Dave Snowden has written an excellent post warning of the dangers of simply looking at the past and attempting to apply, without adaptation, what happened then to what is happening now. After reading Dave’s post jumped on a plane to Sydney and as I was rushing out the door grabbed Charles Handy’s Age of Unreason from my friend’s bookshelf for some in-flight reading. Published in 1989, Handy’s words are prophetic and reinforce Dave’s message as Handy argues that the nature of change has morphed in the last 30 years from incremental change, where the past was a good indicator of the future, to discontinuous change, where the future is much less certain.

Of course we do learn from history (Dave makes this clear in his post) but it’s how we apply this learning that matters. I remember in Arthur Koestler’s The Act of Creation (1964) how he talked about creativity being like being faced with a canyon you wish to cross. Your first step it to find a bridge. You might find a bridge that nearly fits but then some extra effort is required to completely span the gap. These ‘bridges’ are our patterns which we develop through experience or by hearing stories about other people’s adventures. While we are good at recalling past patterns we must remain mindful of the need to reshape these patterns according to the context and needs of the issue at hand. 

This view of decision making in a world of discontinuous change suggests two capabilities each and everyone should actively develop:

• seek out opportunities for new and diverse experiences or seek out people or accounts of new and diverse experiences – build your pattern repertoire
• learn ways to adapt bridges. As deBono says, “creativity thinking is a skill and can be taught.” Many of his techniques are applicable here.

Here is an anecdote from a senior executive from our recent survey which I just had to share. I’ve posted about the 5 ways in which stories are discouraged in organisations, as well as the 7 story forms which are valued in organisations. Paradoxically, but realistically, this anecdote contains elements of both of these, discouragement and value. This anecdote also reflects two of the key attributes which I think is vital to being a skilled storylistener. Patience and Hope. This senior executive appears to demonstrate both of these.

I have only been with this organisation for 2 months when I started I heard a lot of stories about the organisation. "The culture of this organisation is one that doesn't support it's staff!", "Management don't know what they want from us" and "You have a hard job ahead of you". These stories were greatly valued and encouraged by me but as a source of insight into organisational need and individual needs. These stories were, at the same time, not encouraged because there is a sense of constantly being negative, not seeing a way forward at all.

Following on from our last research findings post suggesting the 7 story forms valued within organisations we have also explored the flip side question of “when has storytelling been discouraged or frowned upon in organisations?”. The broad themes which have emerged from our research are:

• When stories are gossip
• When there is a break down in trust and relationships
• Where there is no time
• When there are “bad news” stories
• When it sounds like corporate spin

Out of 162 responses, it is interesting to note that only 22 respondents specifically focussed on or shared their experiences with storytelling being discouraged or frowned upon in their organisation. The overwhelming majority of respondents shared their experience of how storytelling is valued within their organisation. Interestingly, when storytelling is considered to be gossip was one of the most common reasons for storytelling to be discouraged in organisations. As one participant said “it is usually discouraged as a form of gossip because it generally relates to company stuff ups”.

Below I have shared some of our participants responses around gossip, no time for stories, break down in relationships and “bad news” stories. Thanks again to all our survey participants.

Gossip and morality tales
I work in an organisation that is not very aware or conscious about its business. Storytelling and narrative techniques are not 'officially' sanctioned by management. However, there are a multitude of stories that circulate throughout the organisation, travelling via tea rooms, corridors, etc. The majority of these stories are like morality tales that warn of the punishment that is measured out by senior mgt for making mistakes, etc. I wonder what level of change could be made if the Executive team could harness the culture of storytelling and use it to create a more positive working environment.

Gossip and rumourings – prefers hard facts and provable data
The organization as it stands now prefers hard facts and provable data. The little storytelling that happens happens outside of the office. Most of this is dis-empowering, rumor and lowers morale. This is of course increasing the discouragement of storytelling from executive management.

There is no time
I work in Conflict Resolution, where the effectiveness of our work as practitioners depends on enabling people to hear each other's stories. However I work within a team whose leader does not have time for stories at least within her own team. It has been extremely frustrating to attend meetings where the use of anecdotes or stories would have enlivened and broadened our knowledge and understanding of the situation, yet the opportunity is denied because of time constraints whenever I raise the possibility. Ironically, this same leader is great at telling stories in a training situation and often uses anecdotes of her own experiences to illustrate training themes.

Dealing with the board – There is no time for stories?
Story telling has always been discouraged as a method when dealing with the board and senior team, instead they insist on very formal and brief reports to tell the stories...and then wonder why they don't have a true grasp of the culture of the organisation.

A “bad news” story which spread
The story of how a large project went disasterously wrong, cost millions more than it was meant to and went months overdue was very wide spread and talked about. The aim of the story seemed primarily aimed at showing how that part of the business was not very capable - as everyone already knew - and that as a consequence the other bits of the business were more capable and felt good about themselves.

