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.

more dramas

I spent Saturday hanging out with Johnnie Moore during his visit to Sydney and going off on lots of tangents. Our conversations seem to consist of multiple tangents from which we eventually return to our original topic. Anyways, one topic that came up was “mindfulness”. In fact it’s been coming up a lot recently (e.g the slow community podcast with Nancy). Here are some reasons why:

• Life is getting faster & more complicated. If we don’t manage ourselves we will get washed away.
• We have more autonomy – no one else (e.g. a government, a paternal corporate) is going to manage our lives for us. And as our lives get more complicated and more unique, others are less able to provide us with reliable advice.
• Mindfulness & self-restraint have been part of our religious traditions. As we have lost our dependence on religion so we have lost some of the resources that religion provided.

So in discussing drama triangles, I see them as part of a personal project around mindfulness and self-understanding. James R comments that they are negative – which can be true if they are used in an accusatory way: “You are a rescuer”; “You are a victim”. I see them more as tools to aid self-awareness (as KT notes): “What games am I involved in here and do I really want to play them?”

There’s something existential - recognising that you have a choice and more freedom than is immediately apparent.

the enterprise 2.0 drama triangle

If you are driving Enterprise 2.0 in your organisation, there are 3 roles you might be lured into playing:

• Rescuer. "Help, help, we cannot collaborate with Notes Teamrooms, surely your wiki will save us!" "Why yes, it will solve all your problems and all will be right with the world."
• Victim. "Why does no one pay attention to me? Why cannot I get any traction with the business?"
• Persector. "You are doing this all wrong! You are idiots with your impenetrable chains of emails and your hidden information nests!"

Other people will tempt you to into playing these roles by playing one of their own. They may even shift between them.

However, the budding Enterprise 2.0 dude (or dudette) must avoid playing any of these roles and being caught on the point of a Karpman Drama Triangle. There are other options:

• Rather than being a victim, admit your vulnerability. You are not all knowing and some of your experiments may fail. But you will fail fast, fail early and learn from your failures. You will succeed.
• Rather than rescuing, reach out. Connect with others trying to achieve similar things in other organisations. Tap into your internal & external networks.
• Rather than persecute, persevere. The "Enterprise 2.0" buzz term will disappear but the need to help smart people work together smarter will not.

Keep the faith people.

A hat tip to KT for putting me on to these in the first place.