Category Archive

I was following up the new field of “performance studies“.   I have lost the link unfortunately.   Here are five statements and questions I re-phrased in “plain-language”.

1.  We make the company every day by what we do.

2.  Together we act out a story.

3.  Remember there is more that one story we could tell.

4.  Why do I have to speak for you?  What can’t people speak for themselves?

5.  What does the story we are acting out say about our relationships with each other and are we willing to talk about this question?

I hope my title caught your eye and made you panic a little - ooooooh, there is something I should be doing . . .!

Well, I hope to persuade you to do it less. Or, to run a mile from any organization where you hear it a lot.

Reify : To regard or treat an abstraction as if it had concrete or material existence

It really bothers me when we talk of an organization as if it has an existence beyond the people who are in it.

It is true sometimes the organization has a legal persona. We will eventually talk about the Democratic Party nominee, for example. But that is simply a decision that members of the Democratic Party will make following a procedure they devised and adopted.

Real thinking, breathing, living people who are quite entitled to change those procedures as and when they deem it fit. Indeed, they have anticipated doing so and have already laid down procedures on how to initiate change - as do all good organizations.

The rules that we lay down do not live and breathe without us. Every organization has rules that are still written down and have been ignored for years. Every organization also has rules that are extremely powerful and are not written down anywhere.

What the rules tell us, written or unwritten, are the relationships we have with each other.

This is why I think it is dangerous to reify an organization: this is why it is dangerous to present an organization as a mind beyond the minds of the people in it.

Compare the minutes of a meeting which say “it was decided” to “Mary proposed” “Peter seconded” and the votes was carried “10-5″ with no abstentions. Compare these minutes with minutes which include the voting record of each person.

When we say “it was decided”, we are deliberately concealing who said what and who decided. Why are we concealing that information?

Because we don’t want to write down how we made the decision. Whatever we did that day would not, we believe, reflect well on us.

Most likely, we have made a decision we are not entitled to make. Most likely we have usurped authority that is not ours.

Can we get away with saying “it was decided”?

Yes. Often. Rensis Likert has written on this problem.

1. We may not talk about a problem.

2. We may not talk about not talking about a problem.

This is a mark of a festering trouble-spot in an organization. When the double-bind is widespread, the organization is likely to run into deep trouble.

I remember a colleague who used to send out memos headed “from the desk of . .”. Mmmm, she received a lot of replies addressed “To the desk”.

Survival guide to contemporary corporate life

1 Be wary of the passive voice. Ask ‘who dunnit?’

2 Be double wary when inanimate objects and abstract concepts are used to resume the active voice. Ask ‘who substituted a thing or an idea for a person’ , and then,  ‘what have they done that they don’t want me to know’!

3 And if you can, cut your losses. As Clay Shirky said, a four year old knows that any activity not designed for her participation is not worth sitting still for.

Image via Wikipedia

I am looking for my mouse

Clay Shirky at Web2.0 Expo tells the story of a 4 year old who gets bored looking at a DVD and crawls around the back of the screen: “I am looking for my mouse”. This is the story of child brought into a technological age where we expect to participate in whatever we do. “Looking for the mouse” is the mark of a generation who expects to take initiative.

Who moved my cheese?

Just ten years’ ago, we were delighted by another story, an allegory, Who moved my cheese? This story is about a generation who does not expect to take initiative.  Indeed, it resists taking the initiative.  It wants to ‘put the clock back’.

We spend a lot of time crying, “we want the cheese to come back.”  Or, words to that effect.  We celebrate the past rather than the emerging future.

The positive message of this allegory is that once we can move beyond fear, we are free to move on, and find fresher, more interesting, more enjoyable cheese.

My advice is “follow that mouse!”

I live a double life as I have said before. In my one life, I work with Zimbabweans who are frozen in terror about the changes going on in their country. Their fears are real, and justified. So too, is their desire to go back to a time when cheese was there for the taking. Their liberation will ultimately come when they stop protesting the unfairness of it all and start to explore their future.

