The Functional and Empathic Voices: The Battle in My Head
Posted by CCA LiveE December 24th, 2008 
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by Nicole Chen
I discovered this semester that a two-headed monster lives within me. I always thought that only one did – the one that has pushed me to become a great executer and project manager, and has led me to relative success in my career. After all, I studied at a prestigious private university, worked at a now successful startup right out of school, lived overseas for several years and managed projects with high-profile clients. But a second one is starting to make itself heard, and seems to be increasing in volume lately.
The first voice is the one that says to me, “Ok, so what do I need to do today? We’ve got two weeks left before the due date, so let’s set an agenda, outline the goals, and end each meeting with clear next steps. Let’s make it happen!” This voice is quite loud and in a constant state of activity and brain whirl. This new emerging voice, however, is a little softer, more and is constantly trying to interject among the business of the first. It says to me, “Let’s sit back, take a breath and feel. Stop and look around. Does everyone in the team seem engaged and vested into this project? Are we all happy?” But then the first voice pipes back up and says, “Hey, back to work! We’ve got to get this done!” So back and forth the two voices went.
On Visual Documentation…
Posted by CCA LiveE December 23rd, 2008 0 Comments
by Tim Bishop
During the first week of class this semester, a fellow student showed us a project she had been working on. For the past few years, she had taken at least one photo per day, and she shared with us a month in her life. I was immediately struck by the effect of this project, how a single image could transport one back to a time and place. I had always taken photos while traveling, but here was a visual journal of the everyday and potentially mundane. Here, a trip to the park or the movies was now an event stamped with a date, and even though I wasn’t there, I could see how the people and places could immediately spark the memory to recollect all kinds of other details about the day.
Working Mothers in the Design Strategy MBA Program
Posted by CCA LiveE December 23rd, 2008 0 Comments
by Ayano Hattori, Beth Berrean, Heike Rapp-Wurm:
The following are a series of posts between Heike, Ayano and Beth. We’re three working mothers in the Design Strategy MBA program at CCA. The posts below reflect our conversations as the semester progressed around what it means to be mothers, dMBA students and managers in professional practice all at the same time.
We have been lucky enough to have our professor Linda Yaven take some time with us each residency to discuss these issues in more depth. The conversations below reflect just a bit of what has been on our minds as we transition to this new phase of including dMBA in our lives along with working and being moms.
Transitioning between parent, business student, employee and manager has allowed each of us to try on different ideas and come to new conclusions. Ultimately, each of us needs to make choices based on ALL the roles we play. Our hope is that by revealing the details of some of our conversations we can provoke or invite your WHOLE person to respond
Reason Will Not Lead Us To the Future
Posted by CCA LiveE December 23rd, 2008 0 Comments
by Paul Colando:
When it comes to business the most talked about and apparent emotion is fear. Today, as we watch the unfolding of an economic crisis this emotion has never been more prevalent. Corporations and consumers alike are now trained to proceed in whatever they do with caution. In the past few weeks we observed top executives dressed in their buttoned up suits and stone cold faces present to authorities on the collapse and potential collapses of historic companies, driving the fear factor to record highs. We attempt to find comfort through reasoning but during these tough times it is equally important to be aware of your emotional side.
“Left Out Alert”: A Virtual Team Member Reflects on Her Experience
Posted by CCA LiveE December 23rd, 2008 2 Comments
by Gwen Armbruster
The CCA dMBA promotes the opportunity for those of us (ME!) who do not live in the Bay Area to participate in their new business program. And I accepted admission into this program knowing that I would not be relocating to the Bay Area from my current physical location in Baltimore, MD. As a result, I had the pleasure of being a “virtual” team member on various projects throughout the semester. [NOTE: While I am not the only person in the dMBA program who is a commuter, all persons I worked with this semester were physically located in the Bay Area.]
5 Weekends, 5 Months… 5 Lessons
Posted by CCA LiveE December 23rd, 2008 0 Comments
by Kate Ranson-Walsh:
For the past five months, 26 of us have attempted the slightly insane: tackling the curriculum of the new Design Strategy MBA at the California College of the Arts while maintaining our current jobs, not to mention our personal lives. The dMBA program is designed so that working professionals can participate, but it is by no means “part-time.” A orientation it was suggested to 8 budget at least 32 hours a week for schoolwork. We all wondered how we were going to make it work.
After five residency weekends, spanning five months, studying four subjects, all while working 50+ hours a week at my “day job”… I don’t think I have it all figured out, but I’ve learned some valuable lessons to remember for next semester.