A breakdown in relationships
Narrative has been discouraged when these elements are missing - when relationships and trust has broken down, when people are stressed, and emotionally frayed, and there is a tendency to cope by ignoring or downplaying the reality of other's experience. This is of course especially true when the stories being told are difficult to hear, or have some element of accusation at the listener.

When has storytelling been discouraged or frowned upon in your organisation? Have you ever heard of  “good” gossip?

Bob Sutton has a terrific post describing how Cedars-Sinai Medical Center got all their doctors to wash their hands. He main source for the post is a New York Times Magazine article called Selling Soap by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt.

The hospital started out with 65% compliance. [Now this percentage is thrown into question by some Australian research which showed that when doctors were asked, using a survey, whether they wash their hands, 73% said yes. When the researchers observed their behaviour they only detected 9% compliance. Here is another reason to be careful in using surveys to understand what’s happening in a social system.]

Back to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The first step they took was to reward anyone they saw washing their hands by handing out $10 Starbucks vouchers. This pushed compliance up to 85% but seemed to hit a ceiling.

They got the hospital up to nearly 100% by asking influential to place their hands in culture dish then photographing the bacteria and widely displaying the images, even putting one of the more disgusting as a screen saver for every computer in the hospital.

Both these examples are what I would call interventions. That is, a discrete, relatively small activities designed to change the system. It’s not a massive change program. It tackles one issue as a time and can make a huge difference. I think most large organisations get stuck into the mind-set of having to do the big programme—”we’re a big organisation, right!”

“When is storytelling valued within your organisation?” was one of the questions we explored within our Australian wide survey on awareness and attitudes of story and narrative techniques in organisations. Categorising the responses from almost 400 senior executives and decision makers from public and private organisations across Australia, there emerged 7 popular story forms. Those were:

• Hero stories – seen particularly for sales, customer service
• Success stories
• Inspirational stories
• “Lessons/Learning” stories
• “Who we are” stories – an embodiment of company values in action, not just espoused values
• “How we got here” stories – stories exploring a companies history and foundations
• “My time here” stories – provides insight into the individuals work/life history with the organisation

I’ve included an example of the hero story, success story, inspirational story and lesson/learning story forms below. Thanks to all our participants.

Hero Story for Sales
“Fairly often the heroism of the sales force is communicated to the greater organisation. One particular story that I remember and re-tell myself occasionally is of a sales exec who managed to get a contract signed on the last day of the month with a government department – the last day of the month was a Saturday!”

Success Story
“Our organisation uses stories well in learning experiences and in our national conferences. About 3 years ago we completely abandoned the ritual sales/EBIT/Profit data driven powerpoints from our national conferences and we instead took our teams on a journey through great stories. This year at our national conference we had 800 store managers hearing about how we will get to our next performance horizon through the great stories that were already happening in the business. We then supplemented these internal messages with speakers who have told us their story. This year a particular highlight was an African American who beat all odds to become a star sportperson.”

Inspirational Story
“We have people within out organization who volunteer for a 3 mth assignment to Cambodia to work with the UN World Food Program, as part of our committment to Corporate Social Responsibility. These volunteers are known within our organization as 'Storytellers'. They come back and travel around the country telling the story of their experience, motivating our staff to become engaged in the fundraising that we do and the inkind support that we provide from within Australia, as well as the rest of the world where we are located. In this situation, Storytelling is the only medium that would convey the emotion and engage the audience.”

Lesson/Learning Story
“Safety Convention - a paralympian was invited to tell his story to the employees to get across the issue of safeworking and the duty of care to yourself and others. The Convention also provided an opportunity for employees to hear the stories of their work colleagues in small informal sessions and via themed stands and displays - example: those who were up for Safety innovation Awards were available at set times to share their story and expereinces that led to the innovation.”

When has storytelling been valued within your organisation? What other story forms have you noticed being valued?

Also read more about awareness of positive and negative stories in organisations here.

At lunchtime, on October 6th, Larry Peterson a well respected Open Space practictioner from Canada will be diving into our fishbowl with the Victorian Public Services Continuous Improvement Network.

If you’re interested in learning more about Open Space this will be a great event to attend. If you’d like to come and join in our fishbowl (even as a shark!), drop me a line: andrew@anecdote.com.au

Interviews and surveys are no longer sufficient to find out what’s really happening in your business. Organisations are becoming more complex every day and as the number of connections increase understanding root causes becomes impossible. We need a way to make sense of the messiness we face. Interviews and surveys typically come laden with pre-determined thoughts of what the investigators might find and interviewees and survey respondents seem to fall into a mode of response based on what they think the inquirer is wanting to hear.

Stories reflect the messiness, reveal values and beliefs and when told in a group create an informal environment of exploration which invariably reveals insights one could never predict from the outset. Anecdote Circles is how we discover these stories. But that is not the whole story.

