happy endings

Keith McArthur has kicked off the Cluetrainplus10 Project with the FAQ and the list of participants. This is my contribution.

36. Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures end.

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. However "fell" is not really the right verb to use. The inhabitants of the two Germanys did not wake up one morning to find that this icon of the Cold War, this continual reminder of the divided state of their nation, had collapsed in the night. It was taken down. By people. Demolished. It didn't fall, it was pushed.

Organisations have a strange relationship to the outside world - and it doesn't matter if they are corporates, small businesses, government departments or not-for-profits. We talk about customers, suppliers, citizens, donors or service users. We may even have been one just a few weeks previously. We talk publically about serving them. We fantasize privately about killing them. We wonder why they are so alien and difficult. And that is a little odd because they didn't create the technological, legal & social firewalls that we are hiding behind.

Social software does not change the world. It simply makes our present patterns of behaviour less tenable. Other things matter too. We outsourced a whole bunch of stuff. We fired a bunch of people then hired them again and then fired them once more. We've had more cosmetic surgery than Mickey Rourke so it's no surprise that we look as good as he does.

Everyone's a little confused. Is "delighting the customer" really what drives your behaviour? Are your staff really "your greatest asset"? Do you really seek "integrity in all your actions"? The NewSpeak of our organisations is bastard, ugly pidgin of the nerves that is incapable of either poetic inspiration or the direction of a combat command.

If we write our words collectively, in public (and whether it's text or images or video or audio is only of minor importance) then may be we can rebuild our language and the relationships that it supports. But we cannot wait for these walls to fall of their own accord.

They must be pushed.

no luck

I am torn by the work of Richard St John & his eight secrets to success.

I cannot disagree that passion, work, focus, push, ideas, improvement, service & persistence are good things to do. I would strongly advise people to do these things.

At the same time, Richard calls himself a "success analyst". And yet I think there's a gaping hole in his analysis. And this highlights a critical difference between Richard & myself. Richard seems to believe that the world is fair. I do not. And this has implications.

From my understanding based on his website (& please correct me if I am wrong), Richard has interviewed a lot of successful people and, based on his analysis of those interviews, has identified the 8 secrets to success*. If you do these things then you will be successful. Richard does not believe in luck: our success is NOT determined by this thing we have no control over called luck. Our success is the result of doing things that we do have control over – the Eight Success Principles.

That's because his chosen method blinds him to the role that luck plays in the lives of successful people for two reasons:

• There is this thing called the self-serving bias. If you ask people why they have been successful then they tend to attribute it to their own abilities. They tend to attribute their failures to their environment. Successful people may be different in this regard but if so, I would like to see the evidence. Asking people why stuff happened to them is not always a reliable way of establishing facts.
  
• The sample of people that Richard chosen are all successful. He has not spoken to people who did all of his 8 thing but were ultimately unsuccessful. So I'm guessing this bunch of people don't exist. Right?
  

I asked Richard about this latter point and he was kind enough to respond in this blog post. Please read the whole thing but I'm going to pull out a quote for you: So, there was a high correlation between not doing the 8 Traits and not achieving success.

Richard is right to use the word "correlation". He picked a group that are defined as failures - and quite an extreme group. There is an issue with this. Let me demonstrate this by adding a 9th secret of success: "owning a Bentley". There was probably a higher level of Bentley ownership aong millionaires than there is among street beggars. Does this mean that their lack of Bentley ownership is a cause of their non-millionaireness?

To put this another way, there is also a strong correlation between poverty & mental illness - but the cause & effect relationship may go in both directions. Being mentally ill decreases your ability to find an income. Being very poor causes you lots of stress that may increase your chances of developing mental illness. But all those unsuccessful people that Richard had talked to must have lost (or never had) passion and focus before they ended up in their situation. Right?

If Richard's method seems familiar that's because it is very similar to one used by Jim Collins in Good to Great. Good to Great looked at companies rather than people but has come in for a lot of stick from Bob Sutton & Phil Rosenzweig for using the "asking awesome people why they are so awesome" method. This recent HBR article noted that: we evaluated 287 allegedly high-performing companies in 13 major success studies. We found that only about one in four of those firms was likely to be remarkable; the rest were indistinguishable from mediocre firms catching lucky breaks. But I thought that luck played no role in success? How can this be?

