What we think

Remaking Mindsets for Partnership and Innovation

3rd October 2019 Posted by: Ethicore

Photo by s w on Unsplash

Photo by s w on Unsplash

Mindsets do not have to be fixed.  We can develop our mastery of mindsets for partnership, starting with self-awareness, awareness of others and self-regulation.  We first need to understand how we interpret the world and react to it, according to our own mental models.  Understanding the paradigms and mental models which guide the way we see ourselves, others and our work will help to explore how we can develop our mindsets (see diagram 1).   

Any level of organisation: a society, a profession, a company, or a partnership will have paradigms and mental models which influence the way we see things and do our work.  Bring a commercial organisation, and NGO and/or another institution together and the different paradigms can lead to fundamental misunderstandings and miscommunication.  Shifting mindsets requires us to challenge and reimagine the paradigm3 in our organisation or partnership to break and remake our mental models and inform new behaviours. 

Reexamine mindsets 

  • Take a fresh look at the problem/s you’re looking to solve. 
  • How is it new/different from the problem/s you faced in the past? How has the context changed? 
  • ‘Out’ your current mindsets (what are your current assumptions?). 
  • Do your current mindsets enable or disable your ability to solve the problem? 

Identify new assumptions  

  • Challenge old assumptions. 
  • Resist the temptation to adapt and refine, purposefully create new assumptions relating to the new context and problems you face. 
  • How does this change the relevance of your approach?

Establish a new framework of priorities and outcomes 

  • Redefine the issues you need to tackle. 
  • Drive out how your new priorities relate to your new assumptions ‘Because of this, we need to do this …’ 
  • Starting from your new assumptions, define the outcomes you want to see (these may be the same as previous outcomes, but the route to achieving them will be dramatically different). 

Develop behaviours to support a new set of assumptions and priorities 

  • Define behaviours which will enable you to successfully achieve your priorities. 
  • Lead with these behaviours to exemplify new ways of doing things. 

Consider new methods and systems 

  • Consider new methods and tools; how can you socialise and systematise a new approach in your organisation or partnership? 

Be prepared for dissonance and discomfort along the way. This is hard to do. Challenging your paradigm and reimagining your organisational or partnership mindsets, will ultimately lead to new ones, capable of spawning new approaches and creative ways of tackling the challenges ahead.  

Diagram 1:  How behaviours are a function of mindsets, mental models and paradigms. 

How behaviours are a function of mindsets, mental models and paradigms.

How behaviours are a function of mindsets, mental models and paradigms.

  • Capra, F. (1996). The web of life: A new scientific understanding of living systems. New York: Anchor Books. 
  • Senge, P. M. (1990). The fth discipline: The art & practice of the learning organization. New York: Doubleday 

Follow the series to get an ‘overview of the mindsets for partnership and innovation’ and delve deep into each mindset for more insights and tools.  Sign up at https://www.ethicore.com/get-in-touch/sign-up/ to receive the series by email. 

By Jane Thurlow 

[3] Daryl Conner; Conner partners, http://www.connerpartners.com/frameworks-and-processes/the-movement-begins.

 

 


Personal Mastery of Mindsets for Partnership

27th September 2019 Posted by: Ethicore

Photo by Jessica Ruscello on Unsplash

Photo by Jessica Ruscello on Unsplash

Mastering the 6 personal mindsets will help individuals and their organisations build healthy, enduring partnerships [insert link to blog 1 – emily to do once live]. 

The 6 mindsets for partnerships are complementary and require balance.  For example, an outcome mindset can feel forceful if not balanced with a shared value mindset.  An effectiveness mindset can be superficial when not balanced with a reflective mindset.  A solution mindset can be based on a skewed problem definition if not balanced with an openness mindset.  Think of the mindsets as a prismadapting to change the shape of partnerships.  

This week, we look at tools to develop four of the mindsets for partnerships and balance outcome and effectiveness mindsets with openness and shared values to help deliver healthy, long-term partnerships.   

OUTCOME AND EFFECTIVENESS MINDSETS 

1. Leaders take responsibility to build the partnership, not just the programme of activities, constantly modelling and managing behaviours. 

2. Take accountability for your role in the partnership and clearly specify the responsibilities of other individuals with sufficient detail to ensure each individual can follow through. 

TOOLS: 

  • Partnership visualisation:  Developing a vision for the partnership as well as the outcomes. 
  • Commitment setting:  Defining personal, partnership and programme commitments. 

OPENNESS 

1. Be open and honest about your intentions and goals: This will build trust and guide your partners’ future responses. Be clear and frank.  Leaving people to read between the lines can lead to misconceptions. Your behaviour and consistency is paramount. 

