Chief Chaos Officer. Director of Dollars and Sense. Data Detective. Captain of Moonshots. These are examples of an emerging trend where people are liberated to choose their own job titles. Ideally they speak to each person's sense of personal mission and the character of the organization's brand. A recent Wharton study indicates that people with personalized job titles feel more focused, valued and energized in their work. It's another case where when people feel valued for their uniqueness, they perform better.
Growing The Farm to Table Movement, 1 Recipe at a Time
As we're now seeing in urban cores, urban farms and complementary food processing businesses can be wonderful jobs engines and touch stones for healthy communities. We need to take the mystery out of growing local markets for local farmers markets.
My suggestion: more recipes and cooking demonstrations. In my neighborhood market, which is very productive, diverse and growing each year, few if any stands offer recipes or demonstrations. If they did, they would have people cooking more. Cooking is the root cause of buying. It's not that mysterious.
Questioning The Idea Of The "Boss' Standards"
I would argue that when leaders build well-performing team, the team's standards for themselves are at least as high as their boss' would be. The implication is that a boss inflicting higher standards is a failure of leadership. I've see it happen. Teams can learn how to set their own high standards and don't have to be subjected to the higher standards of their boss. It makes an adult rather than parent-child culture possible and in that, teams flourish.
Thinking a of Businesses As Relationships Rather Than Investments
We're starting to think of the core of business growth being about relationships rather than investments. Businesses attract and retain customers because of the relationships customers feel relative to any business. Without these relationships, there is no business or business growth. With no business or business growth, investment becomes impossible. This puts in perspective the value of employees and leaders who attract and retain these relationships by being present to customers.
Should We Care Where People Sit?
Where people sit at work was an important consideration when the sum of information technology was covered in paper mail, office files and telephones. The question shifts dramatically in a dramatically different technology landscape and yields a brand new set of considerations. Today it's far more important to talk about how to use any available technologies to reduce and eliminate time and space barriers to real time information access for everyone. This is infinitely more important consideration than where people sit.
Organizations As Information & Energy Flows
I remember when writing my second book pouring through tons of research on the new sciences of ecology, quantum physics and neurosciences. They uniquely displaced many of the machine metaphors that dominated our thinking about human systems since inception of the Industrial Age. What I learned is that when we get down to the essence of matter, we find dynamic energy and information. This becomes an important and powerful lens through which to understanding and growing organizations. It applies equally to communities and networks.
From this perspective we would stay keenly intererested in what kinds of information flows and gets stuck. We would pay attentiont to the energetic quality of events, conversations and efforts. We would create new pathways for information and energy flows.
Organizing Our Agile Canvas Stories
There's no way to predict how many success and progress stories a group will identify in any given collaboration. It partly depends on how far in time they go. When we sequence and timestamp stories, it's important which stories we select for the first phase of the collaboration. Here are 5 criteria for the stories we place on the top of our sequenced list:
Learning: They generate the kind of learning that will help us scale and apply results Narratives: They generate stories that inspire further engagement and support Relationships: They build relationships of trust that make creativity and commitment more possible More resources: They create paybacks of more resources for future efforts Asset use: They make good use of existing resources
The whole Agile approach features iterations that spiral in cycles of expanding progress and success.
The Glass Ceiling Of Bottlenecks
One of the most important questions leaders can ask others, with the urgency increasing with hierarchical status, is how and when they are bottlenecks to information and energy flows, relationship building and decision making. It's one of the more common blind spots for leaders, so frequent queries and assumption checking is vital. When this doesn't happen, clueless leaders ironically whine and rant about the lack of growth their own bottlenecking precipitates.
Enriching Perspective: Keys To Creativity
Apparently, 75% of white people in the US have no non-white friends. It's a startling figure that speaks to the continued social divides that persist. I experienced first hand the dynamic when I recently asked a dominantly white professional sector in a community to invite some predominantly black clients to a community planning meeting. I faced stiff and cynical resistance to the suggestion. In this kind of culture, creativity suffers because it depends on the synergies of contrasts. I would argue that communities and organizations that thrive will be the ones that do everything they can to honor and engage the unique gifts of every racial dimension of the community.
The Anti-ToDo List
Among his many famously celebrated achievements, Marc Andreessen keeps his energy and time productive with Anti-Todo Lists. This is a daily reactive list of all the unplanned things he gets done in a day, a companion to the usual proactive Todo list of things planned. The positive energy and momentum it creates speaks to the Harvard research that workplace happiness is primarily driven by the acknowledgement of progress made. The more positive energy we create, the more we have for the momentum we intend.
