Learnings around working from home

One of the emerging requests/trends in today’s business environment centers around the mystery of ‘working from home’. Many people talk with much  gravitas about the ‘ins and outs’. However, in my experience, once you dig under the surface a little, you discover how little they know. In fact how little is known, period, about this subject (again that’s my opinion).

You can understand then, why this blog post from Inc Magazine caught my attention. The entire staff decided, as an experiment, to see what they could learn about working from home. And so home they went, for one month. What a great project : )

This article is written one week in, and they give a brief summary of the learnings so far:

Remember to eat

Prepare for e-mail overload

Get out of the house

Get a comfortable chair

Video chat is your friend

Don’t forget to stop

You can actually get stuff done

In the article they unpack each of these 7 points. Worth following and reading for sure….

Five upcoming changes in the way we work

Tammy Erickson, Harvard Business Review contributor and author of multiple books, including Retire Retirement and Workforce Crisis, has written about the five key changes she is expecting in the workplace in 2010. What do you think? Do you agree with her?

1. Two-job norm — More people will maintain two sources of income than ever before. Instead of relying on the onetime holy grail of employment — a salaried job with full benefits — workers will create a series of backup options. For many, especially those in creative or knowledge-based work, this is likely to include becoming entrepreneurs. A second job or even a small entrepreneurial venture provides a safety net, giving workers a small measure of control over their fate in an increasingly unstable environment.
2. Less “off hours” work — Recession-management approaches that made full-time employees take a day a week “off” planted some new questions in the minds of employees who had been working virtually 24×7. What is a “day?” Eight hours? Twenty percent of the time I normally work each week? For many, these questions lead inevitably to: If they only want me to work four days a week, why am I working more than 32 hours? Many companies have come to rely on very long work weeks as staffing cuts lead to more work for the remaining individuals and technology facilitated round-the-clock work. I expect to see more push back this year — in part because many individuals will be spending time advancing their second work option.
3. Competition for discretionary energy — Engagement has been a hot topic in talent management circles for the past decade. But its benefits have focused primarily on attracting and retaining employees. Increasingly, managers’ focus will shift to competing for an employee’s discretionary energy — competing with other priorities in the employee’s life, including other options for work — but also competing against employees who are only “going through the motions.” More and more of the work in today’s economy cannot be done rotely — success requires a spark of extra effort, creativity, collaboration, and innovation.
4. More diverse arrangements — By now, most companies have put a variety of flex work options on the books. In 2010, I believe these arrangements will begin to take hold in significant ways, driven by employee preferences, facilitated by new technologies, supported by new managers who themselves are more comfortable with virtual work.
5. Transparent, “adult” arrangements — My favorite change is the growth in what I like to call “communities of adults” — a philosophy of recasting the employment relationship from one of paternalistic care to adult choice. A simple example is offering a menu of benefit options and letting employees choose those that work best. Further along the spectrum would include encouraging employees to “own” their own feedback process or even set their own compensation levels. These sorts of changes won’t settle in this year, but they’re coming. I expect we’ll see more examples as the year progresses.

Source: HBR blogs

Free video course on Managing Generation Y at work

In December 09, Graeme Codrington recorded a series of short videos on Managing Generation Y at Work. This was done with Success.tv in London. These videos are now available for free:

The videos are:

• The New World of Work – an introduction to what we do, and the concept that drives our thinking
• The New Generation
• Managing Young Talent
• Personalising the Workplace
• Managing Meetings in the digital age

Feel free to use these videos in your companies. But, if you’d like more details or have one of our team speak live at your next event, why not contact us and make a booking enquiry.

Tesco, a talented company

I’m always on the lookout for talented companies and I think I found one on my doorstep. The company’s name is Tesco and earlier this week I gave our Mind the Gap presentation at their marketing team away day.

I’m a fan of Tesco (and have written several blogs on the company see TPF has lift off and Tesco trains their staff in generational talk) mainly for one simple reason the customer service and experience I receive when shopping there. I love the fact that they have a stated policy of never having more than two people standing at the checkout. As soon as there is a third person, a new checkout is opened, and this policy works! From the Tesco Express around the corner from where I live, to their megastores I have seen it in action without fail. It is a simple policy but its execution is genius and it keeps me going back to Tesco because I hate wasting my time standing in lines, who doesn’t!

Recently I wrote an article called the Talent Reboot and argued that companies need to be focusing on creating talented companies (by creating talented tribes) rather focusing on individual talent (as banks do). It was therefore great to find in Tesco an example of a talented tribe in action. Carolyn Bradley , Tesco’s marketing director, did a great presentation using Tesco TV adverts (from as far back as the seventies) to bring to life the history of the Tesco brand. It was amazing to see the innovative initiatives and strategies that Tesco has launched since the early 1970’s to grow its market share to nearly twice that of it’s closest competitor. What was more impressive was that this growth has been achieved during at a time when Tesco’s competitors market share has remained relatively stagnant or even decreased. But it was by observing the marketing team in action at their away day and later at their office, that it became apparent that there is more to Tesco than innovative ideas, they are been building talented tribes.

