| 11/05/08 | | The one-arm boy |
There was a boy who was born without a right arm. On his ninth birthday he asked his parents if he could join a karate club. They were delighted by the idea and the boy quickly became a regular at the local dojo. The boy wanted to compete in a tournament and asked his master if this was possible. The master said he could but only if he listened carefully to his master and trusted him.
The master taught the boy one move and one move only. The boy practised it diligently but after a while he was worried that the other boys were learning a range of moves and he only had one. He asked the master to teach him other moves but the master said no. The master just urged the boy to keep practising that one move.
The boy won the first round of the tournament and then the next round and the one after that until he found himself winning the entire tournament. The boy was baffled. How did he do it? He asked the master how a boy with only one arm and only one move could win a karate tournament against these other boys. The master smiled and told the boy that there is only one defence against the move the boy learned and that defence involves grabbing the attacker by the right arm.
I believe this is a Zen teaching story. It was told to me by Pavan Choudary. I spent two days with Pavan and a terrific group of creative people at Conversations that Create. Pavan has recently launched his book, When you are sinking, become a submarine. Pavan is an inspirational and fascinating fellow and if his book is anything like the wonderful conversations we had, it will be well worth getting a copy.
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| 11/05/08 | | The difference between knowledge and information |
"Not that old chestnut" I hear you cry.
We have written a whitepaper on this subject and blogged on it a few times. It keeps the KM list serves across the planet pre-occupied for a few months each year.
I recently had coffee with a client to get an update on the implementation of the knowledge strategy we did for them a while back. The client described good progress in many areas but highlighted one of the things holding them back was the continuing confusion/uncertainty about the difference between information management and knowledge management. This was despite an extensive education campaign to get a consistent 'language' in place across the organisation on order to minimise the roadblocks to implementation.
This reinforced to me that we should just stop 'pushing the proverbial up a hill' on this one. My suggestion to the client was to stop talking about knowledge management. It is much easier to grasp concepts like 'better information management' on the one hand, and 'improved collaboration and learning' on the other. This conception makes it much clearer that there is a big 'people' and 'process/practice' component to the task.
Knowledge strategy = Information Management + [Collaboration and Learning]
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| 8/05/08 | | Melbourne taxis and Sydney taxis |
Last week Melbourne was witness to our taxi drivers protesting in the city streets against their poor working conditions. The protest was sparked by the fatal stabbing of a fellow taxi driver. Among a range of improvements, the drivers wanted taxi owners to make available security screens that wrap around their driver's seat.
This week I was in Sydney and Daryl reminded me that taxis there were once big users of driver security screens but they're rarely seen these days. We have also noticed a marked improvement in the quality of Sydney taxis over the last couple of years. So when we jumped into a cab we asked the driver why the screens had disappeared.
The driver knew exactly what had changed. "A couple of years ago some new legislation was brought in that enabled taxi drivers to refuse a fare," he said. "Now we choose who gets into our cab and as a result violence has dropped. We also know if a single, male passenger, wearing a cap (to shield his face from the in-car security camera) jumps into the back seat, it's likely to be trouble, and we tell them to get out."
According to this cabbie, this one intervention has made the big impact on driver security.
I wonder why Melbourne is not learning the lessons from Sydney?
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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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| 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
| 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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| 17/03/08 | | How stories create culture |
It's said that stories create cultures; they propagate the assumptions and beliefs throughout the group in question. But it is specifically stories that create culture or is it something else?
Before we answer this question it's useful to have a definition of what we mean by 'a story'. Here's a definition I like from Annette Simmons latest book, Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins.
"Story is a reimagined experience narrated with enough detail and feeling to cause your listeners' imaginations to experience it as real."
Hearing a story is the second-best way to gain experience and in many cases it's the only available option. Sometimes it's too dangerous to gain first hand experience or the opportunity to gain first hand experience never presents itself. So the idea that a story is reimagined experience is important and useful. And the impact of a story is heightened the more real it seems.
So imagine the following:
A group of colleagues gather around a meeting room table. The meeting hasn't started and everyone is laughing and joking. Billy, a seasoned salesman, bursts into the room with a huge grin of his face.
"I've just come from the Sam Cook meeting [the CIO of a large government department]. They signed on the original price--they didn't screw us down. We will make out quota," Billy said. "And all we had to do was offer a service they were going to get anyway.... What they don't know wont kill them right?"
The group cheers while slapping Billy on the back in congratulations.
What just happened here?
Was it the story that created the culture? Did Billy's retelling of what happened with Sam create or reinforce the culture?
No, in this case the story is the trigger, but it's the response to the story that shows everyone how we behave around here.
This is an important point for leaders. Leaders must be poised to lead a response to stories told. To disrupt a response if necessary. For leaders this is about self awareness and being aware of the stories being told (which means being able to identify stories) and observing how people respond--and being ready and willing to intervene.
In a complex environment it's important to reinforce the behaviours you want and disrupt what's unfavourable and if you want to change the culture of a group, start by changing the response to the stories being told.
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| 28/02/08 | | An anecdote's point of view |
Ford Harding has just posted two versions of the same anecdote. The first paints the consultant as the hero while the second focusses on the effort of the client. Ford wants us to consider which version would we tell and why.
Version #1
Sometimes losing is almost as good as winning. Not long ago, a major power company was sued for breach of a twenty-year power contract. The plaintiffs were asking for damages in excess of one billion dollars, the value of the damages hinging on the discount rate used in their calculation.
Multiple experts offered the defendant ways to calculate the rate. We spent many hours educating the general counsel on the credibility of the alternative ways to calculate a discount rate and persuaded him of the intellectual superiority of our approach. When the arbitrators compared our estimation of the discount rate with the one provided by the plaintiff’s expert, they found ours more credible. The power company ended up paying the plaintiff only $115 million, far less than they would have had to pay if the plaintiffs had won or one of the other experts’ calculations of the discount rate had been presented.Version #2
Sometimes losing is almost as good as winning. Not long ago, a major power company was sued for breach of a twenty-year power contract. The plaintiffs were asking for damages in excess of one billion dollars, the value of the damages hinging on the discount rate used in their calculation.