Anecdote circles are more than a story elicitation technique; they are an intervention in themselves. Some might say you shouldn’t start to run anecdote circles unless you are really serious about change. Once an anecdote circle process is started the change already begins.

Anecdote circles can be used as a process:
• To overcome the limitations of traditional interview and survey approaches
• For team and relationship building
• For lessons learning in project teams
• For conflict resolution
• To help collecting stories for evaluating intangible, difficult to evaluate projects

We will be releasing the ultimate guide to anecdote circles soon. Subscribers will be the first to receive it. Free!

David Pollard offered for anyone on the net to join him is a joint collaboration project using Writely. The topic: Why are conversation and collaboration tools so underused?

Dave lists 7 reasons and I jumped in with a number of other points answering a set of questions Dave posed. Interestingly only a few people got involved and the discussion hasn’t progressed much over the last few weeks. Hmmm, perhaps collaboration requires a strong need to work together.

Here’s Dave’s list:

• Most people are still unfamiliar with the tools in the middle and right columns. 
• Many of these tools are unintuitive and hence not easy to learn to use. 
• The way you have to use these tools is not the way most people converse and collaborate, i.e. they're awkward.
• Most people have poor listening, communication and collaboration skills, and these tools don't solve (and can exacerbate) this underlying problem of ineffective interpersonal skills.
• The training materials for these tools don't match the way most of us learn and discover (i.e. by doing, by watching others, and iteratively by trial and error).
• Often the people we most want to converse or collaborate with aren't online.
• Often we don't even know who the right people are to converse or collaborate with, so we need to go through a process of discovering who those people are first, which these tools cannot yet effectively help us with; once we've discovered who the right people are, we're likely already talking with them using the ubiquitous tools in the left column above.
• We are not accustomed to learning with others. Traditional schooling rewards individual effort (e.g. you take the test by yourself).

Here are my additions and some answers to specific questions posed by Dave:

When faced with the choice of learning new technology and chatting to colleagues on the phone and email to get a job done, if it can be done with what they already know they will go with that;

Collaboration tools work best when your collaborators are geographically distributed and in other time zones and I wonder how many teams have that as a situation? Sure, globalisation is spreading and small, nimble operators are connecting using these tools, but how many large corporations are active users? I know IBM is and I would imagine technology firms would be at the vanguard. I was surprised however when PriceWaterhouseCoopers consultants arrived in IBM because there were unfamiliar with collaboration tools and disinterested in using them.

It works best when all the collaborators are equally enthusiastic and capable in using the tool. It just takes a handful of influential members of a team to stop using the tool for the tool to be abandoned.

The majority of people in organisations are baby boomers (I'm not sure this is true) and haven't been brought up in environment using collaboration tools. I was in a pub the other day meeting our complexity group and I overheard a small group of people in their 20s and 30s talking about the MySpace interactions. These people already know how to use the tools and will expect them in the workplace.

To answer to Dave’s question: “Is the answer making the tools better? If so, how? If not, what is the answer?”

I think we need to make tools that operate in ways we are familiar using. People are all learning to use browsers so our tools should be browser based. I think we should stop encouraging people to use a new tool and just send them a URL and say, we are going to share our documents here, feel free to update the calendar and let people go for it. By saying it’s a new tool that will make your life better people put up the shutters; “I’m too busy to learn something new.” Yet learning something new is fun

To answer to Dave’s question: “Given time, do you think people will eventually learn to use these tools, despite their shortcomings? Which tools, current or envisioned, will be the winners, the killer apps for online-enabled conversation and collaboration, and why?”

Content volume kills collaboration tools. I’ve used Lotus Teamrooms, Groove, Basecamp and in each case when the volume of the content becomes unwieldy the users stop using. Considerable effort is required to clean out the material, archive it, highlight what's important and bring to people's attention the key things to notice. At the moment I favour web-based tools like Basecamp because of their keep it simple philosophy and the fact it's browser-based.

To answer to Dave’s question: “What one simple thing should we do/learn to most effectively enable people to become better conversationalists, and how would we do this?”

In addition to listening I think knowing how to craft and ask good questions which encourage people to converse is essential. I like asking questions that elicit stories such as "What happened?" or "When was the team at its best?"

To answer to Dave question: “What one simple thing should we do/learn to most effectively enable people to become better collaborators, and how would we do this?”

Focus on the practice of collaboration and only introduce tools when the need arises. For example, a research group might think of new ways to harness energy from heat is a promising research project. They start off chatting on the phone, sending emails to one another and then someone says: “It would be good if we could track the versions on this document we are creating.” That’s the point a tool could be introduced. I would run a poster campaign in an organisation with the title “Avoid using collaboration tools for as long as possible” and then use the rest of the poster to describe the signs the team should look out for to introduce effective tools. Put practice and process before tools.

