I'm building the 60 Second Leader online community with my IT colleague Brom and we are trying to make it as participatory and co-creational as possible (co-creative? I prefer 'co-creational' as it has echoes of 'creationism' and therefore sounds more godlike, and the point is to let everyone do the creating -there is that of god in each of us, as the Quakers say).

But, this brings us up against the problem of participation literacy - I think a lot of people don't get involved with Wikis and even multi-user blogs because they (like me, with Wikis) don't really know instantly what to do.

And I/they don't have the time or confidence to try learning-by-doing within a participatory site (though some of the newer Wiki software looks more like word processing software, so is more familiar than the techno-aware formats most of them are in).

This isn't a new problem. Organizations that have tried to build Knowledge Management or knowledge exchange platforms within their corporation to get people to participate have built far more parties-that-no-one-comes-to than thriving centres of exchange. Though, that is partly a problem of centrism and diktat rather than literacy.

Anyway, our proposed solution at the moment is to offer a range of tools for the 60 Second Leader online commmunity to interact and participate with, such as

1. a Q & A function, using something like www.yedda.com if poss.
2. find-a-buddy with the same interests function for individual peer assists and peer mentoring and coaching, privately or sharing the outcomes/learning (hopefully the latter, with the confidential stuff kept out)
3. a multi-user blog to raise leadership issues and share insights and solutions
4. a 're-write the book of leadership' wiki so participants can re-write the 60 Second Leader book as soon as it is published (April in the UK, June in the US) because they know more than me about leadership (I don't believe in the possibility of expertise, least of all that I have any...)
5. A 'set up a small group to find a solution to a problem, then disperse the group when you are happy, but don't forget th share the solutions' tool (I know: we need to find a better name than that for group peer assistance. Hey, maybe 'group peer assistance' then...

...and a few more 'tools' of participation and interaction and contribution. Some of these will be taken up. Others will languish and we will remove them. That process will be a form of 'co-creation' of the environment, as participants choose by use or omission what tools will form the environment.

Anyway, that's where we are so far. Anyone out there who can help us improve this approach...your thoughts will be immensely useful.

I've built traditional websites the traditional way before - design brief, design agency, specify the architecture, specify the functionality, ask for a user experience (that you never get), road test it with some 'users' before going live etc...and the result was cr*p in both cases. A normal business to business website that was just like any other, in other words.

So, this time we are using this trial and error emergent process to let the shape of the thing emerge rather than prescribe or proscribe it in advance. Fingers crossed.

Some interesting thoughts on navigation and the idea of 'flow' or being in the zone on the Participation literacy website if you scroll down on it to the headline here

Flow: the link between existence and navigation.

"Tell me, I forget
Show me, I remember
Involve me, I understand"
- Confucius (attrib.)

"The great leader is he
of whom the people say
'I did it myself'"
- Lao Tsu

I missed Chinese New Year a few days ago, so that's my way of making up for it by sharing a couple of insights on leadership from a couple of Chinese masters. That second insight is one of the most profound on leadership you will ever find.

Labels: Lao Tse

Guy Kawasaki moderated a panel of web community founders recently. They were fresh, informal, funny, and live in a world of peers and no rules. Community-based networks of common interest have the potential, it seems to me, to teach the corporate world some lessons in how to bring people together to pursue a common purpose, add value and generate income for participants.

As the dominant organisational form for big business is being effortlessly attacked by private venture funds, the scope for these boys (see link below: where are the girl founders by the way?) with their new community forms to teach corporates how to bring people together productively is massive:

Guy Kawasaki and a panel of web community founders

Labels: community of purpose, web communities

Stephen Covey is talking at Leaders in London later this year, and so I dug out these notes I made last time I heard him speak. I like this story as it challenges what most people mean when they say the words 'leader' or 'leadership'...

“A manager asked me how to get a team of janitors working in a way where they took responsibility instead of ducking it. I asked who managed the supplies, cleaning schedules, keeping within budget and so on.