The team spirit I observed at their away day was amongst the best that I have ever seen. I was privileged enough to be given a tour of their very unassuming head office and treated to lunch at the staff canteen (I had a very tasty Cumberland sausage and mash). I was able to see how each marketing team had decorated their cubicles with Christmas themes, building mock chimneys for Santa and using fake polystyrene snow. The finance team won the best and most imaginative design supporting the belief that within each accountant there is a creative marketer waiting to break free. The marketing team at Tesco is clearly talented and full of energy. What I observed at Tesco is very similar to what Zappos, America’s most successful online shoe retailer has achieved. Zappos is often used as a case study of a company that has created talented tribes. At Zappos teams dress up to celebrate events, decorate their team areas and are passionate about what they do – customer service.

What Tesco and Zappos appear to have in common are talented tribes and huge commercial success. They are clearly getting the ingredients right and I plan to follow their stories a lot closer.

Good to Great… to Gone!

Jim Collins got it wrong. Not totally wrong, but wrong enough that we need to be careful (as always) about who we listen to when designing companies for future success. Too often, leaders take a shortcut and blindly apply models they find somewhere else, without doing the work to adapt it to their culture and context.

Jim Collins is, of course, the international superstar guru author of “Built to Last” (buy at Kalahari.net or Amazon.co.uk), “Good to Great” (buy at Kalahari.net or Amazon.co.uk) and most recently, “How the Mighty Fall” (buy at Kalahari.net or Amazon.co.uk). His first two books are the two best selling business books of all time. His latest is bound to follow suit.

I have to declare that I am not the wildest fan of Mr Collins. I have read too many reports from the research teams that have worked with/for him, and are very disgruntled at how he has used their work without giving them any credit. I also received my copy of “How the Mighty Fall” yesterday, and was amazed to turn to the back cover of the book and see a single quotation, made by none other than… Jim Collins. I’m still to read the book, but I wonder if “hubris” and “arrogance” are possible ingredients in how the mighty fall? (Certainly “humilty” was a key element of his “Level 5 Leadership” principle). I’ll say more on this at the end of this (long) post… (But, then again, maybe I’m just jealous).

That personal comment aside, though, the question nevertheless remains: Are the models Jim Collins presents worth following? This is especially important since two of his “Good to Great” companies have recently gone bankrupt, and on average the whole lot have performed WORSE than the general stock exchange index over the past year or so of the recession. Are the principles in Collins’ books eternal? Or do they belong to an era that no longer exists?

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From Hawaii: The Real Learning for Teams

Had an insightful conversation today.

As with any education programme orientated around leadership, standard practice is to have participants work in groups, teams or in business-speak, cohorts. Where do they come up with this terminology, some of which is part of the problem but that is another subject!

There are always two main arteries to such group work: The end product (usually some sort of plenary presentation) and then the process itself – the journey towards realizing ‘the end product’.  What happens in a performance driven culture is that the end product – the presentation, becomes the total focus. The pressure to perform, to impress one’s colleagues in many cases becomes a major source of stress. While this is an important aspect to the purpose of the group work, I suspect the ‘real learning’ gets missed.

The ‘real’ learning is embedded in how the group got to the delivery point. It is in the team dynamics, the process of reaching the end goal. Questions that explore this journey seldom get asked and because of that, the very real dynamics of teamwork get ignored. For instance, questions pertaining to leadership in the group and how that evolved, participation, getting stuck and making progress, negotiating differences, handling conflict etc…provide the courageous conversations of real learning in this example.  These tough conversations and analysis this is dependent on the ability to give and receive authentic feedback, and therein sits another problem for without the anonymous forms and HR methodologies to hide behind, many simply do not know how to do this in a constructive, mature way.

My insightful conversation involved an individual who felt excluded from participating in the group process. Repeated efforts to be heard failed, resulting in the individual simply ‘going along’ in silent ‘agreement’.  The group was the poorer for this omission.

The chances of this type of exclusion occurring are significantly increased when working in a diverse or cross-cultural group. The barriers represented by generational difference, cultural differences and personal differences, to name but a few, mean that inclusive cooperation in not easily achieved.

Naturally the APLP programme cannot prevent the difficulties that emerge in doing such group work. However, unlike most executive leadership type programmes, the learning emphasis sits not in the presentation but in the process. Today, having done the presentations, we will be allowing time for unpacking how the respective groups traveled the road towards that goal. It will provide some insightful learning and certainly tee up the opportunity for the teams and individuals to grasp some deep learning. With responsibility for learning resting with the Learner, that will be their responsibility to realize.

I look forward to the session!

Barrie on Talk Radio 702 at 2pm this afternoon – 11 August

Join Barrie Bramley as he is interviewed by Simon Gear on Talk Radio 702 this afternoon, 2pm. The subject is social networking – not a new subject as we’ve been networking since we first spotted each other.  It’s the mechanisms we use, the rules of engagement and value placed on our engagement that has changed with time. Join Barrie and Simon as they unpack the new rules of engagement.

Barrie is currently on a well deserved break at the Umngazi River Bungalows – I could think of worse places to be to be doing an interview from – almost time to get off the beach Barrie and ready for the interview.

