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| 28/04/08 | | Managing knowledge in not-for-profit organisations |
actKM is again participating in the annual Information Awareness Month. This year, actKM is hosting a world cafe-style event on the topic of: 'How can KM practices contribute to volunteer/community organisations?' The event is in Canberra next Tuesday (6th May) and all the details are on the actKM blog. Nerida Hart and I will be running the session and we look forward to seeing you there.
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| 28/04/08 | | Net Neutrality |
Some worrying developments which might limit the use of the Internet for the little guy.
via Dave Snowden
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| 28/04/08 | | Without Collaboration |
Hugh Macloed is a master with social objects. He draws at the back of business cards!
Here's two of his recent creations, so cleverly done for Microsoft.
It's a fun way to get people talking about collaboration.
And this one brings out the importance of a good conversation and good storytelling skills. We're all human after all and that's what brings us together.
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| 27/04/08 | | The difference between cooperation and coordination |
After writing our paper on collaboration there were several things we wanted to explore that just wouldn't fit into the original work. We are interested in when it's unhelpful to collaborate, examples of when collaboration has failed, and how collaboration differs from similar terms such as co-operation and co-ordination.
So on the question of cooperation vs. collaboration I decided to phone a friend, well Skype chat some friends, and get their gut response to the question:
What do you think is the difference between cooperation and collaboration?
Now please remember that each person had no time to consider their response. It's right off the top of their heads. Despite that caveat I think we got some excellent insights.
Here are the responses.
Cooperation = working together so both of our needs get served. Collaboration = working together to create something/a higher outcome together.
Initial gut reaction is that cooperation is more shallow / surface level than collaboration which is a bit deeper - more about a shared meaning and purpose with smarts, more strategic / tactical rather than (co)operational. Other gut reaction is that it involves using technology - synonymous between web 2.0 and collaborative technology. never hear of cooperative technology. Sort of like the difference between wiki/blog shared conversation (KM) and supply chain logistics and e-commerce (IM). Fuzzy boundary though.
I think the only thing that I would add on reflection that collaboration implies that there a a "product" of some type at the end (and not an abstract one)
However as I said (and as is implied in the paper on a skim read) I think there is far too much emphasis placed on the individual and individual behaviours when people talk about this, and not enough about relationships and interactions per se. Social Atomism v Communitarianism, its one of the basic divides
Amino acids cooperate to break down meat in my stomach.
I cooperate with a bunch of people in del.icio.us to create a massive pile of tagged information.
But I would collaborate with you on tagging specific documents for a book project.
Wilfulness and focus are key factors
Cooperation costs $125 an hour. Collaboration costs $350 an hour.
Some loudthinking. My daughter and I try to cooperate with each other about leaving the bathroom clean. I need her cooperation in certain respects and she needs mine. We are about to collaborate on arranging the financing for her university arrangements. Collaborator of course has undercurrents in other languages (French for example) of helping the existing regime in a morally corrupt or sleazy way. Cooperative has a good twang in the UK because of the cooperative movement which resulted in co-owned supermarkets, funeral parlours etc with some sense of community and collective investment and return. The cooperative society - http://www.co-operative.coop/ It went through the doldrums and then has resurfaced and took some good moral ground in banking terms a few years back. As I write it feels to me more emergent. Individual morals, ethics and practices collect to create cooperation but it always stays individual somehow. Collaboration must, perforce, be a collective construct throughout. Or in the case of the wartime collaboration, the authorities, or those in power, created conditions in which individuals collaborated. I'm going round in circles here but I'll write both words up and think about them. I suspect the only way is not to theorise but to think of actual circumstances in which one uses the word, both in public and in private life, and then see what the emergent definitions are. We could start a little trial space for the collection somewhere? I've a feeling I'd only use collaborate in a work context whereas I'd use cooperate much more in a private context. This is likely to mean cooperate has more meaning for me as a real word.
This is tough. I think we cooperate when we agree not to work at cross-purposes, and have an intention to help each other as need arises. Collaboration, to me, is always in view of a result -- something we both want to create.