8 Common Time Wasters In Collaborations
Here are 8 common ways people waste time in collaborations & listening response alternatives. Ranting: Going on and on about anything without adding new additions to the conversation; also listening to ranting instead of posting new contributions Listening: Make sure any new additions to any conversations get posted; keep posting your own new additions; encourage listeners to get busy posting new items
Complaining: Talking about what's wrong, what's lacking, what isn't working, why and who's to blame Listening: Turn any negative into a new posted question or fact
Attacking: Initially responding to any contribution with why its unrealistic or wrong Listening: Respond first with the possible merits, benefits or value of any continuation; talk first about what you might like about it, then offer alternatives
Defending: Justifying problems, mistakes, setbacks, failures, bad decisions and things not done on time Listening: Get any new questions or facts from lessons learned posted; add new required items to future sprints; adjust story timestamps to reflect changes
Dominating: Doing so much talking others can't talk; bullying others into conformity and compliance Listening: Get anything new posted; add and invite others to keep adding to any of the 5 Canvas conversations
Acquiescing: Insincerely agreeing to anything to avoid the risk of disagreement Listening: Get any new and different ideas, facts, questions, perspectives posted; be honest and invite people to be honest about their differences and use them to grow the Canvas
Resource-wasting: Allowing the group to work on anything in a group conversation that could be worked on by individuals or pairs in sprints Listening: Decide as a group which sprint to put the work and get it assigned
Delays: People take on more in any sprint than they have time for and don't complete their assignments Listening: Get all sprint items time estimated by the group and make sure everyone declares their maximum time availability for any sprint in which they work
Respectful Arguments
Philosopher Daniel Dennett proposes four keys to skillful responses in arguments.
You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement). You should mention anything you have learned from your target. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
The intent is simple and practical: build receptivity in others so they can accept well your differences.
The Failure Of Facts
Yale law school professor Dan Kahan’s new research paper, “Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government," outlines research showing that not only do people with beliefs refuse opposing facts, the more facts thrust on them, the more firmly they resist them. Those of us who teach and work with storytelling now have research to support what we have at least intuitively known. It's an important lesson for anyone in the sciences, economics and other fact based endeavors. It speaks to how stories have a unique power facts lack.
3 Tips For New Leaders
I am somewhat surprised to meet and observe young leaders who have not had the advantage of good mentoring, and perhaps have been protégés under not good leaders. Here are my top of mind suggestions for making the best of the role. Build credibility
You will have influence to the extent that you build and sustain credibility. Credibility means dependability and transparency. Don't expect the privilege of position or your track record will contribute to your credibility. People will authentically appreciate your leadership efforts and intentions to the extent they trust you.
Listen first
Your ideas will have the most value when they work in context. Your sincere belief in the genius of your ideas is meaningless outside of the contexts where your ideas need to apply. Listen more than you're used to and have context wise ideas. Do more homework than anyone you know.
Connect people
The most important resource you will ever have available is the ecology of relationships you help grow and engage. Your most significant contribution is growing and engaging the relationships among people in your world. Measure your success in large part by your ability to do this.
The Agile Canvas, For Any Mood
Any time I'm invited to help groups collaborate, I use a simple, powerful model called the Agile Canvas. It has evolved over the past couple decades into a model that works in any kind of collaboration imaginable. The Agile Canvas keeps any group focused, realistic, aligned, inspired and productive throughout any collaboration. It's a canvas that captures our work in five unique conversations: questions, facts, principles, stories and sprints. The power of the canvas is how it links and leverages a diversity of perspectives and keeps everyone literally on the same page the whole time. For more on the Canvas, visit TheAgileCanvas.com
One of the many interesting features of the Canvas is that it immediately engages people in whatever mood they show up. The process honors the fact that, as much as we glamorize the rational side of being human, people act based on how they feel. Each of the five unique conversations leverages any mood people happen to be in.
When people feel curious or negative they contribute well to the Questions conversation.
When people feel informed or decisive they contribute well to the Facts conversation.
When people feel intentional or empathetic they contribute well to the Principles conversation.
When people feel inspired or passionate they contribute well to the Stories conversation.
When people feel committed or ready for action they contribute well to the Sprints conversation.
The many variations on emotional themes that show up in collaborations parallel these moods. People feel engaged because they don't have to pretend. They can be themselves and fully participate, engaging their passions and strengths in ways that builds relationships and supports the process.
How Much Is Experience Worth?
When I was in school in the 1960's the half-life of knowledge was 15-20 years. Now it's 6-12 months. Organizations and communities are now seeing unprecedented trends in retirement and post-retirement careers as Baby Boomers improvise career maturities and reinventions. The trend raises an old question now at large scales: What should we do with the mountains of experience some Boomers still bring to work everyday while others are preparing to take into retirement?