You may have been part of our Australian wide survey on attitudes and awareness of story and narrative approaches within organisations. One of the questions which we asked was for people to rate their awareness of positive and negative stories in organisational life.

Interestingly, the trend was that people rated that they were generally more aware of negative stories then positive ones with 24.1% of people saying they were aware to a considerable extent to positive stories, as opposed to 41.5% who claimed a similar awareness of negative stories.

I remember hearing Dave Snowden talk about the importance of negative stories and how they have served us. Evolutionarily speaking. The negative story gives us the opportunity to learn from someone’s experience. Often our own. He also mentioned that it is for this reason that negative stories will spread faster through an organisation than positive ones.

Something else which I find interesting about this trend is how powerful an approach like appreciative inquiry might be. If on the whole, most people are less aware of positive stories within their organisation than their negative counter parts, it seems to me that taking an Appreciative Inquiry, seeking out positive stories like those demonstrating “what it’s like when we’re at our best” could surely provide a break through way to how the organisation tackles ‘business as usual’. This may also be at the heart of the usefulness in being a positive deviant.

So, I wonder, what are you more aware of – positive or negative stories?

Interested?  Come get a taste at our free webinar that Evolve has invited us to present. Check here for more info.

We are getting prepared to be surprised about an upcoming Open Space Fishbowl with Larry Peterson on October 6th with the Victorian Continuous Improvement Network. It should be great. I took the opportunity to send a few questions Larry’s way regarding Open Space. I’d love to invite you to contribute to any of these questions as well by replying into the comments field.

Question 1: How did you first come to experience Open Space?

Harrison Owen did a workshop in Toronto in 1990, invited by ACCORD and some people I knew.

Question 2: When you're explaining Open Space to someone who has never heard of it, what do you emphasise and what do you leave out?

It depends on the person?  If it is a potential client, then I describe OST in relation to the business issue that she/he is facing and what could result.   For example, if a person wants to engage the employees in dealing with an issue at hand – I’ll describe how OST does that and the role of convergence in relation to the results. I will usually tell a story from my experience.  If the person wants a senior team to clarify how it can work together to achieve a vision, I’ll describe how that has is done with OST and cite my experience.  I don’t “sell” OST but identify it as an option.

To people in the airplane, I talk about:  easy way to conduct a meeting where everyone has an opportunity to shape the agenda and actively participate; generating enthusiasm, energy or spirit; people work on what they have an interest in or passion for; circle and description of process.  It then depends on what questions they ask what aspects I describe or theory I suggest.

Question 3: Some feel that the principles of Open Space seem to be authentic. That is, able to be applied to everyday life. What's your view?

YES!  Living life and management approaches based on OS principles are quite profound ways of going further with what the Technology has to say.  Open Space Technology is different from Open Space.  The “technology” is the approach to applying the principles that Harrison Owen developed.  Open Space can be practiced anywhere, everywhere, all the time.

Question 4: What 3 tips would you give to a new facilitator interested in "Opening Space"?

That is what I do in the workshops on OST that I lead or the coaching that I do.  Many tips.  I have an article on coaching OST facilitators on my web site.  So I’ll send people there.
 
Question 5: I have heard of the concept or leadership style called "Open Space Leadership" sometimes discussed. What's your experience with "Open Space Leadership"?

I have not heard of Open Space Leadership or seen anything written on it.  I have heard of the Open Space Organization and seen some writing.  Certainly the principles of OST can be applied to leading change.  I think some learn to do that intuitively as our study suggests.  I think those principles are part of great leadership for our times – but it is not just “Open Space” leadership but all leadership.

I recently heard a presentation that mentioned the truism ‘if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it’. It reminded me of how uncomfortable I have always been with this statement and the way it gets touted like a mantra in some organisations. If we view the functions of management as ‘plan, organise, lead, control, direct’, then both ‘measuring and managing’ appear to be more appropriate in an ordered world where cause and effect are knowable. For complex situations, where cause and effect cannot be predicted with acccuracy, the concepts of measure and manage aren’t sufficient to be successful. Measure and manage also don’t make any allowance for emergence and tend to overlook any unintended consequences. Fortunately I think many more people recite this truism than really believe it.

I prefer to view the function of management as ‘creating the conditions that enable people to be successful’. I also much prefer the concept expressed by Albert Einstein: “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts”.

Andrew Hargadon and Bob Sutton did some research on brainstorming in the 90’s that has been written up in BusinessWeek recently. Bob says it’s a good representation of their work. For each heading I’ve included here there is a paragraph of detail in the BusinessWeek article.