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| 23/04/08 | | Workplace diversity |
Every month, the Australian Institute of Management publishes its magazine 'Management Today'. The back page (p56) of the May 2008 edition has some comments about diversity including the following anecdote:
"I had to ask for some time off for a family matter and I think my manager really resented it"
Compare this to an anecdote we recently collected from one of the companies we regularly work with:
"One of my fellow managers told me recently about one of their staff, their mother was in a unit that had flood damage and the mother was elderly and that person had to go and help the person strip out the carpets and do all the work. But she wanted a day off, so she had a day off. And then what happened was she needed to have more and more time off. My colleague said, look you need to sort out your family situation and we will sort out what you need to do with your work time. So as a result of that, that person got all the work done and then couple of weeks later did the extra hours, tied it all up, and got back on track. And that person who had the elderly mother in the unit was very much appreciated, that the flexibility was involved. That was very important to her. I felt good about that because there were no rules or guidelines but the manager made the decision and he got everything—the thing got done and everyone got a win-win situation out of it. It didn’t go to HR, he just organized it"
I know which organisation I would rather be part of. The article in Management Today states that effective diversity management means understanding and supporting both the obvious and less obvious aspects of our individual differences. Diversity is much more than a policy; it is an everyday activity that, if done well, can lead to more engaged staff and a positive impact on the bottom line.
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| 23/04/08 | | Communicate with impact |
Imagine presenting without PowerPoint. No slides, no bullet points - just a persuasive message that changes opinion and makes an impact.
The PowerPoint alternative is simple - stories. Whenever you present or communicate, your stories will help you communicate your ideas more meaningfully. That's why global brands such as AXA, Harley Davidson and Nike are utilising their power.
Never submit another audience to death by PowerPoint. Join our Storytelling for Business Leaders Workshop and develop your innate storytelling skills to convey ideas clearly and effectively. Most importantly, you'll learn to build a rapport that stimulates trust and a sense of connection with your colleagues and clients alike.
"Shawn's presentation to our technical sales forum was right on the money. The story telling tactics and skills passed on have been immediately adopted, and are producing higher quality presentations by our team to our clients. We look forward to continuing to develop our skills in this area, which will support the business objectives of our organisation and our customers." — IBM
The workshop will teach you how to find your own stories, understand story patterns and how to share your stories with maximum impact. We'll talk about the six different types of stories and much more ...
Download the Registration Form
We look forward to seeing you there!.
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| 22/04/08 | | Building a collaboration workplace |
Our white paper on collaboration is now available. It was a pleasure working with Mark and Nancy White on this one. We're hoping this document creates a new conversation within organisations where people responsible for fostering collaboration (line managers, business units leaders, CIOs, HR directors) not only realise that they must look beyond the technology implementation but consider ways to introduce and support collaborative practices. The need to effectively collaborate is only going increase because the world is becoming even more complex and we will need more people banding together to create solutions by bringing their different perspectives to bare. We also look at a new type of collaboration, which we've called network collaboration, where the rules of how we work together are being re-written.
Nancy, Mark and I would dearly love to hear your thoughts on what we've written and in particular what additional advice would you give to supplement our ideas?
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| 20/04/08 | | Revealing character |
Recently we've been helping people find stories from their life that help give others an insight into the type of person they are. Annette Simmons calls these stories, 'Who am I?' and 'Why am I here?' stories. They are most useful when you meet people for the first time because the two questions they're likely yo have in their mind are, 'Who are you?' and 'Why are you here?' Without answering these two questions it's unlikely they will take in much else of what you say.
The 'Who am I?' story reveals character whereas 'Why am I here?' reveals motivation. I was flicking through Robert McKee's book, Story, and noticed a section on the difference between character and characterisation and I wanted to share this scenario McKee paints for us that graphically depicts how character is revealed.
Consider this scene: Two cars motor down a high way. One is a rusted-out station wagon with buckets, mops, and brooms in the back. Driving it is an illegal alien—a quiet, shy woman working as a domestic for under-the-table cash, sole support of her family. Alongside her is a glistening new Porsche driven by a brilliant and wealthy neurosurgeon. Two people who have utterly different backgrounds, beliefs, personalities, languages—in every way imaginable their characterizations are the opposite of each other.
Suddenly, in front of them, a school bus full of children flips out of control, smashes against an underpass, bursting into flames, trapping the children inside. Now, under this terrible pressure, we'll find out who these people really are.
Who chooses to stop? Who chooses to drive by? Each has rationalizations for driving by. The domestic worries that if she gets caught up in this, the police might question her, find out she's an illegal, throw her back across the border, and her family will starve. The surgeon fears that if he's injured and his hands burned, hands that perform miraculous microsurgeries, the lives of thousands of future patients will be lost. But let's say they both hit the brakes and stop.