Ode to Innovate the Government
Posted by CCA LiveE December 21st, 2008 0 Comments
by Rowan Edwards
Coming into the dMBA program at CCA was always an exciting proposition. Innovation. Sustainability. Design. Business. And all for the greater good. This is why I came to this program or it came to me. I also came for the unknown. In the program I would be getting some better understanding of the corporate world, the strategy within it, better skills in organizational architecture, decision making and control, and the underlying economic ramifications inherent in them. The unknown quantity to this next wave MBA curriculum was not just new methods of integration of Design Strategy into the old corporate paradigm, but understanding and integrating meaning into it. Though I typically would consider myself fairly self aware, the course “Live Exchange” (the communication component to the program) would prove to be the course that not only would challenge me to be more efficient in my communication technique, but offer meaning and encourage a more compassionate and reflective means to that end.
How To Make Working Virtually Work For You
Posted by CCA LiveE December 17th, 2008 0 Comments
by Carla Voorhees
As a member of the brand new Design MBA program at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco I’ve gotten a crash-course in how to work across miles, time-zones and emotions. While the school and most of my classmates are located in San Francisco and the rest of the bay area, I live just outside of Washington, DC and fly in to attend classes. As a result, 98% of our group work on projects is conducted virtually.
Working virtually is almost never easy, but it can be managed. More importantly it’s becoming a necessary tool in the businessperson’s arsenal. There are significant trends in business today towards cross-functional and multi-disciplinary teams, many of which are not physically located in the same office, city, state or even country. It is this trend that makes finding a way to work virtually that works for you so critical. Here are some tricks for making it work for you:
1. Choose the right project and the right team. Projects that are easily broken up into discrete blocks with little overlap are particularly good for this type of environment. Team members that are good at working independently can be great assets.
2. Schedule meetings far in advance. Once the scope of the project has been defined and the team assembled, block out once or twice weekly “sync-up” meetings for all members of the group, taking into account time zones and other factors.
3. Work asynchronously as much as possible. Independent workers and discrete portions of projects make this task much easier. If everyone owns a section of the project, focus can increase, stress decrease and meetings can be shorter.
4. Keep the lines of communication open. Post your work regularly for feedback where the group can see it, and make sure that you also give feedback to other members. Make sure that everyone is heard, and that you are present on every conference call. Really listen, pay attention and think about what everyone is saying and how you can incorporate it into your section of the project.
5. Set clear expectations. In addition to owning a section of the project, having clear expectations for each group member, and the group as a whole, I’ve found to be incredibly helpful. Knowing exactly what I’m expected to do helps me know when I need to ask for help or additional feedback.
6. Try not to overreact. It can be very easy to misinterpret an email message or other form of virtual communication without the benefit of body language and physical presence. Try to remain calm, and reread the message. Try not to take it personally, and ask for further clarification if need be. This would be a great time to start a videoconference if you need it.
7. The right tools make it easier. There are a multitude of tools available on the internet. Here is a quick survey of the arsenal that my team uses. The right tools have made working virtually something that I may have dreaded to something I actually look forward to.
Who owns the image of the business person?
Posted by CCA LiveE September 23rd, 2008 0 Comments
In September 2008 California College of the Arts, San Francisco, launched a groundbreaking Design Strategy MBA, the first of its kind in the country. The program has a sustainability emphasis.
Taught by Associate Professor Linda Yaven, Live Exchange (LiveE) is the foundational course on effective communication for Design MBA. At the intersection of design and business we find human centered research. LiveE takes a close look at the power of a conversation to build, rebuild, repair and regenerate trust.
Design dilemmas are often dilemmas of communication: certainly, many of our environmental concerns are caused or exacerbated by missing, unarticulated or poorly executed conversations. Or we grow accustomed to a lack of clarity in on-going communications.
We live at a time when those in fiercely competitive environments are being called to shift to collaborative mind-sets, become stewards of effective communication, open conversations we may have previously dismissed and speak for those without recourse to human speech.
LiveE takes a close look at the power of a conversation to build, rebuild, repair and regenerate trust. We experience self-renewal through our narratives and stories; certain kinds of conversations are curative.
The course branches out from the spoken word to visual thinking strategies and the power of shared visual mediums to generate meaning and sustain collaboration. Communication is viewed as a renewable eco-system of self, peer, customers, managers, stakeholders, materials, networks and vision.
As part of cultivating their voice in a variety of ways LiveE students will be writing a 500 word blog on an aspect of communication, creativity, design, sustainability and/or business of compelling interest to them.
With appreciations to Nick Aster for his inspiring invitation.
- Linda Yaven
Faculty, Live Exchange,
Design Strategy MBA
CCA
***
Linda Yaven is on faculty at California College of the Arts, San Francisco. She provides lively visual presentations on Curative Communication Strategies and Making Thinking Visible including at Harvard, The Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and Innovation Immersion for Fortune 500. Linda is completing a documentary “Teach Us Something in 7 Minutes”.
Questions, feedback or comments welcomed: elle@lindayaven.com
Visit www.lindayaven.com
SPECIAL PROJECT
Introduction to LiveE Blog
Linda Yaven, dMBA FacultyLive Exchange
elle@lindayaven.com
Lindayaven.com
Let us treat men and women well, as if they were real.
