#45 - Getting Started

I've lived through my succession process and lived to tell the tale. I did it young enough to grow an executive advising practice I very much enjoy, with time to write and develop related content. Normally, we keep these Executive Thinking issues short! 1-2 minutes to consume. Max!? This issue is an exception.

Sifting through some files recently, I came across this account of how my work life began, and how it led to becoming a Founder and CEO. Feel free to skip.....or to sit for a little longer and think through how you got started. What formed your passion for leading in order for the world to be better?

In 1987, a church elder called and asked to meet with me during office hours. He was taking time off from his workplace to come. Such conversations are almost always?portentous?and are rarely times where encouraging words are the centerpiece.

The meeting did not last long. He wanted me to know that even though the Church Council had met the night before and voted unanimously to move forward on some key matters, he had changed his mind about a key decision after going home and discussing it with his wife.

I did not look forward to what would come next, as it short-circuited our ability to move forward as a congregation.?And, I certainly did not envy the marriage my elder was in!

<Sigh>

This was a pattern, and not just for the relationships with this elder, nor for our community development work in the blighted urban core of our city, nor for our congregation. Other leaders in our community had the same experience with their partnerships, their boards and among their senior leaders. The real meetings were not taking place in formal settings; informal conversations kept trumping and unraveling the formal organization. ?Creative and committed leaders among us were getting discouraged because honest conversations did not take place in the proceedings, instead in bedrooms, parking lots, coffee shops, on golf courses, or over phone lines. The real power was often not in the room.

Something needed to change, and I did not know what. I walked home on the maple-lined sidewalks that day with a fair bit of despair.

I was enrolled in graduate school at the time and had not yet decided where to direct my thesis work. Out of this conversation with the elder, my solemn walk home, and my desire to figure something out, an idea hatched. ?Why not look at the passages of Scripture in which God’s people had decisions to make??Why not identify where/how the process worked and where/how it did not work? There were times when God’s people celebrated their decisions. Why not study and then draw from them? And then, why not lay that learning beside a similar study of teamwork and group decision-making in the social sciences? ?Finally, why not create a training curriculum?

In addition to the Scriptural texts (particularly in the book of Acts), I found myself immersed in the Quaker and Jesuit traditions, as these were the two communities that had practiced group discernment. The Harvard Negotiation Project was underway at the time, some of the first ever social science around complex decision-making and use of discernment methodology, giving rise to the best-seller?Getting to Yes.?

In developing my thesis I learned almost all process errors?grow from not being able to identify W5H: WHY a decision/action/evaluation is needed; WHO?will play which role in the process; WHAT the criteria of success is for each group member; WHEN the work needs?to be completed; WHERE the work will take place (maybe in a domain rather than a specific geography); and HOW the group will proceed. ?In short, a process design.

Going Deeper:

Sonya Richards , later the Administrator for Design Group International and now Director of Operations at the Classical Academy, attended that first-ever training more than thirty years ago. She had a particular occasion to draw on it some years later in Michigan during some difficult moments on a board where she served. The elder in my story also participated and could eventually articulate how much more he preferred to work with computers than people. He stepped down as an elder, and his wife joined the church council in a far more productive turn of events.

Not long after this, I got a call from a Day Care Center board in Ohio?— would I come to help them? Their director had injured a child on the playground. Whether accidental or on purpose was in dispute, but this was also beside the point since everyone involved threatened to sue the all volunteer and newly-seated board. WWWWWH did not give the answers, but did point the way toward how they got there. There was a settlement in the end, and the Day Care Center survived. That outcome led to other engagements and then still others until, over the years, they became hundreds: family businesses, publicly traded companies, international relief and development organizations, national sports, as well as other consultancies. My work had found me, and it eventually led to what we now know as Design Group International.

The ability to relentlessly, graciously, consistently, and artfully pay attention to W5H from beginning to end is the heart of Process Consulting as I’ve come to understand and practice it. Even the Consulting Agreements are built?around these questions.? This approach is easy to learn and remember (so important!), harder to implement, and perhaps hardest to keep distraction-free. And yet, it is the easiest way to build long-term relationships as we lovingly Listen, Help, and Learn. ?

Repeatedly. ??

In My Backpack

I am at Green Lake Conference Center today during a week of Maestro-level leaders' retreats as this issue of Executive Thinking publishes. My wife and I were able to be present at the actual 75th anniversary, just before this "thin air space" entered the COVID era, had to close for several months, and has since emerged stronger than ever.

Rather than read this fun and fact-filled commemoration, come to central Wisconsin and this beautiful place dedicated to people discovering the best possible version of themselves.

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Executive Thinking is a?source for being and thinking as an executive who links the world's future to their enterprise mission and its profitable operations. Here you will find some of the soul-searching, middle-of-the-night, honest reflections at the core of who we are becoming as leaders.

A Systems Convener and Executive Advisor walking alongside accomplished executives in the third turn of their careers, Mark L. Vincent, Ph.D., EPC, loves leaders who love leaders.

In his own third turn, Mark continues to grow his capacity for wise advising, artful facilitation, and public presentation.

Mark has founded?Maestro-level leaders,?Design Group International,?and the?Society for Process Consulting and authored a number of books, including Listening Helping Learning. He now partners with Mygrow to build an emotionally intelligent world.