2. Build empathy and seek understanding:  Welcome feedback and differences in values and viewpointsBuild self-awareness of defensive behaviour and plans to mitigate it. ‘Out’ internal barriers and problems as soon as they emerge to protect against ‘rigid’ thinking. 

Openness tools: 

  • Internal communication plan 
  • Conflict management training 

SHARED VALUES 

1. Establish shared values: Develop shared ‘superordinate’ goals, which can only be achieved by working together.  You can reduce conflict and challenge by defining goals which aren’t ‘owned’ by individual organisations, but created together.  

2. Establish a shared set of rules or norms that function within the partnership to promote harmonious working and prevent rigidity and oppositional organisational styles. 

Shared value tools: 

  • Shared rules/norms for partnership 
  • Feedback loops:  formalised and regular mechanisms for feedback 

A partnership which is grounded in honesty and transparency may be uncomfortable at times but is more able to function smoothly and withstand disagreement.  Developing personal mastery of such mindsets takes practice, but with an openness to discuss outcomes, values and effectiveness comes truly effective relationship building.  Start talking today. 

Next week, we will explore the solutions mindsets and its relationship with openness and reflection mindsets for partnership innovation. 

Follow the series to get an ‘overview of the mindsets for partnership and innovation’ and delve deep into each mindset for more insights and tools.  Sign up at https://www.ethicore.com/get-in-touch/sign-up/ to receive the series by email. 

By Jane Thurlow and Rachael Clay


Personal Mastery of mindsets for Partnership Innovation

18th September 2019 Posted by: Ethicore

Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash

Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash

Partnership and innovation require similar mindsets, to explore possibility beyond the limits of our own organisation or existing solutions.  Tackling problems to achieve such ambition for transformative change is a stretch.  It takes diverse skills and perspectives working together in multi-functional teams.  solutions mindset is key, particularly when balanced with a reflective and openness mindset. 

Developing a reflective mindset is critical for excellence in partnership and innovation. Studies have shown that perceiving a supportive feedback environment is linked to greater feedback seeking and higher performance2.  Taking time to reflect with colleagues and partners can help explore the dynamics of a partnership. It is important to embrace this feedback and learn from it. Feedback and discussion can expose issues and opportunities; help challenge nascent assumptions and habitual approachesand make knowledge and attitudes more explicit, making it possible to work on solutions.   

Practising an openness mindset with humility and embracing differences in viewpoints, can lead to greater opportunity for innovative ideas, which is essential for transformative partnerships. Indeed, researchers have found that openness to experience is linked to Creativity i . People who welcome feedback and are interested in other points of view, seeing these as a way to find solutions, can build mutual success in relationships. Incorporating the solutions of others and empathising with their perspective helps to make individuals feel valued, as well as enhance partnership and innovation solutions. 

A solutions mindset is critical for transformative partnerships and innovation.  It challenges us to engage with the experience of participants in programmes or ‘users’deeply understand problems we are solving and outcomes we are expecting as well as seeking out solutions that are already emerging.  When developed alongside a reflective and openness mindset, the following approaches will enable both partnership and innovation: 

  • NLP researchers propose that the flexibility to move between the levels at which a problem or concept is considered, from the abstract to the detailed or vice versa, can help gain agreement in negotiations and plan projects.  
  • Embracing heterogeneity to stop ‘group think’ and encouraging participation by local actors. 
  • Being flexible and adaptive, encouraging openness and adaptation to changing contexts and challenges. 
  • Taking considered risks: being ready to fail fast and learn. 

 As partners we need to focus on building solutions and openness mindsets, enabling us to create a fundamental shift in the way we view problems and our ability to innovate.  

Follow the series to get an overview of the mindsets for partnership and innovation and delve deep into each mindset for more insights and tools.

Sign up at https://www.ethicore.com/get-in-touch/sign-up/ to receive the series by email. 

By Rachael Clay and Jane Thurlow

[i] Schon, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action (p. 1983). New York: Basic Books.

[2] Whitaker, B. G., Dahling, J. J., & Levy, P. (2007). The development of a feedback environment and role clarity model of job performance. Journal of Management, 33(4), 570-591.


Opening Mindsets for Partnership

11th September 2019 Posted by: Ethicore

Terracotta wall windows

Photo by Caitlin Oriel on Unsplash

In our last blog, we introduced the mindsets for partnership and innovation.

Mindsets do not have to be fixed.  Starting with the disciplines of self-awareness, awareness of others and self-regulation, one can begin to develop a mastery of the mindsets essential for partnership.  Mindsets are built from, and closely intertwined with, personal mental models that help us make sense of the world and guide the way we see ourselves, others and our work.  Shifting mindsets requires us to break and remake our mental models and inform new behaviours.  

