King Arthur's Round Table: How Collaborative Conversations Create Smart Organizations - Hardcover

Perkins, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471237728 ISBN 13: 9780471237723

Publisher: Wiley, 2003

Synopsis

Your organization functions and grows through conversations–face-to-face and electronic, from the mailroom to the boardroom. The quality of those conversations determines how smart your organization is. This revelatory book shows you how the Round Table of Arthurian legend can help foster collaboration and transform today’s world of business, nonprofits, and government.

"When I want a group to work effectively, I turn immediately to my colleague of thirty-five years, David Perkins. This book is a distillation of his knowledge and wisdom."
–Howard Gardner
author of Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences and Intelligence Reframed

"David Perkins applies his wit and inventive mind to create a fresh perspective on the world of collaboration in organizations. His archetypes and toolboxes offer valuable insights to anyone facing the challenges of collaborative problem solving."
–David Straus
author of How to Make Collaboration Work

About this title

About the Author

DAVID PERKINS is a senior professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is a founding member of Harvard’s Project Zero, a research outfit focused on cognitive-symbolic capacities and their implications for learning in all settings, and for many years codirected the project with renowned education specialist Howard Gardner. He is also the author of The Eureka Effect: The Art and Logic of Breakthrough Thinking, Outsmarting IQ: The Emerging Science of Learnable Intelligence, and Smart Schools: Better Thinking and Learning for Every Child.

From the Back Cover

One of the most familiar stories of Arthurian legend involves King Arthur’s Round Table. Arthur’s table was a significant innovation: Rather than issue proclamations from the end of a long table, a round shape brought him closer to his court and facilitated collaboration. Arthur’s table also allowed him to easily call on his knights’ particular expertise at the precise moment he wanted it.

The Round Table can teach us much about effective communication, collaboration, and organizational structure. By reducing hierarchy and making interactions easier, Arthur discovered an important source of power–organizational collaboration. This new collaboration was much more powerful than the old hierarchy and allowed Arthur to fulfill his dream of a united England. The simple innovation of the Round Table became perhaps Arthur’s greatest asset.

In King Arthur’s Round Table, renowned Harvard professor David Perkins uses the metaphor of the Round Table to uncover the importance of effective collaboration and communication in today’s intelligent organizations. Traditional steep hierarchies and departmental silos are insufficient for dealing with the complexities of modern business, since leaders must rely on the input and expertise of those around them. Like Arthur, today’s successful business and government leaders understand that communication and collaboration must be fostered and that the decision-making process must be opened to anyone who can offer insight and wisdom.

Managers today know that they must embrace collaboration to succeed, but they often don’t know how to do it. Using examples from the past, the modern world of corporations, nonprofits, and governments, and everyday life, Perkins shows how the Round Table metaphor serves the needs of modern organizations. He offers a practical methodology that maximizes the intelligence level of a group while ensuring good group communication. It’s an invaluable tool for companies struggling to stay ahead of the competition and for any organization wherein efficiency and group morale are imperative to success.

In King Arthur’s Round Table, Perkins shows how applying the cooperative ethic to your business, government, or nonprofit organization can be its greatest strength.

"When I want a group to work effectively, I turn immediately to my colleague of thirty-five years, David Perkins. This book is a distillation of his knowledge and wisdom."
–Howard Gardner
author of Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences and Intelligence Reframed

"David Perkins applies his wit and inventive mind to create a fresh perspective on the world of collaboration in organizations. His archetypes and toolboxes offer valuable insights to anyone facing the challenges of collaborative problem solving."
–David Straus
author of How to Make Collaboration Work

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

King Arthur's Round Table

How Collaborative Conversations Create Smart OrganizationsBy David Perkins

John Wiley & Sons

Copyright © 2003 David Perkins
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-471-23772-3

Chapter One

King Arthur's Dream

A SMARTER TABLE

It's probably the last thing you'd think of, recalling the glories of Camelot, the magic of Merlin, and the attractions of Guinevere. It's probably not very romantic compared with the legend of Excalibur. But there it is: King Arthur was a social theorist.