It's for me as much a personal as professional question as I continue to bring decades of really rich experience to every table at which I sit. Typically, most people at the table have 10-20 years in one, maybe two industries and often on the same continent. I bring over three decades of experience in over 2 dozen different industries and across the world.
What place does this vast portfolio of experience have at any table where we are striving to transform organizations, communities, networks and educational systems?
Any consideration needs to take into account the knowledge half-life trend that makes some portion of anyone's experience less relevant than ever. The contexts of my experiences in the 70s or 90s often sharply differ from current contexts and so are not usefully or wisely replicated today.
The churning and dynamic nature of knowledge today levels the experience playing field. When we elders sit with emerging leaders and have honest adult conversations, everyone brings equally valuable and relevant experience, vision, creativity and humility to the table.
The prime case I would make for any generational generalizations is that we who bring 3-10 times more experience are better positioned to ask more and better questions because of our experience. That's our unique value and social responsibility today.
How Communities, Unknowingly, Sustain Business As Usual
The "hunger problem." It's the object of marathon talking, anxious funding and sincere programs sincerely hoping more of the same will lead to different. One of the most effective ways communities, unknowingly, sustain business as usual is the deficit conversation of needs. We do needs assessments and base metrics on adressing needs. Until communities become asset based, they have no idea the needs focus actually sustains the status quo. Their narrative is that social problems like hunger are intractable, even when Federal policies wage, always unsuccessful, wars on these people who persist in the obesity of their hunger.
When communities become asset based, everything changes. Their conversations shift 180 degrees in the direction of business quite not as usual.
They talk about vacant land that could be a thriving oasis of crops. They talk about the underemployed, unemployed and working poor who could learn to grow and cook their way into unprecedented levels of wellness and community. They talk about the countless idle school and church kitchens that could process locally grown food for year round use. They talk about the talented young people who could do food and branding education for people who could become food entrepreneurs. They talk about the college students who could start up new urban farms and food literacy programs as ways to leverage experiential learning for their degrees and the closure of food deserts.
These are the conversations that engage assets, that shift conversations of hunger from conversations about people as problems to be fixed to people as gifts to be engaged. These are the conversations that make a difference.
Reflections On Ferguson
Another racially challenged US community has imploded on the national and international stage. Even with careful scanning of updates and editorials the real dynamics, causal and emerging, are not always transparent. It's what we call a wicked problem, resisting simple, linear, historical solutions. Military and police force, political blame throwing and disciplinary curfews are just a few classic examples of simple, linear and historical strategies. This is a broken community. Like all broken communities, hope and healing will depend on the community's network weavers convening and connecting people in new small acts that build trust and create new narratives. As the community strengthens corrupt and inept community leaders lose credibility and power to continue to divide the community.
These network weavers are often everyday individuals and informal change agents, volunteers and mentors, teachers and faith leaders. They hold space for new conversations that have the power to create new community connections. We wish them the best.
The Bonds of Educational Success
UC Berkeley professor and author, David Kirp, in this Sunday's NY Times suggests that the experiment of trying to run schools like businesses has not met advertised promises. We have not seen dramatic improvements from shuttering low performing schools, leveraging competition and incentives and inflicting industrial standardization processes on pedagogy. It's yet another example of how "best practices" don't effectively adapt across different contexts. Kirp argues, with evidence, that success stores speak instead about improved emotional quality of relationships between faculty and students.
Every successful educational initiative of which I’m aware aims at strengthening personal bonds by building strong systems of support in the schools. The best preschools create intimate worlds where students become explorers and attentive adults are close at hand.
The emotional quality of relationships is not something most school systems are going to get from most successful business practices. According to Gallup, the large majority of businesses expect to profit specifically as they sustain high levels of employee disengagement. Teaching and learning apparently works by a different dynamic. Hopefully more schools and policy makers will discover this.
Understanding Your Success, Really
It's always interesting listening to people in successful companies narrate their success. Each story is filtered through business school and consultant models, spins and theories. Among the most popular, crediting borrowed "best practices" for replicated successes. I've learned to listen to all rationalizations with a mix of curiosity and skepticism. I listen for the unspoken and the under-rated dynamics. Network sciences have taught us to look at the edges rather than cores of networks for clues into why and how change occurs in complex systems like organizations, communities and networks.
It's too easy to think that what causes success is what seems obvious to the majority of critics or what's most cited by the leaders who are supposed to be smarter than everyone else. It's too easy to confuse correlation and causation.
I think an intelligent approach is to include as many diverse perspectives as we can. We listen to experts and pundits, founders and the least heard, people from all disciplines in the organization people from deep within the organization, people in the market and the official institutional storytellers. We suspect that more of us are smarter than any one of us.