The attorney representing the company asked several experts to calculate the rate. He spent many hours with the power company’s general counsel evaluating the credibility of the alternative ways to calculate a rate, and selected our experts’ approach. When he took the case before arbitrators, they found his arguments both intellectually superior and more compellingly presented than those provided by the plaintiff’s attorney. The power company ended up paying the plaintiff only $115 million, far less than they would have had to pay if the plaintiffs had won or one of the other experts’ calculations of the discount rate had been presented.
There are a couple of other interesting features these stories display that are worth talking about. Each one is prefaced by a statement summarising the moral of the story. It's an effective approach which I've noted in the work of Victor Frankl. It's conversational and creates a mystery of sorts because we want to understand what is meant by the statement.
Both stories are without real people's names. It's the sort of story written up in case studies that gently washes an element of truth from what's been said. It's harder to check these stories out. Did it really happen? People love details and the best stories have the names of the characters. I understand what this type of business story lacks names in its written form: people are uncomfortable talking about what happens inside organisations. But when told orally names are important.
| 27/02/08 | | Anecdote's will be checked and re-checked |
Expect any anecdote you tell to be tested and retested, especially if you are a politician. Barrack Obama is a storyteller par excellence and so when he recounts a story you can bet there is an army of doubters checking out its validity. Here is the anecdote in question reported in the New Republic.
"You know, I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon--supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief."
The same is true for organisational leaders. Don't get lazy. Don't think you can slip one past without employees noticing that you are garnishing the facts. Good stories are retold and good stories are checked out. Authenticity is the key.
| 24/02/08 | | Knowledge management lessons |
As the co-ordinator of the SIKMLeaders community of practice, Stan Garfield asked the community members this question:
"If you were invited to give a keynote speech on knowledge management, what words of wisdom or lessons learned would you impart?"
Here's my answer.
All KM is change managementView every knowledge management initiative as a change initiative, which means helping the leadership group to imagine what it will be like when it's done and after imagining it, they want it. It also means getting the employees engaged in working out how it's going to work and then getting people to volunteer to work on it. It will also involve a recognition that most KM initiatives are affected by culture (actually, what isn't) and culture is never completed, done, ticked off the list of things to do. Consequently, a continuous improvement approach is needed.
Link to what matters
Make sure that the the most powerful people in the organisation understand and believe the answer to, "so what?" Always link the KM initiative to what people care about. Mostly that's the business strategy but there have been times when I've worked with organisations without a clear business strategy, so a linkage there wasn't going to help. Find out what matters and if the KM initiatives doesn't make a difference, dump it rather than try and make it fit. A poor fitting KM initiative will eventually unravel anyway so it's better to dump it early than to forced to dump it when heaps of resources have been spent and it's barely limping along.
Collect stories early and often
It's often hard to quantify the value of KM initiatives. So whenever you hear a real live experience, no matter how small, take a note of what happened and tell others. We're helping an engineering firm start a community of practice for its draftspeople. At the first teleconference a woman in Newcastle recounted how she was creating a library of screws for a particular type of aircraft. A fellow in Adelaide piped up saying they already have a library of screws and it also includes auto-placement. You could hear the excitement in the woman's voice on hearing this work had already been done, "and it even has auto-placement." The couple joined forces and updated the library and made it available to the whole community.
This is a small story but one senior leadership heard from the very beginning of the community's development and they could retell to other leaders in the company while finishing their anecdote with, "and this is just one thing the community is doing." While the business benefits must be articulated, the stories gave the community time to establish themselves.
| 22/02/08 | | Everyone has a story... |
...is the byline of Smith, an online storytelling community that provides a space to read, write, and share stories. Just over twelve months ago they posed a challenge to the community that was based on the famous $10 bet that Ernest Hemingway rose to conquer - that he could not write a short story in six words. His pithy and evocative response: "For sale. Baby shoes. Never Worn." shows that a story does not have to be long and complicated to deliver a punch to the emotions. Over 15,000 people took up the challenge, delivering funny, eloquent and addictive results. Smith have just released 852 of the best of them in this book Not quite what I was planning.
It says a great deal about our willingness to tell our stories, no matter how small. I also seem to find writing to a specific set of directions is always a lot of fun and obviously I am not alone in this. Smith describes the book as "the most literary toilet reading you'll ever find".
And my mini-memoir? It's late. Make up your mind.
| 4/02/08 | | Why is presentation important? |
There are probably a 100 reasons why presentation is important. But a laundry list of reasons won't get the point across as effectively as a story can. Here's an interesting anecdote I read recently:
Gary Bush’s passion for his craft [makes him my most memorable teacher]. I took a course called Presentation Fundamentals from him (really, a 3-day Trainer's Training class that, by far, surpassed [another] 5-day class I also took) back in the early 1990's. I still remember it vividly to this day, plus still often use the training materials from that class. I then had the pleasure of developing an entire corporate training curriculum with him and credit him for my learning of the teaching/training craft.My favorite memory of Gary is from the He came into the classroom after a break - no introduction, no explanation, no talking - looking rather disheveled. He started serving pieces of cake by scooping them out with his bare hand and onto brown bathroom-type paper towels. He didn't get very many takers for pieces of cake.
He then left the room and reappeared a few minutes later dressed like a waiter from a fine dining establishment. He had the cake on a fancy rolling serving cart, along with silver, china, and cloth napkins. He served up the cake again, spoke politely to each prospective cake-eater, and obviously got quite a different response the second time round. He then debriefed the whole event with the gist of the message received by the students (without a second of "lecture") being, "it's all in the presentation." The cake was still the same cake, but the audience members' reactions sure were different.
I read this anecdote in an ebook called My Most Memorable Teacher (or Trainer). It’s an amazing compilation of stories put together by Elliot Maise.
To understand and share what makes great teachers, he invited people to send stories about their best teachers. The book contains around 750 testimonials and anecdotes about teachers who made a difference, and the stories give a great insight into what makes the teaching experience memorable. Storytelling, of course, is a key factor.
