#2. Accept Your Friends Mistakes

Continuing the journey of applying Dragos Roua's 100 Ways to Live a Better Life to my life. Number 2: Accept Your Friends Mistakes.  Dragos says: Maybe you got hurt by somebody. Happens. Just accept it and deal with it. People are making mistakes and if you can accept that for yourself, accept it for your friends too. In the end, all you need from them is their love.

It has taken me a few days to get to this post because I've had to do a lot of thinking about this recommendation. Here's why.


One of the traits I've had to work on my whole life is that I'm an "avoider". I think my parents were really successful in training me to avoid fights rather than get into them. The "bigger person" is the one who walks away must have really stuck with me because that has been my prefered strategy all my life.


Now, there are times when that is ok, even a good thing. But avoiding is not usually the best approach when it comes to mistakes - whether they are made by friends or employees. Avoiding means the mistake is never used as a teachable moment. It means that wounds are left open when they might be easily closed. It means that there is an unsettled sense of dissatisfaction underlying your relationship.


So I'm translating Dragos #2 to say "Accept, but don't avoid, your friends mistakes." My plan is to be mindful of my own actions and to be sure I confront mistakes and accept them. That way the opportunity to make those mistakes will not only benefit my friends it will benefit me.

1. Accept Your Mistakes

Beginning the journey of applying Dragos Roua's 100 Ways to Live a Better Life to my life. Number 1: Accept Your Mistakes.  Dragos says:
You’re human. We, humans, are making mistakes. Accept what you did wrong and try to do better next time. No need to punish yourself forever. In fact, accepting your mistakes is the only way to make them disappear.

Mike King had a really good post on Leadership:Accepting Mistakes in January. I like his use of the quote "Mistakes are the usual bridge between inexperience and wisdom." (Phyllis Therous) Mike also includes a couple really great lists that make his ideas easy to apply.

I'm of an age where I've had the opportunity to learn from lots of mistakes. I don't feel wise yet...more like I'm still on the bridge. I do want to share the one mistake I made that might help others the most.

My post before last was about trust, and it is interesting what role trust played in my mistake. As one more step in living up to Item 1. I'm even going to give you a link to the New York Times version of what happened. I was senior vice president at a charity that was hit with a multi-million dollar embezzlement. I could argue about where the responsibility lay for the theft but I'd rather point out how you might prevent it in your organization.

The person who engaged in the theft had been with the company for 20 years. That's where trust came in. It was not possible for us to imagine that she would steal from us. The result was that no one was watching closely enough. Procedures were unassigned or slipping. Simple safeguards weren't in place. Advisors weren't making sure that we understood their recommendations and weren't being persistent in demanding that we address them.

The point is that this could happen anywhere. We think of embezzlers as creative but the more I learned about the crime the more I came to realize that they are just opportunists. Accounting procedures work - if you follow them. But laxness is born of comfort and comfort is born of trust.

So I learned. I learned that the gravest danger to any business is in the smallest details. I work hard now to see that they are attended to. But I still miss some. Mistakes are always out there. Use mine if you can to avoid yours.

Going Dazzling with Dragos Roua

 In "About me" Dragos says:

     Don’t expect to find common things here, and in the case you will still find common things, enjoy them, because they will not emerge often.
     But do expect to find controversial, unexpected, unusual or just plain strange interpretations here. I saw over the time that some of my thoughts or mental connections have the tendency to put people in the dazzling state. Dazzling is good, sometimes. It makes your brains working.
     I just think we don’t have to raise perception walls between our mindsets, goals or approaches. Our “big picture” might often seem cluttered and foggy, but this is mainly because our knowledge paths are frozen in habits. Unfroze your knowledge paths and let them converge and feed each other.  And do not be afraid about the results.
     We can never fail. We just learn.

I just ran into Dragos list of "100 Ways to Live a Better Life." and I was excited for two reasons. First, it is a great list and being mindful of it will in fact result in my leading a better life. I plan to do that.  Second, I sort of let Becky Robinson (@LeaderTalk) convince me to get going on my blog. But if you ever blogged you know that saying it and doing it are two different things. You need something to get you going. You need a spark. I was thinking about how I was going to handle that - I didn't want to let Becky down (Even thought we haven't met yet.) - when I read Dragos post. I knew right away that this was it. If you've been paying attention to movies lately you know there is a movie out called Julie and Julia. It is about a woman who moved her life forward by deciding to work her way through Julia Child's cookbook and blog about each recipe. It helped her. She was touched by Julia Child even though she wasn't actually there. I think Dragos Roua can do the same thing for me. So my plan is to work my way through his 100 ways to live a better life. At each stop I will include his comments and then will either reflect on how this has helped me have a better life or will identify a way it will help me have a better life.

I'll be 63 next month. My health is far from perfect. I need reflection and inspiration. This is where I am going to look for it. You can follow along, but it doesn't matter. I'm committed with or without followers.

There is one other possibility. You could jump on board and do it yourself. Would it make your life better? "We can never fail. We can just learn." (Dragos Roua)

Trust Takes Time

Trust is a hot topic right now...considering the release of Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. While I'm waiting for my copy of the book I've been thinking about trust. The funny thing is...when I think about trust I think about Charlie.

My wife and I have had Charlie for three years. He was four when we adopted him from a rescue organization. Charlie is a mix between a King Charles Cavelier Spaniel and a Daschund. About twenty five pounds, short stubby legs and snout more pointy than stubbed. Charlie had been left tied outside a Humane Society office in another part of the state. He was being fostered. He had no hair from the middle of his abdomen and back to the tip of his tail. He had rubbed and chewed it all off because he had such bad allergies. If anyone tried to touch him around his tail he erupted into a violent, mean chorus of attack barks. He could scare you out of your skin at a moments notice when you thought you were just petting him. The only good thing was he seemed to recognize that people were trying to help him and he never sunk his teeth into anyone.

