How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer

A must watch, ‘How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer’ is a fabulous documentary (watch it here) about network theory and testing the urban myth of six degrees of separation. Understanding networks is at the heart of understanding our complex society. Theorists in the doco argue that networks don’t grow accidentally - they evolve according to a pattern, and that this predictable power of networks is helping researchers to find solutions to problems, such as containing the spread of infectious) diseases. Fascinating.

Good to Great

In his book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t, Jim Collins introduces the Hedgehog concept, and with it a comparison of a Fox and the Hedgehog. The fox is a creature that know many things but lacks consistency; the hedgehog is a simple creature that knows ‘one big thing’ and sticks to it. He uses it to argue that great companies, like the hedgehog, stick to the one thing that they can be the best in the world at. As a generalist (aka as a fox), I just can’t agree. The hedgehog might make money (?), but he sounds rather dull and boring to me. I also find Collins’ criteria for determining Great Companies less than convincing (mostly financial performance). I understand why, as a research method he has chosen to do so, but it seems to reduce the social value of organisations to the economic - that being great is simply a matter of being financially successful. I believe there are other measures of greatness. It’d be interesting to see which companies (if any) rate as ‘great’ in light of the recent ‘financial crisis’.

FOC08

A few closing thoughts on the Facilitating Online Communities course. I learnt a lot. The course helped me clarify my own understanding of the role of facilitator and the meaning of community, from both an online and face-to-face perspective. I also really enjoyed the interaction with the other participants and the chance to try some new things in a ’safe’ and supportive environment. It’s nice to hang out with people who share similar interests. I also really enjoyed organising my session for the mini conference. For me, the reward was the people (including my co-host Mark Elliot) accepting the invitation and showing up, being present and willing to engage. It taught me a lot about making offers. Leigh Blackall modelled the role of facilitator to a T. He was well organised and showed leadership when needed, but mostly tried to get out of the way and allowed us to get on with self-organised and self-paced learning, which I appreciated (thanks Leigh!).

Work and Meaning

I’ve been doing some outplacement work, so the meaning of work has been top of mind. I read about a 1974 study, where Studs Turkel observed that work is about “a search for meaning as much as daily bread” — and that “only a happy few find it, the majority loaded with weariness and discontent”. ¹ Seems to me that perhaps things haven’t changed all that much in the last 25 years?

1. see: Turkel, S. (1974) Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. Link.

Okay, glad that’s done. Thanks to Chris Brogan for the virtual inspiration/kick in the pants I needed to get going again. Welcome to 2009.

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!

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!

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.

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!

“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.

In most cases consultants or facilitators are called in to help organisations to solve a problem(s). They often do so in the hope that someone ‘external’ will have the right information and is able to give them the right answer. The old ’silver bullet’. Invariably, this approach isn’t very effective. That’s because it’s a cop out. It’s too easy to put someone on a pedestal — a guru who says that the answer is in this or that.

In the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy a giant computer is able to calculate the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything. The answer was 42. Easy. But this answer is on its own is meaningless. What was needed was a proper question.

It seems that some people are reluctant to take a more holistic approach where they ask questions, explore, and make their own meaning through dialogue and the stories they tell both themselves and others. Why is this?

I gladly come back to the absurdity of our education: its end has not been able to make us good and wise but learned. And it has succeeded. It has not taught us to seek virtue and embrace wisdom: it has impressed upon us their derivation and their etymology.

Come to think of it, this statement sums up my feelings about my own education. I’m working hard to correct the imbalance on that score.

Aside: the definition of pedagogy?: from paidagōgos, slave who took children to and from school.

Not only are too many of us becoming too unpracticed at thinking, I believe many of us no longer have the breadth of useful information, or the generalist experiences and competencies of our ancestors, or the diversity of experiences, or the introspective, meditative, peaceful, uneventful moments, or the unhurried and pensive conversations to draw on, all of which comprise the raw material that effective thinking depends on.

