Action Inquiry

Awareness building - paying attention to the every day

• Start by building an awareness of your regular patterns (consider keeping a journal)
• Notice the everyday regular things about your life
• • Your journey to work
  • Your office space
  • The people you regularly interact with

Experimentation - raising awareness

• Try small experiments in raising awareness at times when you are normally in 'auto-pilot' - aim for around half an hour a day
• Leave later, earlier or use different routes and notice the difference in the journey
• Talk to people differently (louder, faster, on different subjects) and notice how they react to you
• Talk to different people and notice their reactions
• Move in different ways and at different speeds
• Notice the impulses within yourself that you do not usually hear - smells, sounds, things in the environment you might miss

Experiments to test new actions

• Build experiments into the working day - try a different one every day
• Deliver memos face to face instead of sending email - move around at a slow relaxed pace or a different pace than usual
• Visit areas of the building you rarely encounter and notice the architecture, layout and interactions between people
• Visit other Directors' organisations to get a feeling for the whole system and how your part relates to the part you are visiting
• Spend time observing flows and interactions between people in highly public places - around coffee machines, in canteens etc... notice what they say to you

Notice yours and others reactions

• Build observation experiments into meetings (ones where you are not the formal leader)
• Notice when you are feeling self-conscious or awkward.
• Keep notes on a page divided in two of content and process in a meeting
• Notice how the way a meeting is framed, how ideas are advocated and illustrated, and how people inquire of each other makes a difference to the outcomes of the meeting
• Track who talks and how they interact with others
• Track your own advocacy, illustrations, inquiries, complaints and recommendations

Try totally new Strategies

• Begin to take initiatives that are nothing to do with your own agenda and help the group as a whole or other people
• Support diverse views
• Highlight your observations on the nature of impasses
• Shift the balance of your contributions away from familiar patterns

Build your powers of Observation

• Build the capability to engage in an ongoing silent, impartial observation of your performance amongst others
• Experimentation is likely to evoke emotional responses. Notice and track your emotions and any changes in physiology (palms clammy, heart pounding) and consider what this means.
• Choose what type of 'framing' you will make - "am I introducing this as a complaint, inquiry, challenge, vision, goal or test of expertise? Did I acknowledge others might have adopted a different frame?"
• Rehearse different options and notice how they make a difference in the responses of other people
• When reactions are not what you expected stop action and engage in experimental discovery of what happened
• Always stay open to the possibility that the change will be most significant for you will be able to see yourself differently and challenge your underlying assumptions. Be open to ask about other's assumptions and frames of reference, and be prepared to be influenced