As we cared for Charlie and became more and more in love with him it became obvious to us that he had been abused. He would cower even when you brought your hand toward him to pet him or with a treat. I'd say he was probably at the end of his trust scale. Our first success was in getting him to allow the cats to live with him. We have two. One is a little ten pound tabby whom Charlie seems to have taken as his own. The other is a 20 pound siamese who Charlie still gives a wide berth too - but who he only occasionally chases. Throughout this entire process we were working on healing his raw skin. After the first year or so he actually looked like a healthy dog with hair covering all his body. He still had allergies that had to be treated but at least most of the year they don't dominate his life.

As time went on we became more comfortable with each other and it became more and more possible to see Charlie's trust. At first there were still times when you could see old memories come back as he went off like an explosion when he got touched somewhere he didn't like. Then slowly, first my wife, and now even I, got to where we could touch him anywhere and where we could nuzzle his face without feeling concerned that he might bite us. We grew in trust together!

Now that it has been three years, things are pretty settled. Charlie still cowers a little when a hand comes toward him but he recovers quickly and often comes for rubs. My wife and I on the other hand aren't afraid to have a little "doggy fun" with him, rolling him around and "teasing" him a bit. It has become a trusting relationship and now we can build on it for the rest of our time together.

So that's how I think about trust with people too. It's not easy. It takes work and it takes time and we have to put ourselves out there sometimes even when they are gruf and growley.  But if we do, and we give it time, we will end up with a relationship that will serve us well for a long long time.

New Media Friends

I made a new friend this week. We connected several times by Twitter, e-mail, and phone. Whats really exceptional is it looks like we can help each other out. I can give her an opportunity to stretch herself with some new challenges and she can push me to get back here to my blog and to writing longer posts. Her name is Becky and you can Tweet her at @LeaderTalk.

Becky reminded me how important we can be to each other...even when our friendship is different today than it would have been a few years ago. The value of proximity has changed in the determination of trust. We get to "know" the mettle of people by our interactions - even if those interactions aren't face-to-face. As a Twitter follower of Becky I learned what she feels is important, some of the people whose ideas and opinions she values, and how consistent she is... I learned to trust her. That led me to invite Becky to present at a conference I facilitate.

In turn, after a lengthy phone conversation Becky gently nudged me to get back to this blog and perhaps be a bit more original in my posts. I'm actually eager to accept her challenge.

I love new media...and now, I love my new media friends!

Paul's Stream

For those interested in trends, this tells some of the strategies being put in play by college students to adapt to the "new economy." splash

Here is some insight into Generation X. splash

Then there are two thought pieces:

• Can Wisdom be Taught? splash
  
  
• Best Practice vs. Next Practice splash

Paul's Stream - New Addition

My friends tell me I find some interesting things when I go on Twitter or to the posts I read or whatever I do. So I have decided to add another twist to this blog - Paul's stream. As I capture things that I think are interesting I will add the links here. I won't quit doing occasional summaries of articles I like or the occasional thought piece that is more than 140 characters, but I will share my eclectic stream of interest. If others find it intriguing to see what I latch onto - have fun. I'm sure sometimes links will break and items will loose interest over time but for what stays this will provide you a chance to sit by and dip in my "stream".

Here's the first set:

What can you learn from executives who use Twitter well? splash

I believe Robert Scoble has put a mash-up of various pros together. Here are rules to live by

Are you pompous? splash

Is bulldozing cities the way to save them? splash

Role of environment in behavior. splash

Not knowledge management - wisdom management. splash

Did you know about this NYT learning opportunity? splash

What happens when leadership passes generationally? splash

More later.

How David Beats Goliath

I highly recommend the New Yorker article on May 6, 2009 by Malcolm Gladwell, "How David Beats Goliath"

The sub-title is "When underdogs break the rules" but I think it is more appropriately "When underdogs break with existing conventions." Often people give these conventions the weight of rules, but they aren't breaking any rules by doing it. Gladwell talks about the basketball team that plays the full court press for the whole game and wins on legs instead of arms. They didn't break any rules they went against the convention.

We seem to want rules so bad that we create them in our minds to cover the way we want to approach situations. There's no rule that says a Walmart can't build stores in rural areas but that doesn't stop us from vilifying them. From the barber who opens on Sunday to the medical clinic that opens in a drug store...David beats Goliath by going against convention. Gladwell calls it being "socially horrifying".

What does that mean for you? Are you David or Goliath? If you're Goliath, what can you do to create the urgency that will keep you moving forward?

What C.K. Prahalad has Learned

There was a May 5, 2009 article on fastcompany.com about C.K. Prahalad. It ended with a sidebar: What the Teacher has Learned:

1. When the going is roughest, leadership matters. In times of trouble leaders must act like emotional and intellectual anchors. Authenticity is the most important trait.
2. Successful managers embrace discomfort. Discomfort can push you to a new level of achievement.
3. Great leaders stay on message. Nothing is more important than reminding people what the company stands for.
4. It's not one person. It's not the team. It's both. One unique person makes a difference, but you need teamwork to make things happen.
5. Think? Act? Balance the two. Sometimes not acting is smart. But if you get the feeling that everybody's becoming so thoughtful that nobody's doing anything, I wanna go light some fires somewhere.

Me: I could get along with Prahalad just fine!

The Management Myth

Matthew Stewart, writing in The Atlantic, is my kind of guy. He says most of management theory is inane and if you want to succeed in business you should study philosophy not get an MBA. Of course, he is a philosophy graduate. He makes the case in this well written article that the need for the MBA is a myth. New fads are promoted with maddening papal infallibility and lack of empirical data.

He points back to Mary Parker Follett in the 1920's for attacking "departmentalized" thinking and advocating the "integrative" organization. Rosabeth Moss Kanter picked up the torch in 1983.

"Between them, Taylor and Mayo carved up the world of management theory. According to my scientific sampling you can save yourself from reading about 99 percent of all the management literature once you master the dialectic between rationalists and humanists. The Taylorite rationalist says: Be efficient! The Mayo-ist humanist replies: Hey these are people we're talking about! And the debate goes on."