What an excellent approach to cultivating the right behaviors in people!
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| 31/01/08 | | BHP Billiton axes its Knowledge Networks |
BHP Billiton axed their division called Operational Excellence last year. This was the group that, among other services, supported the organisations Knowledge Networks (also called communities of practice but language matters in this story). BHPB had developed the networks over the last 10 years but when the new CEO arrived he thought that if the business lines thought these networks were valuable then they should support them. Operational Excellence was a corporate service and while I don't know the exact numbers there might have been 30 or more people supporting their knowledge networks program.
Knowledge networks in BHPB were formal affairs. There was a defined process for creating one. Senior sponsorship was required. There were funded extremely well. And each one had one or more support people helping to run the network. In the case of their Global Maintenance Network there were at least a handful of support people. At the same time groups of people could informally come together without corporate support and these groups were communities of practice. Ironically it's a career limiting move at BHPB to mention knowledge networks because they connote corporate, bureaucratic and expensive. But calling gatherings of professionals 'communities of practice' is OK and perhaps even applauded. Language matters. History matters.
| 22/01/08 | | World Trade Center and emergency services mis-coordination |
One tragic example [of mis-coordination] is recounted in Peter Denning’s article about HFN [hastily formed networks], in which he describes analysis of the disaster response efforts after the attack on the World Trade Center: New York Police Department (NYPD) helicopters that had been monitoring conditions by circling the towers had observed signs of structural collapse in the north tower and immediately issued an emergency evacuation order to all police; however, they failed to inform the firefighters, who, having had no warning, were not evacuated.
Huston, Tracey. "Enabling Adaptability & Innovation through Hastily Formed Networks." Reflections 7, no. 1 (2006): 9-29.
| 22/01/08 | | The role of a story in lessons learning |
Chris Collison is pondering the usefulness of the Kolb learning cycle as the basis for many of the lessons learning activities organisations conduct. I agree with Chris' observation that most organisations don't build in reflection and therefore are unable to reformulate what they have learned to change behaviour. And like Chris I'm not sure of the effectiveness of write-ups to achieve this last point. In fact I think we create our abstract conceptualisations (Kolb's language) by telling ourselves and others a story of what happen. Ironically the abstract comes from the specific of a story. Something like this happened to me just last week.
I got a friendly email from someone who has been a long-time subscriber to our newsletter. After mentioning that she had gained many useful tips and ideas from it she went on to say that she had only just realised we provided consulting services. I was nearly knocked off my chair—were we that poor at telling people what we do?. So I rang Mark and told him the story. He was gobsmacked. We obviously weren't letting people know in our newsletter we provided consulting services. What shall we do? Our first idea was to put a line at the top of our newsletter that said, in effect, 'we provide consulting services.' Actually we wordsmithed it a bit more than that. Then I called up our graphic designer, Kerenza, and told her the story and shared our plan for the oneliner. 'Ahhrg, that oneliner is awful,' she said. 'Before you were sending useful tips and information to me, now you are selling to me.' It was immediately clear that the one-liner approach was wrong and Kerenza and I came up with a new way forward.
So on reflection it was the story of the original email, told a number of times to different people that created new conversations that helped me learn about our brand, how we communicate to our newsletter subscribers and how we keep what we do authentic, fun and useful. And it changed my behaviour. To me, that's learning.
[thanks to Patrick Lambe for putting me on to Chris' post]
| 14/01/08 | | Thoughts to actions |
The best thing we could do for ourselves is reflect on the way we think. I read that in a book once (as a wisdom tip!)
Our thoughts affect the way we feel about something (emotions) and the way we react to situations (our behavior) and that chain reaction determines the outcome (results). At Anecdote, the sense-making activities we facilitate aim to invoke the right knowledge-sharing behaviors within an organization, and we start by asking people to reflect and share their emotional experiences. The anecdote circles help to subconsciously re-tune our thinking and thereby our actions and the results we achieve.
Here's an interesting anecdote that illustrates this chain reaction quite well.
We associate Alexander Graham Bell with the invention of the telephone, but it was actually Elisha Gray who invented it first. Gray was criticised by academia for an invention they found 'had no direct application,' and he let the criticism stump his creativity. Graham Bell, on the other hand, showed stronger self-belief. He walked into the Patent Office and secured a patent for his invention. Gray walked in two hours later, but it was obviously too late then.
You can read the full story here.
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| 10/01/08 | | The Beams of New College, Oxford |
Another find from the filing cabinet clean up. This time an anecdote from Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn.
This story was recorded by Brand from the anthropologist Gregory Bateson.
New College, Oxford, is of rather late foundation, hence the name. It was founded around the late 14th century. It has, like other colleges, a great dining hall with big oak beams across the top. These might be two feet square and forty-five feet long.
A century ago, so I am told, some busy entomologist went up into the roof of the dining hall with a penknife and poked at the beams and found that they were full of beetles. This was reported to the College Council, who met in some dismay, because they had no idea where they would get beams of that calibre nowadays.
One of the Junior Fellows stuck his neck out and suggested that there might be some oak on College lands. These colleges are endowed with pieces of land scattered across the country. So they called in the College Forester, who of course had not been near the college itself for some years, and asked about oaks. And he pulled his forelock and said, "Well sirs, we was wonderin' when you'd be askin'."
Upon further inquiry it was discovered that when the College was founded, a grove of oaks has been planted to replace the beams in the dining hall when they became beetly, because oak beams always become beetly in the end. This plan had been passed down from one Forester to the next for five hundred years. "You don't cut them oaks. Them's for the College Hall."
| 27/11/07 | | Maxine McKew tells three anecdotes |
People vote for politicians based on the emotions they generate not the intellectual merits of their policies.1 And emotion is generated by the stories we are told and the stories we tell ourselves. We watch the candidates and observe what they do and tell ourselves a story about the type of person they are and what they stand for. The Rudd campaign understood this fact.
