IdeaTree

After watching President Obama’s Health Reform Summit yesterday, I have some suggestions. Obama is supremely skilled as a facilitator, but the Washington culture seems stuck in practices that any corporate workshop leader would never allow.

A) Republicans and Democrats should never sit with each other. Not in Summits, not on the floor of the Senate during State of the Union speeches. They should be interspersed, Republican–Democrat–Republican–Democrat.

B) They went from one big table to an empty square. Whoopee. Should have been a circle. Of chairs only, no table. Everyone already knows what they’re going to say, they don’t need space for documents. They can keep notes with legal pads in their laps. Open up physically to open up mentally. Get people out of their fortresses, out on the edge of their comfort zone.

C) Ask questions! It was six hours of “yes, but…”, when there could have been six glorious hours of “how would you do this”, “how does this cover that”, “what’s your solution to…”, etc., etc. Last weekend I read a book that should be required reading, NOW, for everyone in Washington: “Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone”, by Mark Goulston, M.D. It’s the rare self-help book that actually has something profound, and simple, to say: essentially, that there are physical, neurological reasons why deep listening is far more persuasive than argument or reason. (I have no connection to Dr. Goulston.)

D) There are people out there who understand how to break logjams. They should be consulted. People like Dr. Paul Paulus, Chairman of the Department of Psychology and former Dean of Sciences at the University of Texas at Arlington, who has studied over 1,000 brainstorming groups and distilled what works into a few simple practices. Dr. Paulus has already presented these to the CIA. He and others like him should be invited into the Senate chambers.

© 2010 by Ron Newman. All Rights Reserved.