He calls MBAs a way for businesses to outsource hiring.

In the end he has three recommendations for academic philosophy departments that he says will bring them back to be the educators of management - their "rightful" place:

• Expand the domain of your analysis! Why so many studies of Wittgenstein and none of Taylor, the man who invented the social class that now rules the world?
• Hire people with greater diversity of experience! Not just someone from another university, someone with another world view.
• Remember the three Cs: communication, communication and communication! Remember Plato: Its all about dialogue!

My comment: I have to agree that organizational leadership demands a broad range of skills and backgrounds and there really is no common set of tools for getting there. It would be interesting to put the requirements for an MBA up against the list of skills of innovators from the previous post. I think you would find that there are many, many places where they do not relate.

The People Focus in Innovation

Paul Williams wrote a post for innovation tools on May 8, 2009 about the people focus of innovation. This was a response to Stefan Lindegaard's challenge on why leaders don't talk more about the people who drive innovation. Williams does a great job of synthesizing the people focus:

Ideas have many sources:

• Employees
• Research and development teams
• Customers
• Vendors
• Marketing/sales team
• Competitors
• Leadership
• Patent Searches
• Academic Institutions
• Business partnerships
• Best/next practice reviews
• Association memberships
• Conferences

What all of those sources have in common is that each and every idea starts with one person. Those who excel at developing ideas and solving problems have many common skill sets and traits. They are:

• Skilled at alternative thinking styles
• Excel at individual problem solving
• Able to participate in or facilitate group ideation settings
• Able to see weak signals of future trends
• Able to identify root causation of problems
• Comfortable with taking calculated risks
• Not bothered by fear of failure (or success)
• Able to maintain an imaginative and creative approach to problems and/or opportunities
• Able to analyze and learn from failures
• Able to assume leadership responsibility
• Able to translate ideas into objects (physical, visual, etc.)

Then there are the roles that are important for moving ideas from concept to reality:

• Idea generator - The origination point of an idea
• Idea champion - The person responsible for shaping the idea, building a business case and keeping it moving forward
• Idea sponsor - The person who secures the resources (money, human, time) to explore the idea and who provides "cover" for the idea to keep it safe
• Process manager - The person who manages the innovation/idea process to ensure ideas have an easy to access and repeatable path to follow
• Engineer or prototype builder - The person who brings the idea to life (on a drawing board, in a lab, virtually, physically, etc.)
• Project manager and implementation team - The people who manage the process and create/implement an actual object, business process and/or service based on the idea
• Sales and marketing teams - The people who convince others to purchase the output of the new idea, thus making it an official innovation

But how do you protect these people and help them stay connected?

• Look for the mavericks who feel constrained by your current processes and procedures and who develop alternative methods
• Reward those who challenge the status quo
• Encourage self-organizing teams
• Mandate cross-functional teams
• Implement collaboration tools like conference rooms/idea centers, blogs, message boards, wikis, groupware, etc.
• Provide training on expanding their natural innovative/creative skills
• Provide cover and support and appreciation for fast failures
• Demonstrate that risk taking is okay

And what about keeping people motivated to keep the idea pipeline full?

• Public recognition
• Money
• Idea lottery
• Frequent idea point program
• Calls, notes or personal visits from senior leadership
• Ice cream socials
• Promotions within the innovation management group
• Temporary assignment to work on the idea
• Award ceremony for the best failure
• Great idea awards banquet

My comment: I find most of what Williams says right on target. The one place I'd differ is this last section on keeping these people motivated. I, for one, would be turned off by anything public - so eliminate the public recognition, ice cream socials, award ceremony and banquet. The things that I want are freedom with support - for myself and my people, enough resources to develop and test the new ideas we come up with, and the ability to get the project out of our hands once it becomes mundane and ordinary. Give me those things and you'll get more production than you could ever imagine!

A refresher Course in the Basics of PR

Jonah Bloom in Ad Age.

1. Earned media isn't paid media - any place that will take cash for editorial credit isn't credible.
2. Earned media requires being interesting and open - you have to have a real, meaningful story to tell.
3. Listen to the people you paid to help you - don't hire a PR person or agency and then ignore them when they tell you your story is boring, or a lie, or a lie that will be found out.
4. You can't control the message - PR helps you communicate something demonstrably true.
5. PR isn't cheaper than advertising, or more expensive, just different.
6. PR doesn't replace advertising - sometimes you need one, sometimes you need the other.

Judging from the comments to the post it appears Mr. Bloom hit the spot.

Louis Gray's 10 Rules for Real Time Consumers

1. We want access to your product as quickly as possible
2. We expect the product to work on any platform in any location
3. We want to see that you allow for feedback, positive and negative
4. We expect that you respond to your customers quickly
5. We expect that you join and lead the conversation
6. We want to see that you continually improve your product
7. We expect you to use your product and be visible
8. We expect that you will embrace or lead standards
9. We expect you are driven by more than money alone
10. We want you to treat us as informed consumers and partners.

Enough said!

Take Your Community to the Next Level

Stuart Foster at The Lost Jacket.com had a worthwhile recent post about taking your community to the next level. Despite everything you are doing not enough discussions are happening, people aren't engaging with each other and your community is spinning towards irrelevance. I like Foster's five recommendations:

1. Incite. Take a stand. Do something interesting.
2. Invite new people, with new and exciting voices, to the discussion.
3. Take your content to another community. Grow your community by exposing new people to your voice, product or service.
4. Inject your personality into the mix. To succeed you need a distinctive and real voice. People can sense passion and you should be sweating from every pore.
5. Be everywhere. Hit every place you can think of and own it.
   

No Sense of Urgency

Dan Ciampa wrote a piece for The Conference Board Review on "No Sense of Urgency." It paralleled my thoughts on so many things that I wanted to address.

He talks about lack of urgency from the perspective of a new CEO, but you don't have to be CEO to recognize this feeling in your organization. Ciampa suggests that urgency fades away as people lose confidence about having any impact on the problems they face. Also, he states that success can work against urgency - as the employees without the "entitlement mentality" give up on urging changes and improvements and leave. Innovation slows down as organizational structures expand.

