Blog Post 10/12/2009

Is your change management leadership more like automobile drivers or motorcycle riders?

I’m not trying to ascertain whether or not they live life on the edge, have a bad-boy image or anything like that; I’m more interested in your leaderships focus and flexibility.

Physics and Change Leadership

I have been an automobile and motorcycle enthusiast my whole life. I really like machines and tinkering with them and particularly machines that will propel me somewhere. For this reason I’ve had plenty of opportunities to push cars and cycles to their limits, and to my own limits. Here though we don’t need to focus on pushing those limits. In fact I want to focus on the most important, most risky and most frequent examples.

The daily drive in traffic, on your most familiar streets.

If you are familiar with driving a car (or taking public transportation) for going about your daily routine you know that there isn’t much required of you. You have to make it to the bus stop on time, or you have to make sure that your car is properly warmed up before you head out.

During those colder months many automobile drivers won’t even fully clean off their windows because they are so confident that they don’t need that level of clarity to safely navigate between their familiar destinations.

A motorcyclist however must be a constant master of risk mitigation and change management. A short list of variables that change daily, no matter how familiar a motorcyclists path, are:

• Weather – Heat, Cold, Sun Glare, Rain, Sleet, Snow, Ice and Wind. Every one of these weather elements effect how the rider reacts, the information they are receiving from their nervous system. It also effects how the machine acts and reacts – motorcycle components are much more exposed than automobile parts and this plays a role in what your bike is able (or unable) to do at any given time.
• Road Conditions – Potholes, Oil, Debris. Many obstacles on the roadway could damage a car but rarely in such a way that it is disastrous to the operator – this is not the case for motorcyclists.
• Driver Awareness – Eating, Cell Phones, Stereo Adjustment, GPS. Look around for a moment at what drivers are up to during their commute and you’ll get a good feel for why motorcyclists can never let their guard down.

All of these factors play a part on a daily basis. When turning a motorcycle you have to physically adjust your body position, appropriately use your brakes and speed to maintain proper tire traction or else you’ll end up on the slab. In a car you worry about braking and speed but, for everyday driving, you are making that happen with the shifting of a single foot.

Day to Day Change Leadership

Is your organization’s leadership comfortable with waiting for those surprise moments where they may or may not have time to disengage their auto-pilot and react to change? Is your leadership treating the organization more like an automobile that doesn’t need much attention? When this approach is taken where is your leadership’s focus on a day-to-day basis?

What if your leadership worked day-to-day like a motorcyclist? Focused, balanced and being aware of the daily changes that are occurring around them; looking for opportunity in those changes? What if they paid attention to the organization like a motorcyclist has to pay attention to their bike; knowing that any under-performing group changes the dynamics of the whole organization?

Driving a motorcycle is like flying. All your senses are alive. — Hugh Laurie

Blog Post 10/5/2009

The immediacy of online interaction is significant to the revolution that our society is under right now; it allows us to make things happen that otherwise seemed impossible.

For example, the creation of “flash mobs” is uniquely internet driven. Not that these activities couldn’t happen through analog meetings but they generally don’t and haven’t. I believe that is related directly to the sense of urgency we create in our online interactions that we don’t feel when we are talking to the more limited audience of our face-to-face peers.

When then does it make sense to slow down, to actively and consciously resist this speeding up of our interactions and our world?

Slowing Down Online

There are times when we specifically need to slow down online and there is actually plenty of opportunity for that. If you are a Facebook or Twitter user you likely have a stream of thoughts, ideas, statements and shared content flowing past you that you know you can never keep up with. From time to time why not grab ahold of a particularly interesting piece of that content – that idea thread – and let yourself chase it down the rabbit hole.

This process can be similar to reading a really good book. Following the idea process, the links associated with it and finding differing opinions or stances.

Actively choose not to respond, not to involve yourself in the idea stream but just to follow along “listening”.

At the end of the tail you might be really surprised by what you learn about yourself, your network and the idea itself.

Sharp Tongues

When we communicate in sharp, short statements we often miss out on opportunities to learn. Our ability to quickly respond makes this knee jerk reaction all the more appealing.

This type of communication is inherently very self-centered because it doesn’t give room for another viewpoint. This doesn’t mean that you need to compose an encyclopedia behind every statement you make, it is just something to be aware of.

Consider slowing down instead.

While the right to talk may be the beginning of freedom, the necessity of listening is what makes the right important – Walter Lippmann

I couldn’t have said it better myself. What do you do to slow down?

Blog Post 9/28/2009

Last week I had the opportunity to speak to a few groups of people about social media. What I found however was that I talked a lot more about community than I did specifically about social media.

I like that because I see social media as just one other way to develop, build and grow community; and, I look to community as the producer of innovation.

Community produces innovation

When I consider a healthy community I think of a diverse group of people bound together by one (or many) commonalities. In regards to the work I do at the State of Ohio the commonality is related to IT procurement, at least within the group I am working with.

Many of the staff have commonalities beyond just that but it is the work around IT procurement that pulls them together. When the group sits down as equals, as a community, they manage to brainstorm really innovative ideas to the problems facing the State in this current economy. Being a part of this, even just witnessing it, is really spectacular.

This week I witnessed many innovative ideas bubble to the top thanks to this very process. (I would tell you more but you’ll have to wait until the ideas are farther along and can be released into the wild.)