Pupils to study Twitter and blogs in primary schools shake-up

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TomorrowToday does extensive research on the impact of changing societies, institutions and technologies on the new world of work and what is called the connection era.

There are signs that one of the UK’s largest institutions, its schools, are changing and realising the importance of preparing kids for the new world of work and the connection era. A new school curriculum proposes that children will no longer have to study the Victorians or the second world war but will be required to master web tools such as Twitter and Wikipedia.

This is bound to be controversial but one of the problems the current curriculum faces is that the top 10 jobs in demand in 2010 did not exist in 2004. The current challenge for today’s school curriculum is to prepare kids for jobs that don’t even exist today.

you can read The Guardian for the latest report on this issue.

Generations online… who’s on and who’s not?

It’s great to follow the online trends for each generation. Pew Internet recently completed a report called Generations online in 2009. You can get the full report here but I’ve copied the key highlights for you below:

Generation Y, aka the “Net Generation,” does not dominate every aspect of online life. That revealing statistic and many others like it come from Pew Internet and American Life’s recent “Generations Online” report which takes a look at how the different generations of users – from Millennials to the G.I. Generation – use the internet.

The web is still largely populated by younger generations as over half of those online are between the ages of 18 and 44 years old. But these days, larger percentages of older generations are going online and they are doing more activities while there.

According to Pew’s research, Generation X is most likely to shop, bank, and look for health information online, but boomers are just as likely as Gen Y to make travel reservations online. Even the older Silent Generation is competitive when it comes to email, although that could point to the fact that email is an activity that is trending older.

Who Uses Email?
It’s true: email is for old people – at least it is now. Today, 74% of internet users age 64 and older send and receive email, making it the most popular activity in this group. Meanwhile, email usage among teens is dropping. In 2004, 89% of teens said they used email. Now that number is 73%.

Social Networking Dominated by the Young
Teens and Generation Y (18-32*) are the most likely to use the internet for entertainment and for communicating with friends and family through social networks. They’re also more likely than others to play online games, watch videos, send instant messages, hang out in virtual worlds, and download music. In other words, they’re the most likely to use the net for fun.

The favorite online activity for teens, however, is not social networking – it’s game playing. 78% of 12-17 year-olds play games online, but only 50% of Gen Y does.

Older Generations Research, Shop, and Bank
It’s not really surprising to discover that the older generations use the internet less for socializing and entertainment and more for research, email, and shopping. Generation X (ages 33-44) remains the leader when it comes to online shopping with 80% using the internet to buy products online, compared with 71% of internet users ages 18-32.

What is surprising is that users age 73 and up use the internet just as frequently for doing health searches as does Gen Y. In fact, researching health information is only the third most popular online activity for seniors, after email and general online search.

However, when it comes to online banking, it’s Gen X that dominates. 67% of this age group does their banking online. Gen Y will most likely do more banking online as they grow older. You can see the activity trending up in their group from 38% in 2005 to 57% in 2008. As Gen Y ages, this number will continue to increase, as does the percentage using the net for booking travel. In 2005, 50% of Gen Y booked travel online and today 65% do.

Facebook, relationships and dream teams

Focused, friendly, inspired, collaborative, outputs-driven, warm, respectful, innovative, wise, reasonable risk-takers, in synch, complementary, assertive, successful, cutting edge, high performance, visionary

 I attended a leadership course on Monday evening and we had to brainstorm a ‘dream team’.  The words above are a small sample of the ideas I copied off the flipchart.  The point of the exercise was to illustrate how many of the qualities of a dream team are based on meaningful relationships.

Judging from the success of networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace, it seems we crave interactions with and connections to other people.  Then why is it that there are so few dream teams around?  Why is it, that in a world that is obsessed with connectivity, we find it so difficult to build the relationships that are the foundations of visionary teams?

Apparently the average middle manager gets at least 80 email messages per day. Instant messages demand instant responses. Our costs of interacting have been reduced to almost zero but the volume of our interactions is heading towards infinity. There is no time to anticipate the future – people are too busy reacting to demands of the present.  The quantity of communication has increased but the quality has decreased.  There is no time to think.  Creativity lies dormant because everything else is more urgent.

Today we can connect better with Alaska and Outer Mongolia.  But, do we still connect with the same quality with the people who work on the floor below us?  Facebook, mobile phones and email have given us breadth not depth.  We are spread too thinly.  We have quantity, not quality.

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If something is wrong, why are people not proactive enough to fix it?

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell is an excellent book.  In fact, it was so good that I read all 267 pages in one sitting.

In 1964, a young lady called Kitty Genovese was chased and brutally attacked on a street in New York City.  That sounds tragic but not as tragic as this – 38 people witnessed the attack from the windows of their homes.  No one intervened or called the police.

After much analysis and media attention, it was decided that this event epitomized the alienation and anonymity of people in New York City.  Living in a crowded city like London, I can relate.  People are always in each other’s personal space so, in order to protect yourself, you zone them out.  Indifference becomes a conditioned reflex.  That sounds like a pitiful excuse so two New York psychologists investigated the Kitty Genovese attack further. 