Ciampa points to some fundamental principles underlying any change in organizational urgency:

• Become a student of behavior change - for a new sense of urgency you need a critical mass of people willing to change comfortable habits.
• The top group must be of one mind on the diagnosis and the cure.
• Don't avoid making changes at the top - some senior-level people, who are blocking the ability of the organization to move on, may have to be replaced in order for things to improve.
• Find examples from which to learn. Hold up examples in your own organization.
• Identify learning needs and barriers to learning early in the process.
• Eliminate the fear of making mistakes and encourage experimenting.
• Get the right help and use it wisely. Be discriminating in seeking help and define precisely the types of advice needed and kinds of advisers best suited to these needs.
• Become "That kind of place".
  Make it evident to everyone in the organization that urgency is a real priority. Be prepared to clearly visualize what an "urgent organization" looks like.

Based on my experience I would add a few points:

• Identify the false assumptions on which the complacency is built. Will the funding stream continue indefinitely? Will customers continue to purchase more and more products?
• In education and non-profit organizations it is often impossible to have one culture around urgency that fits every program embedded in the organization. How will you deal with varying demands for urgency from varying programs?
• Funders - taxpayers, grantmakers, customers - have not yet learned how to effectively demand urgency for their investment...but they will.

I believe we are past time for opening a wide discussion on urgency and we should do it now.

Evaluation 1

We should be evaluating our ability/capacity/hope, rather than our past performance.

People are convinced evaluation is worthwhile but don't know how to use it.

We need to stop evaluating practice and start evaluating potential.

How can you bring evaluation to "scale" so it is useful as a measure for community?

Organizational direction results from the intersect between audit/obligatory/rules and assumptions/guidelines.

Organizations have incredible inertia.

1. What exactly are we trying to accomplish?
2. How will we assess progress?
3. How will we know when we get there?
4. How will we respond to the areas where we don't meet goals?
5. What's the best way to proceed?

Evaluations are measured by

• utility - are they useful
• feasibility
• validity, accuracy
• propriety
  

Cision - Ten Tips on Reaching Out to "Mom Blogs"

1. Thou shalt not spam.
   Bloggers dislike canned pitches sent to generic lists. Authors of mommy blogs often get their start by sharing their most personal thoughts and stories. An impersonal approach won't be the best approach for them.
2. Read first - a lot. Pitch Later.
   Get to know the blogger and the kinds of things she writes about before you make an approach.
3. Research the "influentials."
   Learn which blogs are truly influential versus those that are popular. Many blogs that don't have as much traffic have customers that are highly targeted and provide you with a very desirable niche.
4. Personalize your pitch.
   A carefully worded e-mail touching on something the blogger has written about is the best way to share your information with the blogger.
5. Cultivate relationships
   Know the community and join it if you can. Positive word-of-mouth is the strongest influencer of product choices and brand loyalty.
6. Call your own mom
   Relate your own personal experiences to help you understand what is worthwhile and interesting to a mommy blogger.
7. Go easy on the "m" word.
   Don't stereotype every mommy blogger as a "mom" and nothing else. Mommy bloggers are intelligent adults with many interests.
8. Don't attach strings to samples
   Its fine to send samples in hopes the blogger will write about it but make it clear there is no prid-quo-pro, obligation, or expectation attached.
9. Follow-up
   Failing to follow-up after a writer has done a post on your product is a cardinal sin. A brief note thanking the blogger for the post and offering to be of help in the future is best.
10. Have a sense of humor.
    Loosen up and have some fun. Being a mommy is stressful. Mommy bloggers want to have fun and relieve their stress. Don't ever add to it.

What a great set of suggestions. Many apply to all bloggers.

Are You Micro-Managing Yourself?

Thanks to Steven DeMaio for putting this in the Harvard Business Review. It's a good tool for some self assessment. Here's what he says:

• Don't lose sight of the big picture, even when doing grunt work. The classic micro manager tends to zero in on details right away. Doing that in your own work will make it feel like drudgery. Don't lose sight of your tasks larger purpose.
• Avoid mid-stream self-correction, especially on the first run through. Your first session on a project should be your longest. Give yourself the chance to experience the full arc of the endeavor. Don't start tidying up a little corner before you've built the entire structure.
• When you can't delegate entire tasks, delegate micro decisions. Micro managers have trouble delegating. But there are times when a quick consult with a colleague can help you move forward on something that would otherwise bog you down. "Am I on the right track here?" is a good question.
• Recognize that micro work has its place. Not micromanaging doesn't give you permission to embed your work with small mistakes or imperfections. Continue to be fastidious about the details. The bad type of micromanagement is often the result of impatience, but the good type requires patience.

I find that the mid-stream self correction often leads to loosing focus on the goal. The project gets muddled and, without correction, often fails.

What Women Know

Rachel Happe, Principle in The Community Roundtable, wrote a recent piece on "What Women Know and How it Drives Profitability". She makes the case that businesses with more women in senior leadership positions are more profitable and innovative. Here what she says about how what a woman knows translates into business success.

Women know high risk comes with high potential upsides and high potential downsides. She says that means women focus less on what could be and more on what can be today.

Women know relationships and know that the more open and transparent we are the closer the relationships are that we can foster. Rachel claims this allows women to form more enduring relationships that aren't built on weak links, like money and rewards.

Women know how valuable communication is - at all levels. According to Rachel that means people around her are better informed and therefore more trusting and open.

Women know how to navigate emotional conflict better and have an easier time discussion deep rooted differences of opinion between colleagues in a friendly way. This allow for early conflict resolution.

Women know how to identify subtle social ques and can tell when someone is being open. This allow more accurate assessment of customers and others.

Women know that telling people what to do is not the most effective way to lead.

Women know complexity. We can never focus on just work, or just money, or just family. It is always about the best decision for everyone rather than the best decision for just one constituent.

