In this chapter I discuss several of the mechanisms we use to put our collective heads into a different frame of mind.

1. Dailies, or Solving Problems Together

1. Research Trips

1. The Power of Limits

1. Integrating Technology and Art

1. Short Experiments

1. Learning to See

1. Postmortems

1. Continuing to Learn

Rumana’s method is supported by six intertwined studies by psychologists Emma Bruehlman-Senecal and Özlem Ayduk. Emma and Özlem found that, when bad things happen to people (e.g., the end of a long-term relationship or a lousy grade on a test), if they focus on how they will feel about such troubles in the distant future (rather than the near future), they experience less worry, fear, anxiety, anger, and guilt. Savvy friction fixers coach others to harness the human capacity for imaginary time travel.

Leaders use the “ride-along” or “shadowing” method when they watch, follow, and question employees, customers, and citizens. This usually means going deeper than MBWA, which entails strolling around and having brief chats with people about their troubles. Taking the time to watch, talk to, and follow people as they try to do their work and struggle with the broken parts of an organization can shatter a leader’s delusions about the causes, costs, and cures for friction troubles.

I challenged myself over the course of a single year to write down, as accurately as I could recall, the details of at least one session every week (or every other week) when something interesting caught my eye, when I had the sense that the Buddhist element was in play. Sometimes this influence was overt: people might ask me about meditation technique, or I might spontaneously bring something I had learned from Buddhism into the conversation. And sometimes it was only a feeling: I might find myself reaching beyond traditional analysis to help someone grasp an alternative perspective on whatever issue was troubling them.

This technique isn’t guaranteed (no such techniques are), but you can see how the intention here is to allow your alternate forms of knowing—emotional, spiritual, social, intuitive—to have some room to express themselves to you, and thereby complement the evaluative, cognitive knowing, which, if you’re like most of us, is the dominant form of thinking and choosing you rely on.