Maybe he wasn't up there with Aristotle or Thomas Paine or Karl Marx, but he was in there trying. King Arthur wanted a lot more than a Camelot of dreams, soaring out of the morning mist with a banner on every spire. He wanted a smart Camelot, a collective enterprise that functioned intelligently.

Central to the legendary Arthur's agenda of unifying England and fostering peace and prosperity were the Knights of the Round Table. And that round table was anything but the aesthetic whim of a monarch oh so deeply into interior decor. The traditional kingly table swept down the length of a grand reception hall, the king seated in his divine position at the head. After all, the king was the king, and that ought to be worth a place at the head of the table. But who would sit at his right hand, who on his left, who nearby, who so far down the table you'd have to shout to be heard by the king? (And you don't shout at kings.) And what would those well down the table say about the privileged up-table positions that they would have preferred for themselves? More to the point, what would they do about it? What they did do about it in other courts was plot, form coalitions, seed dissension, and fight duels over status.

King Arthur knew that such a restless and fuming group could not help keep a kingdom in order, so he exercised a very simple idea: His table would be round. His knights would sit around a round table. No position would be greater than any other.

But Arthur had more in mind than avoiding the downside of a bickering mob of knights. He wanted the upside of a thoughtful community. His knights would converse as equals-proposing, challenging, debating, reaching accords, and solving the problems of the kingdom. The round table not only symbolized this collaborative commitment but made it easier: At a round table, each knight sat within reasonable speaking distance of all the others. Of course, Arthur himself would have to sit somewhere at the table. But who happened to sit closer to him on that occasion would not be important.

It was a beautiful and practical thought. It still is. The symbolism of place at the table is something we all feel, whether we're sitting in a boardroom, jury room, ready room, team room, or an ad hoc let's-solve-this-problem meeting in the corner of the corporate cafeteria. We may not be ready to challenge our colleagues to duels, but long tables with the boss at one end still and inevitably provoke uneasy thoughts about status, as well as posing practical problems of shouting in order to be heard. Round tables-or, if not round, then square or squarish-still and inevitably serve people well, symbolically and functionally, when they gather together in a mutual spirit to puzzle out a problem or construct a vision.

PUTTING OUR HEADS TOGETHER

I take my hands from the keyboard, pull my eyes from the monitor, and look down from my second-story home office on the June lawn. After a rainy weekend, it needs mowing. But I'd rather think about lawn mowing than mow the lawn, so I think about lawn mowing and King Arthur.

What if we had King Arthur's estate, with a veritable Camelot of a lawn? It would take days and days to mow that lawn. But get 10 of the Knights of the Round Table out there with power mowers, and together they'd have the Camelot lawn done 10 times as fast as one. Well, maybe not quite 10 times as fast. Social scientists have identified a phenomenon called social loafing: In many circumstances, when you add more people to a team, each individual works a little less hard. Okay, so eight times as fast.

Fine for the lawn. Now imagine those 10 knights of industry putting their heads together to design a new power mower. You can be sure that they wouldn't get that job done 10 or 8 times as fast. It might even take them longer than a concentrated effort by a single person. It's so much easier to mow the lawn together than to design a lawn mower together. Call this:

* The lawnmower paradox: Pooling physical effort is usually rather easy. Pooling mental effort is usually rather hard.

It's not difficult to understand why the Lawnmower Paradox occurs. We can usually divide up physical tasks by assigning people to different physical parts of the task-different sectors of the Camelot lawn for instance. For mental tasks, it's typically harder to find conceptual parts that make for an efficient division of labor. Moreover, often we do not so much want to divide up a mental task as to bring the power of multiple minds to bear on the core problem. Even with the best will in the world, pooling mental effort is not so easy.

King Arthur's idea about the round table is a small step toward dealing with the lawnmower paradox. A round table makes it a little easier to pool mental effort. A round table makes a group a little more intelligent. Given all the brain power in a product development lab, a policy team, a programming team, a marketing task force, a planning committee, or any similar gathering in corporations, governments, or universities, the potential intellectual power would seem to be enormous. But how do we realize that power? Not easily, as Arthur recognized.

