T.G.I.M.

Every Monday I look forward to the Globe and Mail's Monday Morning Manager.  Some days are quite engaging and one tidbit today caught my attention.

The headline is "The Eureka-moment myth, and nine more." One of the myths listed is quite relevant: the brainstorming myth.  It states that if you put people in a room, creative ideas will be "unearthed."

I imagine that we can all think of examples when a brainstorming meeting has been a failure. In fact, in my experience, preparation is often the key element that needs to occur before the meeting in order for ideas to come forward.  We call it R & D (Research and Duplicate).

The Globe and Mail article confirms this, and emphasises that creativity is a process, not a moment.  New ideas do not come through a flash of insight as suggested by Archimedes and his Eureka moment (myth number 1 in the article).  New ideas "incubate in our subconscious as we connect disparate notions."  And although the discovery may come in a flash, we have actually been processing the idea for some time.

The following steps are given to ensure your brainstorming meeting is fruitful:

1. You must do the research
2. THEN you can brainstorm
3. Converge on the best idea
4. Test it (a.k.a. pilot project)
5. Lastly, get it into the marketplace

 Good to know we're on the right track for MakerSpaces.

The Four Conversations, by Jeffrey Ford

The Four Conversations: Daily Communication that gets Results

In a busy and progressive work environment, conversations are key for keeping a forward momentum.

This book asserts that there are four productive conversations:

1. Initiative Conversations -- where one shares new ideas, goals, visions and futures with people who can implement and make them real
2. Understanding conversation -- where one builds awareness and knowledge of a new or existing idea in a way that helps people see how to participate in using. or accomplishing it
3. Performance conversations -- where one makes requests and promises that generate specific actions, results, and agreements, and pave the way for accountability
4. Closure conversations -- where one supports experiences of accomplishment, satisfaction, and value.  These conversations strengthen accountability and give people an honest look at the successes and failure encountered on the way to reaching a goal

 Using these conversations at the right time, in the right combinations or patterns, is the trick.

Maddaddam, by Margaret Atwood

Atwood does not disappoint, and once again she demonstrates why she is a literary great.  I finished this book a couple of weeks ago, and it still infiltrates my thoughts.  I keep finding innumerable connections and associations to it during my daily interactions. 

As for the story, it progresses and builds upon the storyline of characters from the earlier works.  Thos pigs --pigoons -- are back and they scare me half to death.  (As a child on a farm, I worked with pigs and recognize how intelligent they are without the any tampering with the frontal cortex.  The idea of these genetically altered pigs make me shudder.) 

As for the story, it is highly engaging, thought provoking, humorous (dare I say hilarious in parts), disturbing and makes we want to start the trilogy all over again.  Definitely not a trilogy for everyone, but definitely a work I want on my book shelves to read again, and again.

Library Journal offers this review:

The compelling conclusion to Atwood's dystopian trilogy opens with a brief synopsis of the series' first two books, Oryx & Crake and The Year of the Flood, then launches directly into the story of the MaddAddamites, survivors of a global pandemic that wiped out most of humanity.

Readers, even those unfamiliar with the human characters and the genetically engineered new species Atwood has created in her futuristic world, will be quickly drawn in and eager to find out what happens to the MaddAddamites and to the Crakers, a gentle, quasihuman species created by Crake.

Their world is full of many dangers, including direct attacks from criminally insane Painballers and from pigoons, transgenic pigs developed to grow replacement organs for humans. Toby, Zeb, and the rest of the MaddAddamites are alive, but will they be able to continue not only to subsist but to build up their small society and, eventually, live alongside the Crakers and even flourish? VERDICT Certainly of great interest to Atwood fans awaiting this third book of the trilogy and for fans of dystopian/postapocalyptic fiction generally, this finale is a gripping read for any reader.

Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman

This book was delightful -- delightfully scary and entertaining.  From the onset, Gaiman expertlly wraps you in intrigue, mystery and other worldly magic.  Luckily, I was able to read most of it in two consecutive sittings (one included a Thanksgiving out of town visit), so I was able to immerse myself in it.  I plan to read it again. 

 

 Here is the summary of the work:
A moving story of memory, magic, and survival in Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy. Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettiee"magical, comforting, wise beyond her yearse"promised to protect him, no matter what. A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.

Six Factors of Influence

I'm a fan of Cheryl Stenstrom, professor at San Jose.  She gave a discussion today through FOPL regarding Advocacy and her research.  I particularly enjoyed her overview of Cialdini's Six Tactics of Influence.  The key is consistent and committed message, but one of the most influential factors is "liking" and at the very least being familiar to key stakeholders.  It brings to mind the adage that it's important to be seen.

The six factors are

1. Authority -- hierarchy or by expertise
2. Consistency (and commitment) -- alignment with personal or organizational values
3. Liking -- popularity, familiarity
4. Reciprocity -- prior exchanges, including favours, advice
5. Scarcity -- the possible lack of availability
6. Social Proof -- what would others do

And here is a link to Mind Tool's post on the Six Principles of Influence

It also brings to mind the theory I studied at Western for my Diploma in Public Admin.  The Multiple Stream (MS) framework explains the policy process that takes place under stressful situations -- conditions of ambiguity.  It proposes a theory of political manipulation. The MS identifies "three conceptually separate and usually parallel streams (problems, policies, and politics) flowing through the system as having their own dynamics and rules. At critical points in time, during open “policy windows,” the streams are merged, typically through the efforts of policy entrepreneurs, and combined into a package that enhances dramatically an issue's chances to receive serious attention, especially when all the three streams are coupled through strategic manipulation by skillful, resourceful, and well-positioned policy entrepreneurs."

It was a wonderful way to spend one's lunch!