These social psychologists staged emergency situations to determine which witnesses would help and when they would act.  The outcome was fascinating – the severity of the event did not affect a witness’s decision to help the victim or take proactive measures to solve the crisis.  The number of witnesses to the event determined whether people helped or not.

Gladwell says, ‘The lesson is not that no one called despite the fact that 38 people heard her scream; it’s that no one called because 38 people heard her scream.  Ironically, had she been attacked on a lonely street with just one witness, she might have lived.’

This is known as the ‘Bystander Problem’.  It means that, in a group, people are generally less responsive because they expect everyone else to act.  If no one does, they assume it is not a big problem.  Responsibility for taking action is diluted by a group.

The penny dropped for me because I experienced the ‘Bystander Problem’ many times at work.  As a manager, I was often shown problems that could have been solved earlier if someone used their initiative and was proactive.  But no one did this and now I understand why – when there are many people involved, they expect others to act.  Responsibility is diffused among the group.

I didn’t realize how sensitive people are to their environment.  Gladwell calls it the ‘Power of Context’ and says the moral of the story is that if you want people to change their behaviour – help someone in need or solve a problem at work – most of the time you can do this by considering the small, subtle details of their immediate surroundings.

Let the crowd decide (if you have a bestselling book or not)

Founded by HarperCollins, Authonomy is a new community that invites unpublished and self-published authors to post at least 10,000 words of a fiction or non-fiction manuscript for visitors to read online.

Visitors can review and recommend books, and can showcase their five favourite submissions on a virtual bookshelf that’s viewable from their profile page. Authonomy keeps track of the number of recommendations a book receives and ranks writers accordingly. Readers are also ranked, based on how good they’ve been at spotting books that make it to the top of Authonomy’s charts. To help authors make it from computer screen to printed book, once a month the top five books are delivered to the desks of an editorial board made up of international HarperCollins commissioning editors.

The website is free to use both for readers and writers, and HarperCollins hopes the wisdom of the crowds will help them unsource potential hits that individual editors or agents might otherwise miss, or just don’t have the time to read. Needless to say, the site could also prove to be a good marketing tool once manuscripts are actually published, since authors won’t have to build a fan base from scratch.

ABSA on FaceBook

I know this is old news for most people, but I figured we should at least log it on our blog.

Got sent this from a colleague, Jude, a while ago. She got it from BizCommunity, but I can’t find any trace of it through their search function.

They have 2060 ‘fans’ as of today. They’re saying, below, that there are 700 000 South African’s on FaceBook. They have a way to go, but it is a start.

Absa joins Facebook

?Social networking sites offer opportunities for us to establish new channels of communication with our customers, and better understand their needs,? says Christo Vrey, managing executive of Absa Digital Channels, and this is why Absa, South Africa’s largest retail bank, has launched its profile on Facebook.

While Absa is known for its dynamic approach to the younger generation, winning Sunday Times/Markinor Coolest Bank Award in 2006 and 2007, its entry into Facebook highlights the growing importance of social networking sites to traditional corporations.

?More and more companies around the world are embracing social media as a way to develop deeper connections with their customers. We’re excited about the possibilities our Facebook profile will bring,? adds Vrey.

South Africa has a surprisingly large Facebook following: various sources confirm there are about 700 000 members, putting it inside the world’s top 10 countries in terms of Facebook members. Absa already has a significant online presence, with 1.25 million individuals visiting its site each month, and nearly one million Internet Banking customers.

Absa’s Facebook profile has launched with a competition to win an Apple MacBook, around the theme of the bank’s ?Put your best foot forward’ campaign. People will be able to view images and TV videos of the campaign; and have their say.

?We are encouraging people to tell us how they ?put their best foot forward’, and tell us about their philosophies towards life, all summed up within a sentence or two,? says Vrey. 

Absa’s Facebook profile can be found at www.facebook.com/pages/ABSA/12216188250.

Is this the future design for companies?

I came across an interesting article in the Mckinsey Quarterly today which argues that companies need to take the power behind informal networks and create formal networks. Their consultants state that:

- Most large corporations have dozens if not hundreds of informal networks, in which human nature, including self-interest, leads people to share ideas and collaborate.
- Informal networks are a powerful source of horizontal collaboration across thick silo walls, but as ad hoc structures their performance depends on serendipity and they can’t be managed.
- By creating formal networks, companies can harness the advantages of informal ones and give management much more control over networking across the organization.
- The steps needed to formalize a network include giving it a “leader,” focusing interactions in it on specific topics, and building an infrastructure that stimulates the ongoing exchange of ideas.

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Building Network Alliances – The future for profitability and success in turbulent times.

Business world is facing the dawning of a new alliance age / revolution that will bring about a new business model more symbiotic and substantially different from the business model of today. The competitive and changing economic landscape demands a new business model…one removed from the shareholder value model to one where value for all stakeholders is created. A model where symbiosis is common place, a model where an entirely new set of rules, governances and structural design/architecture is created; a model that requires the mobilisation of every ounce of intelligence from the managers managing the relationships. In this article our UK & European Director, Dean van Leeuwen, shares with us the results from interviewing over 30 senior executive managers and undertaking a broader global research study of leading companies. The results are illuminating.

