Dave Snowden of the Cynefin Centre recently said that the relationship between a terrorist and the state, a tax-payer and the tax authority and an employee and the organisation are very similar: they are all complex, a-symmetric relationships and a simplistic traditionalist approach usually gets the opposite effect than what was intended. Peter Senge refers to a simplistic “eventsâ€? and “trendsâ€? focus in stead of a more complex “systemicâ€? focus when trying to understand the drivers behind specific organisational dilemmas. Graeme Codrington calls it a mechanistic, Newtonian, industrial-age approach to try and solve complex, quantum, connection-economy type problems. Continue reading ‘On using overly-simplistic language to describe complex organisational issues…’
Author Archive for Jean
As a team leader it is important to understand what it is your team needs to optimise its performance. If you can read and understand these needs, you will be better able to respond and help your team to the next level.
But let’s be honest: no two teams are similar. Just as individuals are unique, teams are unique. Your team has a unique configuration of individuals, it operates in a unique environment and has a unique history and future. How then, if your team has a unique story, is it possible for you to know what to look out for in terms of your team’s development? And, if no blue-print of your specific team exists, how can you know that responding in a certain way will have a definite desired effect?
Yes, understanding and leading teams are complex. That is why we often feel ourselves ill-equipped to intervene if we sense something’s holding our team back. The natural thing to do then is to turn towards a team building expert to sort your team out. The problem is that many team building experts have set team building programmes that they use for all teams. A generic model and sequence and workbook with discussion questions that touch on all the essential dynamics of the generic team. But yours is not the generic team.
Written by Jean Cooper and Graeme Codrington.
The previous e-zine had a great article by Barrie Bramley and Dr. Graeme Codrington, entitled: Loving and leading diversity. In this article they explain the business benefits of deeply embracing diversity in the workplace. They also touched on how NOT to do diversity.
However, if the way to approach the opportunities diversity opens to our organisations is NOT to force people into a room where we expect them to talk to each other and like each other, how then should it be done? In a longitudinal study (over 12 years) by the University of Pretoria, they came up with an interesting framework for making diversity work. I call it the “3 spaces-framework”, based on the research of Prof Hannes De Beer (2002).
Today I had quite a peculiar experience. I was sitting in the foyer coffee shop of the hospital, waiting for Fransie and working on my laptop. In came a smartly-dressed guy and sat with his back towards me. After a while he turned to me and asked whether I managed to connect to the wi-fi hotspot in the hospital. He was about to connect with his Vodafone 3G card when he realised that he could pick up a free wireless network. Then I recognised him - well-known and widely acclaimed Industrial Psychologist Dr Gustav Gous.
The funny thing, though, is that I had a coffee meeting with him while I was in my first or second year at varsity. My mother showed me a newspaper article that he wrote and told me that she thinks this guy does what I hope to be doing one day. So I phoned him and he agreed to have coffee and we talked about what he did for a living and what I need to do to do the same one day. That was almost ten years ago.
Now we sat next to each other in a hospital coffee shop where his daughter and my wife happen to have appointments at the same time. We had a great conversation about our profession, our businesses and our clients. Compared notes, shared ideas, discussed trends. They have a great new product to map culture in an organisation. The only tool of it’s kind at the moment. He does a lot of work in Dubai and Qatar. He knows about TomorrowToday.biz and that we are a strong player in the field. He knows Graeme’s dad Redge and he knows Michael and I suppose Michael’s dad Arnold as well. He was in Sonop Residence at Tuks many moons ago.
I think this is someone we could do some interesting work with. Either by being pulled in to help with his clients, or by pulling him in to help with ours. Check out his website
Is there something wrong with me if I start to look forward to the Saturday rugby game on Monday already? And now it’s Friday and I really can’t wait. And I normally don’t really even know the players that are not good enough to make the Bulls’ team. But somehow this green team is glueing me to the television….
