The new learning organisation?
August 21, 2008Edgar Tan writes a nice summary of a recent presentation he attended on the successful use of web2.0 tools in the organisation. He says:
They opened themselves up to question and scrutiny, but by doing so they achieved transparency, alignment, openness and trust … What kind of leaders would open themselves up to such vulnerability in order to see hierarchical structure (ie power) crumble away?
He cites Bonny Cheuk listing the qualities of what she termed Leardership 2.0:
- employee-centric
- listen and value every staff’s inputs
- ready to be surprised
- tolerate mistakes
- hear what you may not like to hear
- genuine dialogues with employees
- willingness to let go of leader’s authority
- leaders have to participate, not delegate
Fantastic! This is the kind of stuff that gets me really excited – the intersection between technology and human potential!
Forget Bullet Points - Tell Stories
July 18, 2008Convincing people of the power of narrative and encouraging them to tell stories rather than use bullet points in their presentations is often quite difficult. Trust me, it’s harder than it sounds.
In a podcast interview with Elliott Masie, Dan Pink gives a great example that shows it is quite natural and makes perfect sense: When you come home from work and are asked “… how was your day?”, do you get out a series of power points? No. You narrate!
Do you love your work?
July 16, 2008If you were to hazard a guess, what percentage of people do you think truly love what they are currently doing at work? I’m not sure where the statistics come from, but according to Steve Denning …
It’s a miserable 6%! That means 94% of people are in various stages of disinterest, disillusion or despair as to how they are spending most of their waking time on this planet.
Enterprise 2.0 and Employee Engagement
June 24, 2008I was at Michael Specht’s unconference session at PubCamp last night. He’s right, unfortunately, the conversation was dominated by too few. But I’m glad he’s written a summary. I was particularly interested in some of the statistics quoted from the Watson & Wyatt research report:
A further 2007/2008 Watson & Wyatt research report on communication best practices found that organisations with a “most effective” communication programs provided a 91% total return to shareholders from 2002-2006 compared to 62% for least effective. Improved communication effectiveness is associated with a 15.7% increase in market value. While finally organisations with “most effective” communication had an employee engagement level 4 times that of “least effective”.
I agree with Michael’s argument that communication & customer focus are areas that Enterprise 2.0 can help. But I’m concerned that these discussions always seem to focus on technology being the answer — the silver bullet — to solving organisational problems. I’m not saying that it doesn’t play a role, but I believe that Enterprise 2.0 is more about creating a culture of participation and collaboration. Technology can be an enabler of that, but on it’s own, it’s not going to work.
There are plenty of things we can do in organisations to improve employee engagement without getting embroiled in debates about whether or not people could or should access social tools inside/outside the firewall. Here’s an idea: why not encourage people to walk from their desks and actually talk to someone (yes, a real human) instead of sending an email? Why not arrange a brown bag session and invite some like-minded folks to join you? How about some well facilitated meetings to help people have conversations and learn how to collaborate?
There are many, many small things you can do that will make a big difference. I’ll use an example from last night (although this does relate to technology). Someone — I think it might have been Alison Young — decided that it would be a good idea to write her twitter handle on her name tag. And everyone followed suit. This led to some interesting connections and conversations. Simple idea - big impact. Be a positive deviant (shout-out to Matt Moore for this link).
What other simple things like this could you do in your workplace that might make a huge difference? Oh — and borrowing an idea from the 2020 summit — make sure some of your ideas have a no cost option - they’re a much easier sell!
Seth Godin on meetings and conferences
May 21, 2008Seth Godin writes an interesting piece: The new standard for meetings and conferences. In it he argues that the standards, along with people’s expectations of face-to-face meetings and conferences have changed significantly.
“if you think a great conference is one where the presenters read a script whole showing the audience bullet points, you’re wrong”.
I couldn’t agree more with what he is saying. The standards have changed, and people should expect more from organisers. This is one of the reasons I started etching out a career as a facilitator. Let me tell you how it all started …
Early in 2005, I was asked to host the technology stream of a software user group conference. I had attended a number of preceding conferences, and felt that they were staid and boring, and followed a far too ‘traditional’ format which focused on sales and marketing. They didn’t really provide the opportunity for dialogue or the type of engagement that customers were seeking. So, knowing that customers were going to sit through three days of powerpoint slides, I decided to go out on a limb and try something a little more dynamic and engaging. I ran a session based on Edward De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats method. I had never done this before, and did so with some caution. However, my instincts proved to be correct. The session was lots of fun and we had some great conversations. Afterwards the participants thanked me for trying something that was, for them, so different and unexpected.
This was a moment of clarity for me about just how important it is that we discover more productive, creative and innovative ways for people to work together — ways that engage people, that ignite their passions and harness the collective wisdom of the assembled group.
There’s a bunch of passionate and committed people out there doing lots of good work to improve the way conferences and meetings are run. It’s often underestimated, but it truly is important work.