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A lesson from politics…

Politics in America is hotting up and I’ve been curious to note that with all their charisma and pedigree the Clintons have started falling behind and even though Hillary did rally in New Hampshire primary they still trail Obama. Now I’m not into politics but what did interest me was what John Sviokla had to say on a new post in Harvard Business. He has identified that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama treat their supporters differently. Clinton considers her backers as “customers” while Obama sees his supporters as “members”

For example, Sviokla points out that their two web sites differ radically. On Obama’s you received “points” for each activity you do such as creating a profile, making your profile public, logging in, or befriending a link and you can “climb” this social/political ranking by engaging more–hosting events, linking to others, raising money and many other forms of participation. To anyone in the MySpace/Facebook generation this type of functionality is expected. In contrast, joining the Clinton web site gives you an identification tag like TZ3QQ7, so that any donations can be tracked – sounds just like the old style “frequent purchaser” numbers that everyone from CVS to American Airlines uses.

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Yuwie – earn cash for playing

The explosion and evolution of social networks on the internet is something I have been watching and participating with a keen interest especially Youtube, Facebook and SecondLife. What is great about these social networks is that around the time of the dotcom crash period most commentators said that people would not “socialize” on the web, preferring personal contact. Well I don’t think these commentators predicted the impact that the millennial generation or generation X would have on social networking! History is now proving thesm wrong, Facebook has over 50 million users and is valued at £7.5bn

With results like these imitators are of course following fast. It’s simple economics and anyone familiar with Michael Porters 5 Forces model will know that industries displaying high profits and low barriers to entry will attract competition. One of the new boys on the block is Yuwie an social network who’s proposition is to share with it’s members a percentage of the advertising revenue the company gets. According to founder Korry Rogers “Yuwie users get paid every time they log on, send a message, upload a picture or invite someone to join.” So if you visit pages, you earn money, if you invite friends, you earn money, if your friends login in, you and they earn money…sounds like a no brainer… but is it? Do people really want to earn money out of their social networking and what their friends do…Facebook believes that it’s core members don’t and the opinion of some analysts is that people use social networks to link up with friends and make new friends not to earn money out of these social activities. So will the lure of making a potential £200 or more per month be enough for users to switch from their current social networks? Personally, I like Facebook and funnily enough now feel that I have a “personal investment” and connection with the site so for me it isn’t easy to just switch. However, Yuwie launched in July 2007 and has over 350,000 members and is growing at 50,000 members a month. Seems to me that Yuwie’s proposition is working. Now of course the mighty Facebook could eliminate this threat by matching Yuwie’s offer but this would erode industry profits so they are unlikely to do so for now…But I’m intrigued enough to give Yuwie a try and who knows maybe earn some Yuwie pocket money… let’s call it a social networking experiement, I’m keen to be part of this evolution…

Phenomenonal, You

I write a regular column for the Intelligence magazine in South Africa. Its the Back Page column, and is meant to be fun, irreverent, interesting. (I have secret ambitions to emulate the back page of the Fortune magazine).

I thought you might be interested in a recent contribution about Web 2.0 and interactive websites.

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Links in a chain: How it all fits together

I was asked again the other day what the “theme” of this blog is. It can sometimes seem like a collection of rambling musings on the world. Well…

Besides being just that, it is really the place that the network at TomorrowToday.biz put all their musings on the world. This is part of what we do at TomorrowToday – we track societal trends, trying to spot patterns and identify futures and scenarios.

Every now and again, we get glimpses of how major forces combine to shape societies and destinies globally. One such thought hit me today, and it brings together things we say around retiring Boomers, globalisation, governments, investment opportunities, emerging markets, and much more. Its a simple, yet profound thought.
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A Delicious Fetish

Joshua Schachter once sent me an email. At the time, I had no idea who he was – his response had come from a request I’d sent to the del.icio.us ‘support team’. Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site, I needed some help figuring out how to use it (being new to the concept) and support@del.icio.us seemed a good place to start.

His email was dated 11 October 2005. Not two months later, on 9 December, Joshua announced on his personal blog that Yahoo! had snatched up his fledgling Web 2.0 startup as part of their extreme 2.0 makeover. Nobody is really sure what was paid, but considering the bulk of the rumours estimated the price at USD30 million, give or take ten percent, Joshua did ok.

I’m not sure what it is about del.icio.us. It certainly isn’t pretty. In fact, it’s arguably one of the ugliest darn sites on the web. It might be the name – the name is downright smart, using the .us domain to complete a sublimely catchy Web 2.0-ish lilt. At least I got excited about that. Perhaps it’s all the extensions and plug-ins the del.icio.us community has created to integrate functionality into popular web browsers and blogging platforms. Then again, it might just be that I have found del.icio.us to be the least flashy, most functional, most valuable, most sustainable Web 2.0 application (and information resource) on the internet.