Perhaps they are.
- Ralph Wado Emerson
During the inaugural semester of Design Strategy MBA (dMBA) it has been an honor and pleasure to teach and coach the twenty-six pioneering students in Live Exchange (LiveE). I learned so much. The course objective is transforming behavior within a communication context, deepening the interplay of independence and interdependence simultaneously.
It was a deep-dive into everyday conversations - the ones we have with ourselves, others materials and vision. The intent was to gain awareness of individual reasoning process, reduce junk thoughts and cultivate a communicative “voice” alongside peers doing the same in a variety of communicative expression; speaking, listening, collaborating, visually documenting, peer coaching, performing and writing.
Thank you to Nick Aster for the generous offer to activate the “Writing Voice” here at TriplePundit.
dMBA posts are arranged in eight broad categories with overlap:
- Virtual and Distance Communication
- Teams and Collaboration
- Communication in Business
- Teach Us Something in 7 Minutes
- Sustainability
- Parenting in Professional Practice
- Mavericks
- An Emergent Voice in Business Practice
WHO OWNS THE IMAGE OF THE BUSINESS PERSON?
Business thinking is characterized by logical, numbers crunching, statistical, prescriptive qualities; design thinking by analysis and synthesis, deductive and inductive logic. While design thinking is used to innovate products and services it unpacks and activates effective communication beautifully. This is where design thinking’s “right brain” aspect shows up.
In his book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future Daniel Pink performs a great service legitimizing an emergent landscape already inhabited by “creative types”. dMBA students were drawn to the program because it aligns creativity and design thinking with business and were to varying degrees creatively productive as individuals even as they managed or worked in teams in professional practice.
dMBA has an ethos of teamwork as the new math of innovation and the students were immersed in duo and group work. Here they were tasked not just to collaborate but to do so with awareness. As a life-long painter I admit I am prone to listen for narratives of creativity however they show up. For 4 months I watched with fascination my students collide and glide between the pulse points of their own creative agenda, concerns and timetables – and those of their teammates while shedding and finessing unproductive communicative habits.
dMBA Eric Erkhe: “the highest expression of communication is when we think "together with others” while maintaining our individual faculties of independent assessment. But this is precisely where communication commonly fails - when it is “this OR that” not “this AND that.”
Observing the tensions and victories of their collaborating provoked questions: How does the nature of collaboration shift when the team has an innovative objective? Or when the collaborators themselves place high value in their own creativity? What has to be accounted for when “creative types” collaborate? What is replicable about the process? How can outcome be tested?
Reflecting this zeitgeist of collaboration and creativity within business dMBA Vinitha Watson: “The voice of the modern day corporation has evolved over the years from a stiff, monotone and dull persona to a hip, conscious, empathetic and altruistic partner”. Corporate marketing has actually capitalized on the look of edgy creativity for quite a while now.
Still that is a distinct beast from transforming behavior. dMBA Jennifer Pechacek: “Returning to school has given me the wonderful opportunity to start a difficult conversation with myself. I have determined - probably what is most disturbing - is that I am nothing more than a manifestation of how I have been trained especially by my…professional superiors.”
This question of autonomy in prescriptive environments is thematic - dMBA Jason Hui: “The British and American T.V. show The Office comes to mind”.
LiveE speaks to the “people” strand running through dMBA. To describe these skill sets as “soft” is, to my mind, so last century. Foundational to successful communication in competitive environments is an ethos of the equivalency of the communicators – that even for a finite amount of time we can suspend “positioning” in hierarchy to listen and learn. Easier said than done.
In the past the agenic, empathic or poetic voice and right-brain skill-sets belonged to the outsider. dMBA posts are placing this perspective front and center and in so doing reconfigure the requirements of professional identify. It’s what LiveE student Nicole Chen calls the difference between her “functional” and “empathic” voice.
POSSIBILITY
In plain words American educator John Dewey described effective communication as “an experience” meaning the congruence between the inner (private) and outer (public) dialogue. Writing in pre-tech 1950’s he contrasted this with the way daily life’s disruptions pull us away from ourselves. Even then.
Here a third logic of design thinking shows up, abductive logic - a working definition goes something like approaching any problem biased by the question “what is the possibility here?” In listening we listen not only to the speaker but to our own listening about how what is said affects our future possibilities. For anyone with a desire to improve interpersonal dialogue, collaborative intelligence or deliver meaningful customer experience check the meaning maker within each communicator.
Design thinking is masterful at disciplining its users in rigorous listening for possibility – a required skill-set for the collaborative work ahead of us bringing balance to the global eco-system on an unprecedented scale.
dMBA posts shed light on an emergent mind-set intended to dive beneath the image of innovation and effective communication to its meaningful embodiment.