Amazing what winning can do to your team, the individuals in the team, the supporters, customers, sponsors and brand.
Does anyone have a story of a truly magnificent, winning team he/she has been part of? Sport, business, community - doesn’t matter which kind of team - but let’s hear those stories…
I love my office. My desk is never at the same place - in fact, I can choose a different desk each time I come to office. Also, my desk is always clean - no scrap papers from yesterday or last month, no stationary-holder. And, of course - the coffee is always good. No normal office Ricoffee. But what I like most about the coffee shop business culture, is the people and the vibe.
It is now three years since the Greenfields coffee chain in Pretoria started to give free wireless access at their Hatfield branch and since then to all its other branches. You don’t have to pay a cent. Of course they hope that you will buy coffee, but they never chase you away when you just quickly want to download and go. The result - a coffee shop business hub second to none - especially in the Lynnwood Greenfields branch. They’ve put in multi-power plugs all around the shop so you’ll never be out of battery power. They are now planning to have printing and fax facilities available which they’ll just charge to your bill. The waiters also know that you are here to work, so they don’t come and ask you every two minutes (hours?) whether you want to order something else. Of course when you do need something, you need to do some waving to get attention…(not more than in other shops, though…;-)
The amazing thing, though, is the amount of networking that takes place in this shop. People know each other because they always see each other here and they take their coffee breaks together, exchange business cards and even do business right there where they see the synergies. We also watch each other’s laptops and belongings when the coffee starts to talk…
What a lovely culture to be part of. Viva Greenfields Pretoria.
The past week I learnt a lot about myself. We learnt that the final tests on our baby came out totally clean after what have been six months of anxiety and worry. What I realised, though, is that during these six months I was actually under a lot more stress than I thought. Only when I felt the immensity of the relief did I realise that I must have been under a heavy burden.
Suddenly I have the energy to do and start the things that I should have started months ago. Those creative thoughts that I get when I do my morning run. Two months a go I thought of them, but simply knew I didn’t have the energy to pursue them. In a business like ours where proactivity is the only way to survive, this is quite a disadvantage. Not only for work, but also for relationships with people that expect things from you which you simply don’t have the enegy to deliver. It’s almost as if my brain was rebooted in “safe” mode - loosing some functionality but with enough functionality to survive, at least.
Continue reading ‘My relief’
‚Sir, when looking at future trends and stuff - what should I study?‛
Being a futurist Industrial Psychologist often attracts a questions like this. It is often asked by a late teen/early twenty-something whose parents stand just that little bit too close for me not to notice the desperate grin behind the smile. But why is this question so ironic? Well, firstly, I’m a 20-something myself. And, secondly, it is the wrong question to ask. And if you ask the wrong question, you will always get the wrong answer.
Post-graduate Programmes offered:
- Innovation
- Storytelling
- Leadership
- Diversity
- Generations
- Strategy
- Team dynamics
- Communication
- Learning
- etc.
Why not?
Dr. Simon Jones (CEO - Ictinos Innovation, UK) indicated these key elements to successfully set up an innovation centre. Here they are - (in cryptic format)
- Inter-disciplinarity: Disciplines do not innovate by nature. They want to protect the purity of their discipline. Look for overlaps between different disciplines. Look for places where disciplines do not exist. Look for people who are specialists in different disciplines or open to inter-discipline co-operation by nature.
- Churn: Switch people often enough. R&D teams function most optimally at the start of the project, not the end. At Ictinos Innovation people get 2-year contracts after which they must leave and are replaced by new people.
- The Leader: The leader should be able to manage highly-skilled and strong-willed individuals.
- People: Again, you need people who are predisposed towards inter-disciplinarity. People who have worked / specialized in various fields. People with hobbies or a life outside their normal professional life.
- Projects: Innovation and research should be defined in project terms, where people take ownership in the definition and delivery of the projects.
- Management and structures: Light-weight and informal and flexible. Rewarding failure.