I've spent most of my professional life as a cognitive scientist and educator interested in learning, understanding, thinking, and intelligence. Much of my work has concerned the individual thinker and learner, child or adult. In Outsmarting IQ (New York: Free Press, 1995) and other places I've written about the nature of intelligence-how intelligence is more than a matter of neurological efficiency; how intelligence involves not just the ability to think well but the sensitivity to read situations; how people can learn to be more intelligent. But individual intelligence is only one part of a more complex cognitive system. We are a social species. We almost always do what we do together. Much of what we do requires pooling not just physical effort but intelligence, especially in the modern world. In many ways, this interactive, collective, group, or organizational intelligence (the term I'll usually use) is much more important than individual intelligence. That's why it has captured a portion of my attention in recent years.

Cognitive science and related disciplines speak to the intelligence of groups, teams, communities, and organizations as they do to individual intelligence. They can help us to untangle the lawnmower paradox. Information processing is a concept that applies to groups as well as to individual minds. Basic demands of problem solving and decision making identified by researchers figure in group as well as individual thinking. Scholars have identified important elements of organizational intelligence, for instance, facilitative leadership styles that foster thoughtful collaboration. Notions from the business world such as communities of practice and knowledge management illuminate how information can flow well within organizations face-to-face and digitally, informing practical action. Such ideas help to show us how many individuals' intellectual efforts might merge into organizational intelligence.

The mission of this book is to advance King Arthur's dream. The aim is to look hard at the lawnmower paradox and offer an illuminating theoretical and practical account of organizational intelligence. An important starting point is to recognize that King Arthur is certainly not the only dreamer. Throughout human history people have wondered how to put their heads together without simply bumping skulls. Before we mow Camelot's lawn any further, it's worth recognizing a few more of these dreams.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Democracy was born of its opposite in Athens in the last years of the sixth century B.C. Democracy was not the enlightened conception of Athenian philosophers. It was the practical construction of Kleisthenes, a political figure embroiled in a power struggle between his extended family and a rival clan, who had the upper hand.

Kleisthenes adopted an almost paradoxical tactic to resolve his problem. He proposed a new constitution that would give dramatic powers to the people of Athens and the surrounding region, Attica. The people liked the package he was selling and eventually pushed his rivals out of their positions of power. The form of government that emerged from Kleisthenes' constitution and later refinements was called democracy, from the Greek dmos, the people, and kratia, power-power in the hands of the people.

Athenian democracy was not exactly equitable by modern standards. Male adult citizens of Athens participated; but women, slaves, and foreign residents, even long-term ones, did not, although in many respects these groups fared better than in other cultures of the era. Athenian democracy was not exactly a lean mean machine, either. A huge popular assembly, the Ekklesia, met about every 10 days to represent the collective will and ratify decrees. Decrees to be ratified were generated by the Boule, a kind of senate consisting of 500 members that met almost every day. The Prytaneis, a rotating executive committee of 50 members, organized the work of the Boule. Legislation aside, a court system heard numerous legal cases as well as ruling on the interpretation of legislation, not unlike the U.S. Supreme Court. Each gathering involved at least 201 jurors and as many as 2,500.

Although these numbers clearly pose problems of efficiency, they demonstrate a striking commitment to one aspect of organizational intelligence: pooling people's judgment in ways that avoid bias from special interests. Thus, decisions would benefit the people of Athens generally. This principle played out in several notable ways. On the largest scale, the government introduced by Kleisthenes divided the citizens of Athens into 10 large groups called phylae (singular phyle). The composition of the phylae deliberately cut across old family power blocks and also geographical interests: Each phyle included members from three geographical areas of Attica that traditionally had been rivals-plains, coast, and hills. To allow participation even of the poor, citizens received a small stipend for attending the large meetings of the Ekklesia.

Representation in the Boule, the Athenian senate, was balanced by phylae. Moreover, members of the Boule were chosen by lot for a period of one year, rather than by the popularity contest of an elective process. The Prytaneis, the executive committee of the Boule, rotated among the 10 tribes every month or so. Ordinary citizens, members chosen by lot for the Boule who happened that month to be part of the Prytaneis, guided the state.

