Hanzatsu

A recent email exchange with the estimable Dennis Stevens inspired me to put words to some thoughts that have been floating around for a while.

(For those who don’t know him, Dennis has done some amazing work on understanding how meaning is generated during conversation and how conversations can be deployed to enormous benefit in teams and organizations)

Dennis encouraged me to take a closer look at the work of Humberto Maturana and, in particular, Maturana’s work on the concept of autopoiesis:

“Autopoiesis talks about how living system continuously regenerate through their interactions and transformations. He talks about the biology of knowing and the plasticity of the mind. This means that our minds actually change in the way they function in this transformative process. Maturanian objects (like language, artifacts, and ceremonies) can shape those interactions and change the system.

Crazy academic talk. But what he is saying is that we transform organizations (they way they think about their work and each other) by shaping the language, artifacts, and ceremonies. If we can get people in a room together, and get them talking about the system, understanding the system, and socializing around the system, the way they think will literally change – and a new living system will regenerate from this process over time. “
– Dennis Stevens

This prompted me to respond with the following reflections:

Regarding Maturana: these ideas do not sound crazy to me at all. It seems to me that all of us have observed these processes first hand. Almost every experience getting to know a new team or organization reveals new characteristics of autopoietic phenomena. Especially pathologies: the system is unable to regenerate itself because of calcification of communication pathways, there is an inability to create new types of shared meaning, etc.

I have been reading into some of the current neuro research and it is clear that the plasticity of the mind is real. Dan Siegel from UCLA has influenced me quite a lot (The Mindful Brain, The Mindful Therapist). Some of his key points:

• The brain is a social organ. Human connections shape neural connections.
• The function of the brain is to engage with other people, other brains, in the shaping of its development over time and in shaping its activity in the present.
• Self-knowledge and self-awareness is strongly linked to the existence of mirror neurons.
• Social interactions are one of the most powerful forms of experience that help shape the development of both brain and mind. In other words, how one brain interacts with another has important effects on how the brain functions.
• Repeated activation creates, strengthens and maintains connections. Siegel says: “Neurons which fire together wire together”.
• Areas involved in self-regulation overlap with those involved in interpersonal communication and plasticity. In other words, self-regulation is a critical foundation for those who wish to have an impact on their own cognitive development.
• The Middle Prefrontal Cortex is a crucial locus of integration, self-regulation, and social connectedness. (See explanation of nine key functions here.)

There is no doubt in my mind is that conversations — especially one-on-one conversations — represent the most fruitful terrain the creation of autopoietic effects.  It’s also clear that the careful use of language and the intentional design of artifacts and ceremonies are some of the most powerful tools in our meaning-creation toolkit.

That said, I’m not sure that we have put our finger on how exactly it is that a particular conversation leads to a powerful experience of shared meaning creation, when a similar one (sometimes with the same people talking about a very similar topic) does not. My hunch is that it has to do with something that I don’t yet have optimal words for but that for now we might call “relational flow.”

I believe this flow occurs both on rational and emotional levels, on conscious and subconscious levels, and on verbal as well as non-verbal levels. Of course it occurs in conversations, through artifacts and ceremonies, but it also occurs when no one is paying attention at all.  (This is a broader topic for another day, but to me the missing piece of understanding why co-located teams are so much more productive than distributed teams is in recognizing that relational flow is constantly enhanced through tiny invisible moments: overheard remarks, subtle visual and aural cues, jokes and humor, etc. etc.) In particular, I have observed that many common pathologies in project teams can be addressed by systematically improving relational flow.  Not surprisingly, some of the most effective ways to do this involve methods like the ones you describe in your Beam Team case study.

I have recently become very interested in understanding in how and why relational flow tends to be disrupted.  Certainly the structural aspects of team and workflow are vitally important.

But I have also observed many examples of resistance to structural improvements, and I have come to believe that this resistance is a symptom of relational flow disruptions that stem from other sources: issues related to team identity, personal identity, even things like past trauma or childhood attachment — maybe what you would call psychodynamic factors.

Ultimately, I think that people often want to improve their relational flow on some level, but are struggling to overcome obstacles that were generated internally (and were then triggered by the system) rather than having been created by the system per se.

Anyway, I am enthusiastic about the intersection of Kanban and relational dynamics (including conversations) because:

1. I am convinced that Kanban has enormous potential to improve relational flow in teams and organizations
2. I feel certain that the lean-agile mantra of paying attention to flow and cycle time is applicable to relational flow.
3. I suspect that the mechanisms of visualization and de-personalization offered by Kanban may provide clues as to how to help individuals and teams overcome some of their internally-generated resistance.

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Clearly, my exchange with Dennis is just the first step in what will surely be a long journey to better understand relational flow. If you’d  like to be  a part of that journey, or if you know of good resources that are already leading in that direction, please consider commenting or getting in touch some other way.