Kevin Rudd's campaign was effective in telling three types of stories which helped to create positive emotions towards him and the ALP. These three types of stories are: Who am I? Why am I here? and My vision story.2Kevin Rudd's first television commercials contained his 'Who am I?' story. We learned how Kevin grew up in outback Queensland, how his parents didn't even get a high school education and how he enjoyed going back to his home town and talking with the residents about what they wanted for the future. For many people in the electorate Kevin was just like us.
Kevin's 'Why am I here?' stories revolved around his focus areas of an education revolution, being a economic conservative, getting rid of work choices, ratifying the Kyoto protocol, and providing new leadership. And in talking about these focus areas Rudd set out his vision for the future--his vision story.
Rudd's campaign mastered the master narratives required to create the right emotions in the electorate. Interesting, however, both Rudd and Howard avoided recounting anecdotes of specific events and encounters as a way to illustrate what the candidates really value. I have been told by one political insider that both Rudd and Howard are worried the media will crucify them for using anecdotes as a mere trick to spin a particular message.But we saw on election night how storytelling can be done with authenticity and impact when Maxine McKew gave a short speech on the news that she look like winning the seat of Bennelong. Maxine started by saying some general statements about the contest for Bennelong being on a knife edge, and how the seat will never be taken for granted again. Then she moved into storytelling mode, first remembering how she was at this town hall only a few months before and then recalling the many interviews she had done over the years and that some of the very special people she has ever met were actually in Bennelong, and this is where the mood changed as Maxine told three anecdotes.
I'm thinking of the 90-year old Sister Louise who's at St Catherines who I met just a couple of weeks ago. She's blind. But the day I talked to her she said, "Nobody is blind in heaven."
And I'm thinking of 6 year old Emily at Denniston East. She told me that she told her parents to vote for Kevin Rudd because Kevin Rudd would be a great Prime Minister for children. And you know, ... we need a great Prime Minister for children.
And I'm thinking as well of a boy called Ali who only recently completed his HSC exams, who—maybe Ali you are here tonight—who a few years ago was in a Pakistani refugee camp waiting for passage out, and Ali has found a safe home, and a welcome here in Australia ...
I'm sure many people felt goosebumps at the end of this speech--emotions were created.
We help leaders tell these types of stories, first by helping leaders learn how to find their stories (of course Maxine is an expert at this but we all can do it), then help them learn how to tell these stories and ensure at all times there is authenticity in what you say.
1. Westen, Drew. The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. New York: PublicAffairs, 2007.
2. Simmons, Annette. The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion through the Art of Storytelling. Revised edition ed. New York: Basic Books, 2006.
| 21/11/07 | | Let's be proactive with organisational storytelling |
Stories are created in organisations whenever something remarkable happens, and people love to remark on how leaders react under pressure because the way anyone reacts under pressure reveals their character. With this thought in mind I have been reading an excellent book called Crucial Conversations and I was struck by the following anecdote about a leader who was put under pressure and how she reacted.
Greta, the CEO of a mid-sized corporation, is two hours into a rather tense meeting with her top leaders. For the past six months she has been on a personal campaign to reduce costs. Little has been accomplished to date, so Greta calls the meeting. Surely people will tell her why they haven't started cutting costs. After all, she has taken great pains to foster candor.
Greta has just opened the meeting to questions when a manager haltingly rises to his feet, fidgets, stares at the floor, and then nervously asks if he can ask a very tough question. The way the fellow emphasises the word very makes it sound as if he's about the accuse Greta of kidnapping the Lindbergh baby.
The frightened manager continues.
"Greta, you've been at us for six months to find ways to cut costs. I'd be lying if I said that we've given you much more than a lukewarm response. If you don't mind, I'd like to tell you about one thing that's making it tough for us to push for costs cuts."
"Great, fire away," Greta says as she smiles in response.
"Well, while you've been asking us to use both sides of our paper and forego improvements, you're having a second office built."
Greta freezes and turns bright red. Everyone looks to see what happens next. The manager plunges on ahead.
"The rumor is that the furniture alone costs $150,000. Is that right?"
Of course what happens next determines the type of story that gets told in the organisation.
Greta might have said, "Excuse me, but I don't think that my new office is an appropriate topic for this forum." In which case a story of the leader's hypocrisy will fly around the organisation in a flash.
Here is what Greta actually said: "You know what? We need to talk about this. I'm glad you ask the question. It'll give us a chance to discuss what's really going on." And this conversation led to Greta investigating the costs of the new office and committing to drawing up new plans designed to save 50% of the costs or cancel the project altogether. Now her team knew she was serious about cost cutting and by encouraging dialogue created an opportunity for a positive story to travel.
In organisational storytelling there can be too much emphasis on finding and retelling persuasive stories. We should also help leaders take actions that create the stories that help the organisation. We can be proactive and improve an organisation's storyability.
| 15/11/07 | | Letting go |
I was waiting for a flight the other day and I happened to catch 5 minutes of a surfing documentary featuring Kelly Slater, 8 times world champion. So what has this got to do with a blog on business narrative I hear you ask?
Well, when talking about his 7th title win, he tells an amazing story. I'll try and retell it (although I'm sure that I won't do it justice) ...
Expectedly, he had surfed his way right into yet another championship final contest. However, he was beaten comprehensively in the first heat of the final, even though he thought he had surfed particularly well. Angry with himself, and distraught at the thought of losing the title, he had to come up with a strategy to make an assault on the title in the next two rounds.
Realising his predicament, he took some time to ponder the situation. There was clearly a lot riding on the next heat. He wondered whether he should perhaps 'try harder'. But he soon realised that this would not work, he had to do something more. He had to pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat.
What did he decide to do? He made a conscious decision to 'let go'-to stop trying so hard and to go out there and just have some fun!
And the result? You guessed it, he came out and scored two perfect 10's in the next two rounds, with some awesome rides, one where he visibly nearly comes off the board twice! Just incredible.
What amazing courage in the midst of all this chaos to trust his instincts and follow his heart and not his head. I think there is some important wisdom in this story that is applicable to other areas of life.
When was the last time you or your organisation just 'let go' and had some fun? What were the results?
There is a trailer for the documentary here if you're interested.