In his blog post responding to me, Richard goes on to say: So, if successful people follow the 8 Traits, what differentiates the ones who achieve super success from those who achieve moderate success? Again, it’s a question of degree. The Gates and Oprahs of the world not only do the 8 Traits, they do them to a greater degree than other people. They love what they do more than most people. They work more hours (even after he was a multimillionaire, Bill Gates worked most nights until 10pm and only took 2 weeks off in 7 years).

Bill Gates is approximately 100,000 times richer than me. That means that he must work 100,000 times harder than me. Or else he loves his work 100,000 times more than me. Or could it be that environment and/or luck play a role here? But that can't be right because life is fair and luck plays no part.

Actually there is one group in the world for whom life is fair. And that's people like me & Richard - white males in the developed world. Life is more than fair for us. It is wonderful. It rocks being a white male living in a developed country (esp. if you have an education, money, status & power) - and don't let any self-hating liberal hippy tell you otherwise. And if the rest of you aren't as successful as us then you have only yourselves to blame. Be as passionate as us. Work as hard as us. Stop being losers.

So what will I tell my children?

I will tell my children that they must work hard & be passionate about they do & all the other things that Richard talks about. But I will also tell them that life is not fair and they are very lucky to be living in a country with access to education & health services (assuming we still do). I will then refer back to the previous point that life is not fair and state that they are also very lucky to be born into this wonderful country in a position of relative status & power.

And I will finish by reminding them that life is not fair and this all could be taken away from them in a moment.

*But wait? Are these really "secrets"? I don't really feel that "hard work is important" is something that anyone has kept from me. Every authority figure in my life has told me this.

bring the noise

"My name is Legion, for we are many"

Much of the work in data communications has been about getting the clearest data possible, clearest signal possible - and while this may be useful when I'm trying to have a convo on Skype, noise reduction isn't necessarily a good thing when applied to online identity.

Triggers: Marcus Brown writes a little here, Chris Locke writes a little there and Adam Ferrier writes somewhere else.

The strand that links these blog posts for me their recognition that our identities are partially cocreated with others, they lie in relationships (but not wholly). And not all exchanges are good. And not all relationships are wanted.

In giving out our data, in presenting ourselves in different environments we must guard against being too transparent or else we end up like Mr Cellophane.

One option is passive acceptance.

Another solution is to give away as little as possible. Get off the grid. Put up the gates. Information survivalism.

The third is to overwhelm & confuse. Multiple identities. Multiple data. How many social security cards can you collect? How many people do you want to be? How much noise can be introduced into the system*? One person as many? Many as one?

How do we introduce disorder into the world for own collective advantage?

*Michel Serres is obsessed with noise, with turbulence. I have to go back to my copies of his books.

Story week is coming

Anecdote, Sparknow and Innotecture have been working together for a little while now to find out a bit more about what stories have influence and impact. We've found quite a difference in views, even among ourselves. So we're inviting our combined readership and their networks (and their networks) to participate in Story Week (starting May 4th) Over 5 days we're going to show you 5 stories from different people in different formats, intended for very different audiences and settings. You're going to tell us how you respond to them. We'll tell you what you collectively told us. We'll all learn something in the process. Oh, and it will be fun, too.

Watch this space...

moral panics: young people & the internet

Journalists love an outrage like ordinary people love hot cross buns. A couple of items have cropped up in the Australian media recently around cyberbullying & the impact of the internet on young people that I think require a little scrutiny.

Exhibit 1: Miranda Devine wrote an article last week entitled MySpace cadets sliding into addiction. Ms Devine quotes Susan Greenfield. Baroness Greenfield is probably a very good researcher in her field of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. However she also has a side vocation as a writer of speculative fiction. Unfortunately, many journalists cannot tell the difference between scientific research and speculation. Based on this interview, the ABC's Kerry O'Brien seems to be one such journalist. I would like to see the Baroness actually support her claims with, y'know, some science. Dr Ben Goldacre puts it very well in this article.