He managed all of that. So, my advice was to cede it all step-by-step to the janitors. Let them set the schedules. Show them how to do the budgeting. The principle at work here is: ‘Lead people, manage things.’

He felt this was not possible with manual labour. But, much of what we have to do today is turning manual workers into knowledge workers.*

The janitors now do the planning and doing. The supervisor serves them. He has become a ‘servant leader’. Costs are down, incidentally…”

Source: My notes from a talk given by Stephen Covey. Before you can lead others you need to be able to take charge of and lead yourself. Frontline leadership, where there is no direct supervision of others in a hierarchy, often consists of this initiative-taking self-leadership, and leading peers by example.

*The phrase ‘knowledge worker’ is commonly taken to mean what white-collar workers have to evolve into. That’s wrong. Manual workers are becoming knowledge workers, too.

Labels: servant leadership

Moving from a product to a customer-centred culture demands innovative, flexible thinking. So, where do you start? Edward de Bono tells the story of Ron Barbaro of Prudential Insurance, Canada, to illustrate how to do it.

Barbaro was at the hospital bedside of a terminally ill friend, whose illness was long and drawn out. Barbaro was frustrated that his industry had no product that was of relevance to his friend’s situation; that could ease his life before death, rather than pay up after, as existing life assurance did then.

Barbaro left the hospital thinking the ridiculous: “How can you die before you die?” If he had lacked the mental flexibility to come up with such an apparently absurd question, he would not have come up with the answer: Living Needs Benefit, a new product that pays out 75% of a life policy while the policy holder is still alive.

At a stroke, Barbaro had invented a new product that made life assurance much more attractive for single people, a category of customer (often affluent) who previously had little use for it. Now, almost every life assurance company around the world has a similar category of product.

De Bono defines this kind of thinking – beginning with a thought far removed from any existing product and then forcing the brain to work out a pathway from there to a workable product – as a ‘provocation’, rather like the grit in an oyster that encourages a pearl to form. Yes, I know this is old stuff, but it's still not practised enough.

“The brain is astute at building new pathways to connect different areas, and this kind of exercise helps develop that ability,” he says. It worked for Barbaro. He became President of Prudential Canada.

Labels: customer innovation

Try the 24-question Asshole-Rating Self-Assessment (ARSE - at last the Yanks spell it correctly) that Guy Kawasaki and his friends at Electric Pulp have put together. It's from the excellent Bob Sutton's book The No Asshole Rule. Unfortunately, this rule, and this self-assessment, are highly relevant to a lot of leaders, as you will find out if you go through the 24 questions. Of course they don't apply to you...But they will remind you of plenty of bad bosses (hopefully from your past rather than your present).

Labels: bad leaders

"What makes wage slaves?" asked Groucho Marx once. "Wages."

The Employee Ownership Association in the UK today publishes a paper by Richard Reeves (whose Intelligence Agency site seems permanently closed for renovation, but his contact details are up there) on CoCo Companies - companies that practise co-ownership and co-creation.

If you were to create an ideal business or organizational form from a blank sheet today, to fit the expectations people have of their lives and work, and to bring people together in a joint enterprise, it would look far more like a CoCo company than it would a limited company.

"CoCo companies may offer an organisational model whose time has come", says Richard.

Mutual or co-operative enterprises, with a new injection of co-creation, may finally fulfil the promise John Stuart Mill held for them a century and a half ago.

Richard's biography of Mill comes out this year and he quotes the philosopher-economist as saying that co-ownership holds out the prospect of:

"...the healing of the standing feud between labour and capital; the transformation of human life, from a conflict of classes struggling for opposite interests, to a friendly rivalry in their pursuit of a common good to all; the elevation of the dignity of labour; a new sense of security and independence in the labouring classes; and the conversion of each human being's daily occupation into a school of the social sympathies and practical intelligence."

Gets my vote.