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| 7/11/07 | | Name badges as conversation starters |
Graham Harvey in his book 'Seducing the Vigilante Customer ' tells of his experience in a restaurant.
"Even though I sort of half guessed what the answer might be, I went ahead and asked the question anyway.
"Why do you have Cardiff, Wales written under your name?"
"Cardiff is where I was born." replied the waiter.
The conversation then continued for a couple of minutes centring on how long she had been in Australia, why she had left Wales etc. She also explained that everybody in the hotel had their birthplace inscribed on their respective name badges and how positive the idea had been in creating conversation between guests and staff."
Although Graham is looking at this from a sales and marketing perspective his point is relevant to any group that is trying to build relationships. A key step in establishing rapport is engaging in conversations on a first name basis as quickly as possible.
You could have a lot of fun with this. Here are a few possibilities from the conventional to the quirky:
* your nickname
* sports you love to play or watch
* the footy team you follow
* your favourite biography
* what's on the cover of your diary
* a thought provoking quote
* your personal motto
* the beginning of an interesting story
Can you suggest any better ones?
Add something interesting or unexpected to a name badge at your next seminar, conference or community of practice kick-off meeting and watch curiosity get those conversations started.
| 27/10/07 | | Collaboration conditions |
I was having a conversation last week about how easy it is to rob people of the permission to collaborate. Examples were provided of how 'bosses' don't even need to say anything: a disapproving look is enough to communicate that a chat while making coffee isn't considered 'working'.
The conversation reminded me of an experience during one of our projects. The client representative couldn't find a meeting room and took us to this fabulous collaboration space in their new(ish) building. This new building was designed to enhance collaboration. An atrium runs along one entire wall and is filled with secluded nooks for private conversations, with areas where groups can get together and with cafe areas where people can have 'chance meetings'. I was surprised that our little group was the only one in there and asked why. Our host explained....
Early on, this place was used all the time. I loved it and brought my team here for regular meetings and, with the shortage of formal meeting rooms, I had lots of my smaller meetings here as well. The place always had a great 'buzz' about it. But the design had a big flaw, the executive offices were all positioned overlooking the atrium. One day I was called into the office of an executive who told me they considered I was spending too much of my time in the atrium (collaboration space). Apparently others had similar experiences. Nowadays hardly anyone comes here. We feel we are being watched.
In complex environments we know that little things can make a big difference and in this case the impact is obvious in the low usage of this great space. The conversation also remind me of the powerful impact of managers in their day-to-day interactions. Every interaction is an opportunity to build or to erode engagement....and collaboration. It could have been a very different outcome if the executives had said 'its great to see you using this area'.
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| 30/09/07 | | Client relationships - getting a helping hand |
We are lucky to have many terrific clients that we love working with. Here's an example.
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| 16/09/07 | | Dreadful managers |
How do they get away with such appalling behaviour? I've seen some dreadful displays by managers who seem to revel in the power and forgetting their role is to serve their staff so everyone can deliver value to their clients/stakeholders. Bob Sutton calls these people assholes and has written a neat book about them (The No Asshole Rule) and how to survive their despicable behaviour (here's a list of survival tips).
So if 'Who Killed Channel 9' by Gerald Stone is true, there is a new pantheon of arseholes to be considered in Australia. In a stinging confrontation with channel nine executives, Kerry Packer hurled one accusation and expletive after another. Rory Callaghan, head of light entertainment, had the following interchange with Packer:
'So where are the figures I asked you to get for the last ten years of Sale of the Century?'
Callahan was left absolutely stunned. 'You never asked me for those figures,' he replied.
'I f...ing well did,' he snarled.
'No you didn't,' Callaghan bravely persisted.
'Right,' Packer retorted, 'let's fix this once and for all.' With that he picked up the phone to his personal assistant back at Park Street, Di Stone, and barked into the mouthpiece. 'Di, who's the f...ing idiot I spoke to about getting all those statistics for Sale of the Century - you know, so we can discuss the seven o'clock slot?' He listened for a moment, then Callaghan could almost sniff the brimstone on the dragon's breath, 'Rory Callaghan! That's exactly what I f...ing thought!'
In the next couple of pages of the book we discover the call with Di Stone was a charade and there was no one at the other end of the telephone.
Technorati Tags: assholes, bob sutton, kerry packer
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| 15/08/07 | | Building relationships |
I flew from Newcastle to Melbourne last night and had a fantastic two-hour chat with the lady in the next seat. By the end of the journey I felt like I had a new friend. She posed three questions to me that helped us build a relationship in a very short time. Give these questions a try and I suspect you will surprised at what happens. I was.
What is the best piece of advice you can give me?
What has been your most profound experience?
What is the greatest gift you have ever received?
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| 10/08/07 | | How a transcript can enhance listening |
I've just returned from a couple of days in New Zealand working with my old colleagues from IBM. It was a fun to spend two days thinking and talking about knowledge strategy.
I had lunch with Ross Pearce from IBM and he told me how he helped two parts of a company resolve their communications difficulties using an anecdote circle. He got both parties in the room and encouraged them to tell their stories about what was happening. The session went for three hours! One participant came up to Ross at the end of the session and thanked him because it was one of the very few times they have had a conversation without the pressure of delivering a specific output. A good start but the interesting insight came later.
Ross recorded and transcribed the meeting and sent the 100 page transcript to all the attendees asking them to read it. At first they resisted—“it's so long, we don't have time”. they lamented—but after some gentle persuasion they all agreed. In fact it was quite easy to read because it was in their language, it was their words.
A week later they all met again and many of the participants said the same thing about reading the transcript: “I can't believe how much I missed at our first meeting. I guess I was too busy thinking about the next thing I was going to say and failed to listen properly.”
This second meeting was the watershed for the relationship between the two groups. And while Ross never provided me with the details I got the sense that there now existed a foundation to rebuild the rapport between the two groups.
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| 4/08/07 | | History matters |
I just received this comment from AJ which I thought you would enjoy. I will let her comment speak for itself.
I'm an anthropologist who's just finished a study of a small government department. After reading your story above, I thought I'd share the value of understanding corporate histories, corporate kinship & traditions I learned during my doctoral fieldwork.
