Squidoo Lenses
| 5/07/08 | | The pond metaphor |
Here is something I have meant to post about for a while. It is a metaphor in the book 'Dangerous Undertaking' by James Harlow Brown. Shawn has previously blogged about the extensive use of metaphor in the book. The metaphor is in a story about a NASA engineer who discovered something that took him off his 'autopilot' and helped him realised the impact his behaviour and actions have. I have tried to paraphrase the story to capture its essence:
The engineer was sitting by a pond, contemplating. He saw a frog jump into the pond and noticed how the ripples spread right across the pond. He watched intently and realised that there were many other sources of movement on the surface of the pond. Insects would occasionally touch the water causing tiny ripples. A swallow swooped down and lightly touched the surface as it caught a bug. A light breeze came up and created more ripples. All these ripples interacted and caused complex patterns on the surface of the water. The engineer began to get an insight; each event was writing its unique pattern on the water and the ripples lasted long after the event happened. He realised that the whole world was the same way. We make ripples and create the future every moment.
The engineer's insight deepened. He realised he was watching the pond from a distance, as if he were outside watching others make ripples and he couldn't see himself in the picture. Suddenly it hit him that in the real world, there is no bank to sit on. He was right in the pond where the ripples were affecting him, and where he was causing ripples too. This was the insight that had a profound effect on the engineer, getting him to turn off his autopilot. Seeing himself as a part of the pond, not as some external observer.
For me, the pond metaphor has relevance to our work in leadership development. Some managers see themselves as sitting on the bank, carefully choosing where they want to drop a pebble and create patterns. They do so without realising that their every action creates patterns that have a big influence on the pond. Influences that may counteract the effects of their carefully dropped pebbles. 'Sitting on the bank' is a luxury that doesn't exist. We are all creating patterns, and the future, constantly because we are in the pond. Seeing ourselves as 'in the pond' helps change the way we think about the effects of our behaviour.
What ripples are you causing? Will your pebble drop with scarely a ripple in the pond, or will it have lasting effect?
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| 3/07/08 | | Another little thing.... |
One of the things we talk about a lot is the power of 'little things' to make a difference
in a complex environment. I saw the sign in the photo on the counter of a cafe earlier this week. If you can't read it, the poem goes like this
Smiling is infectious, you catch it like the flu
When someone smiled at me today I started smiling too;
I passed around the corner, and someone saw my grin;
When he smiled I realised I'd passed it on to him;
I thought about that smile, then I realised its worth;
A single smile, just like mine, could pass around the earth;
So if you feel a smile begin, don't leave it undetected;
Lets start an epidemic quick, and get the world infected
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| 2/07/08 | | Matt Moore facilitates a discussion on story work with Madelyn Blair and me |
This morning Madelyn and I met Matt Moore on Skype to chat about story work. Matt's a fast worker and has already posted the podcast. Here are the show notes:
00:00 - Introductions: Madelyn & Shawn's first introduction to storywork.
04:00 - Stories that stick in your mind: Madelyn's story of the Swedish ambassador, the mosque & the stone.
06:00 - Shawn distinguishes between storylistening & storytelling.
08:30 - "Storytelling" as a bit overwhelming vs things that you do everyday.
11:15 - The use of objects in storytelling - Madelyn applies this to mission statements.
13:00 - The importance of context & duckus duckus.
16:00 - Getting different groups to talk.
18:10 - Scientific papers as mystery stories.
And if you are interested in how to use mystery story format to write scientific papers (or any persuasive communication) then check out this post.
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| 2/07/08 | | Immediate feedback in the moment |
The best way to learn a practical skill is to receive immediate, helpful feedback while you are performing the task. I was reminded of this fact this morning at our junior basketball competition. Next to each referee was an apprentice referee in a green shirt, whistle in mouth ready to make the call. They get six weeks of working with an experienced ref but only get their stripes when they can demonstrate their ability to confidently and accurately blow their whistle and do what a ref needs to do.
So why don't we employ a similar approach in the workplace? Managing staff, conducting performance reviews, facilitating sales meetings, leading teams, co-ordinating communities of practice, and I'm sure you can think of a heap of others, are practical skills you need to learn which you just can't read from a book.
I suspect workplace cultures make these types of apprenticeship initiatives embarrassing. "I've been employed to do this job and I can't let anyone know I have a lot to learn. Plus I don't want to bother anyone else." Organisations that make an apprenticeship approach just part of the norm are going reap the rewards.
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| 30/06/08 | | Employee engagement interest in storytelling |
A few weeks back, Alex Manchester from Melcrum interviewed me on various issues around storytelling. He approached me following the large amount of interest in storytelling shown at the Employee Engagement conference in late May. The interview is available as a podcast if you are interested.
The use of narrative for exploring issues around employee engagement has been expanding of late, with several organisations approaching us to help get a deeper understanding of what the results of their employee engagement surveys really mean and what they can do to positively influence engagement. I will post a longer piece on this in the coming days.
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| 30/06/08 | | Recognition, praise, credit |
"Credit is infinitely divisible. Give it away every chance you get, and there's always plenty left for you."
Don Berwick, Head if Institute of Healthcare Improvement 100,000 lives campaign (I see it is now 5 million lives), quoted in Influencer p 164.
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| 28/06/08 | | Leaders need to listen |
Deborah May provided the following account in her recent newsletter.
Most leaders want to engage their team in planning processes but don't always do so effectively.