Cultural change

Here is an interesting discussion in changing a organization's culture.  Very timely since we are going through a new strat plan process at my organization.  I'm hoping our story telling initiative in October will add fuel to the fire of change.

Culture is conversation. To change the culture, change the conversation.

 by Jack Martin Leith |  posted in: Change, Co-creation, Culture, Ethos, Organisation Transformation |  2

Your organization’s culture is nothing more than what individuals say to each other and what they think to themselves. When you shift the conversations, you shift the culture.

Stephen Shapiro, Innovate the Way You Innovate, European Business Review

We define another person’s friendship, courage, or loyalty by talking about that individual in certain ways, both to ourselves and others. Our mental scripts and verbal behavior are powerful – giving useful meaning to concepts that define the very essence of human existence. When groups, organizations, or communities communicate to define these concepts, we get a ‘culture.’ Perhaps, it is fair to say that culture is conversation – both spoken and unspoken.

E. Scott Geller, The Psychology of Safety Handbook

Setting aside legal and aesthetic questions about the nature of creation, it’s clear that we are in a period of ever-increasing co-creation. Updating the neo-Platonists and Mystics of old, we experience creativity as something that emanates and emerges through frisson, friction and inspiration, and often best when in collaboration and conversation with others. We create culture, and all culture is conversation, a creative conversation. So wherever two or more are gathered, the conditions for imagining a future into reality emerge. And this becomes the story of our lives.

Bill Wilkie, Stori / View source of quoted text

Change the Conversation: Change the Future

The strategy for an alternative future is to focus on ways a shift in conversation can shift the context and thereby create an intentional future. Reconciliation of community, or a future different and not determined by the past, occurs through a shift in language. Operationally, this means engaging in conversations we have not had before.

Peter Block, Civic Engagement and the Restoration of Community: Changing the Nature of the Conversation (download pdf)

A more empowering way of thinking about organisational culture

The traditional definition of culture is “The way we do things around here”.

A  more empowering definition might be “The way we talk about things around here”.

Among the most important ‘things’ that need to be talked about are possibilities—what might be brought into being to generate value for customers and other stakeholders; how essential resources might be acquired; how obstacles might be surmounted; how the product, service or project might enrich society.

Some categories of conversation that contribute to a culture of innovation

Conversations for relationship

“Who are you? What do you care about? Can I trust you? How can we deepen our connection?”

Conversations for possibility

“What might we create together? What more is possible if we accomplish our goals? What is the bigger game we want to play?”

Conversations for purpose

“Why are we considering creating something together? What is our joint or collective purpose? How does this contribute to the organisation’s overarching purpose?”

Conversations for co-creation

These are conversations for collaborative action.

“How are we going to create this together? What action is called for?”

“Yes, but how do we shift the conversations in our organisation?”

I don’t know how to respond to this question without sounding glib and superficial.

Here are my initial thoughts. For the purposes of this article we’ll imagine that you are the CEO of the organisation in question.

Read Peter Block’s essay, Civic Engagement and the Restoration of Community: Changing the Nature of the Conversation, and heed its content.

Commission the services of a leadership coach. He or she will need to be highly skilled, wise, courageous, and have a possibility mindset.

If you do not know such a person, I recommend my three colleagues at InterBe, a UK-based transformation practice.

Seek the wholehearted commitment of each member of the senior leadership team, and the collective commitment of the team as a whole.

Each senior leadership team member will need to acquire a possibility mindset.

Invite the senior leadership team, the next tier of managers and a large sample of employees to a co-creative conference. During this conference, the participants engage in conversations for possibility, and commit to creating an organisation in which each person coaches, and is coached by, another.

A cadre of coaches is established.

Each member of the cadre establishes a new cadre.

This process is repeated, rippling through the organisation until every employee is:

• Coaching another.
• Coached by another.
• A member of a cadre, which functions as a community of practice.

The work I have described is reinforced by further co-creative conferences, internal communications programmes and a reinvented performance management system.

There you have it. Those are my top-of-the-head thoughts.

I’m acutely aware that I’ve made culture transformation seem very easy. It may not be easy, but it is possible. And when you believe it to be possible, and others share that belief, it becomes possible.

Further reading

• What Is Organizational Culture? And Why Should We Care? by Michael Watkins, in Harvard Business Review
• Start Changing Your Organisation’s Culture Using Storytelling & Startup Techniques (video by Jonathan Kahn)
• The Four Conversations: Daily Communication That Gets Results, by Jeffrey D. Ford and Laurie W. Ford
• Coaching ‘Triple A’ Leaders to Become More People-Focused, by Kristin Cobble (discusses conversations for relationship, possibility, action and results, referencing Fernando Flores, J.L. Austin  and John Searle)
• Fernando Flores Wants to Make You an Offer, by Lawrence M. Fisher, in Strategy+Business
• Changing Conversations in Organizations: A complexity approach to change, by Patricia Shaw | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com | Google Books
• Civic Engagement and the Restoration of Community: Changing the Nature of the Conversation, by Peter Block (download pdf)
• Good Companies Are Storytellers. Great Companies Are Storydoers. By Ty Montague in Harvard Business Review

Mount Pleasant, by Don Gillmor

This book's premise intrigued me: an middle aged man shocked to discover that his anticipated inheritance ended up being a few thousand dollars as opposed to the anticipated million plus.  Once again, an unlikable main character, but very timely and relevant.

Summary:
Harry Salter, a middle-aged man born into wealth but living with ballooning debt, is counting on his inheritance to rescue him financially and maybe even save his crumbling marriage, but when his father dies and the will is read, all that's left for him is $4,200. Unable to believe that his father, whose estate should have been worth millions, had died broke, Harry sets out to discover exactly what happened to the money.