This choice gives us a clue to character, but who is stopping to help, and who's become too hysterical to drive any farther? Let's say they both choose to help. This tells us more. But who chooses to help by calling for an ambulance and waiting? Who chooses to help by dashing into the burning bus? Let's say they both rush for the bus—a choice that reveals character in even greater depth.
Now doctor and housekeeper smash windows, crawl inside the blazing bus, grab screaming children, and push them to safety. But their choices aren't over. Soon the flames surge into a blistering inferno, skin peels from their faces. They can't take another breath without searing their lungs. In the midst of this horror each realizes there's only a second left to rescue one of the many children still inside. How does the doctor react? In a sudden reflex does he reach for a white kid or the black child closer to him? Which way do the housekeeper's instincts take her? Does she save the little boy? Or the little girl cowering at her feet? How does she make Sophie's choice?
I would never wish this level of drama upon anyone in real life—remember, McKee is advising screenwriters— but it demonstrates that character is revealed under pressure. It's probably one of the reasons we intuitively watch our leaders when a crises occurs to see what they do because their actions reflect under pressure their character.
When looking for 'Who am I?' stories you will need to seek out those times when you were under the pump, or it didn't go the way you expected. What did you do? Alternatively find stories of when others were under pressure and you admired how they acted.
I'm in the process of writing a new anecdote for the back of my business card. I want it to be a 'Who am I?' story. It's far less dramatic than the burning bus scenario but I would like you opinion. What do you think? What character/s are revealed in this story?
In 1996 I helped the Australian Geological Survey Organisation document their scientific datasets. We put a heap of effort into designing the database and then went to the scientists and asked them to describe their datasets. They scoffed at the suggestion, reminding us that they had a mountain of data and little motivation to do anything with it apart from publishing papers. We were stumped until we cottoned on to the fact that their culture was defined by the imperative to publish or perish. We revisited our project design and created the idea of a published dataset. It was linked to their performance management systems but most importantly each published dataset could be officially cited in their personal bibliographies. We went back to the scientists and asked whether they would like to publish their datasets and there was an instant line up.
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| 15/04/08 | | Building a collaborative workplace - Canberra workshop |
Improved collaboration is a business imperative - to develop and implement strategy, to leverage existing capabilities and knowledge, to innovate, be more resilient in a rapidly changing environment and to reduce costs. Creating communities of practice is one of the key ways to build collaboration, but there are other important dimensions leaders and managers need to know to systematically build a collaboration capability.
If you're in the business of business, whether in the public or private sectors, you need to know about collaboration. Collaboration activities are ongoing in every organisation. Yet according to a recent Economic Intelligence Unit survey most collaborative activities are not completely successful because collaborators fail to establish a deep sense of trust among themselves. Then there's also lack of clarity on roles, support etc. There's a whole gamut of things one needs to pay attention to. Unfortunately, this is not an area they cover in business school.
We've learnt a lot about collaboration techniques in our journey and are keen to share some ideas about how organisations can make their workplace more collaborative. Given this, we are pleased to announce a new workshop called Building a Collaborative Workplace. The workshop is running in Canberra on 28 April and four other capitals later in the year. Go here to register.
We'll be discussing issues such as:
- the various types of collaboration
- roles required to foster and sustain collaborative behaviors and practices
- getting the most from your collaboration tools
- starting and sustaining communities of practice
- helping leaders foster a collaborative culture
And, of course, we will be providing many examples and stories to illustrate these issues.
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| 15/04/08 | | Conversations That Create—An International Thought Leadership Programme |
Here's an event you might like to attend. It's been organisation by Ralph Kerle from The Creative Leadership Forum.
Conversations That Create—An International Thought Leadership Programme
May 7 - 9, 2008
Venue: Centre for Leadership, Building 18, Chowder Bay Road, Mosman, Sydney NSW, Australia 2088
The Forum Challenge: "How can leaders in organisations lead generative conversations"
With International Thought Leaders
Shawn Callahan, Founder, Anecdote, Melbourne. Australia
Pavan Choudary, CEO, Vygon India, author and executive coach, Madras, India
Ralph Kerle, Chief Executive Officer, The Creative Leadership Forum, Sydney, Australia
Professor Kirpal Singh Ph.D, Singapore Management University, Dean of Economics, Arts, and Humanities, novelist, poet, Singapore.
and Session Leaders
Sandra Kay Lauffenburger (Laban), Dr Louise Mahler (Vocal and Choral)
A 2 1/2 day leadership programme designed to explore, develop and produce new thinking and learning around the way conversations occur to produce creative outcomes..
"Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so." Doris Lessing
The Forum Preamble
The hard assets of all organizations tend to constitute the primary value of the organization but they are useless if not for the human asset and specifically the resourcefulness of that human asset to organize and utilize the hard assets. And one of the essential elements of this human resourcefulness is that of imagination and creativity. But these two elements remain dormant without the generative contexts to draw them out and generative contexts are established and maintained only by the right kinds of conversations. If the output of a musician is music, the output of a playwright a script, the output of a sculptor a piece of visual art, then the output of a leader is creative conversation because it is the leader's job to organize and focus the energy of human resourcefulness. It is the job of the leader to create and maintain the conversational 'spaces' that trigger the imagination and apply that imagination to creative work. The majority of conversations that people have at work do not readily lend themselves to creative action. What is the case in your organization?
Conversations that Create will explore and develop how to create and maintain the necessary generative spaces and have the kinds of conversations needed to move individuals and teams into creative output. Participants will learn and practice practical ways of having conversations for possibility and opportunity, for engagement, commitment and creative action and for creating the necessary relationships for sustaining a generative space.
Click on www.thecreativeleadershipforum.com
Event Fees and Conditions
The cost to participate is $880 incl GST. All meals are included in the cost. Accommodation is excluded. Click here for full details of the venue situated on Sydney Harbour. The Forum is limited to 30 people. All presenters will be participants as well. This is not an academic conference, rather a peer to peer practice led information exchange with participants drawn from business, government, academia, the arts. Particular regard will be paid to the balance and mix of participants.
If you are interested please email Ralph Kerle on rk@thecreativeleadershipforum.com or call direct on 0412 559 603 in the first instance.
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| 15/04/08 | | Leading from the front...complexity management basics for CEOs |
The damaging windstorm in Melbourne two weeks ago gave me an interesting insight into how poorly prepared the leadership of our energy organisations were to deal with a crisis. You could argue that a simple demonstration of the energy of Mother Nature and its effects on modern civilisation is hardly a crisis but I doubt that many of the 300,000 Melbourne households that were without power for days would agree with you.
I was one of those left in the dark both literally and figuratively for close to 55 hours. I understood that it was an “unusual weather event” and it would not be easy to get everyone quickly back onto the power supply. I didn’t mind losing everything in my fridge and freezer, having no hot water, reading by candlelight or being without my laptop, broadband internet or Foxtel. But I did mind not being able to speak to anyone at my power company…and I was surprised by just how much I minded. When things are not going the way they should, we all look for reassurance and information to help us wait it out. The situation across Melbourne was complex and complicated and I knew that SP-Ausnet would not be able to tell me when they would get to the fallen powerlines in my street and I knew that every available repair crew member was on duty and out there working through the night to get the job done. My appreciation to them knows no bounds. But…not once was I able to find out whether anyone at the power company knew that our powerlines were down. Our suburb was either not listed on their answering machine message as offline or being worked on. In fact, on the Friday morning, we once again woke to a cold, dark morning and the recorded message “There are no known outages in your area” Yeah, right! My congratulations go to the one exception in all this – the CEO of Alinta, Peter McGarry, who was a shining example of “The buck stops here”. He was personally available to radio and television interviewers and the number of interviews he had done by day three was close to twenty. He took on board the concerns expressed by disgruntled customers who were unable to speak to anyone or get any information from their power company. And like his repair crews, he and his team worked long hours to stay on top of things. An SMS service for customers to report outages and damage was quickly set up as was a website to give up to date information. I was impressed to find out that on Friday as my household entered its third day without light, power or information, Alinta had rung their 1700 customers still waiting to be reconnected to let them know how things were progressing and ask how they were getting on. Peter McGarry made sure his company looked after their customers and kept the communication coming. When one of his linesmen was killed working to restore power to houses on the Mornington Peninsula, most of us would have understood if Peter had gone to ground and hidden out at Head Office. But that was not his style. While under enormous pressure he made time to visit the family and colleagues, made sure there were condolence notices from himself and the company in the Melbourne newspapers and I have no doubt he made time to attend the funeral as well. In contrast to my supplier, he didn’t hand any of that over to “a company spokesperson” from the PR department. Complications and complexity are part and parcel of crisis situations where the shifting nature of the problem is a big part of the challenge of solving it. Peter and the Alinta team stepped up to that challenge, made sure they kept telling everyone what they were doing as they did it and, as far as I'm concerned, did it markedly better than the rest.Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 14/04/08 | | 2020 Summit—storytelling advice to summiteers |
The Australia 2020 Summit promises to bring together the nation’s best and brightest brains in a bid to discover new ideas to take the country forward. For those attending it will be an opportunity to make their mark. The Summit is a big event, full of big IQs and bigger egos – it’s tough to stand out from the crowd. My advice for summiteers: make an impact by reaching people’s emotions. Statistics don’t do that – but stories do.