To her credit, Ms Devine does quote some research. Well kinda. She mentions the work of Dr Mubarak Ali. Currently researching the problem, Ali says internet addiction is so serious that by 2012 it will likely be classified as a mental disorder in Australia. Being a bit of nerd, I dropped Dr Ali an email asking if I could receive a copy of his published research. He was kind enough to respond and tell me that he hadn't published anything yet. He pointed me to the Teenspeak website where he is running a survey on this topic. I asked him how many people had responded to his survey (i.e. his sample size) and, as the survey appears voluntary, how he'd be controlling for self-selection biases. He hasn't got back to me yet but it is Easter so I am looking forward to his response after the holidays.

I must confess that I have a suspicion of the term "internet addiction". I haven't seen articles about TV addiction or radio addiction or SMS addiction or telephone addiction. As this ACMA report states (p.2): Despite these changes, other aspects of young people’s discretionary time are notably stable. Electronic media and communication activities overall take up around half of children and young people’s aggregate discretionary time, and this proportion hasn’t changed since 1995. So far from becoming slaves to technology, young people's use of tech has remained fairly stable - it's just the tech they are using that has changed.

Near the end of the article, Ms Devine makes this comment: Her fears may be reflected in reports this week from two fatal traffic accidents in Yagoona and Burwood, where onlookers were said to have watched, laughed, chatted and taken photographs, ignoring the pleas for help from one man as he died, treating the scene as if it were entertainment. When I was a police reporter almost 20 years ago, such a scenario would have been unthinkable.

The problem I have with this statement is simple. If the internet makes us bad people then we would expect to have seen rates of violent crime rise over the last decade as internet use became more widespread. However the opposite is true: rates of violent crime have trended down over the last 10 years as web usage has trended up. N.B. I am not claiming that the internet makes us better people - simply that there are probably other factors that are more important than the internet.

Let me be clear: I am sure that some young people do not have a healthy pattern of internet usage. We need to have a public debate about the impact of these new technologies on young people and the role their parents could be playing. However I would prefer to base this debate on facts and evidence rather than innuendo.

Which brings me to Exhibit 2: ABC's Four Corners programme last Monday. The topic was cyberbullying. The first half of the show seemed sensible enough - discussing first ordinary bullying and then bullying with an online component. Then it all got a bit weird. The main story was an awful one of young man who took his own life. Prior to this he had been harassed by a former friend using a number of different communication media.

You have to sympathize with someone who has had to bury their child. However I have an issue with the ABC supporting statements like: "There's a new word that I've created for this it's a new drug, and the new drug is cyberspace. Cyberspace to us has taken our child."

Suicide by young males is a horrible problem but it is not a simple one. As the Wesley Mission state: Suicide is a complex issue which, while tragic, confronts families, friends and wider communities. It results most often from an accumulation of risk factors, and it intersects with problems and concerns across society: mental health, drugs and alcohol, family issues, employment, cultural identity, law enforcement and criminal justice, education and poverty.

Rather than discuss the complex issues around teen suicide and the particular issues around men (& our chronic inability to seek help when trouble strikes), as far as the ABC was concerned it was all about the interweb as a sinister tool for bullying that is so powerful it makes people kill themselves. This undermined the valuable first half of the programme.

Again, let me be clear: Bullying is an issue. It probably always will be. There is so much good work that could be done in discussing this with parents - but can we have a grown up talk please?

Are we capable of that or would we prefer to work ourselves up into a moral panic instead?

ways i have been lucky

1. I grew up in family of tight-wads.

I had quite a comfortable upbringing. I am demonstrably middle-class. However in one respect I find myself a little unusual. My family is debt-phobic. My parents grew up with rationing in post-WWII Britain. They nursed a young family through the high-interest rate 1970s. For them, debt was not a handy way of accessing funds but something not that far from alcoholism or drug addiction. This meant that we spent our holidays visiting glamorous Birmingham (where my grandparents lived). However inheritance of their loathing of debt has made my life considerably easier in recent years.