Recently I facilitated a session with a group of executives. The conversation was lively, the questions were thought provoking and we ultimately developed a decent plan for the future. Unfortunately, the CEO's need to control the outcome limited the value of the session and dampened his team's enthusiasm and confidence in the future. The CEO was well intentioned. He asked his team to come up with ideas and told them that he would just listen. This was welcomed. Too frequently he dominated the meetings and limited the contribution of his team. Ideas began to flow, discussion was animated and there was a sense of possibility and excitement in the room. The conversation was still lively when the CEO somewhat petulantly ended the meeting when he said that he'd heard most of it before, they didn't come up with anything new and the meeting had been a waste of time. The animation ceased, the mood changed, energy dissipated and people looked embarrassed. I was bemused, however gathered the notes from the meeting, confident that there'd been many good ideas generated that could be harnessed and used. I later found out that the CEO had wanted his team to adopt a particular strategy he'd articulated at a prior meeting. He was so focused on his own idea he had failed to listen to others. When I shared the outcomes of the meeting with him later, he was decent enough to admit he'd been too rash in dismissing the meeting as a waste of time. Unfortunately he was not quite able to articulate his error of judgement to his team. Your role as a leader is to enlist followers and engage the hearts, minds and resources of the whole organisation to achieve something compelling - and then get out of the way. Leaders who are too directive and don't let go, lose not only great ideas but eventually the people as well.
I am sure I have been to that same meeting. The one where the convenor purports to listen but in reality only wants to convince people to do something they have already decided. Professor Brenda Dervin said "anger dissipates when people are listened to". I think the converse is also true. We need to learn from examples such as the one above. If only we could apply the 'law of two feet' from Open Space Technology when we find ourselves in sessions like this.
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| 27/06/08 | | Vital behaviours for communities of practice |
Over at the Influencer blog David Maxfield has written a four post series on improving teamwork based on one of the key insights from his co-authored book, also called Influencer, which is simply changing a few behaviours can drive a lot of change. David calls them vital behaviours.
For example, the two vital behaviours David believes are essential for effective teams are:
- Whenever anyone has a concern, he or she speaks up and explains the concern in a complete, frank, and respectful way
- Everyone holds everyone accountable for meeting expectations, for commitments, and for bad behaviour—regardless of role or position
This got me thinking. What are the vital behaviours for communities of practice?
This morning I was talking to Matt Moore about this and he suggested these two:
- When someone asks a question members provide answers. No one is left hanging.
- Before you ask a question you put some effort finding the answer and in doing so respect the everyone's time
Both have a tragedy of the commons feel about them in that to continue to get value from the common (the community) you don't just milk the system dry (ask questions but never answer).
Last night I gave a talk to the KMLF on Building a collaborative workplace and posed two vital behaviours for communities of practice:
- community leaders meet regularly to shape and improve the community
- community members band together in small groups to create things that are valuable to themselves and the entire community
While I think these vital behaviours are important I think we need to be mindful of the variety of orientations a community of practice might adopt of just find the orientation has emerged because there are likely to be vital behaviours for each one. The idea of community orientations was introduced to me by Nancy White. It's an idea she has been working on with John Smith and Etienne Wenger in preparation for their new book on technology for CoPs. John has a good graphic on slideshare that lists the orientations as:
- meetings
- projects
- access to expertise
- relationships
- context
- community cultivation
- individual participation
- content publishing
- open-ended conversation
I suspect my second vital behaviour about members banding together only makes sense in project orientations. The other three might be universal. What do you think? What are the vital behaviours for successful CoPs?
Before you answer it's worth considering what David says about what is a vital behaviour:
Here are some "vital behaviors" that aren't really behaviors at all: "Respect all team members," "Achieve all team targets." The first is a quality, while the second is a result. The vital behaviors describe actions people can perform. A good test is to ask yourself, "If I told 10 people to demonstrate this vital behavior, would they all perform the same actions?"
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| 27/06/08 | | Guide to anecdote circles |
I've just realised that our Guide to Anecdote Circles has been kind of hidden on our website so I have popped a copy of the guide in the Whitepapers section of the site.
Update: Jenny Murray just pointed out to me that I put a draft version up in the first instance and this note is to let you know I have now replaced it with the final version. Thanks Jenny for letting me know.
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| 22/06/08 | | Innovators are a bad choice for change |
I'm thoroughly enjoying reading Influencer at the moment and the story of Dr Everett Rogers grabbed my attention. After finishing his PhD his first job was to help Iowa farmers adopt a new strain of corn which promised much higher yields. He spoke to many farmers and couldn't get a single one to try out the new strain. They just didn't trust this researcher who was so different from the farmers. He was a city slicker who was naive about farming practice, so what would he know.
Dr Rogers persisted thinking, if only he could get one farmer to try it out and then they could influence everyone else. After a time he did find someone to try out the new corn, a hipster dude who wore Bermuda shorts and fancy sunglasses. He enjoyed a bumper crop but the other farmers were unimpressed. This maverick farmer derided their way of life, he was an outsider and there was no way they were going to adopt anything from a Bermuda short wearing weirdo.
This failure springboarded Dr Rogers into a career of studying why good ideas are not adopted.
"Rogers learned that the first people to latch onto a new idea are unlike the masses in many ways. He called these people innovators. They're the guys and gals in Bermuda shorts. They tend to be open to new ideas and smarter than average. But here's the important point. The key to getting the majority of any population to a adopt a vital behavior is to find out who these innovators are and avoid them like the plague. If they embrace your new ideas, it will surely die."
It turns out it is a much better strategy to get on board the early adopters, the opinion leaders (about 14% of the population). Mind you if the opinion leaders don't like your idea, then you are sunk.
The book suggests the best way to find the opinion leaders is to ask everyone to list the people who they believe are most influential and trusted. When the same names keep being suggested (perhaps 10 times) they are the opinion leaders. I wonder about the practicality of getting this list made. Would it be done as a survey? A social network analysis survey would find this information as well as uncover those people who are most connected.
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