For example, the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is someone who understands the power of a story. One of his first television commercials as Prime Ministerial aspirant used his personal story as the basis for his plan to reform education: http://www.alp.org.au/labortv/6FiTQAgNy6
Stories work because they get people’s attention and people develop a resolve to act when their emotions are triggered. My tips for our 1000 brightest minds if they want to stand out from the other 999 Summiteers:
1. Grab your audience’s attention with a story of how’s things are failing and tell it with detail, empathy and authenticity. Humans are psychologically attuned to take notice of tales of woe because we have evolved to notice and avoid danger.
2. Paint a picture of what it could be like with a story of hope illustrating that good things are already happening. As celebrated sci-fi writer William Gibson noted, “the future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed.” Hopeful stories generate resolve to take action.
3. Find real stories and never embellish, fabricate or tell half the story for effect. One untruthful story will erode all your good work.
Forget the dreaded PowerPoint presentation and, instead, use stories to leave a longer lasting impression. As conference veterans know too well, the chances of meaningful discourse are slim at best when bombarded with one slide after the next jam packed with enough bullets to deplete Cadbury’s licorice supplies.
If the aim is to generate conversations so leaders are not only exposed to new thinking but also remember and adopt new ideas then a combination of stories and reasoned argument is essential. And always lead with the stories because trying to change someone’s mind with hard, cold facts only results in people with convictions to dig their heels in even further.
Anecdote’s “business narrative” techniques are becoming more and more mainstream as people realize the limitations that come with statistics and surveys to tackle and solve problems and implement change. Stories often get to the heart of the matter because they represent the natural way people share what they know.
Here my interview with Richard Aedy from the Life Matters program on ABC Radio National. Here's the audio (approx. 8 minutes).
Or check out our latest storytelling for leaders workshop.
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| 13/04/08 | | 2020 Summit |
Andrew Leigh went to the 2020 summit warm up yesterday in Canberra. It was the ACT 2020 summit and the lesson he will be taking to the big event on the 19-20th this month is, "... any idea with less than 90% support on Day 1 is going to get killed." I can just imagine it, 300 people clamouring for their big ideas to be heard by 299 others and only 16 ideas making it to the end of the day. This is idea decimation in the original Roman sense of the word.
How did the successful ideas emerge? Were these successful ideas merely part of the community zeitgeist and would have survived regardless of what the participants did? How many were presented as a list of facts, a presentation of the evidence? I would be willing to bet many of the successful ideas were presented as a story illustrating the idea in a way that helped it stick in the minds of the participants. Once the idea took hold, it grew.
I worry about the upcoming 2020 summit. I want it to be a tremendous success but I can see 10 groups of 100 egos clashing and the largest voices smothering the quieter best and brightest. The success will depend on two factors: how the event is facilitated; and whether participants can tell stories to engage their fellow summiteers.
Facilitation, techniques and physical space
From what I can tell the summit organisers plan to run small group sessions and large plenary presentations. The warning bells should sound if we see rooms arrange in seminar seating styles, the favoured arrangement for one-way information transmission. I'm hopeful that the organisers know about techniques like open space, world cafe, or even something like jump-start storytelling to help the group be more collaborative. But maybe my hope is misplaced. These techniques foster real dialogue when in fact these two days will be a gladiatorial contest of whose ideas win. Physical space and technique are important but both are trumped by the skill and attitude of the facilitators. At one end of the spectrum is the facilitator who already has in their mind a picture of what good looks like and regardless of what's been said this person hears their version and heads the group in that direction. At the other end of the spectrum is the facilitator who is totally focussed on process and helps people be heard. I'm hoping the 2020 team of facilitators fits in this last category.