There are a couple of reasons why this post piqued my interest:

1. It calls for us (the royal we) to become more generalist. Now clearly here is a voice of reason!
2. I’ve also advocated for a long time, the move towards business models that are more open and cooperative and for organisations to treat their staff more like adults than angst-ridden teenagers (inspired by Ricardo Semler).
3. I’ve recently been implementing GTD (more on that later). There is some real synchronicity here. From my reading of the book, what David Allen advocates is a method for dealing with the ‘firefights’ and everyday issues SO that we DO have time to think. Is that not the whole point of GTD? From my own experience facilitating strategy and planning sessions, this bottom-up approach to planning is essential. You are never going to achieve the required level of introspective thinking or any productive thought unless the day-to-day is under some level of control.

I agree with Dave’s postulation that the solution lies in approaching management with a completely different mindset–one that empowers individuals to take responsibility, encourages them to act and most importantly, treats them like human beings.

Whilst doing some research, I came across an elightening piece on the challenge of building communities by Dave Pollard.

I’ve read everything I can get my hands on on intentional communities, and what strikes me most is that their failure, just like the failure of so many new-age business models, is a failure of imagination. The intentions are good. They invest a lot of time and energy in research, and in trying to make it work. But when they run into difficulties, they keep falling back on ‘conventional wisdom’: we need a council, and committees, and voting and non-voting shares, and strategic plans, and legal agreements, and to borrow lots of money; we need to work harder, and to wait until conditions are exactly right. I appreciate that creating a new community is scary, but the social, political and economic failings of the old system are exactly what got us into this mess, and incorporating them into the new models is just asking for the same terrible results.

Whilst the focus of his post seems to be a broader context of intentional communities, I think the same reasoning applies to building communities of practice and social networks. It is very easy to fall into the trap of making things too strucured or formal, and this can stifle creatvity and openness.

To be successful, you have to nuture and create the right conditions for evolution and transformation rather than trying to control and force resolutions. This is the philosophy I hope to take with me into the new venture.  Do you subscribe to this philosophy, or do you think I should take a different tact?

Helping was much more difficult than anticipated because, whilst I was able to come up with many great concepts and ideas; I found myself acting like it was MY assignment. My role in this excercise was to assist Madelyn to come up with her own ideas and thoughts and provide her with some direction, not to add my own ideas.

During this experience, I was reminded of an article that I read recently, which discusses the temptation to impose one’s own ideas on other people in the persuit of adding value and the effect that this has on the committment and ownership of ideas.

Therein lies the fallacy of added value: Whatever is gained in the form of a better idea may be lost six times over in the employee’s diminished enthusiasm for the concept.

So–upon reflection–I learned a couple of valuable lessons:

1. Be careful how you ‘encourage’
2. It’s better to “teach someonehow to fish” rather than to “feed them the fish”.

This is probably a lot harder to put into pracice than it sounds. So, do you let other people be winners?

Offices are best at creating three things: politics, commutes, and distractions. Again, find great folks and do regular in person meetings, then let them go home and work. They’ll be happier, you’ll have less expense, and there will be much less drama.

I SO agree with this statement.  Why do businesses still cling to the outdated concept that a physical presence is required?  Paying for broadband access for employees is a lot cheaper than paying rent for a shoe-box in the CBD, so what’s holding people back from embracing the officeless office?  Fear, Control, Ego et al?

At the risk of sounding rude … what a load of rationalist crap. For better or worse, the jobs environment of yester year–where there was some notion of stability, structure and security–is gone. And this is not a recent phenomena. It went a long time a go.

What we need to do as individuals is to respond creatively and decisively and take advantage of the situation rather than becoming a victim of it. We need to free ourselves of the master-slave mentality and forge our own path. As quoted here before … “security only comes from controlling your own destiny.”

Any decision beats no decision.” … “When Microsoft decided online computing was real, Bill Gates refused to talk with employees for three months unless they prefaced the conversation, about anything, by explaining how it related to the Internet. That’s focus. No waffling. And the company immediately shifted direction.” I.e., if you’ve got a problem or incipient problem, don’t screw around and around doing analysis aimed at producing the “perfect answer”—just get the hell on with something, anything directly & unmistakably related to the issue at hand.

Having worked as a business/planning analyst, I can definitely identify with this as I have witnessed it first hand. Left too long, this problem can become ingrained into the culture of an organisation and saps the energy of those workers who are driven towards outcomes and who try and take initiative. Don’t get caught out!

[A further thought]:  I’m a bit of a perfectionist, and I’m not for one minute saying that I’m not guilty of this myself, but you must be AWARE of this tendancy and balance it with a good dose of pragmatism.