Dr. Anthon Botha from Technoscene (www.technoscene.co.za) is busy talking about the future. Interesting stuff in terms of strange and new innovations and inventions. What is more interesting, is that we are way ahead in our thinking. And in our ability to communicate our thinking. (It is amazing how people talk about technology and the future while they cannot effectively use powerpoint.)
Of course it is always necessary to know about new inventions, but the real significance lies in the ability to say: “So what?”
I am reassured that we have a :”So what?” that is a niche market: How to help companies and individuals to adapt to the connection economy - the economy where relationships have become critical. Here we combine our research and expertise about futurism, technology, business and human behaviour into a powerfully unique AND ultimately valuable offering.
I am attending an innovation conference at The Innovation Hub. During tea time I talked to one of ABSA’s innovation managers. When he saw the company name on my name tag - he said: “Oh yes, you are the generations people.” After we talked about the different things TT.biz does, he commented on the fact that he will use us for generational stuff - and that’s it - Why? Because we are the generations people.
Lessons from this:
- Generational theory is perhaps the strongest dimension to our brand
- Positive: We have managed to create a niche where people regard us as the only players
- Positive: We can use and should use this niche gap to enter client-spaces and build wider relationships around that
- Negative: If we want to be the Connection Economy People, we cannot limit ourselves to generational frameworks. People are more complex than that
- Negative: When the generational wave has been surfed to the shore, what is our next niche curve?
I am not fond of psychometric testing. Not because I don’t think these tests have value, but because I have seen how the wrong application of these tests do more harm than good. There is nothing as off-putting (is this a good word for “grillerig”?) as a team building programme where people do a DISC profiling in the morning and are then required to act according to their profiles throughout the day. And many facilitators do this with DISC, MBTI, Belbin - you name it. We should also beware of doing this with our frameworks - especially with the Enneagram and Mind the Gap.
Continue reading ‘We must beware of changing our frameworks into boxes’
If this was really aimed at hurting the English for their involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, why did they target tubes and buses? The powerful and influential don’t use tubes. The ordinary citizen does. And the ordinary citizen is English, South African, Pakistani, Indian etc. If these were the same terrorists and motive than in 9/11, surely they should rather have targeted the Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, 10 Downing Street etc. Or is the security near these places too tight? I just wonder where political and religious fanaticism stops and where plain malice and cowardice starts. Still it is quite disconcerting how these terrorists break through the security barriers and let 7 (or were it 4) bombs explode in a few hours. Not one bomb that slips through the national defence and intelligence - 7! In one morning. If this is the new kind of warfare, how does one confront it? Seeing the G8 leaders standing behind Blair also symbolises to me that we are actually experiencing the 3rd world war ever since 9/11/2001. It is a war. And the whole world is involved - directly as nation states or indirectly as victims or terrorists,
We live in a world where the individual has more power than ever before. The traditional super-power is not in control anymore. The power has shifted to an unmanageable network of individuals and the ones that can ride this rollercoaster-network are the powerful ones. Meet the Bright Young Things! Some of them are working for you today; some of them have worked for you in the past; perhaps you are one of them yourself. They are buying from you and their networks are buying from you and they have the power to influence others to buy from you, or not…
One email to a strong network can have a tremendous effect: “I came across this car-rental company in Cape Town. Their cars are not really any different in quality or price from other companies, but they are the funkiest bunch of people! The company was started by a guy…” And there follows a story that inspired one BYT so much that he is giving free marketing to hundreds of people who trust his opinion 200% more than they trust any advertising campaign. Of course the email could also read like this: “If you really want to buy from these guys again, don’t read further because after you’ve read this you will never want to come close to that place again…” The power of connecting to the Bright Young Things.
Continue reading ‘Connecting with your Bright Young customers’
Hi team, I had a great exploratory conversation with Hannelie Minnaar, the Assistant Registrar at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) this morning. I invited her to interact with us on this opportunity via our blogger so that these ideas can get a life of their own…as they usually do as soon as we start working through them.