2. I joined a marginal profession just as it faced annihilation.

I trained as a librarian back in the mid-1990s. I don't really remember why. This meant that (quite by accident) I found myself smack in front of the information Tsunami that was the internet. And that was a good thing. It sent me down a pathway that involved technology, human behaviour, all kinds of cool things. Above all, I learned that professionally you either adapt or leave. Simple really.

3. I am mentally ill.

I suspect that I suffer from cyclothymia - a mild form of bipolar disorder (manic depression). The "down" part of the cycle is pretty horrible (struggling to get out of bed, wanting to die), the "up" part is exhilarating & a little scary (boundless energy & confidence, insomnia, poor impulse control) but there are plenty of bits in the middle. There is a genetic link between bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and a close family member was diagnosed with the latter condition. The depression drives me to read compulsively as a form of medication. The hypomania drives me to get things done (often based on what I have read). My condition (and there is no reliable test for it, just conformance to symptoms) has probably aided my professional life - just as my relative's condition has probably condemned them to a life of marginalisation.

There are many other ways in which I have been lucky but these are 3 that have been pinging round my mind recently.

How have you been lucky?

give 'em tha money already

I have been asked to blog in exchange for money before - but only by people who make Babcock & Brown look like a sure fire bet. Jasmin has put out a request to which three brave souls have replied. I was tempted to see how badly I could insult Incentive House (and their mothers) in the course of this post and still get the cash for the deserving but it's been a long day and until I get the Abusive Post Automator, it's too much like hard work.

I know nothing about being poor in the Philippines. Zip. And here's the thing - neither do most of you. So writing about it is tricky. I could just say "look at the photo of the cute kid on the rubbish tip" and let the image do its work.


But by reading this post, you get to be some kind of hard-core, Silion Valley venture capitalist - minus the freaky cosmetic surgery & fake tan. You get to fund someone else's business. Their ambitions and their dreams. I can't promise you an ROI within the next fiscal. I can't even promise you the nasty free T-shirts that most start-ups give away at exhibitions ("it's printed on cotton that we harvested from the dev team's belly buttons after a 3 day coding sesh").

Screw it, the way things are going, these ladies will probably be lending us money in a few years. You'll want them to like you.

There we go, people, it's all about the naked self-interest. Just Do It.

bring me the head of raymond kurzweil

Raymond Kurzweil is an intriguing science-fiction writer but a lousy neuroscientist. He seems to think that being human is all about having a brain. And that having a brain is all about having computing power.

Ray should remember that it's not size but what you do with it that counts. As Antonio Damasio has spent a lot of time researching, we think with our bodies as well as our heads. If we want to give our machines consciousness then we have to give them bodies (or rather systems that interact their environments and provide feedback from interventions in that environment that can guide future action).

I do not believe in a soul or some vital essence so I do not have any philosophical objections to machines with consciousness. However neither do I believe in some "Singularity" (it seems rather to close to Milllenial religious ideas like The Rapture*).

There's an important point here for those of us who spend a lot of our time working on the digital/virtual/interweb. We neglect the bodies of people at our peril.

Actually Ray Kurzweil can keep his head but let's see how well he thinks without his body.

*I quite like this The Rapture - I do hope that God offers them an opportunity to do the soundtrack.

Hat tip: George Siemens

innospivs

Barry Saunders has weighing on the comments section of the previous post with some good ideas and some hot! links!

He's also made me articulate another idea that's been running round my head. You may remember this post from a month ago where I state: Innovation = Invention + Entrepreneurship. Let me spell this out in more detail.

The issue I have with most Idea Management Systems is that they only work for really obvious ideas (often ones that meet explicit needs). The wacky ideas don't get past the first stage gate. The ideation bit (where people are encouraged to come up with & discuss ideas) is fine as far as it goes. But then you get some Stalinist committee of judges and a strict project management framework. Which may be necessary if you are spending big bucks. But more money isn't always better.

Market-based approaches are slightly better but for a proper Innovation Support System you need to recreate an entrepreneurship network inside (& even outside) your organisation:

• You need ways of encouraging your employees to notice things - esp. failures & frustrations.
  
• You need ways of linking people with needs to people who have ideas.
  
