Squidoo Lenses
| 12/05/08 | | Rating your own expertise |
Last week I was running an open space to kick off a new community of practice for engineers. While I was wandering around the room I overheard one of the participants make this point about self rating your expertise.
The guy who has done this job for 20 years rates himself as good. But the guy doing it for two years rates themselves as expert. They don't know what they don't know.
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| 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 | | Best website for learning |
We were advised this morning that LearnX Asia Pacific 2008 has announced that the winner in the category of 'Best Website for Learning' is ........Anecdote! We are really pleased that our efforts to make the website an interesting and valuable place have been recognised in this way.
Shawn and Robyn are presenting at the LearnX conference on 12-13 June on our work in using narrative-based approaches to improve induction and retention for indigenous staff. Should be fun.
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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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| 7/05/08 | | Global Storytelling - Pangea Day |
May 10 is Pangea Day. A great opportunity to get inspired!
Storytellers from all over the world will tell their stories about humanity to humanity. 24 short films have been selected (from the thousands submitted) based on their ability to inspire, transform, and help us see the world through another person's eyes. Check out this video about the event.
Tune in...
Date: May 10, 2008
Time: 18:00 to 22:00 GMT
Language: Full program subtitled in Arabic, English, French,
German, Hindi, Portuguese, and Spanish.
How to watch: In person, online, on TV, on your mobile phone
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| 3/05/08 | | Conversations take time |
A few weeks ago, about the time of the 2020 Summit, I met with Dave Pollard at the Athenaeum Library on Collins Street. Dave was visiting from Canada. I've been a long-time reader of his blog and was excited by the prospect of finally meeting him face to face. As serendipity would have it Michael Sampson (Sharepoint collaboration guru) was also in town (from New Zealand) and joined us.
When you meet a person for the first time and you know there is plenty of things to talk about, the standard one hour meeting makes no sense yet I'm surprised how few people make time for longer conversations. Dave, Michael and I talked for 3-4 hours and it was only in the last couple of hours we got into the juicy topics. Yeh, yeh, I hear everyone saying, "We're soooo busy," but you know what, you need to make time for great conversations. The time excuse is our defence mechanism so we can say no to requests. How many times have you seen people greet each other with the words, "how're going? Real busy! Me too. Do you want to get a coffee? Sure?"
Well, I see something we talked about inspired a new post from Dave on his vision for how we might work in 2020. I'm glad to see it is filled with stories and concepts of collaboration.
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| 3/05/08 | | Storytelling event in Washington |
My friend Madelyn Blair is busily preparing for two great storytelling events in Washington that start on the 9 May. I believe there are 30 seats left now so you still register to attend
For Goldenfleece Day08 go to http://www.goldenfleececon.orgFor Smithsonian Event, May 9 go to http://residentassociates.org/ticketing/tickets/reserve.aspx?performanceNumber=87387
I wish I could make it because I know there will be terrific conversations about storytelling in business context and I would get to meet many of the people I Skype such as Victoria Ward, Madelyn, and Steve Denning.
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| 1/05/08 | | Cooperation and the tragedy of the commons |
One of our regular commenters, ken, has directed me to an interesting article in the Washington Post equating Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton's race for the Democratic nomination to the classic tragedy of the commons scenario. That's when the individual actors operate to maximise their self interest and in the process ruin things for the wider group.
Here's how the tragedy of the commons (TOTC) scenario played out for a group of people playing the role of timber companies.
He asked volunteers to play the role of timber companies in a forest. The volunteers were told they could harvest a certain number of acres each year, and were also told how quickly the forest could replenish itself. The question was whether volunteers -- thinking on their own and without discussions with other volunteers -- would restrict themselves to taking less than half the timber that they were allowed. If everyone did this, the forest would replenish itself in perpetuity, creating the greatest wealth in the long term.
But because the volunteers did not know whether their kindness would be reciprocated by others or exploited by competitors, people raced to cut as much timber as they could and quickly razed the forests to the ground. Groups with volunteers more willing to think about the collective good preserved their forests longer. But selfish people within these groups had a field day exploiting the altruists -- and the forests perished anyway.
Unfortunately TOTCs are played out in organisations everyday, especially by managers who haven't worked out that their role is to help their staff succeed. And this problem is being exacerbated by the trend of people moving from one job to another and only sticking around for the short term. This is a problem because TOTCs are only avoided if people are working for the longer term.
the only way to prevent tragedies of the commons is to set up structures in advance that reward long-term thinking and punish short-term selfishness. This happens mostly among competitors who share long-term interests and have social relationships of trust (emphasis added): If you and I are Maine lobstermen, we are likely to agree to set up limits on the overall catch each year because we see our future, and our children's future, inextricably linked. In the absence of trust and long-term relationships, the only way to prevent these tragedies is to have an outside regulatory agency step in to establish -- and enforce -- limits.
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