Storytelling
Each participant will have very little time to engage the group in their idea. Cognitive science show that if someone has a strong opinion on a topic and you provide an alternative opinion, it only serves to reinforce the person's original strong opinion. It's called a cognitive bias.1 However if we tell a negative story to grab attention then a positive story to illustrate what's possible, we have a much greater chance of changing someone's mind and engaging people.2,3 It's only after hearing the stories are people open to hearing the reasoning and evidence.
There are three reasons why these stories work:
- stories are memorable and can be retold. This is powerful if your story embodies your big idea and is the told and retold at the Summit.
- stories convey emotion and, regardless of what all the hard-headed rationalists would have you think, we make decisions based on the emotions we feel
- stories provide context and therefore are more meaningful than disembodied facts and figures. Of course some of the best stories are laden with facts and figures.
Summiteers need to find their negative and positive stories this week and resist the urge to start with facts followed by examples and flip their sequence starting with the stories followed by reasoning. The people who can will increase their chances to be heard and understood. And perhaps more importantly telling stories will help relationships form among this elite group and hopefully is followed by collaborations that will make a difference to Australia.
Kevin Rudd understands the value of story. We have seen it in his election campaign and on Sorry Day. And on reading some of the background papers for the Summit I found this warning:
"These background materials aim to tell an evidence-based story about how Australia is faring. They are not intended to be definitive or comprehensive, but were put together to stimulate discussion on the main challenges and opportunities facing the country and the choices to be made in addressing them. They do not representgovernment policy."
The summit organisers understand the power of stories. Now it's time for the participants to embrace this big idea.
Why not join one of our storytelling for leaders workshops.
1. D. Westen, The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation (New York: PublicAffairs, 2007).
2. S. Denning, The Secret Language of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Action Through Narrative (San Francisco: John Wiley & Son, 2007).
3. H. Gardner, Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People's Minds (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2004).
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| 11/04/08 | | Why should we care about mystery stories? |
Robert Cialdini discovered a secret to learning in 2005. As a world-leading psychologist he was surprised he didn’t already know this secret but now swears by it. He was researching a new psychology book he wanted to write for a general audience and wanted to know the characteristics of effective science writing for an informed public readership. Most of his review confirmed what he already knew: must have a clear and focussed point, well written, concrete examples. The big surprise for Robert was that the best examples where written in the format of a mystery story.
Robert’s laboratory is his classroom so he tried out the approach there. A typical lecture, before using the mystery story format, would end with his students starting to pack up five minutes before the lecture’s scheduled finishing time. When he presented the same information as a mystery story, and he was yet to reveal the who’d dunnit, the students remained totally engaged and didn’t move, even after the lecture was supposed to have finished. It was like magic.
So here is the structure Cialdini discovered in his review and then wrote up in volume 24 of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.
- Pose the mystery
- Deepen the mystery
- Home in on the proper explanation by considering (and offering evidence against) alternative explanations
- Provide a clue to the proper explanation
- Resolve the mystery
- Draw the implications for the phenomenon under study
To test this out I wrote a blog post using the mystery format called ‘What is happening to Melbourne's trains?’ I would be grateful to receive your feedback. Just leave comments on the blog post.
Cialdini, R. B. (2005). “What’s The Best Secret Device for Engaging Student Interest? The Answer Is In The Title.” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 24(1): 22-29.
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| 10/04/08 | | The Mistake Bank |
John Caddell has an interesting project he's just started called The Mistake Bank. It's a place to tell stories of some of your biggest stuff ups with the idea we learn best from our mistakes.
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| 10/04/08 | | An expansion of People, Process and Technology |
"We have to consider people, process and technology." It's a phrase I hear quite often, especially among IT folk. Sometimes they say, "people, process, technology and content." These are the things to consider when implementing a system. There are a myriad of variations. Yesterday I was told by an experienced consultant that they always consider policy when thinking about process. "People, process and technology" has entered our business thinking much like proverbs such as "a stitch in time saves nine." They create the framework for our thinking and both guide and constrain our actions.
I'd like to focus on the Process element of this business proverb and would like to suggest that this word creates a limited and inadequate response when thinking about what happens to make a system work. The word 'process' suggests all those things you can describe and write down, especially using boxes and arrows. Yet we know professional practice and even expert craft is required to get things done. So here is my suggestion. When we use the PPT (all business proverbs should have an acronym—my little joke) let's expand 'Process' and include Practice and Craft. Here is a short-hand way of thinking about it.