In my other life, I work with HR professionals who are also frozen in terror.  In the case of HR, there is a little cheese left, but not much. The world has moved on to work patterns where there are new demands and new generation who says “I am looking for the mouse”?

For Zimbabweans and HR professionals, I am looking for my mouse has a sadder meaning The mice have already detected the dwindling cheese supply and have left.

My advice is “follow that mouse”!

There is about a 30 second delay before a post shows up - that is after you have bit publish and the screen clears.  And you have hit View Site.

First post vanished.  Now it is above me.  Lets look again.

Hit Publish.

This time  based on the ‘Big Five’ from YouGetMe.

Results are presented as ten large balls, two for each dimension.

Conscientiousness: Disciplined and Casual

Openness: Alternative and Traditional

Agreeableness:  Cooperative and Competitive

Extraversion: Extraverted and Intraverted

Neuroticism:  Unemotional and Neurotic

The questionnaire is quick and easy.   The results are immediate and are accompanied by a narrative.

Hat tip to Gumption.

Wave your hand.  And look at it.  If you can see it, you can learn.   But how can we learn emotion?  Well, by watching your own MRI scan.

Amazing.

Image by frontlineblogger via Flickr

“Rumour rhymes with ‘ruma’, Shona for bite. Harare has literally been bitten by rumours. Our city is famed for many things but one thing specifically. The ability to turn no news into headlines. The skill of spinning no knowledge into street wisdom. The hustle of selling unconfirmed stories on a hungry parallel market. Our only non-state daily newspaper was bombed so the people’s paper is the people’s stories, nyayas that circulate like a whisper at a bottle store. Mugabe has fled to Malaysia. Morgan has 68% of the presidential vote. Mujuru has lost her seat. Morgan’s win is being broadcast live on TV. A people starved of truth begin to manufacture their own. So truths roam Harare like street kids, tapping your window at every robot. Like an undelivered text message notification ringing on your phone. Constantly.

But just minutes ago some rumours may have become reality. Our hopes may be backed up by facts. When Morgan held his press conference at the Meikles Hotel he told us that after years of struggle we have a new challenge - that of governance. The need to start to restructure and stabilize our country. MDC believe they have clinched victory. Morgan has never appeared so joyous. Once again the rumours begin to bite. MDC is said to be in talks with the armed forces and ZANU about negotiating a hand over of power. Morgan denies the rumours. So, many things are in the air. Hope and rumours. And once again the joy and the certainty of the press conference need to get out into the townships. The people need to taste the joy of a dream becoming reality. They need to be ready to defend their victorious dreams. Otherwise tomorrow will just be another day of spoken headlines and hustled truths.”

For the source.

PS Zemantra found the picture on Flickr.  I haven’t asked the photographer’s permission because I can’t find the contact link in Flickr.  I hearby ask your permission and endorsement.  Please let me know if you object.  Many thanks.

“You see, to be a leader means to be a dealer, a purveyor and a deliverer of hope.

And it is our job - yours and mine - to be deliverers of hope. Because we believe in this school that all can and will lead and because I believe in the talent and potential of the young men sitting before me - I believe in that hope.”

David Knowles, St Stithians.
Hat tip to Ideate.

Heard on SWRadioAfrica, the voice of independent Zimbabwe beaming out of London, as we wait for news from Harare.

I would go further. Leadership is about thriving on differences!

Cheri Baker from The Enlightened Manager said something similar today about emerging political styles in the USA.

Adam Greenfield, author of Everywhere and new Head of Design at Nokia, brought the recent Royal Society meeting on Ubiquitous Computing to a crescendo on Tuesday with a clean, TED style, ran through on the pervasive nature of contemporary computers and five principles of design. These are taken from my notes (apologies Adam). As Adam spoke I was trying to relate them to soft systems as well, say HR systems.

Once I got back home, I tried to phrase them positively.

1. At the end of the day, will my client, or my employee regard themselves as better off? And am I willing to be accountable for my impact on them?