This particular agency had a culture of purposely obfuscating exact budget expenditure amongst the executives and reporting incorrectly to Treasury. Don't interpret this the wrong way - no one was taking any public money, rather, they were shuffling it about so that money given for one purpose but not spent was being used elsewhere within the agency. Lower ranked managers and field staff widely condemned this practice, and simply couldn't understand why it happened.
When I examined the agency's history, it turned out for the first three years of its existance (1955-1958) it had been legislatively created *without* a budget. Thus, the original directors had to fight, lie and cajole to get money just to employ staff and maintain public infrastructure etc. Also, this agency had its own powers to employ staff directly rather than via usual public sector channels. This upset the mandarins in the public sector and they gave the agency a really hard time for more than 20 years by consistently withholding funds ... this was around the same time the executives who I dealt with were first being employed as junior officers. It was stated quite openly to me by people now retired that they didn't tell Treasury anything truthful because the buggers would cut their budget if they did ...!
Of course, this habit of 'shuffling' money and not telling Treasury everything became a tradition passed from one group of senior managers to the next - even when the organisation became large and powerful during the 1980s & 1990s.
The senior execs all drank with each other, went bush with each other, played golf etc etc. and inducted newly promoted members into their ranks in this way... thus the tradition was passed on until last year when a director from outside was hired, came in, took one look at the annual report and the figures on the computer and went HUH?!?!
So just a short tale about the role of history, tradition & kinship in g'ment ... from an ethnographer living in her tent (like Malinoswki) studying natives in the field.
By the way, Anectdote is a great resource. Thank you so much for your work and sharing.
Some people say to me, “why are we worrying about the past? What's done is done. We need to keep focussed on the future.” These categories of past, present and future can lead us astray. Time is a continuum not a category.
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| 2/08/07 | | Good conversations lead to good stories |
Watching Andrew Denton interview Michael Parkinson on More Than Enough Rope on ABC television recently was a lesson in good interviewing techniques. Denton even admitted he only needed to turn up, say something to get started and then sit back and let Michael just tell his stories.
Parkinson was relating how difficult it was way back when he was trying get his interview show up and running and he credited the late Orson Welles with its successful beginning. Because Parkinson was not as yet an established name it was difficult to get people to come on the show. The producer went all out to get a big name, one that would smooth the way for others and flew to Spain where Welles was making the eventually uncompleted Don Quixote. The successful deal negotiated meant persuading British Airways to knock out the front two rows of seats on the aircraft out so that Welles could sleep on a mattress on the floor.
“And he walked on the aeroplane and he looked at the mattress on the floor and smiled and went and sat in the seat. It jumped the hurdle. And then he came to my room and I’d been working on this interview for, like, all my life, and I opened the door and he was dressed entirely in black, black sombrero, black tie, black shirt, black cloak and he swept into the room. Incredibly dramatic.
“My name’s Orson Welles”, he said “And you would be?”
And I said, “Er Parkinson.”
“Yes”, he said.
And he looked around and he saw this scrap of paper on my desk and he said, “That?”
I said, “My questions.”
“Do you mind if I look?”
I said, “No.”
And he picked them up and he turned to me and he said, “How many of these shows have you done?”
I said, “Two.”
“I’ve done many more”, he said. “Will you take my advice?”
I said, “Certainly”.
And he ripped up the questions and he said, “Let’s talk”. And walked away.
And he sat down and he did two one hours that night, that were majestic.”
Tearing up the questions might run counter to our instincts of wanting to be well prepared for what comes next. Sometimes the best stories arise from our letting go of the process and just having a conversation.
| 30/07/07 | | Ideas made to stick - a scene from West Wing |
Made to Stick is one of my favourite books at the moment because it's well written and well researched. And, you know what? the ideas stick. So I thought I would pass on this sticky story from Victoria Ward's blog. It's a scene from West Wing.
In one of the episodes of the final series of the West Wing, CJ Cragg is more and more frustrated by her inability to make a dent, leave something behind. So when someone from an NGO tries to make an appointment with her, she breaks with habit and gives him a slot in her diary.
He overwhelms her with statistics about the atrocities in Sudan. Thousands, millions, terrible things, rape, amputation, devastation. It’s all beyond her grasp, there is nothing she can imagining doing in this vastness of human failure, and he can see from her face that he is losing her attention, so he says, suddenly
‘When the babies die, the mothers carry them round in their arms because there is nowhere to put them down.’
20 words (I approximate, from memory.)
‘When the babies die, the mothers carry them round in their arms because there is nowhere to put them down.’
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| 25/07/07 | | The fragility of trust |
A friend of mine is a lawyer, and a good one at that. Our families just spent a week together in Mossy Point on the New South Wales coast and, as you might expect, we told each other lots of stories helping everyone to catch up on one anothers’ lives.
Today my friend, I will call her Julie (not her real name) told an anecdote illustrating the fragility of trust. Julie's an expert in collaborative law and she was organising a group of 10 law firms to pay for an ad in the yellow pages. One of the firms contributing to the ad was run by someone Julie knew quite well but he was concerned Julie's law firm would have pride of place on the ad. To address this concern Julie suggested that she would draw the firm’s names out of a hat and whatever order they came out would be how they would be listed on the ad. That seemed pretty fair, she thought. The law firm owner was happy with that idea but he said to Julie, “but we need someone independent to draw the names out.” My friend was incensed and she said to me, “It was at this point I stopped really trusting the guy”.
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| 16/06/07 | | John F. Kennedy and the French Revolution |
I heard this anecdote last week.
John Kennedy was meeting the Premier of China and during some initial small talk Kennedy asked the Premier what he thought of the French Revolution. The Premier replied, “it's probably too early to say.”
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| 16/06/07 | | The war for talent |
The anecdote below, told by a participant in a recent workshop, really made me stop and think. There are lots of lessons it, not least of which is that seemingly innocuous actions can have a big influence on a person's decision to join an organisation.