1. Use brainstorming to combine and extend ideas, not just harvest them
2. Don’t bother if people live in fear
3. Do individual brainstorming before and after group sessions
4. Brainstorming sessions are worthless unless ideas lead to action
5. Brainstorming requires skill and experience both to do—and especially—to facilitate
6. Brainstorming requires skill and experience both to do—and especially—to facilitate
7. Brainstorming sessions can be used for more than just generating ideas
8. Follow the rules, or don’t call it a brainstorm

The other article BusinessWeek ran is called The Truth about Brainstorming. Bob Sutton has a go at most academic research on brainstorming suggesting that it rarely reflects what really happens in the workplace and the idea that individual brainstorming if more effective that group efforts is nonsense.

[via Bob Sutton]

A couple of years ago I started a little group in Melbourne called Emergence. It’s open to anyone who wants to talk about the application of complexity thinking to organisational issues. It has had some ups and downs but I’m seeing a resurgence of interest in the group. New members have joined and they want to make something of it.

The group, as you can imagine from the topic, consists of highly educated and thoughtful people. We have scientists, consultants, engineers and managers as members. I have been surprised, however, at how bad we are at having a conversation. I went looking for ways to help the group this morning and found this list of things to avoid and I think we might infringe on ever point.

• Do not get tempted to answer questions that will move you away from your topic
• Do not have separate discussions with just one person
• Do not interrupt people when speaking (unless they don't seem to stop...)
• Do not let a few active people set the agenda
• Do not use slang or bad habits like saying "right" after every sentence

In particular we have one member who dominates the conversation and jumps wildly from one topic to the next. I skyped Nancy White for her thoughts and she suggested we introduce a ‘talking stick’-like object. This will help.

The list of things to avoid comes from the Oxford Research Group but I found the list at this student’s group site. They also provide a list of things to do. I’ll share both lists to our Emergence group as a potential set of guidelines.

• Allow the audience to influence the agenda, so that you speak to their real concerns
• One argument at the time
• Stay cool ­ even when the audience doesn't
• Be objective
• Finish one topic before starting the next (if possible)
• Respect the chair
• Ask those not so active
• Avoid “dangerous” topics that will move the discussion away from disarmament (the Oxford Research Group is interested in peace negotiations)
• Ask people to repeat their question if you are not sure you have understood it
• Establish common ground

I also went looking for structured dialogue techniques and wasn’t able to find any described in detail. Are you aware of any specific dialogue techniques which you think we should try out. It’s a great little group for experimenting with a number of methods. They are up for it.

They’re both persuasive presenters.

On Tuesday I watched Andrew Denton interview Al Gore on Enough Rope, and on the following day I had lunch with Edward de Bono (with 300 close friends) kindly organised by the VPSCIN. Both presentations were impressive—engaging, thoughtful and enjoyable. With our recent work on helping people tell better business stories I was mindful of both what they were saying and how they said it. There are a number of reasons which explain their effectiveness. I’ve listed 5 and quote Al Gore from the Enough Rope transcript as examples.

1. Facts

Al and Edward plied the audience with facts. Edward started his presentation listing 10–15 projects, seemingly off the top of his head, where the systematic application of thinking skills saved organisations substantial amounts of money. I was thinking at the time, “how interesting that he focuses entirely on saving money as the major benefit of his work,” but I guess he’s learned that people are impressed by saving money.

Al Gore was also forthcoming with relevant facts. Again they were presented as if they were on the tip of his tongue and no effort was needed to recall each data point.  

On Greenland, this past year, there were 32 glacial earthquakes between four point six and five point one on the Richter scale. That may sound like gobbledygook but, you know, a five on the Richter scale for an earthquake is enormous. And there were 32 of them this year on Greenland. That's double the number in '99. In '99 the number was double the number in '93. So that is evidence that what is almost certainly happening, there is a radical destabilising of that big mound of ice. So this is a realistic picture of what could happen if we don't act.

2. Stories

Of course I was on the look out for stories and I wasn’t disappointed. Both speakers took opportunities to relay details of events that either happened to them or their colleagues or clients. Details are important. Al said, “Arnold Schwarzenegger went to see my movie in June” not just that he went to see the movie.

A lot of business leaders who used to oppose Kyoto have now endorsed it. Arnold Schwarzenegger and California, of which he is governor, just last week passed binding reductions in carbon dioxide, a very bold measure, the Democratic legislature joined with him. Arnold Schwarzenegger went to see my movie in June and he said "I'm going to get rid of my Hummer." And he said some kind things about the movie and came to one of my book signings. There are now quite a few other state, nine north-eastern states, Pennsylvania, Oregon, state of Washington.

3. Analogies and metaphor

Metaphor and analogy for also a feature of both presentations. I quite liked this analogy between global warming and a child’s fever.

To put it another way, if you have a child who has a fever, and the fever persists, and it steadily gets higher, you go to the doctor. And you say "Please, let's check this out. What's the problem here?" Because it could be something bad. Well, the planet has a fever. And one or two degrees matters. Two or three or four or five matter even more. And it will continue to get higher until we stop dumping all this pollution into the earth's atmosphere. It is extremely damaging.