Five ways to refresh our mindsets for partnership and innovation 

Professionals working in partnerships need to re-examine their mindsets and their whole approach to partnership through a process of transformative learningDrop the barriers and defensiveness and face up to our existing mindsets and assumptions.  Only then can we unlearn what we think we know and come to realise that our current beliefs and actions cant always be relied upon. Use these five tools to renew mindsets for partnership and innovation: 

1. Actively seek the views of outsiders to help identify new assumptions to establish the new mindsets, e.g. using stakeholder interviews or conversations. 

2. Ask different questions, e.g. what can we help you with, to develop and model behaviours that support each new partnership mindset and signal the change to others. 

3. Use news tools and systems to reinforce new mindsets and normalise them in a partnership, e.g. partnership temperature check, visioning. 

4. Incentivise doing things differently, e.g. reward participationcelebrate human-centred design and recognise mistakes 

5. Remember, pushing too hard for change can increase resistance, e.g. questioning shared value.  So, loosen the barriers to change while focusing on desired mindsets, monitoring partnership KPIs, not just the deliverables.   

Partnership professionals have a job to do, but they can’t do it alone.  It takes a team.  There is an urgent need to professionalise partnerships mindsets and skills for all those delivering in partnership.  Organisations need to invest in the training, systems and support, as partnership is core to transformational change. 

Follow the series to get an overview of the mindsets for partnership and innovation and delve deep into each mindset for more insights and tools. 

Sign up at www.ethicore.com/get-in-touch/sign-up to receive the series by email. 

By Jane Thurlow and Rachael Clay


Introducing Mindsets for Effective Partnerships

4th September 2019 Posted by: Ethicore

Effective partnerships are dependent upon the mindsets of the individuals that make up a partnership.  Individuals hold deeply rooted assumptions and generalisations that will influence their perceptions and behaviour.  Our behaviours aren’t fixed, however, and we can learn to apply certain mindsets and skills through a process of personal mastery to enable better partnerships1. 

INTRODUCING THE CORE MINDSETS 

Developing three personal and internal disciplines of awareness, reflection and regulation acts as a basis to master ‘partnership mindsets’: 

  • Self-awareness of your own assumptions, emotions and behaviours is fundamental.  
  • Awareness of others requires reflection.  Stepping into your partners’ shoes and looking through the lens of their core values can allow you to understand their behaviours and develop awareness. 
  • Self-regulation is about monitoring and managing one’s own thoughts and emotions.  Emotions such as stress, lack of motivation and frustration can hinder performance.  Anchoring positive emotions can help develop positive, constructive mindsets for partnership. 

INTRODUCING THE 6 MINDSETS FOR PARTNERSHIP 

Through our research, we have identified 6 mindsets for partnership.  Developing mastery of the mindsets is key to transformative partnerships. 

1. Outcome mindset 

Being outcome focused means being clear and honest about what you seek from a partnership.  Start from here for authenticity and positive working relationships. 

2. Effectiveness mindset 

Compliments an outcome mindset.  Having clearly set out your goals, you can be frank in delivering difficult information. Being sensitive, yes, but always direct, and holding the partnership to account when it’s not delivering.  

3. Solution mindset 

Very symbiotic with a reflective mindset. Practice these two together, always.  Look for the solution that you don’t already have an answer for, avoid retrofitting your solution or programme to the problem. 

4. Shared value mindset 

Put yourself in your partner’s shoes, consider why your partners are in the partnership in the first place.  Take accountability for your own goals but also for the relationship. How can you achieve more by working together and looking beyond a service-based partnership? 

5. Openness mindset 

Seek empathy and practice humility. Without this, you’ll never develop real trust or move beyond conflict and challenge. 

6. Reflective mindset 

Be open and honest, welcome feedback and provide it to others. Learn together for shared wisdom to reinvest in a bespoke partnership approach. 

The mindsets for partnership need to be mastered and held in a healthy balance.  For example, developing both an outcome mindset and an effectiveness mindset will enable you to both push towards your goalsand keep a dialogue open to manage progress and issues along the way.  Balancing a solution mindset with a reflective mindset is key to help partners to develop and iterate solutions that respond to learning and feedback as well as the needs of ultimate participants/users/clients.  Similarly developing mastery of the shared value and the openness mindset is key to understand each other’s goals and to build sufficient trust to enable them to be delivered in partnership. 

Explore more on mastery of mindsets in our model below.  

Introducing Mindsets for Effective Partnerships

Follow the series to get an ‘overview of the mindsets for partnership and innovation’ and delve deep into each mindset for more insights and tools. 

Sign up at https://www.ethicore.com/get-in-touch/sign-up/ to receive the series by email. 

By Rachael Clay

[1] The fifth discipline – Senge – Personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision, team learning, systems thinking