Dvorak, Orange, Design and Measurement:
Now how did those all show up in one article?
Russ Volckmann
Today I was listening to Dvorak’s “A Hero’s Song,” while I was working on the computer. The phone rang. It was one of my client’s. He is an entrepreneur doing what entrepreneurs do in starting a new business. He had called to status me on his progress on some marketing he is doing.
“By the way,” he said, “I looked through your new issue of Integral Leadership Review and it is really interesting. But it seems like a lot of theory. Can you tell me how in a measurable way this is used?”
Bless his heart. This guy is into knowing. By that I mean his whole life is dedicated to knowledge. Not just thinking about things, but knowing things. This is reflected in the way he has developed his business, an integration of many sources of knowledge.
Well, we have all been warned by the likes of Ken Wilber and Don Beck not to share this integral/spiral/developmental stuff with clients, but I barged ahead, caught in the glow of delight that someone out there was reading what I was publishing in the Integral Leadership Review. Sure, there are lots of subscribers, but who really reads this stuff?
An aside: in one of my prior lives I was a jazz disk jockey on a radio station in Virginia. When I was on the air I would get phone calls from listeners (and sometimes from the station manager who didn’t like what I was doing at the time). Our rule of thumb was that for every phone call there would be 100 listeners—which meant a tough night when no one called!
So I wonder if a similar rule applies to publishing on line e-journals like this. For every email there are a hundred readers? Well, maybe. Just keep burning those emails into me, folks!
Back to this exciting drama: I forged ahead and talked about how the theories and models where being applied and wondered if he had read the articles about the application of theory in Africa and elsewhere. I talked about the interview in this issue that had been done with Alan Tonkin and how he had worked with Don Beck using spiral dynamics in the mining industry and subsequently how Alan has been using this approach in his work. I talked about Oliver Weibel and his use of it in McKinsey in Berlin, how Leo Burke was using it at Notre Dame’s Executive graduate education program.
I paused and he interrupted me. “That still sounds like a lot of theory. How is it actually used in a way that has measurable results?”
At this point I began talking about lines of development and integral practice. I told him about the assessments of the Notre Dame program and Leo’s telling me about bottom line results produced by people who attributed their success at least in part to the integral approach. I talked about the integral lens and the use of an integral perspective to look for the “truth” in different approaches, rather than get caught in fruitless debates. I asked, “What more measurable results would you like, than that reported by Michael McElhenie about the reduction of incidence of HIV/AIDS?”
He responded, “Yes, I get that, although I will have to go back and read those articles; I had just read the openings. But it doesn’t answer the question.”
“Ask me a specific question,” I suggested.
“I want to know what exactly people do with this and the results they get,” he insisted.
At this point, I told him about some of the techniques that are used in integral practice and leadership development programs. I pointed out that change was on an individual level through these types of interventions, but that individuals then would take what they had learned to the companies and organizations they worked in and with.
And then I told him that in a series of interviews I am doing, while I have gotten some wonderful information and exciting prospects for the use of integral I found that I did not get much information about specific interventions and their impact. I had asked for some of that information and had gotten an anecdotal story or two. I had also gotten the response that specific designs and approaches were proprietary.
“This is understandable,” I told my client. “These people are making a living with this stuff and they may be concerned that they will be ripped off.”
This he understood very clearly, being in similar shoes himself.
At this point I suggested that we take a look at the work we were doing and talk about using the integral framework. He liked that idea so we agreed to begin there with our next appointment.
After we ended the conversation I continued to reflect on it. I realize that I have a somewhat romantic view of the early years of group dynamics and organization development. There was a time when the ideas were flowing and people were sharing information widely so that all could learn, refine and contribute the methods and concepts that were being used to make a positive difference in organizations and in people’s lives.
Some of that is happening now with integral theory, spiral dynamics and other developmental models. The wide range of material being published on line is really impressive. However, it is somewhat difficult to get specific designs and interventions that people have developed along with some “evidence” of the effectiveness of these approaches.
The designs and interventions we are using are often treated as proprietary. We might be concerned that others will use our ideas and we will not have the leverage to attract clients. Our own measure of the success of these is the business we are able to attract. I wonder about this.
Romantic though I may be, I believe that the work that we are doing is critical for the future of humanity and the world. The more we can spread the word and share our creativity the more we will be able to make the kind of impact that might be measurable. I believe Don Beck has been modeling this. He is passionate about the value of Clare Grave’s work for change in the world and seeks to disperse this knowledge. My guess is he knows he can’t do it all alone and needs a growing cadre of spiral wizards to make the kinds of interventions that provide us with hope for the future.
How do we measure our effectiveness and that of our clients when we are considering development through an integral lens with its multiple variables? Well, lest this seems like a daunting and overly academic challenge, may I suggest we commit to such an undertaking, but with some greater clarity about measurement.
My client may have been looking for hard numbers because in his worldview that constitutes knowledge. I don’t know who said it (I think it is a variation on Einstein’s comments), but something I shall always remember: The most important things are the things we cannot measure. Well important things can be measured, directly and indirectly. That is the message in the eight perspectives that Ken Wilber has put forth in his essay on Integral Spirituality.
A value of Ken’s inside/outside methodological approach to each quadrant is that it reminds us that there are multiple ways to go about measurement. We can use nominal, ordinal, cardinal and ratio levels of measurement. It is important that we understand these to be able to communicate to multiple levels about the promise of integral development. So, forgive this brief excursion into the use of measurement in the social sciences. Let’s hope that memory serves.
Nominal are the crudest of measurement scales, which simply classify individuals, companies, products, brands or other entities into categories where no order is implied. It is either there or it is not. It is a categorical scale, a system of classification that does not place the entity along a continuum. It can involve a simple count of the frequency in which entities are assigned to various categories. It is integral or it is not. It is green or it is orange.
Ordinal scales are used to rank individuals, attitudes or items along a continuum. For example, we ask a client to rank five organizational factors in order of significance or impact. The hierarchical stages of development in developmental psychology are ordinal scales.
Cardinal or Interval scales are what my client was looking for, e.g., how much money was saved, profits generated, new customers attracted, or other indicators of performance. It is only with interval scales that we can justify the use of the arithmetic mean as the measure of average. The interval or cardinal scale has equal units of measurement, thus making it possible to interpret not only the order of scale scores but also the distance between them. Thus we measure occurrence at different points in time.
A ratio scale has the properties of an interval scale plus a starting point. Factors that are ratio scaled include weights, lengths and times. Ratio scales permit us to compare differences in scores and the relative magnitude of scores. For instance the difference between 5 and 10 minutes is the same as that between 10 and 15 minutes.
An integral approach to measuring results can draw on all of these approaches to measurement. We can use them in combinations. And use different ones for different phenomena. They can be linked to the multiple methodologies that Ken is showing need to be integrated. In the end it may matter most what the individual client perceives to be the result—measurable or otherwise, but I think it is an interesting challenge to set for ourselves to be thinking about and applying an integral approach to measuring results.
Got results? Let me hear from you.