For me, a man, I find these as better descriptions of those rare people who make good leaders than any unique set of skills that a person has due to their gender. I've worked with too many women who were none of these... women who went on for months with "strategic planning" processes but couldn't decide to approve my order for lunch for tomorrow's training...women who whisper and close doors and hide plans until implementation is far more difficult...women who hold grudges that impact their business decisions for years, and years, and...women who leave a trail of devastated employees in their path. In short, women who are bad leaders.

I, for one, cherish the opportunity to work in an environment with diversity of ideas, where people are respected and trusted to be part of the team and where they show their commitment through their focus and accomplishments and not through their hours. The situation needs to include men and women and, for me, I value both.

The Future of Collaboration

Cisco has just completed a five part series on their vision of the future of collaboration. Here are their predictions:

1. Collaborative networks will be to Enterprises what social networks are to Consumers. The rigidly structured silos will give way to more fluid, ad-hoc communities of experts. Companies will rely on "collaboration networks" that bring together "clusters of experts" to get critical projects completed. The groups will form dynamically to achieve the shared outcome. The cycle is self-organizing. Experts are drawn to projects, rather than assigned, and thus are motivated.
2. It is not about "on-premise" versus "on-demand", it will be all about the user experience. Ultimately, user experience is what matters. Going forward the "where" in collaboration will become less important
3. Innovation will be redefined by Operational Excellence. Traditionally it was assumed that long term success was driven by either innovation or operational excellence. Today organizations need to do both and collaboration is a critical element that allows that to happen.
4. Organizations without boundaries will drive the next wave of productivity. Business processes must encompass people outside the organization as readily as they do people inside.
5. Information technology will evolve into information fabric. Too much unsorted information is worse than having no information at all. People need to have the right information at the right time, connecting communities that can improve the relevance, and accelerating decisions to drive value for the business. Business architecture must be seamlessly merged with technology architecture.

Obviously in identifying these predictions Cisco has focused on technology. Do they apply beyond technology? Absolutely.

Unfortunately, old habits are hard to break. Look at any organization that has recently gone through a "restructuring." Did the restructuring build the foundation for collaboration networks or did it create new silos? What would an organization look like that would build that foundation.

Could such an organization incorporate employees and non-employees? Or, is the employee the concept that is outdated. Could businesses be redefined to be small centers of mission and principle ready to draw people in who might earn their living being the expert on multiple projects. Could organizations grow and shrink in moments to meet changing demands without creating devastation in the community?

Its an exciting world, isn't it?

Three Assumptions Leaders Should Question

John Baldoni, HarvardBusiness.org, wrote in response to Gary Hamel's "Moon Shots for Management" that he felt it was appropriate to question some underlying management assumptions. He identifies three:

1. It is important for organizations to set firm goals. Unreached goals can frustrate an organization rather than helping it to succeed. Maurice Schweitzer
2. Quick wins are essential to managers in transition. This has been demonstrated in a study by Mark Van Burren and Todd Salferstone to do more harm than good.
3. Senior leaders believe in their CEOs. A study by Booz & Company found that 46% of senior managers surveyed doubted their CEOs ability to navigate the current crisis.

I believe organizations operating in today's environment need to have a clear understanding of what business they are in and beyond that a simple set of guiding principles can be enough to move day-to-day decisions.

Its interesting how often the winner of a race is not in the lead during the early stages. To me that relates to quick wins. You can use up your resources and capacity focusing on early wins when you will need them for the end run.

The lack of belief in senior managers comes from the lack of collaborative leadership, even though it has been shown to be effective. There is still an overwhelming tendency of CEOs to think they can be the hero leader, guiding their troops out of harms way. Information is hidden. Authority is withheld. The easiest way to see this in an organization is to watch what happens when the CEO is not available. If the organization stalls it will be because no one but the CEO is able to make the decisions that would keep it moving forward. Can an organization like that be successful in today's environment?

World Domination and Me

I recently read Chris Guillebeau's "Brief Guide to World Domination" and found it insightful and engaging. If you haven't read it, do. It is 29 pages of "kick in the butt." Do you need that? I don't know, but if you are living a life that is "average" you probably do. Here are the things in an average life according to Chris:

1. Accept what people tell you at face value
2. Don't question authority
3. Go to college because you're supposed to and not because you want to learn something
4. Go overseas once or twice in your life to somewhere safe like England
5. Don't try to learn another language; everyone else will eventually learn English
6. Think about starting your own business, but never do
7. Think about writing a book, but never do
8. Get the largest mortgage you qualify for and spend 30 years paying for it
9. Sit at a desk 40 hours a week for an average of 10 hours of productive work
10. Don't stand out or draw attention to yourself
11. Jump through hoops. Check off boxes.

Are you feeling uncomfortable. They make you think, don' they? But it must be hard not to be average, so many people are. Actually I think Chris would argue that it's not hard to be better than average because so many people are average. His solution is to ask yourself the "two most important questions in the universe:"

1. What do you really want to get out of life?
2. What can you offer the world that no one else can?

If you didn't have to do the things you currently have to do what would you do? And, secondly, since life is not all about you, what can you do to improve the lives of others? How can you do what you would do if you could and improve the lives of others? Chris' recommendation is to find out and then do it. You'll face opposition from gatekeepers, critics, and the widespread acceptance of mediocrity - but Chris has recommendations on how to succeed.

In the final analysis he says:

1. "You don't have to live your life the way other people expect you to
2. The world is waiting for you to figure out what only you can contribute. Take as much time as you need to find the answer, and then get started on it."

If you needed permission, now you have it. Be better than average. Achieve world domination.

Words and phrases that I like

During all my reading I come across new phrases or word connections that really make a connection for me. Sometimes it is the name of a process that I was unaware of - like "Open Space". Sometimes it is just a way of stating something - like "Collective Creativity" (Ed Catmull, Pixar Animation). I've decided to start saving them here. When I run across a new one I will come back and edit this post and add it.

These are the triggers that often start me down a path of exploration. Future blogs cover what I learn along the way.

