Leadership in permanent whitewater: Playing with the metaphor

The essay below was first published in 1997. Several generations of kayak design have come and gone since then, and David Magellan Horth and I have run the Ocoee River in a tandem kayak, twice. The main point of the essay is still a good one: serious play is the key to navigating turbulence, wherever you find it. (The image above of the businessman / kayaker, and the newer one below of collective whitewater leadership, are by cartoonist / philosopher / friend Dave Hills. These are not in our current Leadership Metaphor Explorer deck, but probably should be. Thanks Dave.)

Permanent White Water: Playing with the Metaphor
Charles J. Palus

This article is reprinted from Issues & Observations, CCL Press, Volume 17, Number 1, 1997.

In his book Managing as a Performing Art, Peter Vaill introduces an intriguing metaphor for the change, uncertainty, and turbulence that now characterize organizational life: permanent whitewater.

"Most managers are taught to think of themselves as paddling their canoes on calm, still lakes. . . . They're led to believe that they should be pretty much able to go where they want, when they want, using means that are under their control. Sure there will be temporary disruptions during changes of various sorts--periods when they'll have to shoot the rapids in their canoes--but the disruptions will be temporary, and when things settle back down, they'll be back in the calm, still lake mode. But it has been my experience . . . that you never get out of the rapids. . . . The feeling is one of continuous upset and chaos" (p. 2).

This, or any, metaphor can best help us stretch our thinking when we draw out both of its realms (in this case, white water and organizational life) and explore the connections in detail. Vaill says very little about the actual experience of white water. If we take a good look at that realm, however, I believe we'll find that the ways that people develop efficacy in the turbulence of white water are suggestive of ways people can develop efficacy in the turbulence of organizations.

How can I claim this? My avocation is kayaking whitewater rivers. I have run many eastern U.S. rivers including the New River Gorge, the upper Gauley, and Chatooga's Section IV. As a Research Scientist at the Center I have also spent a lot of time studying individuals and organizations in the midst of turbulence.

Let's start with the current in a whitewater river. A novice river-runner typically sees what appears to be a random froth of rocks and water. One of the first lessons is "reading the river." How can something random be read? Properly speaking, white water is not random; it's chaotic. Chaos has random elements, but it also contains exquisite patterns. In rivers, these patterns tend to be quite stable, so that a snapshot of any single area tends to look the same from moment to moment--although it is constantly reoccupied by different water molecules. Reading a river is thus a matter of learning to recognize the patterns and associating the patterns with their effects on boats.

The most important pattern element in white water is water moving upstream. Yes, upstream. Features of the underlying river bed that provide resistance to fast-moving water create varieties of eddies and waves containing local upstream currents. Think of the overall pattern as one of great masses of water moving more-or-less straight downstream, embellished at the edges by circular swirls (eddies and waves, or what is sometimes called "turbulence"). These swirls make all the difference. A skillful boater can place his or her boat on even a small eddy, with little effort. This allows the boater to slow down, turn, stop, or even drift upstream a bit.

How does one learn to read a river? Two basic approaches are available. The first is by instruction in the types of river patterns and the rules for navigating these patterns. The second is through play. The former needs little explanation here, being the essence of formal training in any realm. The latter is quite intriguing for our present purposes. Skillful play is the hallmark of an expert boater. Play is also a way that beginners can learn to read and negotiate white water. It is the act of stopping at a point in the current and exploring a single pattern or a series of patterns; exploring the complex interaction of the river, boat, and boater.

For example, a boater may play by surfing a wave, moving back and forth across the face of a stationary river wave rather than moving downstream with the current. Play involves discovering rules, testing rules, breaking rules, and inventing new rules. Play requires relative safety, so that the consequences of rule violation are minimal--for instance, playing above a large still pool rather than above a dangerous waterfall.

The notion of "shooting" or even "navigating" a whitewater rapid strikes me as clumsy, the act of someone whose reading of the water is undeveloped. "Shooting" implies riding the mass of water as a kind of projectile, with the swirls functioning as impediments. (Don't we tend to think of turbulence in any realm as an impediment?) On the other hand, the description used to indicate confident, skillful negotiation of a rapid is play--as in, "She played the rapid with ease."

