Changing Twice: Luc de Brabandere

“If you want to change, you have to change twice. You not only need to change the reality of your situation, you also need to change your perception of this reality.”

These are the words of Luc de Brabandere, an innovation consultant at Boston Consulting Group in Paris, written in his wonderful book: The Forgotten Half of Change. What he is trying to indicate is that you have to change things (structures, programs, ways of doing things, etc.) to improve and innovate, but you also have to change the way you look at these things: thus changing reality and changing perception are the two halves of change.

Though hard to choose one aspect of this book to focus on, one of his most interesting passages is about Seeing — perhaps because it so tied to the issue of our perceptions. He describes four seeing dichotomies:

Seeing and Perceiving — Our eyes are not cameras and we get ideas by changing our perceptions of things

Seeing and Believing — We believe what we see but sometimes we se what we believe (this is a significant problem in terms of perception of reality — I think of mental models)

Seeing and Knowing — Even though we know certain things we can still see something different; for instance, we know the earth revolves around the sun but we still see the sun setting (another mental models problem)

Seeing and Hoping — We don’t see the world as it is but as we are

These seeing dichotomies pose some limitations on us and make getting clarity on reality more difficult. Yet our perceptions and our mental models (if tested) can serve as the keys to change. Seeing what is missing, seeing what exists that we didn’t see before, seeing an “empty chair” at the table, seeing new landscapes of possibility, and seeing more clearly the essence of what we desire. All these are crucial to effectively changing, adapting, and innovating — to develop “the new” and the innovative for users and for ourselves.

The Possibility of Success

In a previous post I mentioned “Cirque du Soleil The Spark,” a tale about a sports agent who, having lost his focus and his orignal driving passion, enters the world of the circus and rediscovers his creativity and inspiration.

One short passage has the protagonist, Frank Castle, being taught how to manage jumping up to a trapeze while on bungee cords — at some height. He is very apprehensive and this apprehension actually keeps him from accomplishing the task for a while. Of course when he lets go of his fears he is able to reach the trapeze bar. He reflects internally:

“It’s amazing how much we fear the unknown — even though the unknown carries with it the possibility of success. We are so determined to stick to our comfort zones that we learn to live with disappointment, as long as it’s familiar and safe….Our fears hold us back, make us fall short of our goals. Only by taking risks can we hope to accomplish the extraordinary.”

Librarians I know are extraordinary people. Yet whole organizations of these wonderful people settle for “pretty good” and sometimes mediocre due, I believe, to this fear of possible success. What would happen if we were wildly successful? What kinds of decisions and choices would we make?

I believe there are many extraordinary libraries but something about the fear of success fable in The Spark made me think of the many times I’ve heard librarians say “what if we can’t handle the success of xyz service?”  Certainly we don’t want to live with disappointment in ourselves and our institutions.

What might be some ways of connecting with risk that allow us to actually take advantage of our natural passions for excellence?

The Inspired User

Every user has her/his own reasons for seeking out libraries and library resources. All users are motivated by something — very often something exciting to them. So perhaps they enter the library inspired but then become somewhat daunted by unfamiliar surroundings, rules, practices, and mysteries. Some are further motivated to understand all these thngs that lie between them and the object of their interest but most feel like they are slogging through quick-sand to get to their stuff. The Mercurial wings on their feet vanish as they encounter obstacles -whether physical, virtual, or in the policy realm.

“Cirque du Soleil The Spark: Igniting the Creative Fire That Lives within Us All,” a book about the Montreal circus Cirque du Soleil contains a few nuggets that caused some recognition in my mind of things libraries and librarians could be thinking about. The first little riff for me was triggered by the following comment:
“Every new layer of management, every new rule or form gets in the way. They deaden the magic — cut off the electicity of inspiration. If there are too many restrictions, you stop thinking about what you can do and start thinking about what you cannot do.”

That last phrase: thinking about what one cannot do really got me thinking about whether this might not be the biggest challenge facing libraries in their attempt to invite users into their virtual and physical spaces and into the conversations that create those spaces.

How can we best preserve the users’ ability to stay in their “zone” — to stay with their inspiration or motivation and not ask them to stop thinking about what they can do because they have to think about the things they cannot do in our spaces? Their passion is what carries them forward into the mysteries they will spend much time unravelling. These tantalizing mysteries should not be related to how to access what they are passionate about but about the very thing that motivated them to enter library spaces in the first place.

How do we recognize an inspired user and how do we recognize an inspired user who has been blocked by having to think about what they cannot do?

Innovating Human Systems

Many innovations in the world relate to products and services. I would like to posit that we need to also attend to creating innovation in our human systems: our organizations (read libraries!), our society, our communities. What does this mean?

I believe we have the creative power to create human-centered systems that show positive belief in the abilities of people to get along, think together, work together, and live together. What it takes, I think, is getting out of our own way. As Darlene Fichter of the University of Saskatchewan has pointed out, we need radical trust – radical trust is trust in the community. (See: http://library.usask.ca/~fichter/blog_on_the_side/2006/04/web-2.html)

What all organizations, societies, and communities need is a measure of radical trust. Instead of judging each other so harshly might we not find ways to adopt a different viewpoint for a moment in order to understand one another? In my work as an organizational consultant I have seen what the lack of radical trust and the lack of innovation in the human system can do to a group of well-meaning and smart people. Typically the unfortunate results stem from emotional responses to a perceived threat — I say perceived because often that perception is only that and not a reality.

Essentially this is about overhauling our abilities of communication — to find new ways to break through our own blocks when it comes to how we communicate. How can we engender compassion and empathy in organizations and communities where disparate viewpoints often give rise to conflict?

 I would like to hear from people who have tried to innovate the human systems at work or in their communities.