- Process is what you are told to do
- Practice is what everyone does
- Craft is striving for utmost quality with years of experience under your belt
And the ways to understand these three modes also differs but it's hard to categorise except to say that many processes can be analysed, many practices can be observed and illustrated with stories and craft can be observed, experienced and appreciated but takes years to learn.
I'm certain better systems will emerge if we take this wider view of process.
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| 8/04/08 | | Footprints in time |
Chandni and I have just returned from the official launch of Footprints in Time, a
longitudinal study of indigenous children designed to identify the things that contribute to indigenous children growing up to be strong and resilient. The project has been four years in the gestation, and it was launched by Jenny Macklin, Minister for FaHCSIA and Professor Mick Dodson who is the chair of the project steering committee. This project is an enormous undertaking and high hopes are held for its ability to make a difference to the future policy responses to issues around indigenous children.
The project has two main streams; a quantitative survey and a narrative-based qualitative component. Anecdote has been working with the project for the past year supporting the narrative component and implementing the SenseMaker software developed by Cognitive Edge. It was exciting to be part of the official launch and it is great to be a part of such an initiative.
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| 7/04/08 | | Storytelling for Business Leaders Workshop in Sydney |
We can all tell stories about our childhood quite easily.
What about our work, our workplace, our business? That seems far from easy. People tend to use PowerPoint over PowerPoint to convey their ideas.
At Anecdote, we're always finding ways to help people bring back stories to the workplace. Here's some areas of storytelling that we'll be discussing on April 16.
▪ How does one tell a story?
▪ How can you find stories to tell at work?
▪ What stories should one tell when one wants to communicate values?
▪ What stories can help you introduce yourself to an audience?
▪ How can you build trust by telling stories?
▪ How can you help people see 'the big picture' through stories?
▪ How can you use stories to make a difference?
Join us in Sydney for a workshop on Storytelling for Business Leaders. Download registration form
It'll be fun and you'll discover stories you can share about yourself and your work!
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| 6/04/08 | | Connected futures: New social strategies and tools for communities of practice |
If you are interested in establishing and fostering communities of practice, and in particular are keen to understand the role social technologies such as blogs, wikis and social booking might play in their development, then you'll want to check out this new learning event from CPSquare:
Connected futures: New social strategies and tools for communities of practice
We have been designing this event (runs over 5 weeks) as a virtual field trip and experimental lab where you will engage your heads and your hands (and hopefully your hearts) and get a good feeling for these technologies and how they might support communities of practice.
You will be guided on this journey by the following practitioners:
Beth Kanter, Beverly Trayner, Bronwyn Stuckey, Etienne Wenger, John Smith, Nancy White, Nick Noakes, Shawn Callahan, Shirley Williams, and Susanne Nyrop.
I hope to see you there.
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| 5/04/08 | | Building a collaboration capability - the quick quiz |
A while back we talked about three types of collaboration: team, community and network. So here's a quick quiz to help you understand just how collaborative your organisation really is. This little quiz is part of our upcoming article on Building a Collaborative Capability by Mark, Nancy White and me. If you want to get a preview copy just sign up for our newsletter if you not already a subscriber.
Answer true or false to the following statements.
Team
- You enter into collaborations as peers with each person playing a valued role. True/False?
- Teams are recognised and celebrated as a unit. True/False?
- People enter into collaborations with a feeling of promise. True/False?
- There is someone in your organisation you can turn to to learn more about effective collaboration approaches. True/False?
- You have access to relevant and useful collaboration technologies and are encouraged to use them. True/False?
Community
- There are other people in the organisation who have similar interests and passions who you connect with regularly to learn from each other. True/False?
- Your organisation actively supports communities of practice. True/False?
- The conversations your community is having are engaging and help you do a much better job. True/False?
- Your community is coordinated by a passionate individual who is supported by a small group who really care about the community. True/False?
- Managers see the value of participating in your community and activity support your attendance. True/False?
Network
- More than half the organisation are using social book-marking approaches and tagging web pages. True/False?
- People can recount stories of where they have found information from someone else's book-marks, blogs or wikis that made a significant contribution to their work. True/False?
- New communities have formed based on the realisation that people where interested in similar topics. True/False?