The opportunity is this: To transform higher education in South Africa. The TUT understand the fact that we are entering a new world where relationships are critical and they want to totally transform themselves into a client-centered learning institution. Top management already bought into this although the new university Principle will only be appointed in the next two weeks or so. The opportunity is open for TomorrowToday to partner with the TUT throughout this process. They want to develop individuals that will be relevant and successful in the workplace of the future and they want us to help them on this journey.
Continue reading ‘Amazing opportunity at Tshwane University of Technology’
It’s funny how something that goes wrong, actually gives a company an opportunity to score massive brownie points - depending on how they handle it. I had such an experience with Kulula and afterwards went to their website and posted a comment. This is my comment to them and their subsequent response can be found here (word document).
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The Monday 9 May 11:20 flight from CT to JHB couldn’t take off because of engine problems. I was in a terrible hurry as I had to do a critical presenation in Pretoria at 15:00. Firstly I want to commend the frankness with which the captain explained the situation to the already-seated passengers. Your values: “safety first” and “honesty” were certainly visible. Secondly, to the Kulula ground crew on CT International a warm thanks with your assistance and help to get me on a one-time flight. I was there with my wife and baby and they made it real easy. To err is normal, but the way in which you handle the subsequent crisis is what distinguishes one.
Go Kulula, go!
Can we not partner with a bank / respected financial institution to roll out a massive “understand compound interest” training movement throughout the country? We do this as part of being proud South Africans. We have contacts with financial institutions. We also have contacts with VERY good trainers (in Sotho, Zulu, English, Afrikaans and maybe more,,,). The plan is this: We streamline the business plan. We get a few financial companies into the deal. 
We appoint a programme manager who gets paid out of the overall budget. (I have someone in mind already). We get a training designer to design the learning material ( I can help with this, but Estelle Gallager will be the perfect one). We line up train-the-trainers (I can also help training them). We line up teams from the sponsoring companies to do the training themselves. We make this a buildingUP/reachingOUT angle and capitalize on the team building benefits it has. We splash it all over the media. We make a difference on all levels of society.
Listen people: There are people out there who get cash loans in order to pay off other cash loans!!! AAARRGGHHH - this really hurts me. And they live in small RDP-houses and they are supposed to support entire families. Let’s not wait for government to solve this…
This morning I took my baby to Ampath to get blood samples for the Netherland-lab. We also had an option to take him to the Pretoria Academic Hospital tomorrow for the same sample. Obviously we rather decided to go for the Ampath-option. You know - first world, private sector, blah blah blah. Anyway, the sister couldn’t even spell “Francois”, let alone obtain the blood sample. After the second prick (with a much more vicious lance-like utensil) she still couldn’t get nearly enough blood to cover the required space on the ticket. She then called two other sisters and none of them have ever done this before. So we decided to stop the circuis (baby screaming) and take the state-hospital option.
What an ironical situation. There at Pretoria Academic Hospital you will find a Dr Izel Smuts. She is a world-famous pediatric neurologist yet she has her life their on grass-roots level, so to speak. All the private pediatricians we talked to, refered us to her as a last resort - because she’s the best. She doesn’t have a secretary. Her office, the clinic where she sees patients and the ward where she does her rounds are each a few blocks apart. Her desk is smaller than a 2-man table at a coffee shop. When you walk into that clinic it really feels as if you are in middle Africa somewhere. Really. And of course she only gets a state salary.
Amazing how South Africa presents vignettes like this one. People just living out their passion - no, their calling - and not asking for anything more than being able to make a living contribution of outstanding excellence.
As I write this I stare across the plains of Northern KwaZulu-Natal. The closest town is 30kms away. Very few people speak anything but Zulu. Very few people had any (proper) education. My mother-in-law started a Nougat factory here and currently she employs about 160 people. All women. All Zulu. Most of them on education NQF-level 1 and ABET level 1-2. Fransie, my wife, runs a coaching and training programme with the workers. The purpose is to give them proper ABET (Adult Basic Education and Training) training and to give them the opportunity to share and work through some of their personal difficulties.