4. Humour

Both presenters seemed like the were having a good time and when the opportunity presented itself enjoyed a joke with the audience. Edward even told a couple of jokes to illustrate the similarities between humour and creativity: in both cases hindsight provides the ‘ah ha!’ moment.

5. Relaxed and confident

When you have two seasoned professional like Al and Edward, you expect them to know their content and looked relaxed. Have you ever seen Edward de Bono present. Well he does it sitting down using an overhead project while scribbling pictures and notes on a continuous roll of plastic as he talks. I was told to expect this delivery style with a warning that it was a little unprofessional looking. I totally disagree. His style is unique and suits his personality. Not for a moment did I find it distracting. This shows that every rule can be broken.

How can one improvise (together) in a virtual world, using electronic connections? How can we bring the benefits of interactivity into this medium, which is often an isolating medium?

You know about Improv right? Improv is often known for principles like:

• Accept all offers
• Be present
• Do something
• Be average
• Make mistakes
• Let go

Izzy Gesell and I have been offered the opportunity to do a webinar for our upcoming joint workshop “Change your story Change your world”. As you may know, a webinar involves ringing in and joining in on, essentially, a very large conference call. This webinar can have anywhere between 100–250 callers. The challenge has been to design an interactive program with people we can’t see and we don’t even know how many people there are there. Waiting to join in. Or just sitting listening. The challenge is in the design of trying to create something in almost a brand new medium, providing interactivity and engagement, when so much of our work is about working with people in the same room. The same time and space.

The challenge then is how to create an interactive personal experience in a virtual medium like the webinar. How do we get people to feel connected and interactive when they can’t see each other or respond to each other in visual or usual real-time ways? Have you experienced this challenge?

Business people love stories yet most of them just don’t know it yet. Luckily, many of the world’s leading business thinkers and business leaders point to stories as vital in understanding issues like organisational learning, cultural change, leadership, and evaluation. Using story approaches assumes one important aspect: stories. Storytelling is in our nature, but it seems that many of us have lost or forgotten the gentle art of listening; especially in organisations. How can you elicit stories? How can you help people share their stories? How can you become a skilled story listener?

Running Anecdote Circles is one great way to become a skilled story listener.

Soon we will be releasing our “Ultimate Guide to Anecdote Circles” ebook. In this eBook (which we will be giving away for free) we have drawn upon our collective experience of running hundreds of Anecdote Circles and have focussed on the art and science of anecdote circles. In particular we have aimed to distil our practical know-how which covers the seascape of skills, tricks, tips and exercises useful to running successful, fun and inspiring Anecdote Circles.

If you’d like to be one of the first to receive our free eBook be sure to subscribe to our newsletter. Otherwise, feel free to drop me a line.

We have a rare treat for anyone who’s in Melbourne on the 11th of October. Nancy White is giving a presentation on social software organised by VPSCIN, KMLF and Anecdote. To find out what Nancy will cover and details to register for this free event, visit VPSCIN here.

I have just posted an interview with Jess Dart, co-developer of the Most Significant Change technique, over at the Zahmoo blog.

The range of what we see and do
Is limited by what we fail to notice.
And because we fail to notice
That we fail to notice,
There is little we can do
To change
Until we notice
How failing to notice
Shapes our thoughts and deeds.

by R.D.Laing

In a Foreword by Stephen Covey for Alex Pattakos, Prisoners of Our Thoughts, Viktor Frankl’s Principals at Work. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2004.

[Thanks to Charles Savage]

In a complex world where the future is inherently unpredictable, it's sometimes better to wait to the very last minute to make a decision.

Do you have the 20th or 21st of this month free? Can you free them up?

Here's your opportunity to join us in learning to find, craft and perform compelling stories for work and all your other passions.

When you register it will be our pleasure to give you a free copy of Doug Lipman's fantastic book "Improving your storytelling".

Decide now!

Click on this link: http://www.anecdote.com.au/coursedisplay.php?cid=12

And send in your registration form as fast as you can!

My friends Pascal Perez and David Batten have just had published a new book called Complex systems for a complex world. It’s all about exploring human ecosystems using agent based modelling. The best news is that you can download a copy for free here.

The guys over at Signal vs Noise have it right. Fun is not at the other end of serious. You can have fun and be serious, creative, engaged, productive. Large companies are the worst offenders.

It’s a false choice, not a real fight. And you accept its premise at your own peril. Fun is all about creativity, innovation, play, experimentation, progress, and seeing real things come to life. If you make fun an enemy of business, you’re judging all these desirable concepts by association.

Having fake fun outlets won’t help either. Goofy Friday outfits or a monthly karaoke night are not a suitable substitutes for letting fun be a part of every day work.