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The un-CEO

TomorrowToday.biz got a CEO last year. We elected someone within our ranks to take on the title of CEO. Essentially we wanted to know we had one person that the buck stopped at. Outside of that we’ve had a hard time working out what else we wanted our new CEO to do. And we continue to struggle with this. I smiled as I read an article on FastCompany today about an ‘un-CEO’. It sounded very TomorrowToday.biz like in it’s description of Terri Kelly, the CEO of a company called WL Gore and Associates.

In a decentralised, virtual and highly fractal organisation perhaps the more accurate description of the position is an un-CEO and not a CEO. That’s some of the problem with ‘lanuage’. It means something. And CEO conjures up stuff you want, stuff you don’t want, and even stuff you can’t hope to have in an organisation like ours.

Terri has some interesting stuff to say…

The idea of me as CEO managing the company is a misperception. My goal is to provide the overall direction. I spend a lot of time making sure we have the right people in the right roles. You know the joke, “I’m from corporate, and I’m here to help.” We don’t need unuseful, unvaluable corporate help. We empower divisions and push out responsibility. We’re so diversified that it’s impossible for a CEO to have that depth of knowledge — and not even practical.

How about doing an unconference?

We have all been to them, we all know what they are like and yet nothing changes. I’m talking about conferences in general and in some cases the strategy sessions and planning sessions that go on in the corporate world. They are generally, to use an analogy, like last weeks rolls that have been warmed up in the oven. They seem to be good, they look good, until you bite into them and then you know they are stale. The same goes for company planning sessions and conferences, they are generally stale and boring. So what is the fix. Well, according to Chris Corrigan, an Open Space Technology practitioner, an unconference based on Open Space needs to be arranged.

So what is Open Space Technology? Here is a definition from a practitioner of it in the States called Michael Herman:

“Open Space Technology is one way to enable all kinds of people, in any kind of organization, to create inspired meetings and events. Over the last 15 years, it has also become clear that opening space, as an intentional leadership practice, can create inspired organizations, where ordinary people work together to create extraordinary results with regularity.

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Narrative: high concept and touch

Dan Pink, in his book, A Whole New Mind (get it at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net), captures nicely what relevance Story (which I prefer to call Narrative) has in our economy. In my own words:

The information age was all about managing facts. The connection economy (or as he calls it, the conceptual economy) will be about remembering stories.

Narrative is both high concept and high touch. It is high concept in that it stretches our minds beyond linear, binary modes of dealing with information – concepts and values come alive in the context of a Narrative. Through this process Narrative becomes high touch – there is an emotional connection with Story that transcends the connection with plain information.

The Brussel Sprout and Christmas – an eBay parable

“All the world’s a stage”

eBay, the world’s online auction place, continues to provide amazing 21st century “village square” stories. There are a number of people selling left over, or completely uneaten, Christmas meals. One item caught my attention: a single Brussel Sprout (see auction here). Cooked (for 6 minutes in lightly salted water, we are told) and frozen. Now awaiting sale. It eventually fetched £ 99.95!! The funds were donated to charity. In the process of the bidding, a refrigerated truck driver offered to fetch and deliver the item anywhere in the UK for free! (Oh, and as I did my eBay search, I found many more other Brussel Sprouts for sale, most fetching about £5).

Why, you ask? Because eBay is not just an auction site. It is the “village square”. Its a giant flea market, not just with stalls and shoppers, but also with entertainers, and a few village idiots. And, while you’re out having fun, you’ll probably feel OK parting with some money to support a good cause or to pay an entertainment for a monet of frivolity. eBay proves you can do that online, too.

Its a strange world.

Social Software and Citizen Marketing

PVR was recently introduced into South Africa for the first time. MyPVR.co.za is a website built by an individual (Jason), completely dedicated to glorifying DStv’s new product. According to Jason, he does not get paid for the site or for his positive recommendations – his site is a labour of love. MyPVR.co.za is not the only site Jason has built around a brand – The Sad Life of a Penguin Pools Customer (www.supersmart.co.za) is the antithesis of MyPVR.co.za – it is a detailed, fact-supported account of Jason’s horrifying ordeal with the company.

Jason is a member of a fast-growing online community that is choosing social software (blogs, wiki’s, podcasts and RSS) to share its voice in the public domain. Before clients or customers (or employees) had only mainstream media (MSM) as an option if they had an important message to tell the world. Now anyone with an Internet connection can set up a free blog at Blogger.com for the entire world to see and interact with. It is reality Internet. Forget Isabel Jones’ Fair Deal, Carte Blanche and Special Assignment – citizen journalists are a force to be reckoned with.

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A fresh approach to Organisational Development

by Sonja Blignaut, Aiden Choles, Jean Cooper

We live in a world where things, people and ideas are better connected than ever before. A world where work can flow across the globe as fast and as cheap as it doesin your home office. We live in an increasingly complex world and as consultants, we need to accept this complexity and not try to downplay or negate it. The mistake we often make is to walk around with a few models and tricks and pre-packaged products in our briefcases which we then try to sell to whoever is interested. I have a solution; lets find a problem in your company we can fit it to.There is also the saying that he who is good with a hammer tends to think that everything is a nail. We need to constantly and vehemently guard against this. It is what we call the consultants trap: That you become so comfortable with your money-spinner concept or product, that your need to develop and learn gives way to the need to establish yourself around your unique solution. Suddenly it really isnt about the client anymore. It is about you.