What I am referring to here is quite similar to what Ken Gergen (1991, pp. 193-198) calls serious play: a spirited way of deeply but safely exploring patterns that have significant longer-term implications. For example, part of the reason for playing on this wave now is that tomorrow I may need to surf a wave for the purpose of avoiding a dangerous waterfall. All white-water play is at least a little bit serious. People who run white water but don't play rarely advance much beyond a beginner's level. Boaters who don't play tend to have an overly rule-bound approach to the river that does not allow innovation at crucial moments; the style of such boaters is usually sloppy or rigid, in either case ultimately dangerous. The chaos of white water inevitably requires innovation at crucial moments.

Now that we've taken a closer look at whitewater, let's see what it can tell us about organizational life. Obviously, the metaphor strongly suggests that play in that realm is important. Consider a situation that almost all of us have faced: learning to use a personal computer. The MS-DOS operating system requires you to adhere closely to arcane rules of operation. Learning DOS is difficult because play is difficult (unless you're a hacker) and mistakes often cost-ly. The Apple system (and now Windows) is radically different; most people can learn the complex ways of computing by playful experimentation with a sense that single mistakes are not usually costly. People who don't play with their computers, and only learn by the book or in classes, tend to learn and innovate more slowly than people who do play.

Here's another example: I have done work with an organization that has instituted "feedback groups," in which peers meet several times a year to give one another detailed feedback in a small-group setting. The groups that have done the best have approached this potentially stressful task with a measure of serious play. That is, they have created a safe, trusting atmosphere in which they can take measured risks and even make mistakes and see what happens. The more successful groups show a sense of trying to figure out the dynamics within the complexities of coaching, often bending the formal rules in the process.

What ideas might we take from all this for understanding organizations that are experiencing some form of turbulence? Here's what I offer, in the spirit of ideas at play:

• Chaos in organizations is not random. Organizational turbulence is full of patterns. There are almost unimaginable layers of order enfolded within chaos. The nature of the order can be quite surprising, and is sometimes invisible to conventional wisdom. Turbulence can be an enormous aid, rather than an impediment, to prediction and control. Find new ways to learn the patterns--to "read the river." The development of this kind of perception is a core competency, not a frill.
  
• Play is essential within organizations if people are to develop an eye for patterns within chaos. Play is essential for action and innovation within chaos. Being consistently rule-bound is crippling. Serious play is a vital supplement to traditional learning. Organizational play requires safe places in which to break rules, make mistakes, and recover--and then try it again, and again. Find the higher-order rules which govern breaking rules with relative safety.
  
• Fundamental innovation can come from serious play at the fringes of organizations. Groups of mavericks busy violating common sense aren't all that bad. Making sense of chaos is ultimately a community venture including both the center and the fringe. Make room in the community for both the center and the fringes (and make sure any "skunkworks" are not in exile from the community).
  

Peter Drucker said, "The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday's logic." So, it is interesting to note that the newest high-performing kayaks barely float. Maverick whitewater enthusiasts, playing with the shape of kayaks as they built them, ultimately came up with one shaped like a potato chip. It has a very thin profile and is slightly concave on top, with bubbles built in for the kayaker's legs. Because of the low volume of air it contains, this kind of kayak almost doesn't float in calm water. Suicide? That is what common sense suggests--but common sense is wrong. In whitewater, all or part of the boat can be made to dive beneath the swirls and into the masses of water beneath, which contain their own distinct patterns. These patterns are inaccessible to kayaks that float on the surface (now referred to with the semiderogatory label of surface boats). These patterns afford means of river-running, and play, that were previously undreamed of. The new design can perform something like a wing in the laminar flow of the deeper currents: They "fly" underwater.