• You need ways of linking people who have ideas to people who can sell ideas to others.
  
• You need multiple sources of venture capital inside your organisation.
• You need to acknowledge & reward creative theft as much (or more) than original idea creation.
• You need to actively seek out and embrace innovations that could destroy your business model - because ultimately they will, but the edge is in changing faster than your competitors.
• You need to give simple prototypes of ideas to as diverse a range of people inside your organisation and see what the hell they do with them - because it won't be what you expect.
• You probably need to engage customers, suppliers, business partners & alumni in this process.
  

You need the irate, the dreamers, the spivs & the thieves.

uneven

The future is already here - it is just unevenly distributed.- William Gibson

I've been pondering Sean & Ellen's discussion around explicit, tacit & latent needs. It tied to some thinking I've been doing around innovation.

We expect innovation to come from high-tech research labs because that's where the dollars and the brains are. But that's fundamentally wrong. Innovation comes from where the challenges are. Human beings are generally quite lazy and don't want to learn or change. We only do that when we have to.

You want to find out about a possible future of finance in a resource-constrained world? You'd be better off looking in Bangladesh than Wall Street. Innovation is driven by need. You want the future? Follow the need.

It also suggests that in meeting latent needs, we need to cocreate the solutions with the people feeling the problem. Easier all round really.

Still thinking. More soon.

why having too much money can be bad

In response to a post by John "Desert Storm" Maloney on the Value Networks email list, the thought came to me that the KM scene in Australia is much healthier than in the US (feel free to disagree) and that's largely because we have less money. We can't afford a heavily customised technology solution or heaps of FTE staff. So the focus becomes finding the few things that make the most difference and then doing those.

This isn't unique to Australia. Stan Garfield did great things at HP with only 4 people.

A friend of mine at Microsoft said: "We have too much money. We never have to make tough decisions or focus on one thing".

If you want to reinvigorate your KM programme, maybe you need to cut its budget. Mary Abraham's suggestion of a KM Dept of One is good - but you'd need a KMer outside your organisation you can trust & talk to for that to work.

open society & its frenemies (3): hypocrisy

Closed societies allow people to say one thing in public and do another in private. We call this difference between public proclamation and private behaviour "hypocrisy" - or perhaps its the difference between what we believe we should be and what we are. The bigger that gap between aspiration and reality is, the harder it is on us and the bigger role hypocrisy will play. There is a point when aspirations become delusions. At that point hypocrisy becomes the only sane choice.

However if you're going to have an open society then it either needs to be either homogeneous or tolerant. Everybody has to either think the same or accept that others think differently. Given that variation is wired into human beings, an open society is hard work. In some ways closed societies are more comfortable than open ones.

The price of freedom is accepting that you don't always have to right to win the argument.

the open society & its frenemies (2)

Libertarian capitalists and anarchists view state power as inherently evil. The opposite of an oppressive, totalitarian state is some kind of money-driven or love-driven utopia.

Of course, it's not. The opposite of the Soviet Union is the Congo. The optimal environment for human beings is not constraint-free.

You might say I'm an asymmetric libertarian. The more power a person or entity has, the more that person requires oversight & governance. Of course, it seems to work the opposite way in the real world - the more power an entity has, the greater protection from scrutiny it can buy.

the open society & its frenemies (1)

Been thinking a lot about government recently.

I quite like free-market competition. I'm not convinced that many people do though. Labour unions don't like it. Many business people don't like it - they would rather have a cosy, lucrative monopoly (e.g. Bill Gates or Steve Jobs). We like competition with the proviso that we win - and everyone knows that a competition where the winner is known before the start is not really a competition.

As tempting as this position is, I believe some form of competition is good for our us - in part because competition is wired into our natures. Of course, cooperation is too. At best we find ourselves driven by a productive tension. We might as well channel our competitive & cooperative desires into something helpful rather than destructive.

We need a free(ish) market (that includes organisations driven by both profit and/or concern). But we also need strong, effective government. If all these people are competing all over the place then someone has to call them out when they try to do something stupid - because they will, they are human. Self-regulation only works when there are reciprocal ties between organisations and their stakeholders - otherwise the temptation to cheat is just too strong.