1. Open Space. Harrison Owen. A way of encouraging and supporting self-organizing.
2. Appreciative Inquiry. Asset based assessment.
3. Collective Creativity. Ed Catmull. A continuous process of small and constant change involving a large number of diverse people working together to respond to multiple opportunities.
4. Systemic inventive thinking. Genrich Altschuller. Brainstorming doesn't work because people withhold their best ideas. Instead, break down successful products and processes into components, study the parts and find other potential uses.
5. Open Innovation. Authentically involving all aspects of an organization in the innovation process and ensuring that the process is shared in an open and accessible way.
6. Disruptive uncertainty. Jeanne Liedtke. Organizations deal with disruptive uncertainty to a large extent through collaboration - collaboration among organizations.
7. Black Swans. Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Unanticipated events.
8. Disruptive innovation. Dr. Clayton Christensen. A business model that brings to market a much more affordable product or service that is much simpler to use.
9. Predictably irrational (Dan Ariely)
   
10. More to come.

Focus = Simplify (An analogy)

In a discussion with a colleague she gave a simple analogy for maintaining focus that I really like. When you start a project you have a goal in mind - you are like a bus with the destination posted on the front. If it is an exciting and innovative project, as it evolves, people come along and want to bring their project or ideas and join yours.

Some of these projects and ideas have the same destination as yours and some have one that is different. For the ones with the same destination, invite them onto the bus and look for the ways that you can grow each others capacity. For the ones with a different destination, acknowledge the different destination and encourage them to proceed and look for other partners.

Don't change your destination without overwhelming justification and don't turn your bus into a boat. If you do, you will generally find that you don't reach either destination.

Notes from March MLab Management 2.0 LabNotes

Tim Brown, CEI, IDEO

• At IDEO – management is tolerated insofar as it is a means to the end of facilitating what people want to do, rather than the other way around.
• Key to our culture is an absolutely incessant interest in doing things that are new.
• Choose employees with deep craft who are also keenly curious about the context surrounding it.
• The pattern of innovation in emergent, not planned
• Creative culture has a deep reservoir of trust in its DNA
• The real question about scale is not about sharing information – it is about sharing inspiration.

Vineet Nayar, CEO, HCL Technologies

• The higher the quality of employee you have, in terms of capability, enablement, engagement, the better value gets created in the interface between the employee and the customer.
• Reverse accountability – managers are accountable to their employees
• For any complaint or query an employee opens a service ticket on a portal to which the department is obliged to respond. Crucially, it is only the employee who can close the ticket.

Jeffrey Hollender, CEO, Seventh Generation

• In every deliberation, it behoves to consider the impact of the decision on the next seven generations.
• Extreme transparency. That inspired us to look at everything we were doing and put on our website anything critical that might be missing that anyone would want to know.

The World Beyond Budgeting, Robin Fraser and Franz Roosli

• Radical decentralization is the underlying concept. The organization revolves around the customer. Principles of the beyond budgeting model:
• Devolved Leadership principles

1. Focus everyone on their customers, not on hierarchical relationships
2. Organize as a lean network of accountable teams, not as centralized functions
3. Give teams the freedom and capability to act, don’t micro-manage them
4. Create a high responsibility culture at every level, not just at the top
5. Promote open information for self management; don’t restrict it hierarchically
6. Adopt a few clear values, goals, and boundaries, not detailed regulations
   

Adaptive Process Principles

1. Set relative goals for continuous improvement, don’t negotiate contracts
2. Reward shared success based on relative performance, not fixed targets
3. Make planning a continuous and inclusive process, not a top down annual event
4. Base controls on relative indicators and trends, not variances against plan
5. Make resources available as needed, not through annual budget allocations
6. Coordinate interactions dynamically, not through annual planning cycles

Engaged Innovation Roundtable, London Business School

• Tim Thorne, Royal Bank of Scotland: Five days of innovation training for employees. Develop ideas some of which then receive funding. 50% of those that received funding have entered the marketplace.
• Amanda West of ThomsonReuters: A supporting online toolkit and series of webinars about innovation enable staff globally across the business to build their own skills on a self serve basis
• Tod Bedilion, Roche: Put internal problems on an internal system and waited for solutions. Our hope that our internal technology-oriented people would gravitate to using this type of tool was completely unfounded… We really had to push people (via an electronic marketing campaign) to involve them in suggesting solutions. Had to offer incentives in the end.
• Thought triggered for MSU: Could alumni be involved in “innovative engagement” through technology? Would this create an institutional value for alumni. By innovative engagement I’m thinking of a system that would enable alums to post challenges that other alums could suggest solutions for? What would the incentives be? Access to knowledge?

Seven Rules for Radical Innovators, Lessons from Barack Obama’s campaign, Umar Haque, Director, Havas Media Lab

1. Have a self organizing design. Obama’s organization blew past orthodoxies for structure to use the power of self-organizing
2. Minimize strategy. Obama’s campaign realized that strategy, too often, kills a deeply-lived sense of purpose, destroys credibility, and corrupts meaning.
3. Maximize purpose. Yesterday we built huge corporations to do tiny incremental things – tomorrow, we must build small organizations that can do tremendously massive things.
4. Broaden unity. Marketers typically segment and target, Obama succeeded through unification, not through division.
5. Thicken power. True power is the power to inspire, lead, and engender belief.
6. There is nothing more asymmetrical – more disruptive, more revolutionary, or more innovative - than the world changing power of an ideal.
7. Rule six is the starting point for tomorrow’s radical innovators. Where are the ideals in your organization? What ideals are missing? What ideals will you fight and struggle for

Gary Hamel’s Management 2.0 Book List

• Creative Experience, Mary Parker Follett, 1924
• Out of Control, Kevin Kelly, 1994
• The Age of Heretics, Art Kleiner, 1996
• Manufacturing the Employee, Roy Jacques, 1996
• Competing on the Edge, Shona Brown and Kathleen Eisenhardt, 1998
• The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric Raymond, 1999
• Small Pieces, Loosely Joined, David Weinberger, 2002
• The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida, 2002
• The Future of Work, Thomas Malone, 2004
• The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki, 2004
• Firms of Endearment, Raj Sisodia, Jag Sheth, and David Wolfe, 2007
• Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky, 2008