Labels: co-creation, co-ownership, structure and organisation

Psychologists figured it out long ago. Oliver James, author of the new book Affluenza, says there are four things we need to live our lives in a fulfilled way. I'll avoid the word 'happily' as there's a whole science of happiness growing up at the moment and I'm not sure about some of it.

Here are the four things:

1. Security (so, no impulsive, volatile, unpredictable managers who like to keep people on their toes, thanks)
2. Community (so let people network to their heart's content and contribute and be part of things)
3. Effectiveness (People want to do not just be done to, to see what effect they are having and know it is useful. So, again, let them contribute and use the best of their abilities and have a clear line of sight to how that links to the overall aims of the organization)
4. Autonomy and Authenticity (Let people make decisions. Let them be themselves.)

That last point, on autonomy and authenticity - constantly crops up in surveys of what makes a great place to work where people are engaged, inspired and stretch themselves, from McKinsey surveys to Southwest Airlines' internal surveys of their people.

So, formal leaders in an organisation just need to create that environment and then get out of the way and let people lead the business for you.

There's a Valentine's Day present for you if you click on the big red tab at the top of the page that says 'Feb's free chapter'. It's a preview chapter from The 60 Second Leader book called What's love got to do with it? Should only take 60 seconds to read and contains insights on love and leadership from Rudy Giuliani, Ken Blanchard, Colonel Tim Collins, Herb Kelleher, Niccolo Machiavelli and me.

Labels: Free book chapter February

I've been researching the leadership style of Ben Zander, the orchestra conductor , as he is coming to talk at Leaders in London (logo above is a link) in November.

Came across this story that Zander tells:

"The near-mythical orchestra conductor Herbert von Karajan was reputed to have jumped into a taxi outside the opera house and shouted to the driver, "Hurry, hurry!" "Very good, sir," said the driver. "Where to?" "It doesn't matter," said von Karajan impatiently. "They need me everywhere!"

SOURCE: Ben and Rosamund Zander, from their book The Art of Possibility. Sound like any managers you know? You, maybe? What, not even a little bit? Spend a couple of minutes on the story from Ben Zander, below, for some insight into how making yourself dispensable rather than indispensable actually energizes your people to take the lead themselves.

Labels: Zander

“When Benjamin Zander took the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra to Cuba in 1999, they began their concert in Havana playing two pieces with the National Youth Orchestra of Cuba. An American and a Cuban child shared the music at each music stand.

The first piece, written by Guido Lopez Gavillan, the conductor of the Cuban orchestra, was colourful and brilliant. Ben Zander had decided not to prepare his young musicians in advance; he wanted them to learn the piece from the composer himself.

Maestro Lopez Gavillan began rehearsing his work, but it was quickly evident that its complex Cuban rhythms were beyond the American kids; they'd never seen anything like it, and they simply couldn't play it. After giving it his best, the conductor resigned himself to failure. "I'm afraid this isn't going to work," he said from the podium. "We have to cancel the performance."

Ben Zander couldn't accept this outcome, wouldn't accept this outcome; one of the most important parts of the tour was the opportunity for the Cuban and the American kids to play together. He leapt to the stage and took over.

Through an interpreter, he said to the young Cuban musicians, "Your job is to teach these rhythms to your stand partner." And to the Americans, he said, "Just give yourselves over to the leaders sitting next to you. You will get the support you need."

Then he asked Guido Lopez Gavillan to try again.

Imagine what ensued. The focus shifted from the conductor to the orchestra itself. The young Cubans "became fantastically energized, exuberantly conducting with their instruments, each leading along his American stand partner enthusiastically. The American kids, basking in the lavish attention, gave themselves ... to the process, and began to play the rhythms the way they were (meant) to be played." The maestro was well pleased.

Then it was Ben Zander's turn. He had chosen to conduct Bernstein's overture to Candide, a "fiendishly difficult little masterpiece." The music is so tricky to play that he had sent the score down to Havana three months earlier, to give the Cuban kids a chance to prepare. But asked if they had enjoyed learning it, he got only a blank stare. As it turned out, the music had been languishing at the Havana central Post Office. The Cubans had never seen it.