Jurors were chosen by lot so as to achieve a balance among the phylae. They were also a large group-at least 201 for each session, as mentioned earlier-selected just before the court convened. This made it virtually impossible to bribe jurors. The jurors were paid for participation to ensure that even the poor could contribute their judgment. The juries voted by public ballot, a practice that later evolved into secret ballots.

Athenian democracy was a marvelous invention, but not an unalloyed one by any means. Socrates, who was sentenced to death for impiety and corrupting Athenian youth in 399 B.C. by one of those huge Athenian juries, held that democracy turned the government over to people of no particular enlightenment and counted all voices as equal, though they might differ in wisdom. The makers of the U.S. constitution examined both Athenian and Roman democratic institutions and leaned toward the Roman model. They judged that appeals to passion rather than reason too easily captured the enthusiasm of the large Athenian groups, creating a kind of mob rule. They felt that the brief terms of office fostered inconsistency and undermined personal accountability.

Modern democratic institutions diverge from the Athenian model, particularly in the number, expertise, and continuity of individuals involved in various roles. However, they preserve a serious effort-sometimes more successful, sometimes less successful-to tap the judgment of diverse participants in ways that keep the bias of special interests to a minimum. As in Athens of two and a half millennia ago, unbiased collective judgment remains a guiding principle today, a principle at work in jury selection, state and national elections, and boardroom, stockholder, and union votes.

COOLING DOWN CONFLICT

Mr. Kealoha, not involved in the original incident, facilitates the conversation with serene detachment. He asks his teenage daughter Kili to explain more about the shouting episode. Kili does and Mr. Kealoha paraphrases Kili's account for the rest of the family. He asks Kili whether she thinks perhaps her timing was not so good. Kili acknowledges that probably it wasn't. Mr. Kealoha again paraphrases. He continues probing Kili's account for a while. Kili speaks to him, while the other family members listen. Mr. Kealoha then turns to Mrs. Kealoha, who was also present at the incident. He wants to corroborate Kili's account. Is this what Mrs. Kealoha saw? Mrs. Kealoha agrees broadly but offers a few adjustments. Mr. Kealoha checks with Kili: Is this what happened? Yes, Kili acknowledges. Kalau, their other teenage daughter, now has a turn. What was Kalau's account of events?

If we didn't notice all those names starting with K, such a dialog could happen in many places and cultures around the world, untangling conflicts by a kind of collective cognitive choreography in which people report and reflect and evaluate. But this particular dialog has a context in time and place: an account from 1985 by E. Victoria Shook of an indigenous practice of the Hawaiian people called ho'oponopono.

The traditions of ho'oponopono, a pre-European feature of Hawaiian culture, had almost vanished by the 1950s. In the early 1960s, efforts began to revive the craft, as clinicians working on social problems sought ways to respect and draw upon the rich particularities of Hawaiian culture. Part of that culture was a robust commitment to collaboration and harmony. Pukui, Haertig, and Lee, writing in 1972, lauded the Hawaiian extended family for its sense of unity, shared involvement and shared responsibility. It is mutual interdependence and mutual help. It is emotional support given and received. It is solidarity and cohesiveness. It is love-often; it is loyalty-always. It is all this, encompassed by the joined links of blood relationship.

Ho'oponopono is one mirror of this tradition. Ho'oponopono begins with difficulties in a group, where people experience something for which the Hawaiian language has a very special name, hihia, a relationship of negative entanglement. Hihia grows like a weed when one person transgresses against another, as with the shouting episode that Kili launched. Hihia points not just to a single offence, but to the way aggravations escalate. I snipe at you, you gouge back; I bide my time and strike again. Pretty soon we have a feud going, our lives entangled in a negative way rather than interwoven in productive harmony. Negative entanglements may begin with substantive issues, but they expand out of all proportion, so the real problem becomes the history of reciprocal transgressions as much as the initiating incident.

Shook emphasizes the highly structured character of ho'oponopono. The practice begins with a prayer to Christian or traditional gods, invoking their aid and support. The kind of probing conversation previously illustrated follows. The aim is to identify the original transgression and how it escalated and perhaps spun off side-entanglements. The process, in a single session or several, seeks to address all of these.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from King Arthur's Round Tableby David Perkins Copyright © 2003 by David Perkins. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0471237728
• ISBN 13: 9780471237723
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288