In our continuous and sometimes hard-headed pre-occupation with a customer-centered approach to our work, we are constantly challenging ourselves to re-think our approaches and techniques to prevent us from falling into the consultants trap. As part of this process, we have recently started to build an alliance with the Cynefin Centre, an international research and consulting network. They, like us, also have a passion forembracing the complexity of organisations and ardently believe that their role is not to sell solutions, but to help organisations to craft their own solutions. Here is some background on the Cynefin Centre, the philosophy that guides them and how this links in with our own facilitative and narrative approaches.

The Cynefin Centre

In recent years, popular business management practices and traditional business consulting methodologies have suffered from the over-assumption that organisations and their associated issues are essentially ordered. In other words, given enough time and resources, direct cause and effect relationships can be discovered, and once known, best practice solutions can be defined and applied to other similar issues in future. Cause and effect relationships therefore are assumed to be predictable and repeatable.

Organisations are becoming more and more complex due to many factors such as globalisation, increasing cultural diversity and changing economies. Complex systems are seldom (if ever) predictable, as there are so many different entities interacting with each other, that the possible patterns that can form are almost endless. Think of 9-11, in retrospect we can connect the dots, and pass blame on the ones who missed the signs. Before the event though, the critical dots were part of a collection of millions of dots, each with the potential to form millions of different connections with each other. In a complex system it is impossible to connect the dots and accurately predict behaviour. Therefore best practices and other ordered solutions are seldom appropriate to the complex issues facing the 21^st-century organisation.

Over the last 7 years, Dave Snowden and the Cynefin Centre (which spun off from IBM in 2004) has developed a methodology based on applied research grounded in the areas of complexity science, cognitive psychology, anthropology, narrative, and social networks. The use of narrative or story to reveal patterns, and to pattern in its turn, is central to this methodology, which was developed specifically to deal with complex or intractable issues.

Cynefin (kun-evin) is a Welsh word, which seeks to remind us that all human interactions are strongly influenced and frequently determined by the patterns of our previous experiences, both through the direct influence of personal experience and through collective experience expressed as stories. The methodology is often referred to as pre-hypothesis research which differs from normal research methodologies (where the aim ofthe research is to prove a hypothesis), by admitting up-front that the exact nature of the issue or problem under investigation is unknown. This is especially critical when dealing with a complex system that by definition is seldom, if ever, predictable.Pre-supposing that you know what the problem is within a specific environment is like a doctor diagnosing your illness before hes even looked at the symptoms. The true nature of an issue whether, it is cultural or strategic will emerge from the environment itself if you listen to the stories that are being told about it. This approach ensures much more accurate diagnosis and intervention design.

Cynefin methods have been used with great success in projects all over the globe. In South Africa many successful projects have been run, including several in one of the big 4 banks. These projects focused on diverse topics such as investigating corporate culture, knowledge management, understanding customer experience and breaking into new markets. The insights that were gained both by participating in the project activities and by the outputs are viewed by the bank as being key differentiators for them in the banking industry. The CSIR also recently concluded a very successful project which was aimed at understanding the Innovation culture in one of their divisions.

Narrative and Cynefin

In the 1970s and 1980s a revolutionary approach to individual psychotherapy emerged known as Narrative Therapy. Narrative recognized the power and influence that words have in our histories and realities. Using textual practices, Narrative therapy aids people in re-authoring their personal stories in relation to presenting problems.

In a time when a dissatisfaction with the way in which scientific process and fact decided the way we should deal with problems, Narrative represented a way that embraced and explored the diversity and complexity with which we live our lives. However, this skillful approach was not to be kept in the realm of therapy for long. Coinciding with the realization that management practices of previous eras were no longer helpful in emerging economies, Narrative emerged as a fresh approach to understanding our companies and the manner in which we operate was provided the Story of our company.

Story has been used throughout our history as a means of capturing our experience, histories and meanings. In comparison to scientific methods, Story allows us to represent the complexity and ambiguous nature of human living through metaphor. For example, the use ofstories when parenting often conveys deeper understanding than that of direct instructions. Not to be confused with the fairytale stories of our childhood, Story is a process through which we capture and represent the culture of our organizations the mapping of our companys narrative.

Stemming from Narrative philosophy and practice, Cynefin represents a rich way of doing Story that previous approaches have failed in doing. In the past, Narrative practitioners of the therapy mould have attempted to do just the same, but in ways that were either too academic or irrelevant to the culture and style of the client. Instead, Cynefin speaks directly into the heart and complexity of our organizational cultures. Cynefin uses Narrative as a tool in formulating internal communication programmes, merger and acquisition work, innovation creation and culture measurement. The premise being that the answers to our problems lie within our Stories, not in the information provided by consultants. The founder of Cynefin, Dave Snowden (2005) is quoted as saying, “The stories told in an organisation, formally in presentations, around the water cooler, in project reviews, indeed in all aspects of organisational life, reveal the ideation patterns of the organisation. Narrative techniques both reveal the patterns of the organisation and are in turn the means by which it can be patterned.�

Cynefin practitioners offer a form of consulting that enables companies to discover their own solutions already present within their Narratives. Like a Narrative therapist, a Cynefin practitioner aims to uncover the clients Story, represent it in meaningful ways and then assist the client in molding their Narrative into a form that promotes and contributes to the organizations strategic goals and principles.