If you are inspired to read all of any of the articles go to www.managementlab.org

America's Racial Contract

Charles Mills, PhD
Northwestern

A racial contract is a conceptual metaphor for our philosophy for dealing with each other. The problem is that it is a philosophy vased on white Europeon thought. It asserts:

• We are all equal
• The law treats us all equal
• The government governs equally/no exploitation
• There is transparency in treatment of people
• There is objectivity in threatment of people

John Rawls book, A Theory of Justice, originated the "veil of ignorance" principle which accepted the conceptual metaphor as fact. It was first published in 1971. The claim was that a society is a coopeerative venture for mutual advantage, regulated by rules, that benefits everyone. This assumption was fundamentally flawed.

The conceptual framing for the US portrays racism as an anomoly. Much relied on work of Immanuel Kant and John Locke who on the surface appear to support equality. Deeper research identifies significant racial overtones in their writings.

Mills argues that what we have is not a social contract but a racial contract. We need to accept that and look at how to dismantle the racial contract if we want to procede. Today, there is less individual racism but the system of structural and institutional racism sustains racism. One of his arguments is the systemic white advantage of wealth. As the $9 trillion in wealth is passed down in the next few years it will be passed from whites to whites and thus will sustain white preference. Mills argues that wealth disparity is a connection to the past and, as such, carries forward the racism of the past.

Mills suggests that to create change the interests of African Americans have to converge with the interests of whites. He feels the most likely place for this to occur is between people of color and the working class whites. Income for working class people in the US has been stagnant since the 70's.

Immigration and Anti-immigration

I had the pleasure of hearing a presentation yesterday by Dr. Evelyn Hu-DeHart,
Professor of History and Ethnic Studies, Director, Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America (CSREA), Brown University, about America's love/hate relationship with newcomers. Today several hundred high school students jointed in the conference and were present for this talk. Here are some key points:

• America's immigration "story" has always implied an inclusive, welcoming country. "Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses, yearning to be free."
• The reality has been one of exclusion - except for Europeans.
• The main reason we have sought out immigrants over the years is for their labor...first the African slaves, then Asians, and finally Mexicans.
• Slaves were excluded from citizenship because they were "property". The first US Naturalization Law in 1790 only allowed citizenship for white immigrants. Asians were specifically named as excluded in the first immigration law in 1882.
• I wasn't certain of the date but I think early 20th century Asians were described as "aliens ineligible for citizenship."
• Mexicans were really interesting. Until the 1950's the US Census counted Mexicans as "white". Before the depression they could move freely back and forth across the US Mexican border. The depression resulted in Mexicans being rounded up and deported. After WWII Mexican labor was again needed and a formal agreement brought Mexicans back to work in the US but re-classified them as non-white without citizenship. The term "illegal immigrant" was coined to describe those workers who built a life in the US and wanted to stay.
• Racial restrictions on immigration were finally changed in 1965 but new restrictions were imposed on numbers of immigrants by category. We can argue, for example, that Mexicans should go home and use the legal immigration process to come back into the US. However, many of the Mexican workers who come here work in the unskilled service industry and the quota for unskilled workers in the current immigration law is 5,000 worldwide and last year two of those positions were allocated to Mexico. This, in spite of the fact that there are 12 million Mexican immigrants in the US - and half of them are undocumented.
• It is only recently that the term "illegal alien" has been applied to immigrants. It is today's version of "alien ineligible for citizenship". Alien has connotations of hostile, suspect, and evil that only serve a political purpose.

I hope I got all the facts right. Actually Dr. Hu-DeHart was so interesting I will be doing some reading on the history of immigration to get it all straight in my mind. Once again, it was a wonderful presentation and a terrific opportunity to participate in a valuable learning experience.

Health Care and Communities of Color

I'm writing this morning out of frustration, not at any individual, but at one of my "communities". The James Madison College here at MSU is putting on its 6th national conference on Race in 21st Century America. The general topic this year is Health Care and Communities of Color. This is of interest to me because nutrition is such an important component of people's health and there are such great disparities in health between people of different races and ethnicity.

The opening keynote for the conference was delivered by Dr. Jocelyn Elders. Dr. Elders was Surgeon General of the US during the Clinton presidency. She was the first African American to hold that post and she was the first Surgeon General to use the post as a "bully pulpit" to promote prevention. She was the first Surgeon General I ever knew existed. She spoke at 1:00pm in the auditorium at the Kellogg Center. My frustration came from the fact that I was one of about 75 people to attend.

Then I went on to a panel discussion with three distinguished scholars who were also African American. Dr. Darren Davis, University of Notre Dame, Dr. Bill Larson, University of Memphis, and Dr. Clarence Lusane, American University. Their topic was Race and the 2008 Presidential Election and their presentation and discussion was enlightening and challenging. Two political scientists and a distinguished philosopher, talking about the most fascinating election in history. Unfortunately, I was among less than 50 people in attendance.

This is something I have noticed since I joined the university community five years ago - long term members in the community don't seem to value the benefits of belonging. Certainly the opportunity to be challenged by other scholars, to ask questions about other viewpoints, and to be on the cutting edge knowledge should be a perk. But when I go to presentations, too often I feel like "that guy". I'm the one person in the room who nobody knows. I'm the only person out of my element. People like Dr. Elders, who should draw standing room crowds are lucky to fill a few rows. That's frustrating.

Here's a bit of what I came away with.

I was fascinated by the fact that even after all these years away from the Surgeon General post, Dr. Elders is an expert at talking in sound bites. She used anagrams quite often. She started off reminding us all that she was the first Surgeon General who publicly admitted that, yes, Americans have sex. AIDS was growing and her first anagram of the day was A B C D.