We’ve all had terrible experiences navigating through automated phone systems where you dial 2 for this and 3 for that only to have the system hang up on you. Apparently these systems are called phone trees. Well you can now bypass phone trees with a new online service called Bringo. Just select the company your want to call and someone will navigate the phone tree for you then call you back when they have a real live human being to talk to. Amazing! More evidence that when dealing with people you can’t aim for efficiency because we’ll create ways to circumvent the system. I’m also guessing that the call centre providing the service is based in India or China. Another indicator supporting Dan Pink’s thesis.

[via Freakonomics blog]

A mining company just finished a traditional values exercise. You know the one, it ends up with a bulleted list of single words like integrity, diversity, professionalism. The designers quickly realised that their list wouldn’t mean much in the field so they started a project to collect stories from all their mine sites which illustrated the values. Each site agreed on the stories they thought reflected the values and then each story was illustrated and made into a poster. The genius of this intervention was in making posters specific to each mine site based on their stories AND not fully explaining the pictures on the posters. You had to be in the know to understand them. Visitors to the site would ask, “so what’re the scribbles all about?” “Ah, yep that’s the story about …” and the story illustrating one of the values is passed on. Prompted storytelling at its best.

This reminded me of visit back in 1991 to Chartres Cathedral and a memorable tour conducted by Malcolm Miller. I remember Miller describing each stained glass window as a series of stories from the bible and pointing out how the priests used these magnificent windows to both intimidate the audience and prompt the priests as to which stories to tell. This might be blasphemy, but it sounds a bit like PowerPoint.

[thanks to Jock Macneish for the mining story]

Dissident reports that the UK Cabinet Office has posted two videos on YouTube. It’s good to see the UK Government using the latest social software. I went searching for the videos and found one called Sharing - the Leadership Challenge, which is about shared services. The second, called Transformational Government got this error message when I clicked on it:

This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner COI Television because its content was used without permission

While the intent was good—helping citizens understand government programmes and directions—the production sent the wrong message; the quality was too high. The message became, “the Government is wasting taxpayer money on expensive marketing.” Perhaps a better approach is to create a video at the quality that most YouTube videos are filmed; home hand-held handy-cam. Do some simple editing and add titles and start with a message that says, “we decided to keep costs down in this video and used the most basic tools.”

I found this YouTube link via Dissident. If you’re interested in what’s happening in knowledge management in the UK public sector, this is the blog to watch.

If you are interested in the Most Significant Change technique or, more generally, in ways to assess the impact of initiatives that are difficult to measure, then you might like to keep an eye on the ZahmooBlog. We will posting on how MSC is being used and can be used; updates on Zahmoo—the online service for MSC practitioners; profiles of MSC practitioners; and a range of useful MSC tips and resources.

Yesterday I read a paper by Andreas Riege with the title, Three-dozen knowledge sharing barriers managers must consider. It’s a literature review that lists sets of potential knowledge-sharing barriers. The lit review has one major omission I noticed; there is no mention of Gabriel’s Szulanski’s work on knowledge sharing barriers (see references below).

The list is worth having as a ready reference to remind you of things to consider when you are crafting a knowledge strategy. He divides the barriers into three categories: individual, organisational and technological.

Individual knowledge sharing barriers

• general lack of time to share knowledge, and time to identify colleagues in need of specific knowledge;
• apprehension of fear that sharing may reduce or jeopardise people’s job security;
• low awareness and realisation of the value and benefit of possessed knowledge to others;
• dominance in sharing explicit over tacit knowledge such as know-how and experience that requires hands-on learning, observation, dialogue and interactive problem solving;
• use of strong hierarchy, position-based status, and formal power (“pull rank”);
• insufficient capture, evaluation, feedback, communication, and tolerance of past mistakes that would enhance individual and organisational learning effects;
• differences in experience levels;
• lack of contact time and interaction between knowledge sources and recipients;
• poor verbal/written communication and interpersonal skills;
• age differences;
• gender differences;
• lack of social network;
• differences in education levels;
• taking ownership of intellectual property due to fear of not receiving just recognition and accreditation from managers and colleagues;
• lack of trust in people because they misuse knowledge or take unjust credit for it;
• lack of trust in the accuracy and credibility of knowledge due to the source; and
• differences in national culture or ethnic background; and values and beliefs associated with it (language is part of this).