- The organisation actively supports the use of network collaboration technologies such as social book-marking, blogs, wikis, tagging and RSS. True/False?
- Senior leaders are using network collaboration technologies. True/False?
Give yourself 1 point for each time you answered True. Add up your points.
15 points: Collaboration nirvana. If you like working with high performance teams, communities or networks, never leave this organisation.
14-11 points: Damn good, keep it up. Lot's of opportunities to tackle complex problems and achieve tremendous results.
5-10: So so. Things are getting better and the signs of life are there.
1-4: Dismal effort. Most of the time the hero sweeps in on their white stead and saves the day receiving all the glory despite all the hard work everyone else actually did.
0: Collaboration hell. If collaboration is your thing why are you still there?
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| 4/04/08 | | Craftsmanship |
Every good craftsman conducts a dialogue between concrete practices and thinking; this dialogue evolves into sustaining habits, the these habits establish a rhythm between problem solving and problem finding
Sennett, Richard. The Craftsman. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.
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| 3/04/08 | | A poem about Anecdote |
Matt Moore, a good friend of ours, kindly offered to write a poem about Anecdote.
So that he had some material to work with, Matt suggested that all of the Anecdoters keep 'experience' diaries for a week. At the end of each day, each of us wrote down our most memorable emotions from the day (joy, surprise, frustration), and things we saw, heard, smelt, tasted and touched. At the end of the week each Anecdoter had the chance to go back over their experience diary and choose what they wanted to share (with Matt and/or other Anecdoters).
Here is the poem Matt has written inspired by our comments:
The Long Tale
Once upon a time,
a long way away,
there were five stories.
It has been said that
there are only seven plots
in our word world
but all I know is that
there were these five stories.
Each story started off as a whisper,
a rumour then a rumour of a rumor.
As each story was told and retold,
it grew and grew and grew.
There are boy stories and girl stories,
grown up stories and baby stories
(and just to be clear on this:
a boy story is not the same
as a story about boys).
Boy stories are loud and blue.
Their ends are loose and untied.
Events happen with little thought.
a blur of testosterone and muddy knees.
Girl stories are more considered,
in the pink not necessarily rose-tinted.
Their details finer, their voices are softer.
They need light and air as much as boys.
Old stories are wrinkled
with layers of circumstance.
They have been passed from mouth to ear to mouth.
Some say that the old stories are the best.
Baby stories are never fully formed.
They sit in bits and grow in fits.
Their meaning hardens with the calcium of time
and you can never tell how they will turn out.
Once upon a time,
there were five stories
and although they have started,
they aren't finished yet.
Listen.
---
Thanks Matt, we love it! What do you think readers?
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| 1/04/08 | | Jumpstart storytelling - creating the conditions for collaboration |
When we start on a major change project we will often run a number of workshops with the leadership team to really get them to own and define the project. A big part of this activity is getting this group to collaborate and work as a team. In the past we have run sociometry exercises, anecdote circles and future backwards activities to get this group to gel. But I have a much better way now thanks to Seth Kahan's jumpstart storytelling technique.
How to run a jumpstart storytelling session
- Divide the participants into groups of 6
- Ask everyone to provide a concrete and specific example in response to a story eliciting question that is related to the objective of the workshop or project. Most recently I ask a workshop participants to recall when they have been proudest of the work they or their colleagues have done?
- Each person gets 90 seconds to tell their story.
- When everyone in the group has told one story ask the participants to remember the story that was most powerful for them; what resonated the most. And ask them to remember who told that story.
- Get everyone to switch groups to there is as many new faces as possible in their new group.
- Ask everyone to retell their story they have just told. Because this will feel a little weird I suggested they observe how their story changes and improves in the retelling. Again 90 seconds per story. At the end of everyone retelling their story reassess which story you think is most powerful and remember the storyteller.
- Depending on the size of the group you can switch groups again.
- Now the fun begins. Ask everyone to remember the person who told the most powerful, relevant, engaging story and go over to them and place your hand on their shoulder and keep it there. After a while a network of people forms and clusters appear revealing the high impact stories. Invite the people the group chose to retell their story to the whole group. Lead the applause at the end of each telling.
The energy goes through the roof with this technique and people get to hear stories they have never heard before. Most importantly the group gets to know each other at a deeper level. There is one more advantage as well if your project is narrative based: the leaders experience the power of narrative in the first 5 minutes of the project.