But the government may also cock things up - so we have to make it as accountable as we can. Governments should thank us for limiting their power (as an alcoholic should thank the person who hides their booze stash) but that's not human nature either.

So we need to ensure that everyone is accountable to someone. The price of freedom is eternal pickiness.

Who are you accountable to? If you can't answer that question then you'd better find someone soon.

exposure

Something like this image cropped up in a talk given by Ed Mitchell at Digital Eskimo yesterday around our use of social software 'n' suchlike. The public/private distinction is something that I'm acutely aware (oooo, I have so many secrets from you all and let's face it, that's best for everyone), the personal/professional less so. That's mostly a, well, personal thing: I put a lot of my personal life into my work and vice versa. The idea of keeping them completely separate seems a little odd.

But for many people that division is critical part of who they are and I see their choice as reasonable & legitimate. We all pay a price for our choices.

Another thing that cropped up in Ed's talk was the word affordances. This is an important word because it suggests that our technologies (what we build) and our practices (what we do) need to offer multiple ways of working or being. And I think we are both very comfortable and very uncomfortable with that idea. Formally/Collectively we like the idea of people behaving in a certain way, of following the rules. Informally/Individually we cut each other some slack.

noel edmond's multi-colour cynefin framework

This version of the Cynefin Framework was inspired by a comment from Robert Perey at this. It's still not quite right but it's the best I can do at this time of night & with my limited graphics software. BTW there is no significance in the colours (or is there, Spiral Dynamics fans?)


[Edit: I swear I have seen this model laid out in a similar way before. Who am I ripping off here?]

why roi is a terrible place to start

This started with Stephen Bounds and then moved on to Sameer Patel. He's along the right lines but I don't think he's pushing hard enough.

Many people in the Enterprise 2.0 community are pondering RoI. It seems to be the Holy Grail of E2.0. This pursuit demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how decisions are made.

If you are selling something that meets a need, it has to be a need that people feel. Not that they see reflected in a spreadsheet that features numbers you've either made up (sorry estimated) or taken from other situations.

Once they feel the need, then you bring out the RoI to keep the CFO happy. RoI follows need.

What does this mean?

• It helps if your E2.0 solution meets a need that the organisation and senior management feel. That problem may be around connecting my staff in multiple offices. That be around enabling my research team to share their activities & outcomes better. It may simply be about helping me turn my Sharepoint investment into something that I don't cry myself to sleep at night over.
• Finding an immediately felt need is easy. That means that lots of people will probably have done it already. Finding a need that is on the verge of being felt is a lot harder but more rewarding. Ellen di Resta writes about this well.
• Once you have identified a problem, shown you have a solution and found those people with that problem then (and only then) does the RoI come into play. The RoI should show that your solution is the best and most cost effective solution to that problem (Remember: All RoIs are always comparative - the alternative is often "do nothing"). That should keep the CFO happy.
• If the conversation starts with RoI, you are sunk. Walk away. Or find out what the conversation is really about. Conversations about "RoI" are never about RoI.
• Don't just focus on the numbers, focus on stories & status as well.
  

Until you can do all this, you are not ready to sell - so how can you expect people to buy?

do you know a blunt instrument?

You may remember Barry Business from PubCamp last year. Barry strikes me as someone that I encounter in Australian business circles a lot. The label that comes to mind is "blunt instruments" (BLs). These are men (very often men) who have progressed up the corporate ladder to senior management. They have the following characteristics:

• They appear decisive. They claim not to be afraid to make decisions. For some of them this claim is true. Some of them are just very good at the claiming bit.
• They like sports and mixing with other blokes. They aren't so keen on women unless they can either be a bloke (swearing, beer, sport) or a total chick (very feminine). They really don't like gays, unless that gay happens to their boss. Their mileage of ethnic minorities may vary: wog blokes are OK (as long as they like sport); asian guys are considered geeky.
• They are cunning. They know exactly who to suck up to. And they know who to kick down on. Never cross a BL, you'll find the knife in your back a few weeks later and the BL protesting innocence.
  