Guess what their main personal difficulty is: They receive at least R1000 per month. They need to sustain themselves, their children, their uncle’s children and pay school fees. Still they need/want to buy furniture and clothing. They get credit from Joshua Door and Jet. They don’t understand how credit works. They get in trouble meeting the repayments. They get a cash loan to pay the debt. They are stuck.
What an unethical way to do business! Making money out of people’s crises and their lack of understanding compound interest. How can someone who can hardly count understand compound interest and its devestating effects (if it works against you)? I think government should, as part of its fight against poverty, ban all loan sharks. Let them use their financial skills to make money out of the wealthy and not to squeeze the poor to death!
Me: “Hi, this is Jean Cooper speaking. I just want to point out a small administrative error: I hired a car from you at R88 per day, but you charged me R235 a day.”
Car rental company: “No, sir, it is not an admin error. You were supposed to hire the car for 6 days, but you brought it back on the 5th day.”
Me: “My flight schedule changed. Yes, I brought it back earlier but how can that constitute a 294% price increase? What harm did I cause you by bringing the car back earlier? In fact, by having the car back a day earlier you could rent it out again one day earlier…”
Car rental company: “I’m sorry sir, the contract was for 6 days, not for 5.”
Me: “Yes, but can you understand my point? I will pay for the full 6 days - you can even leave the car in your carpark for today, if you want to. I benefited you by bringing the car back early. How can you penalize me for that?”
Car rental company:“Sorry sir, our system works that way.”
Me: “Why?”
Car rental company:“Because the contract was for 6 days, not for 5.”
Me: “I know about the contract, I’m asking for some reason. Can’t you change the system?”
Car rental company:”Sir, our system works this way. We had a contract….”
Round and round we went. Their system vs. my unique situation. And it’s true - we had a contract for their 6-day winter special which I violated by bringing the car back EARLY. But I’ll never use them again. Nor will my entire family. Nor will my network.
(I’m not putting their name here as I don’t want to use the power of this blogger for my personal fights)
Last week I had a conversation that shocked me. Cold. It was with someone in my extended family. The conversation started with the war in Iraq and ended with a debate about racism. I know, it sounds impossible to have a debate around racism because what is there to argue about? Racism is wrong and all new South Africans know that by now. Wrong! There are actually young people in South Africa who are coldblooded racists! Perhaps I was just very naive because of the circles I usually mingle with, but I awoke with the shocking realisation that there is a very thin line between being conservative and being racist…
Continue reading ‘Racist or Conservative: The thin red line…’
If the world is changing faster than ever before, and if we are rapidly moving towards a world where your competitive advantage increasingly depends on your ability to attract, retain and get the most out of the talented individuals in your industry, leaders cannot ignore the need to be able to adequately develop and prepare their people for the future. But how should we train people for a world that doesn’t yet exist? Which knowledge and skills should we focus on if current skills and knowledge might be obsolete tomorrow? Or should we rather focus on attitudes? How do you train someone that has all the information in the world at her fingertips already?
In the first article I outlined seven attributes that are widely regarded as essential for success in the future workplace. The second article highlighted the way in which you should view the learner if you hoped to have any significant impact on her development. In this article I will take a closer look at the role of the facilitator of the learning process. As I mentioned in the previous article, I will use the terminology ‚learner‛ and ‚facilitator‛ although these terms also refer to leaders/followers; managers/staff, trainers/trainees etc.