A friend of mine had applied for a fantasic new job. Everythng went well during the interview and selection process and the organisation sent her a letter of offer. She turned down the opportunity because the letter of offer was sent to her at 11pm on a Friday evening by the person who was to be her new manager.
It also reminds me of dedicated (workaholic) people I have known or worked for who put in long hours but have no expectation that their staff do the same, and tell them that. The only catch is that their behaviour has a lot more impact than their words...
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| 13/06/07 | | Definition of an Anecdote |
I was over at Wikipedia today and ended up on the Anecdote article. Here's their definition of an anecdote, which I think is pretty good.
An anecdote is a short tale narrating an interesting or amusing biographical incident. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always based on real life, an incident involving actual persons, whether famous or not, in real places. However, over time, modification in reuse may convert a particular anecdote to a fictional piece, one that is retold but is “too good to be true”. Sometimes humorous, anecdotes are not jokes, because their primary purpose is not simply to evoke laughter, but to reveal a truth more general than the brief tale itself, or to delineate a character trait or the workings of an institution in such a light that it strikes in a flash of insight to their very essence. A brief monologue beginning “A man pops in a bar...” will be a joke. A brief monologue beginning “Once J. Edgar Hoover popped in a bar...” will be an anecdote. An anecdote thus is closer to the tradition of the parable than the patently invented fable with its animal characters and generic human figures— but it is distinct from the parable in the historical specificity which it claims. An anecdote is not a metaphor nor does it bear a moral, a necessity in both parable and fable, merely an illustrative incident that is in some way an epitome.
Technorati Tags: wikipedia
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| 1/06/07 | | Finding and amplifying a sense of direction—directional stories |
This week I have been talking to people about foundational stories and how they are important for reinforcing the core vales and direction for everyone in the organisation. HP has a well know foundation story about Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard starting their little electronics company in a garage with a measly $500. Within this story are the basic principles HP was built on.
The foundation story is not the only directional story that people should hear but without good directional stories an organisation can be overwhelmed by whatever stories that well up with each passing day. Here's one example of when things get out of hand. I was at an investment bank and asked the HR Director what stories were prominent in his company. He shook his head in dismay and said, “We have a relatively new CEO and have just finished our vision, mission and values project. Everyone is telling the story that the CEO went home on Friday, pulled out the vision, mission, values from his previous company, came into the office on Sunday, photocopied the statements onto A3 paper and plastered them around level 27. For the life of me I can't dislodge this story.”
Directional stories already exist. You just need to work together with everyone in the organisation to find them and instil their telling throughout the organisation. We use the three journeys process to help clients find and amplify their own directional stories.
Then serendipity stribes. Just I was thinking about this topic I read this story in a chapter by Karl Weick about how VISA was started. What do you think this foundational story conveys about the values of VISA?
Here's what happened at VISA. In the early 1970s, National BankAmericard Incorporated (NBI) turned around the Bank of America's faltering credit card business in the United States (Hock, 1999, p. 155). Soon thereafter, NBI was pressured by BankAmericard licensees in the rest of the world to do the same thing for them. The problems were formidable. Not only did each licensee also have different marketing, computer, and operational systems, but each licensee also dealt with different language, currency, culture, and legal systems, all of which had to be transcended somehow. A technological fix was out of the question because banks were still using computer punch cards and tape, and there was no Internet. After months of tense negotiations, a meeting of the organizing committee was scheduled late in the second year of organizing. The meeting was to one last attempt to resolve three deal-breaking disagreements. Positions had hardened and the organizers could think of no compromise that had any chance of being accepted.
Shortly before the final meeting, the chairman of the organizing committee, Dee Hock, reflected on how the international group had been able to get as far as they did. It dawned on him that “at critical moments, all participants had felt compelled to succeed. And at those same moments , all had been willing to compromise. They had not thought of winning or losing but of a larger sense of purpose and concept of community that could transcend and enfold them” (1999, p. 245). Hock and his staff hatched a plan for the final meeting. They contacted a local jeweler and asked him to create a die from which he would cast sets of golden cuff links. One ciff link would contain a picture of half of the globe and the phrase, “the will to succeed.” The other link would contain the other half of the globe and the phrase, “the grace to compromise.”
When the final meeting actually convened, as expected it was polarized, contentious. The Canadian banks refused to participate and withdrew, and Hock adjourned the meeting midday and said they would reconvene the next morning on order to plan how to disband. Before adjourning, Hock invited everyone to a grand dinner that evening in Sausalito in recognition of their undeniable efforts to try to make the organization work.
After dinner, there was brief reminiscing about shared experiences and obstacles overcome. The the waiters passed among the diners and placed a small wrapped gift in front of each of them. Hock asked people to open the elegant boxes and examine the contents.
He then said quietly, “We wanted to give you something that you could keep for the remainder of your life as a reminder of this day. On one link is half of the world surrounded with the phrase ”the will to succeed“ and the second link is the other half of the world and the phrase 'the grace to compromise.' We meet tomorrow for the final time to disband the effort after two arduous years. I have one last request. Will you please wear the cuff links to the meeting in the morning? When we part we will take with us a reminder for the rest of our lives that the world can never be united through us because we lack the will to succeed and the grace to compromise. But if by some miracle our differences dissolve before morning, this gift will remind us that the world was united because we did have the will to succeed and the grace to compromise (paraphrased from Hock, 1999, pp. 247-48)
Then Hock sat down. There was a full minute of absolute silence as people examined their gift. And then the silence was shattered by one of Hock's exuberant Canadian friends who exploded, ”You miserable bastard!“ The room erupted in laughter. The next morning everyone was wearing the cuff links. By noon, agreement was reached on every issue and VISA International came into existence.
Weick, K, 2004. Rethinking Organizational Design in Richard J. Boland Jr, and Fred Collopy (eds) Managing as Designing, Stanford Business Books, Stanford.