Organisational knowledge sharing barriers

• integration of KM strategy and sharing initiatives into the company’s goals and strategic approach is missing or unclear;
• lack of leadership and managerial direction in terms of clearly communicating the benefits and values of knowledge sharing practices;
• shortage of formal and informal spaces to share, reflect and generate (new) knowledge;
• lack of transparent rewards and recognition systems that would motivate people to share more of their knowledge;
• existing corporate culture does not provide sufficient support for sharing practices;
• deficiency of company resources that would provide adequate sharing opportunities;
• external competitiveness within business units or functional areas and between subsidiaries can be high (e.g. not invented here syndrome);
• communication and knowledge flows are restricted into certain directions (e.g. top-down);
• physical work environment and layout of work areas restrict effect sharing practices;
• internal competitiveness within business units, functional areas, and subsidiaries can be high;
• hierarchical organisation structure inhibits or slows down most sharing practices; and
• size of business units often is not small enough and unmanageable to enhance contact and facilitate ease of sharing.

Technological knowledge sharing barriers

• lack of integration of IT systems and processes impedes on the way people do things;
• lack of technical support (internal and external) and immediate maintenance of integrated IT systems obstructs work routines and communication flows;
• unrealistic expectations of employees as to what technology can do and cannot do;
• lack of compatibility between diverse IT systems and processes;
• mismatch between individuals’ need requirements and integrated IT systems and processes restrict sharing practices;
• reluctance to use IT systems due to lack of familiarity and experience with them;
• lack of training regarding employee familiarisation of new IT systems and processes; and
• lack of communication and demonstration of all advantages of any new system over existing ones.

Riege, A. (2005). "Three-dozen knowledge-sharing barriers managers must consider." Journal of Knowledge Management 9(3): 18-35.

Szulanski, G. (1996). "Exploring internal stickiness: Impediments to the transfer of best practice within the firm." Strategic Management Journal 17: 27-43.

Seth Godin relates a story about breakfast on his blog. Except its not about breakfast but about how compromise insidiously erodes your intent and how one compromise can lead to another, and so on. I read Seth’s story and immediately thought of one of the the themes we have been pursuing about losing the humanity in our organisations. Its easy to see how economic rationalism and the pursuit of efficiency can lead organisations to make compromises that, over time, erode respect and humanity.

Seth’s blog demonstrates why good stories are so effective. They are simple, powerful and they convey richness. You don’t need to tell people what it means because they can relate to within their own framework of understanding.

Thanks again to everyone who has participated in our blog for August. We look forward to your thoughts and suggestions in September.

Commenters

Matt Moore, annette, ken, Chris Corrigan, Michael Wagner, frank.connolly, Moya Sayer-Jones, Sue Huckson, James Taylor, James Dellow

 Linkers

davidmaister.com,  Going to Pieces, Interactions, Knowledge Jolt with Jack, Greg Magnus, Random Walk in Learning, Lee Hopkins, How to Save the World, Em duas línguas, Marketing Interactions, mindflush.com, Knowledge Futures, S A R U S H I B A I .., Connecta, Weblog - Connecta, P3, Learning Alliances, Library clips, Other Interests, Middle Zone Musings, Far Wise in Knowledge Management, Adventure of Strategy, Prato Dialogue, knowledge is everywhere, entreprise_et_blog, elearningpost,  odd time signatures, Bob Sutton, MindBridge, Full Circle Online Interaction, John Westworth, G. Brett Miller

Darren Woolley, over at P3, has also noticed the busy-ness meme. You know the one: we are so busy as the moment, flat out. In fact I’ve noticed that people are greeting each other differently these days. It goes something like this:

“Hi Bob, how’s it going?”

“Busy, very busy. Hardly got time to scratch.”

“Yeh, me too. Flat out.”

“Time for a coffee?”

“Sure thing.”

We all say we are busy. It’s almost a badge of honour. I wonder what would happen if you said, “I have a bit of free time at the moment. It’s just the way I like it.”

Anyway, Darren goes on list some things that are wrong with business meetings and gives us some ideas on how to get more out of meetings. Well worth a read.

Garr Reynolds over at Presentation Zen has written an excellent review of Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind. A couple of quotes that stand out:

“The future belongs to a different kind of person,” Pink says. “Designers, inventors, teachers, storytellers — creative and empathetic right-brain thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn’t.”

“Story” is not just about storytelling but about listening to stories and being a part of stories. We were all born storytellers (and “storylisteners”). As kids we looked forward to “show and tell” and we gathered with our friends at recess and at lunchtime and told stories about real things and real events that mattered, at least they mattered to us. But somewhere along the line, “Story” became synonymous with “fiction” or even “lie.” “Oh, he’s just telling you a big fat story,” they’d say. So “Story” and storytelling have been marginalized in business and academia as something serious people do not engage in.

The guys at www.blogday.org has asked bloggers to list 5 blogs you love reading. Well, here are my five:

• http://www.vpscin.org/ – all the happenings in the Victorian Public Sector
• http://37signals.com/svn/ – all about online services
• http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/ – the author of the no asshole rule
• http://davidmaister.com/blog – on professional services
• http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/ – new ways to look at the world

If you want to see all the blogs I read, visit:

http://www.bloglines.com/public/unorder