Why then do we so often choose to build frameworks that remove this equality, this community?

When an organization chooses to strictly hold a command and control hierarchy they have effectively chosen to forgo innovation.

Innovation is free

The funny thing about innovation is that it rarely happens in a vacuum. The most useful innovation comes when groups of people who share a common experience and mission are empowered to solve their own problems and determine their own mission. Simply by empowering groups you invite innovation to find you freely, you just have to be brave enough to let it happen.

So I want to ask you:

Is your organization brave enough to invite innovation? Are you brave enough to be an equal member of an innovative community?

Blog Post 9/21/2009

Do you ever consider all of the things in our life that have the purpose of being broken? Pinatas are one good example of this.

A pinatas purpose, its goal in life, is to be broken. By taking this beautiful creation and smashing it open the pinatas second goal in life is achieved – delivering candy to children.

When you consider the purpose of the pinata you quickly realise that ultimately the pinata’s final purpose (to provide children with fun) is the only purpose it delivers on in a responsible and efficient way.

You see, the pinatas beauty is the artistry of the container itself. Surely it would be more efficient to deliver the candy in a bowl to the children; maintaining a beautiful piece of art would be a more responsible use of the pinata itself. The action of smashing the pinata is quite fun though.

So, through destruction we derive  joy.

Destructive Purpose

Don’t get me wrong, I <3 pinatas. I was so excited to see my daughter take her very first ever whacks at a pinata. Sometimes things with a destructive purpose are a real joy. However, I understand that there are a lot of other things we do with destructive purpose in life that aren’t enjoyable.

At your organization do you call meetings where you struggle to build agendas? Do you have meetings that are cobbled together around issues that not everyone has an interest in?

These meetings are destined to breakdown. Participants become quickly bored and agitated about the time they are wasting. Facilitators of meetings like this lose the trust and respect of their audience. This break in trust and respect often leads to a break in morale.

The primary problem with these meetings is that they are driven by an agenda (either the stated one or the subtle one that comes from above). So instead of hosting destructive meetings how do you start hosting responsible and efficient meetings; meaningful meetings?

Injecting Purpose

One simple question that usually has difficult answers is, “What is the purpose for this meeting?”

Answer that question first before doing anything else. If someone wants to start building an agenda before you have your purpose completed then stop them. Even if you are the one calling a meeting don’t develop the purpose alone, have someone else sit with you.

This collaborator will help determine if your purpose really requires convening a meeting and whether or not the purpose is driven by personal agenda or if it will drive an organizational agenda.

Once you have a clarity of purpose the agenda will write itself and you will easily determine who are the right people to invite. Instead of a destructive meeting you now have laid the groundwork for a productive meeting and possibly innovative discussion.

Try It

1. Sit down with someone else to plan your next meeting.
2. Sit across from each other or in a circle if there are several of you.
3. Put a big piece of blank white paper in the center with some markers.
4. One at a time talk about what the purpose of the meeting might be and let each person write their idea on the paper.
5. Once everyone has had a chance to contribute a thought or idea work together to boil those down or expand them, depending on what seems appropriate.
6. Take a clean sheet of paper and write out a final version of your purpose in its center – this becomes the core purpose behind everything that happens at the meeting.
7. Now, and only now, are you ready to create your agenda. If something doesn’t fit with the core purpose then it shouldn’t be a part of this meeting.

Blog Post 9/14/2009

Recently I’ve been watching a film called Long Way Down; the follow-up to the documentary film A Long Way Round. The premise  is that you take a couple of well (or well enough) healed individuals, in this case actor Ewan McGreggor and friend Charlie Boorman, put them on motorbikes and follow them as they circumnavigate the globe.

Paraphrasing Ewan, “this is the type of adventure every boy dreams about but few get the opportunity to do.”

We all have dreams, adventures and aspirations that we’ve held onto for years now. Some of these may go all the way back to our childhood. While I believe that you can accomplish anything you put your mind to I understand that often times the idea of the adventure is more important than the adventure itself.

My Little Adventures

The aforementioned films get my blood pumping to do a long adventure motorcycle ride. At the moment however I am not in a position to make that happen. After several days being removed from the film I realize that, while I would like to make such an adventure happen immediately, it really is not at the top of my list of priorities.

I’m sure this is true for many people. Instead I satisfy some small cravings by finding small adventures that can be accomplished quickly. To satisfy this small craving my small adventure was to forgo driving on the streets that carry me effortlessly to my destination and instead hop onto the gravel service road next to the train tracks.

In the heart of a city of nearly 1.5 million residents I find myself surrounded by trees and wildlife with not another soul around. My motorbike slides into ruts, pushes me back and forth as it fights for footing on the large loose gravel. This ride is an adventure, a little adventure.

I take these little adventures as a way of reminding myself of my place in the world and as a way of re-opening my mind to new possibilities.

Daily Little Adventures

On a day-to-day basis I find excuses to break out of my routine, this small act alone provides for a very little adventure but one that is crucial to keeping me engaged in my work.

The act of reaching out to someone within your organization, or an organization that you admire is another little adventure – one I highly recommend. For me an adventure is anything that takes you out of your comfort zone, challenges you enough to highten your awareness and quicken your pulse a bit. This physical change causes a mental change that sharpens our focus while opening our minds to previously unseen possibility.

“We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character” – Henry David Thoreau

What do you do to create little adventures and how do they make you feel?