Maestro Zander felt his panic rise; The American kids had taken months to learn it. Standing before the orchestra, frozen, he suddenly realized that the young musicians seated expectantly before him were smiling. Why not? Now it was the young Americans' turn to lead. Springing to life, they led their stand partners ... and it came off perfectly.”

I’m sure you don’t need any words from me here on the need to take Ben Zander’s core principle and use it to to energize your own approach to leadership – let people teach and lead each other rather than trying to control what they do from ‘above’.

Source: The Cuba story is from The Power of Possibility, by Kim K. Crawford Harvie. Kim’s story is from Rosamund and Ben Zander’s book The Art of Possibility.

Labels: Zander

Dave (see post below) , is a brilliant fiddle player and told me another story...How the Germans were advancing on Paris and Stefan Grappelli knocked on Django Reinhardt's door to warn him to run, as they would be in Paris any minute. (They were both playing in the Hot Club of Paris, I think, at the time - Grappelli and Reinhardt, that is).

Reinhardt, who had been asleep, stuck his head out the window and said he'd be along in a minute. Grappelli escaped. Reinhardt went back to bed.

Reinhardt woke up to the German occupation of Paris and, being a gipsy, realised this was not a good place to be. He managed to get to the border with Switzerland, hiding in the back of a truck, but was ordered out by an SS officer.

The officer asked his name. "Oh, Reinhardt the famous guitarist?" said the officer, a music lover. And instead of being sent to a concentration camp with every other gipsy the SS captured, Reinhardt was sent back to Paris to play for the Germans.

On such tiny, apparently inconsequential matters do life or death turn. Because, as Dave told me that story, I instantly wondered (see 'the power of names', below) if Django's fate would have gone the other way if Reinhardt had not, by chance, been such a Germanic-sounding name...

Labels: fate, names

This post is a musing. Be warned.

My geography professor friend Dave told me recently how James Lovelock came up with the name Gaia for his theory that the earth acts like a living organism, and has regretted the name ever since.

Apparently he was in a pub (possibly - in a village, anyway, so maybe in the village pub)with his friend William Golding (yes, Lord of the Flies author William Golding) and explained the new theory to Golding, who promptly told him he should call it Gaia.

They may have had a few pints beforehand, because Lovelock misheard him and for half an hour was trying to figure out why Golding had told him to name his theory after a water funnel that appears in particular seas in the southern hemisphere (called a 'gyre' - I've probably mis-spelt it. Geographers chuckle at this kind of thing) and how on earth Golding knew the word.

When the confusion was cleared up - that he should name his theory after the idea of an earth spirit or goddess - he agreed. And now regrets it.

You see Lovelock was a serious NASA scientist - a leader in his field and a master of hard facts. But, that name has trailed mysticism in its wake and ever since he has been 'tainted' with the aura of a hippy scientist. This, he feels, hindered his message from getting through to hard-nosed politicians and the rest of the scientific community.

Now we know Gaia theory is probably right. But we might have come to that conclusion ten years earlier if he had given it a different name.

The power of names, it occurs to me, cannot be over-stated. Lenin, Molotov, Trotsky, Stalin...These were not real names. They were acquired. They had to be, as these revolutionary leaders had to disguise who they really were in the years they worked under cover.

But - and I was a historian for a while so this has always fascinated me - would the cult of leadership around Stalin have been quite as unbreakable if he did not go under his chosen name, which means "Man of Steel" and instead was known by his Georgian provincial name of Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili...

Malcolm Gladwell has written convincingly in Blink how we sub-consciously defer to taller leaders, including research that shows if you are tall you are more likely to become a leader and be paid more. These sub-conscious cues - height, sex, even name - carry more weight in success or failure as a leader than we might think they do.

So, maybe the first thing you should do if you aspire to be a successful leader (of yourself and of others) is change your name...

Labels: Blink, Gaia, Gladwell, Lovelock