2. Am I willing to discuss fully with my client or my employee or a knowledgeable person they select, what we are going to do and what might be the consequences?

3. Does my suggestion honor my client or my employee and bring them esteem and status in the minds of people important to them?

4. Am I aware of the time constraints and rhythms important to my clients and employees and have I entered the rhythm of their activity in a way that is pleasing to them?

5. Is my client and employee in effective control of the process and do they feel that? Are they able to terminate at any time freely and without collateral damage?

Why do we find this so hard to do? I have been following a discussion that the Chief Happiness Officer started on customer service. Why do customer service people hate their customers so much? Quite likely because they have not benefited from these design principles and feel disrespected themselves. Until we, the people who design HR and management systems convey genuine respect towards them, they are not likely to feel well and happy themselves

So while customer service people protest their innocence on CHO, what is our best defence?  Have you designed systems which violated these principles?  Have you had success stories which surprised even you?

Trust in task

There was a time that I would have needed an interpreter to understand my title. After three years’ teaching a large management class (+-900 students) on the South Island of New Zealand, I agree with Scott McArthur, Gen Y rocks.

Far from being out-of-it, as young sociologist Maz Hardey at York University attests, mobile phones represent levels of interaction that our generation can barely comprehend. Games, as I know from talking to young games designers, represent a level of social design beyond anything envisioned by the social engineers of 60’s and 70’s sick.

And they don’t vote.  But this isn’t lethargy.  It is like helicopters blaring out “Paint it Black” as they go into combat.  And Forces’ radio “Good morning, Vietnam”.   We are seeing a similar attitude and I suspect, a revolution.

And about time too. Gen X was horribly out numbered by the boomers. Gen Y is as powerful as the flower power, baby boomers, the contraceptive pill, protests against Vietnam and a VW Kombi. Gen X is also known as the generation without a war. Gen Y were give their war. They are turning out for Obama.  So let’s see.

As for me, I think Gen Y rocks. The 21st century is looking good!

Positive psychology is about us.  What we like to do (and are not even necessarily good at). What brings us alive and what we contribute to the world through the interaction of our stories.

The internet and computer games is a good parallel.  As games become more sophisticated, the game is not even designed (c.f. Second Life).

Even the maths of positive psychology is different.  Old school psychology is based on regression.  I have variable X (which becomes a strength when pp is misapplied) and I have something of interest Y that takes place independently at a later time.  And we are lined up on X and Y to see who is better or worse.  All we are asking is whether we can predict who will be better or worse at time Y, with the information we have at time X.

Who cares, frankly?  It’s like people who predict the outcome of a cricket game rather than watch it or better yet, take part with everything that entails - winning and losing.

The new maths describes what is happening internally to one person (or group) and it understands that there will be several things happening and affecting each other.  (A recursive non-linear model.) So you spend some time thinking about the world then you spend some time reflecting and then you go back to reflecting about the world.  The point is we are varying our behaviour all the time and what we do at one minute is determined by what we did the previous minute and the reaction we got from the world and ourselves.  Happiness is simply being willing to engage with this dynamic process.

The strengths based approach is to do with our narrative.  We continually make sense of our lives and we are engaged in this to and fro business of making sense, taking action.  We like our stories and we do better when we are around people who like them too.  When we are ignored or our stories are deemed irrelevant, we sag.

Hence the reason I should not try to take over your blog.  My apologies.  I read too many posts on happiness today and they often

Lifehacker suggests replacing your “to do” list with your “could do” list.

Michelle at The Fertile Unknown suggest the “ta da” list better.  I find that instantly attractive.  What I get a chance to do!

David Whyte is a little guarded about his poetry but you can find the odd snippets on the web. If you haven’t encountered his work, I recommend you buy his CD, Midlife and the Great Unknown.

Born in Yorkshire, of Irish decent, David Whyte is a marine biologist, ngo worker, turned poet who writes about our relationship with work. There will be lots about David Whyte on this blog!