Shifting from confrontation to participation in decision making: the interest-based paradigm...

Navigating the Emerging Decision Making Paradigm

I have been asked many times to describe what I do and how I help organizations learn a new, a different and better way of making decisions. But this time it started with an out–of–right–field question that really threw me for a bit.

We were sitting in a standard issue government cafeteria in the Department of Labor, taking a break from a meeting of state directors of area labor–management committees. As I was gazing into the styrofoam cup trying to figure out how anyone could do this to coffee, the guy sitting across from me says, "what’s your metaphor?" I almost spilled my coffee as I jerked my head up to look to see who had asked such a quirky out of the blue question. The guy who asked the question was Ned Hamson. I had met him briefly that morning when the meeting started. He had asked me where I was from. After I said Sacramento, California, he simply said, "Hmm. I grew up in LA."

For the moment being from LA helped to explain the strange question. Then he asked again, "What’s your metaphor? The one that explains what you were talking about this morning?" I had to stall, since I didn’t have an answer as yet. I said, "Ah, what’s AQP and what do you do?" As he explained AQP and that he was editor of its journal, the metaphor began to take shape in my mind’s eye. Then we had a most interesting conversation and were late in getting back to the meeting.

Even though four years have passed since that conversation, the metaphor that came to me that day still describes for me what change, changing (especially how groups make decisions) and paradigms are all about.

The when-you-realize-you’ll-have-to-change metaphor... I’m cruising down the freeway in my very comfortable and well broken in car. I’m going the speed limit and suddenly I’m nearly blown off the road by some guy in some-thing that looks like it might be a car, but I can’t quite tell because it went by so fast. To keep up with whatever it was, I know I’d have to replace my engine, drive train, wheels and tires, body and the steering system. Worse yet, I realize that I will have to do it while I’m still driving what I have because I can’t afford to start from scratch. Then, just ahead I see a "No speed limit" sign.

If the metaphor fits what it felt like when you or your organization realized that change was necessary and if you are the one who will have to help the organization out of being so comfortable in its old car (organization), the next question always is: where do we start?

As my focus is both systemic and paradigmatic, I begin with the most basic, every day act that people in all organizations do everyday: communicate with each other and make individual and group decisions. The style I use is interactive and makes use of lots of pictures or diagrams that compare the old and current model with the emergent model - the new paradigm of decision making and communication.

What is interest-based decision making?

An interest-based approach to communication, negotiation and problem solving is a non-adversarial means of achieving decisions or even just being understood in a discussion or dialogue with others. It is a collection of principles and techniques familiar to anyone. These principles include con-cepts such as:

Focusing on issues not personalities...

Making decisions based on an objective reason rather than power or coercion...

Accepting all motives or interests as givens, rather than evaluating those interests as right or wrong.

Interest-based decision making includes recognizing that human beings are just that and as such we usually find ourselves in relationship to others. Because of this, the human element in any situation must be taken into account and focused on as much as the substantive if one is to achieve a good and lasting situation rather than a win (a win often guarantees that an enemy has just been created; one who will do everything possible to insure a lose next time, or as the late Jesse Unruh would say, "Don’t get mad, get even.").

Although the components are familiar, to work well and serve as a tool for developing organizational effectiveness in the face of constant change, the interest approach is most successful when introduced jointly to the parties committed to using it. The introduction is through a facilitated training and practice.

Who uses this approach? It is being used in labor relations, public policy decision making, alternative dispute resolution, international relations, economic development, counseling, planning, business, government, and more. Professionals in these fields and more are discovering that the traditional approaches are no longer effective in the face of multifaceted and constant change.

Is it effective? The approach is at one and the same time, analytic and creative. Its application in public school labor relations reduced the filing of formal complaints by 70 percent. Its application in international relations is visible today in South Africa and the Middle East. The interest approach is fast becoming the antidote to failed or stalled initiatives in quality and par-ticipatory management in business.