• And they are also canny. They may have an MBA. They can certainly calculate EBITDA in their sleep.
• They are confident. They know this world belongs to them. The favourite topic of conversation for BL is himself (which makes conversation easy but dull: "Please tell me why you are so great again?").
  
• But they aren't very imaginative. They didn't get where they are today by being "wacky" or "unusual".
• They are physically big (hence the label). Wide, square bodies with wide, squre heads. They are certainly willing to use physical intimidation to get their way.
  

I don't mind BLs. I don't relish working with them but their behaviour is predictable. It's the penultimate point that gets me. So many beedy eyes, so little vision. And yet they play a role in keeping the wheels of commerce grinding on. We need them - but do we need so many?

Do you know a BL? Is this an accurate picture? What have I missed or am I missing here?

guru triangles

Thanks to a Mark Gould tweet, I encountered Scott Berkun's post: How to call BS on a guru. SB's post kicked me into writing this one as I have been pondered the place of business gurus.

My pondering is simple: I think that we need to get over them.

Do not misunderstand me. We need people with:

• deep skills & expertise in a particular area;
• provocative or insightful points of view;
• the ability to energize and enthuse others.

But under no circumstances should we treat them with deference or undue respect. How would you treat your postman? Well that's how a business guru should be treated. However instead I see a tendency to give undue deference and respect to the "guru" when what we really should be doing is destruction-testing their assertions.

I don't see this as being only the gurus' fault. We bare much of the blame ourselves. You may recall a couple of posts last year on drama triangles. I think we often fall into unhealthy cycles of behaviour. Drama triangles are unhealthy because in playing a role within the triangle and its associated games, we avoid owning our problems. We act like children.

E.g.

Guru: I am great and all-knowing. I have seen the future of business.
Follower: Truly I am lost. Rescue me, oh great guru! I will pay for your book and your seminar series. Tell me the one true path! I will do anything (except take responsibility for my own future).
Guru: Verily I will show you unworthy one. Remember all other business gurus worship false idols.
{There is a pause. It becomes obvious that not all the guru's sayings are literally true}
Follower: You tricked me, you evil guru! I spit on your Harvard Business Review articles and your incomprehensible lecture notes!!!
Guru: Love to chat, but there's a new fad coming round the corner. Goodbye.
Follower: Truly, I am lost...
{Repeat}

It all ends in tears. And haggling over invoices.

So what can we do? Here are three suggestions:

• Drink from many wells. There are lots of good ideas out there but no perfect ones.
• Cultivate critical engagement. Ask questions. Lots of them. Start with what niggles you.
• Develop your own ideas. Everyone wants to buy ideas of the shelf - but homegrown is ultimately more satisfying.

N.B. If you ever find yourself in a session that I am running and you think I am going a bit "guru", I give you permission to throw paper at me. Or anything else that does comparatively little damage on impact. I will thank you for it.

storytelling (2): ken robinson busts some moves

At the Single Origin coffee morning, I was having a chat with Mal about the story thing and he said that there are two TED videos with stories that absolutely blow him away. And before he said it, I knew what one of them would be. You can click on the image above and then scroll through the video on the TED site until you get 15:00 in.

This talk is one that everyone seems to love. There are probably many reasons for that: Sir Ken's ease & charm in front of an audience; the topic of the talk (creativity); etc. However the Gillian Lynne story gets me every time. It's very different to the story Obama told. Here are some of my reactions:

• It happens near the end of the talk. There's a distinct change in gear that occurs with this story. The previous 15 mins had been very jokey and light and now it gets a little more serious.
  
• It's a story told in the third person (the narrator is not a participant).
• It's quite short (around 2:40).
• It covers a broad span of time but the real core of the story happens in the doctor's consulting room.
• It is a true story.
  
• There are lots of other stories that could be told around Gillian Lynne's life. Our narrator has picked one that serves his point - and been very focused in telling it.
  
• It's a topic that everyone can relate to - having our skills unappreciated, especially at a young age (even if we aren't dancers).
• Little details: Turning on the radio on the desk as he leaves.

What did you hear? What touched you? Or did you hate it? If so, why?