References:
Gergen, K. J. (1991). The saturated self: Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life. New York: Basic Books.
Vaill, P. (1989). Managing as a performing art. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Leadership Metaphor Explorer Cards used with multiple federal agencies at the Treasury Executive Institute

From: Laskow, Greg
To: Palus, Chuck, Horth, David
Subject: Metaphor Explorer Cards with multiple federal agencies represented at today's Center Connection at the Treasury Executive Institute

Hello David and Chuck:
The Leadership Metaphor Explorer Cards were a supreme hit with multiple federal agencies represented at today's Center Connection at the Treasury Executive Institute. This was the initial event for the morning.

• First we asked them to write down adjectives in response to the framing question: In your agency today, how would you describe the talent pool for future leaders? (An option is to allow more time for journaling on this topic)
• Next we asked them to select a metaphor card that represented this current state of affairs in talent development (this is step 1R in the 4MAT Model). There were 5 tables with a deck of Metaphor Cards at each table. I asked them to spread them out so that all were visible. They did so immediately and enthusiastically and began to exchange their reactions to the cards (we did not have to tell them to do this).
• They each selected a card, sometimes two.
  
• We had them exchange with each other their adjectives and the reason they selected the card(s). This took 10 minutes.
  

When we asked them to report out, we received comments such as "I can't believe that we were able to describe our situation in such a short period of time".

Lastly, we did a Visual Explorer session. Here we asked, them to select one image that represented what they needed to do differently in their organizations given what they learned today. I literally took them on a gallery walk with almost all of the VE images on display to insure that they saw them all (we were constrained as to space) and with a hand-held mike, I "led" the tour encouraging them to let the picture "grab" them. Worked well and then we had them do a table-top debrief using the Star Model. VE was a real hit as well. We let them keep their selected VE images as well as their selected ME images.




Regards,
Greg
Gregory B. Laskow, Ph.D.
Lead Senior Enterprise Associate
Government & Military Sector
Center for Creative Leadership

Creating and Sustaining High Performance Public Organizations

Thanks to Tom Hickok for this fine description of how the Leadership Metaphor Explorer Cards worked in his advanced topics in management course at Virginia Tech, with a special focus on "the inextricably intertwined concepts of leadership and culture."










-----Original Message-----
From: Hickok, Thomas, CTR, NII/DoD-CIO [mailto:Thomas.Hickok.ctr@osd.mil]
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2008 5:07 PM

Thank you for allowing me to use the metaphor cards. I have had one opportunity to use them to date, and see another opportunity coming up in a few weeks. You asked for feedback on use, and I am happy to provide it.

I am presently teaching a course at Virginia Tech designated as an Advanced Topic in Management; the subtitle is "Creating and Sustaining High Performance Public Organizations." There are 15 students -- 12 are PhD candidates and 3 are Masters candidates -- in two locations, Richmond and Alexandria, and they represent a mix of local and Federal organizations.

I used the cards in the 3rd session, a joint Saturday session in Fredericksburg, in between Richmond and Alexandria. We shared a meal at a local Perkins restaurant, and went to a classroom at nearby Mary Washington College.

I started the session by letting the students know we would be having a discussion followed by an exercise. The discussion began with the class brainstorming a number of characteristics of high performing organizations. Then we teased out the discussion of one of those characteristics -- accountability. We talked about what the term meant operationally; how you would implement it; what would be consequences of failure to implement; and how you would measure it. This was a robust discussion.

Next I laid out the cards on several tables. I asked the students to mill around the tables and to pick out one or two cards that spoke to them in respect to the challenge of creating a high performing organization. The organizational context could be either where they worked, some other organization, or an imaginary organization. The card(s) could speak to them in either in a negative or positive way. And I let them know they would be asked to share about the card(s) they pick.

The sharing came fluently and progressively seamlessly as the discussion went along. By fluently, I mean that none of the students had trouble sharing, and in the process both self-disclosed and provided insights into their organization. By seamlessly, I mean that students hop on each others backs, linking their card to the one just previous. The discussion period last nearly an hour and a half.

There was no given order for discussion. The way they took turns is, after someone shared, another person would say "Maria's card reminded me of ... " and then they talked about their own card.