So where do we start? We begin with the basics: two parties in an organization negotiating their differences over terms and conditions of employment. What are they trying to do?

They’re trying to reach an agreement, right? So, then, let’s say that reaching an agreement is a consequence of something: meeting of minds. A meetings of minds is a consequence of something we call understanding. The question is then, what creates understanding?

Understanding understanding
Successful problem solving, like negotiation, is essentially a consequence of the parties to an issue understanding it well enough to have a meeting of the minds about the issue and the solution. Understanding, coming to know or be known in the mind of another person or group, is a consequence of communication. But what is communication? What does it look like?

The interesting thing about talking and listening is that it doesn’t have as much to do with words, eardrums, and vocal cords! We understand each other through communication but, how do we talk and listen?

50/50 communication...

According to "Getting to Yes" author Roger Fisher communication is "50 percent talking and 50 per-cent listening, and the most important part is the listening."

Communication involves the orchestration (as an individual or as a group) of three types of behavior: words, affect, and ritual and practice.

Communication through words... Language, either verbal or written, is used to convey or memorialize information and knowledge about the situation at hand. When making decisions or solving problems, there appear to be three word categories:

1. Words with which we set forth the situation or issue...
2. Words used in the ritual and for affect...
3. Words that memorialize solution and agreement.

Communication through affect… Affect is non-verbal posture, body language, tone of voice, facial expression, demonstration or lack of emotion. It includes such things as volume, intensity, and timing. It has many cultural constraints and connections, and often conveys commitment, urgency, intensity.

Ritual and practice… Ritual and practice involves who does or says what and when. Ritual includes assumptions and principles about how success is accomplished. It’s both a learned and taught collection of steps, sequences and protocols that guides behaviors between and among the parties to the issue.

How we communicate to solve problems -- If we think about decision making as paradigm driven, two significant and identifiable models of decision making or problem solving in the work-place can be defined: conventional communication and an emerging paradigm of communication for decision making.

The conventional communications paradigm... This has been the predominate paradigm used for the better part of this millennium. In Western Civilization at least, this model represents our way of escaping from making of decisions by the assertion of raw, physical power.

The use of raw power has been diffused and/or reduced by the concept of RIGHTS and the offer/ counter–offer, accept/reject method of negotiations. In the workplace we’ve been practicing a version of the RIGHTS concept and the convention-al communications model for about 150 years. The tug of war in the workplace or elsewhere has focused on determining where one party’s rights end and another’s begin. This model reflects our (now outmoded) Newtonian understanding of how the universe works -- for each action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The emerging communications paradigm... Since the rights won through confrontation or assertion concept became entrenched in law or logic, our understanding of the world has grown much more complex. We are now realizing that the conventional decision making model is not serving us well. And we have realized that there is a need for something other than offer/counter-offer, have or have not, win or lose. The emerging model reflects our current understanding that the universe may be understood through quantum, field, chaos, and Newtonian theories all at the same time.

What’s our communication about? Most often, our communication concerns a situation, issue, dispute, problem, or an opportunity. I personally dislike the word problem and like to use opportunity instead. The negative qualities associated with it (problem child, problem worker, he/she is problematic) carry biases that preclude some choices and/or data from being considered. Semantics aside, when we communicate to reconcile different views of a situation, needs and/or desires it’s also to settle differences over how the situation is to be resolved.

My colleague, Ian Walke, introduced me to a convenient way of entering into an analysis of any situation. He calls it CPR! I call it "Ian’s triage". Any opportunity or situation can be thought of as having three fundamental components: content, process and relationship. Each of these in turn, can be further analyzed. When all these elements are understood, diagnosis, prescription, and practice are possible. A closer look at the content aspect is presented in the boxed figured on the next page.

The process aspect of decision making... The process or ritual aspect of decision making may also be presented as alternative conventional and emerging paradigms.

... more to come ...

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