• Abstinence
• Be Faithful
• Condoms (latex)
• Do other things

She said it was the "Do other things" that got her in so much trouble that she finally lost the position. She pointed out that now, African Americans are 14% of the population but have 50% of the HIV. Later in questions she also pointed out that African Americans only make up 3% of the doctors in the US in spite of being 14% of the population. She talked about our sick care system and our need for a health care system. She pointed out the three "simple" goals that she put forth in 1985:

1. Improve quality of health for all Americans
2. Reach 100% access to health care
3. Reach 0% disparity in health care

Among other comments along the way was that 25% of girls 15 - 19 have a sexually transmitted disease and the mind numbing statistic that infant mortality in Detroit is 25%.

Dr. Elders gave us five "c"s for leadership

1. Clarity of vision
2. Commitment
3. Consistency
4. Concern
5. Control

She also shared a tale that was relayed to her early in her fight for change:

• When you're dancing with a bear, you have to keep dancing until the bear gets tired.

For Dr. Elders fixing the education system is the key to fixing health care.

Then I went on the the panel on the 2008 Presidential Election. Dr. Davis suggested that the election was not about race. He stated:

1. Obama ran a de-racialized campaign - what he had to do to secure support
2. Obama became an exception to the rule - even people with negative beliefs about African Americans could support Obama because they could declare him an exception - Harvard education, multiracial, Hawaiian birth, etc.
3. Obama did a good job of reminding people that America is about equality and since Whites believe that they are not racist that encouraged their support for a person of color.
4. Most whites did not vote for Obama

Dr. Lawson talked about Obama's focus on colorblindness - his focus was on not using race in public policy. Dr. Lawson feels that this will hurt people of color down the road. He feels that Obama overstates the case that things have changed. There are some disparities that can only be solved by taking a racial approach - not a colorblind approach. Now it will be more difficult to impose programs that include color conscious policies.

Dr. Lusane felt race was significant in the campaign. Obama won because:

1. He had a compelling message - change
2. He had a compelling strategy - most significant was the decision to go after all 50 states since - because of the work of Jesse Jackson and others - the Democratic Party does not hold winner take all primaries - delegates are split based on the results in each state. That meant that even in the states that Obama lost he picked up delegates.
3. He had a compelling biography

Dr. Lusane is looking at the impact on the world. His thesis is that although Obama was de-racialized in the US, the world definitely saw him as a minority, person of color and all the things that implied. That drove their amazement that he could be elected.

I think it was a good day. Don't you?

Applying FURI to Work

Strategies that Guide the Network

Increase the focus, urgency, reach and impact of nutrition education for low income people in Michigan.

Focus: SNAP-Ed money is meant to fund nutrition education and identification and promotion of appropriate physical activity. Michigan Nutrition Network is working to increase SNAP-Ed focus by:

• Carefully administering an application process that ensures that selected partners fit the eligibility requirements of the funding
• Assigning Liaison’s to each partner who are charged with working to help the partner stay on target
• Administering the Compliance Review Program to provide a regular, organized process for ensuring Partner accountability for their focus
• Identifying and developing partners that have natural opportunities to incorporate nutrition education into their work
• Building collaborative partnerships with other USDA FNS programs to ensure the best use of cross-program resources

Urgency: There are over 1.3 million people on nutrition assistance at any time in Michigan. Every person who receives assistance without having any nutrition education is a loss in terms of health and prevention of chronic disease. MNN is increasing urgency by:

• Administering broad campaigns like “Grow Your Kids with Fruits and Veggies” Social Marketing Program
• Developing new broad-based approaches to service delivery like “school garden nutrition education” (SGNE)
• Working with the partners who have the most direct links with the target population – food banks, Center for Civil Justice, ElderLaw
• Work with health organizations to emphasize the urgency of preventing chronic diseases.
  

Reach: A key determinant of SNAP-Ed success in Michigan is the percent of the people eligible for SNAP-Ed who receive it. MNN is working to increase reach by:

• Extending the opportunity to participate in providing SNAP-Ed to as many partners, and partners with as broad a reach, as possible
• Working to provide resources that enable partners to reach diverse populations, otherwise limited by language, cultural competency
• Connecting resources with schools where youth, a high percentage of nutrition assistance recipients, can be reached
• Organizing statewide approaches that target nutrition assistance recipients in non-traditional locations like grocery stores.
• Providing a central resource for products that support statewide efforts at nutrition education
  

Impact: SNAP-Ed needs to be achieving behavior change to be of value. MNN is helping ensure that SNAP-Ed is achieving behavior change by:

• Working with partners to build their organizational capacity to have impact
• Linking SNAP-Ed partners and projects with University based evaluation resources
• Provide communities the opportunity to become engaged in nutrition education in a manner that best serves their communities
• Providing recognition for excellence in the SNAP-Ed program

The Urgency Challenge

I've been thinking lately about what makes something urgent. Why do we prioritize? How do we pick what we work day and night to get done versus what we let slide on our to-do list? I've been thinking about it because there are so many things that I think should be urgent that others apparently don't. My conclusion so far - pleasure and pain. We either apply ourselves with urgency to something because that will result in us achieving greater rewards, or we do it because failing to do so will cause us some sort of pain. Urgency can be applied at the personal level and at the organizational level. An organization will have an expectation of urgency if those in charge believe that applying the resources of the company to its products with urgency will result in greater rewards or not will result in greater loss or pain. Urgency and power are interrelated.

Programs Need More FURI

I'm writing this blog as a way to capture my thoughts in an organized way. If you want to follow what I'm thinking about you are welcome. FURI stands for Focus, Urgency, Reach, and Impact. For years I have worked in the delivery of programs funded, either by generous donations from private citizens or by taxes. I believe that these are both appropriate ways for some programs to be funded. On the other hand I see much too much waste in the delivery of these programs. FURI came out of my experiences with the wasteful programs. They make me mad. I believe there is a solution and that is to be sure that all programs have Focus, Urgency, Reach, and Impact. This blog will explore my experiences in moving in that direction. It is not and will not be a straight and narrow journey. It is a worthy destination.