Hock, D. 1999. Birth of the chaordic age. Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco
Technorati Tags: karl weick, VISA
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| 22/05/07 | | How Gehry designs—the full story |
On the recommendation of Johnnie Moore, I read A Perfect Mess by Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman. I was really looking forward to this book because it held the promise of providing an interesting view of issues dear to my heart: chaos, complexity and messiness (I also hoped it might give me good reasons for maintaining my messy desk). Sadly I was disappointed with the book because the authors spent too much time trying to categorise mess and messy people (The archaeologist, the order prig, the mess distractor), relying on a single source for major arguments (see Corporation's Big Plan and their use of Starbuck's 1992 journal article), and relying heavily on newspaper sources (more that a 1/3 of the 50 sources).
Despite all these flaws I found one story about the renowned architect Frank Gehry and his firm which got me excited, but again I was let down.
Gehry Partners were engaged to design and build the new business school at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. Gehry is renowned for using models to convey how the building will look and feel. As told in A Perfect Mess, Gehry is mindful of how difficult it is to translate the emotion impact of the building when you collapse the model into a two-dimensional blueprint. Abrahamson and Freedman write:
“The school approved the design and brought in a small army of contractors to build it. The contractors duly admired, in a shocked and fretful way, the model of the God-awfully complex structure they were about to undertake, and then asked for the blueprints, to which Gehry's team replied that there weren't any. The contractors thought the group was joking, but Gehry and his associates assured the contractors they were serious. ... Gehry's group maintained that the contractors could derive the measurements they needed by studying the model of the building ...” pp. 87-88
The story continues and the contractors work together with Gehry Partners to co-create the building. The building in delivered on time, on budget and everyone is thrilled with the result. Furthermore, the contractors develop a multitude of new skills and techniques such as new ways to bend steel beams, survey sites, affix unconventional materials. Wow! I was impressed. This was very similar to our three journey approach. The first journey was Gehry and Partners creating the scale models, the second journey was involving the contractors in co-designing the building, and the third journey was its construction.
But something bugged me about the story, so I started surfing the web to see if I could find the source referred to in the book's end notes. I learnt that as the building was designed and constructed the academics from the Case Western Reserve Business School, lead by Professor Richard Boland, were studying the process. There were a number of papers written as a result and I read this one called Design Matters for Management. The first thing I was struck by was how Gehry Partners makes extensive use of computer models in their work. Hmmm, don't you need measurements to make computer models?
So I emailed Richard Boland and he seemed as surprised as I was. It turns out that Gehry does use models in lieu of blueprints a long time before a blueprint is created. The firm works with speciality contractors who are crucial to the success of the project early in the design phase and works with them to create the design. Gehry avoids the traditional approach of drawing something up and saying “here is the blueprint, go build it.”
I think Abrahamson and Freedman failed the plausibility test because that's what we listen for when we hear a story; is it plausible? You can see from the picture I included just how complex (and I think this is complex and not merely complicated) his building are. To think they were built without blueprints seem implausible.
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| 16/05/07 | | A sensemaking story |
Here's an interesting story Bob Sutton recently received from a US Marine in relation to his excellent book, The No Asshole Rule. It's a terrific sensemaking story because I can imagine people will have strong opinions about what the Marine did and so the story will easily start a conversation that will help the participants better understand how they might act if they ever encountered such an asshole.
I'm reminded of a story of my own which I'd like to share with you. I was part of a special project for the Marine Corps. I was in a leadership role actively playing a part in the physical military operations and the academic/management part ruled by civilian contractors. Because of my education, I was tasked to play a liaison role which often meant bearing ill will from both parties as I tried to explain their intentions to the others. Right off the bat, a member of the civilian management team rubbed me the wrong way. I wasn't sure what it was until he severely berated one of my senior Marines, telling him at one point that “we had all taken a oath to defend this Nation.” I was offended by that. I knew for a fact he took no such oath. But more importantly, I believed that he was acting in a manner in which he thought was consistent with military leadership-- an assumption he developed from watching too many movies.
I held my tongue at the moment but that evening during our After Action Review, I brought the issue up. We were seated across from each other at a conference table. As soon as I aired my complaints, he puffed up in his chair, put both hands on the table and started looking at me menacingly. He was a large man-- about six and a half feet and easily 250 pounds. At that moment, I realized that he was trying to physically intimidate me. I'm much smaller-- about 5'10“ and 190 pounds. I could tell that this was a natural reaction to him and he did this often. For a moment I was amused. When he continued to glare at me, I finally drew my sidearm, placed it on the table and said to him, ”Calm down. I deal in real violence.“ He settled down and walked out of the office a couple of minutes later. I hoped that this encounter would shift his behavior but it didn't. He was a senior member of the team and he started treating everybody else worse. Me-- he mostly left alone. I think I made my life better but I sure didn't do anything to make my teammates lives easier. Eventually, the most senior member of the civilian team removed him but not before I threatened to ”accidentally“ hurt him in training. I'm not proud I had to resort to that.
This was my first contact with the civilian management world and I was not impressed. Unfortunately, my experiences after haven't been much better. We certainly have our share of lousy leaders in the military world but I was surprised to see how much backstabbing and political in-fighting existed in civilian leadership circle.
Technorati Tags: bob sutton, us marine
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| 14/05/07 | | The story of a map - Massimo Vignelli's 1972 NYC Subway Map |
Imagine if you could get people to talk on camera about their achievements and mistakes. The result could be a powerful, especially if you use these stories to get people talking. Here's a tiny example on a topic dear to my heart: how to convey complex information simply. In this clip Massimo Vignelli talks about his 1972 information design masterpiece, the New York City Subway map. There are a couple of things I noticed in this four minute video, which is an out-take for the documentary Helvetica.
- the actual map was a powerful reminder device
- enough time had elapsed for Massimo to be comfortable to talk about his mistakes (just one) - mind you, you could imagine his self confidence soaring
- the beauty of the map comes from knowing what to leave out--and if Massimo could do it again he would have left out even more
Mr Vignelli was inspired by Henry Beck's 1933 legendary map of the London Underground. You can take a look at London's current versions here. Michael Bierut has written an essay called Mr Vignelli's Map which you might enjoy.
Thanks to 37 Signals for the pointer
Technorati Tags: information design, massimo vignellie
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| 10/05/07 | |