Facilitator vs teacher
The role of the facilitator is aptly described by the name: facilitator. Someone who facilitates learning. Someone who makes learning easy. Please note that I did not use the term ‚teacher‛. Where a teacher gives a didactic lecture which covers the subject matter, a facilitator helps the learner to get to his or her own understanding of the content. In the former scenario the learner plays a passive role and in the latter scenario the learner plays an active role in the learning process. The emphasis thus turns away from the instructor and the content, and towards the learner and her context. This dramatic change of role implies that a facilitator needs to display a total different set of skills than a teacher. A teacher tells, a facilitator asks; a teacher lectures from the front, a facilitator supports from the back; a teacher gives answers according to a set curriculum, a facilitator provides guidelines and creates the environment for the learner to arrive at his or her own conclusions; a teacher mostly gives a monologue, a facilitator is in continuous dialogue with the learners. A facilitator should also be able to adapt the learning experience ‘in mid-air’ by using his or her own initiative in order to steer the learning experience to where the learners want to create value.
Why this change of role?
- Because you don’t have all the answers anymore. We live in a world where there are various answers to the same questions. Why should your answer be superior to mine?
- Because I learn better when I discover things for myself. Of course it’s easier if you just give me the content � but that’s boring! And I don’t need you to give me the content, just give me my internet-connection and I’ll dig up the content myself.
- Because the content alone is not what it’s about. Things change. The content you give me now is old by lunch-time tomorrow. Rather excite me about the topic and help me to master the foundational concepts � as well the skills to continuously master new ones.
- Because my questions are more important than your answers. Respect my questions, don’t smother them with quick answers. I’d rather live with the ambiguity.
What does this mean in practice?
- Rather think of creative ways to help the learner explore and discover the topic than spending hours and hours on developing slides and slides of content.
- Develop your facilitation skills. Don’t tell them the answers � ask them the questions that will lead them to the answers. Usually when we get nervous, we tend to convert to teaching mode. Resist this temptation.
- If you are a leader, these principles should be applied in your everyday interactions with your people. Facilitate their development: do not try to teach them in YOUR ways � help each person to discover her/his own way.
Jean Cooper is an Organisational Alchemist at TomorrowToday.biz, a dynamic organisation that is assisting both large and small companies navigate the rich steams of the new economy. Jean completed two Masters degrees in 2004, both cum laude (an MPhil and MComm). He is an Industrial Psychologist and team dynamics expert, with a passion for helping companies get the best out of their bright young things.
Yesterday Frank and I facilitated a three-hour experience with Sportron’s top sales leaders in the Drakensberg. What a great company this is! During dinner I told Dr. T (Sportron’s head) of a specific nougat brand and the only question he had was: “Is it good for you?” It seems as if this is the unwritten Sportron motto “Is it good for you?”
Not only are their products ‘good for you’, but it also seems as if Sportron as an organisation is good for its people. Several stories were shared of people who really benefited on a personal level from being part of Sportron. I had the flu while presenting the programme and it was amazing the amount of care they gave me once they found this out after the workshop. And their products really were ‘good for me’!
I think all organisations can learn from direct marketing companies. They perfected the art of relationship-business long ago. This was so evident in the team we had there, although it was only for a short period of time. The sincerity between the leaders and the team and the team amongst each other and the fun they have while doing their business is inspiring. Of course there are always things in all teams than can be improved, but we can all learn from Sportron’s passion for learning, care for people, value for empowering relationships and determination to succeed.
Whatever you do to yourself or to others, always remember to ask: “Is it good for you?”
Where you live becomes irrelevant in a virtual team - or does it? Recently I had quite a peculiar experience. Graeme had a presentation close to where I live and we agreed to have coffee afterwards at a coffee shop just around the corner from my house. I was there a bit before him and ordered so long while I waited. When he arrived I had the strangest feeling. It wasn’t the excitement of coffee with Graeme (sorry Graeme!). It was the fact that this would be the first coffee I had with one of our team members in MY valley. My space. The piece of earth where so many of my stories intertwine and weave across each other. My piece of earth. My valley. Me.
What can we learn from this experience regarding the importance of geography in virtual teams?
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