From theory to practice

TomorrowToday.biz is currently in the process of adding our thinking, processes and frameworks to some of the techniques that Cynefin uses in order to build and develop the expertise in both networks. In addition to linking up with the Cynefin Centre, we have also set up a Facilitation Community, which is a community of practitioners from different industries and organisations that endeavors to share thoughts, ideas and techniques in the pursuit of developing our collective skills, tools and methods as we facilitate development in organisations.

We invite you to join us as we explore ways in which to truly help organisations, groups and individuals to excel in scripting their own stories of greatness. If this interests you, please contact
Jean Cooper at jean@tomorrowtoday.biz.

Sonja Blignaut
Sonja is a Certified Cynefin Practitioner with application experience inareas such as SocialCorporate Culture Transformation, Knowledge ManagementCustomer Experience.studies on work she has done for IBM have been published in amongst others the EU Knowledge Board E-book on Knowledge Management.She is an experienced facilitator and is skilled at guiding groups through complex sense-making processes.has a degree in Meteorology and earlier experience includes consulting around Enterprise Content Management Solutions and Portals.

Aiden Choles
Aiden pursued academic and service avenues in clinical psychology, religious studies, drug rehabilitation, anger management in prisons, English literature, education, training, counseling andtherapeutic practice. While completing his Masters degree in Narrative practice at the age of 24, Aiden discovered his commercial aptitude and excelled in Human Resource Management within the SMME sector. Here he continued displaying his flair by branchingout into strategic management where he has proven himself as a highly competent management team facilitator, Black Economic Empowerment strategist, trainer, mentor and advisor to executives and management teams.

Jean Cooper
Jean is a registered Industrial Psychologist with four degrees, including two cum laude Masters degrees (Industrial Psychology and Applied Theology) both from the University of Pretoria. He specializes in utilizing various types of experiences to develop individuals, teams and organisations. His work on developing people for the future workplace has earned him international acclaim and was presented at the European Association of Work and Organisational Psychology (Istanbul) in May 2005.

“Podcast” declared ‘word of the year’

This could be seen as another post giving you amunition for why you need an iPod for Christmas, or it could be an illustration of just how important social software has become.

The New Oxford American Dictionary has declared ‘podcast’ as word of the year, and will add it to it’s online version in it’s next update early next year.

“Podcast was considered for inclusion last year, but we found that not enough people were using it, or were even familiar with the concept,” said Erin McKean, editor-in-chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary.

“This year it’s a completely different story. The word has finally caught up with the rest of the iPod phenomenon.”

Click here for the story on BBC News. Or check out the Oxford University Press blog for words that didn’t make it.

They rule

I came across a very intriguing web site (www.theyrule.net) today – the richness of the information, and the opportunities this could open up are amazing!

In a nutshell the site allows you to select any one of the top 500 US companies, expand it to see who’s on their board of directors, and look for linkages to board members of other top 500 companies – essentially you’re creating a social network with top 500 companies and their board members as the nodes. There is also a search function that allows you to search for a connecting path between two specified companies.

The information on the site is based on 2004 SEC filings and corporate web sites, so the accuracy may be questionable. The creators of the site also seem to have their own political agenda, but the technology and the idea behind it is extremely powerful.

Online, on tap resources

Imagine this…

You’re a manager in a large corporate, and you’re working on an important project. You assess your current team, and you realise that you’re a little short of some skills, and the team is not quite as balanced as should be. It could also do with a little bit more diversity. So, using your company’s latest web-based staffing software, you go online and enter a request for two additional staff members to provide 20 hours a week of input to your team. You are able to select from a wide variety of fields – either specifying a particular selection, or deciding which criteria are not important.

You may be able to specify some of the following: age, gender, culture, language, country of origin, current country of residence (for multinationals), personality profile (Maybe Meyers-Briggs MBTI, or Enneagram type, for example), leadership style (based on agreed profiles), team style (e.g. Belbin), skills and talent themes (e.g. Markus Buckingham’s ‘Now Discover Your Strengths‘ and Gallup’s StrengthQuest profile), expert knowledge and subject expertise, etc.
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Share and play tag on the new web playground

“It’s the latest wave on the Web: tools that combine search with tagging and social networks. These sites use real people to help tag articles to help create more relevant search results, and build communities around those folks as they share information and destinations. It’s a fascinating advance in Web culture, and it’s emerging rapidly.”

PC Magazine have put together an analysis of their choice of five of the neatest sites, including del.icio.us, Yahoo! My Web 2.0 and Jeteye. Check out their reviews for details on how well these services work, and then visit the sites for a look into the future of the World Wide Web.