Examples of the discussion: Student used ...

• strict disciplinarian to talk about how rules can stifle creativity
• co-creating musicians to talk about high performance as improvisational jazz
• squadron of jet fighters to talk about the need for training to simulate real situations
• union of independent states to talk about new stovepipes replacing old ones
• ambitious pioneers to talk about some initiatives of the new President

Other cards used were critical parents, community of practice, preserved fossils, network of peers, steady navigators, and adventuresome explorers.

There were no negative comments about the cards. The beauty of the card process is that there is no need for every card to resonate -- as long as some do.

I had about 15 minutes prior to close, so I invited the students to give feedback on the class, and especially the use of the Explorer cards. I had earlier let them know the terms of use -- that you were letting me use a product still in pilot and were looking for feedback. The feedback was universally positive. Some comments were --- "It created a dialogue", "the cards were great", "the use of analogies is good", and "great ice breaker".

To me, the success elements that need to surround the cards include: a warm up discussion, so that the brains are warm, ready to go; enough time to let people linger over the cards, to engage their intuitive side; and then the chance to share in a well-supported way.

If I had a wish at the end of the class, it was that I could have given the selected cards to the students. After my CCL workshop experience, where we were allowed to keep the cards, I referred to my cards a number of times and I actually posted the Visual Explorer picture on my wall. The cards were more than mementos. They were triggers to recall the thought process that the workshop facilitated inside of me. (I couldn't offer the cards to my students, since I
plan to re-use them in my work setting in the next month.)

In sum, I think the LME cards work beautifully. And the exercise demonstrated to me the versatility with respect to theme --- the CCL workshop used leadership; in this context I used high performance organizations; and I am confident that the cards will work with "change management" as a theme (that's my plan for the off-site of this office that has doubled in size due to re-organization.)

One other difference in use from the CCL workshop was that in the CCL workshop, the sharing was done primarily at individual tables in small groups. The conscious design of the day for my class session was to get the Richmond and Alexandria students to experience being one community. So I rejected the possibility of small group work. The large group sharing was a less
efficient use of time (the exercise took probably two times as long as it would with small groups), but accomplished the intended purpose.

From my perspective as the instructor, the main purpose of the class was to create a sense of community in a class that is being "polycommed" to two locations. In my view the class was a success; some lesser known students got better heard in that class; and the students from the two campuses got to know each other better. My concern was not with efficient time use, and that is why I didn't rush any part of the exercise. It was with effect, and the cards worked beautifully in that regard.

My next possible use of the cards is as an "ice breaker" at an off-site "team-building"/picnic outing. Our group where I work has almost doubled to about 32 in the last month due to a re-organization. The way I want to use the cards is to create a discussion about managing change, and the number of changes the participants in the exercise are making and/or are going (or will go on) on in the organization. Then, I will invite people to pick cards of people that speak to them, and discuss.

I really like the cards and the way they draw from the intuitive side of people's brains.

Best,

Tom Hickok

Coaching with the Leadership Metaphor Explorer™

Our CCL colleague Clemson Turregano did an impromptu coaching session with his CEO client, using LME and the iLead (CCL's customized version of the iPod Touch).

“I was showing the new iLead to JX, the CEO of Big Co., India Division, while we were waiting in the lobby of a hotel. We did an impromptu one on one coaching session. I handed him the iLead and showed him how to browse the digital Leadership Metaphor Explorer™. He said he liked the tool, and then I casually asked him, “Where are you now, as a company?” He chose the one labeled “Ruthless Gang Bosses”; he laughed and called it “Gang of Idiots. … that’s us.”

We talked about that awhile and then I asked him “Where do you want to go?” That was a great question and we really got into it. He picked “A Squadron of Jet Fighters” and talked about ways in which they could all be flying together in synch. JX said that now all the people that reported to him had a lot of autonomy and big egos, all with different agendas, and the team was all over the place. He wanted them aligned and focused on one objective. Later I talked to JX’s personal coach and she listened with all ears as I shared these images and ideas from our in the moment coaching session.”