Agents of Change @ Work

Why the events at Copenhagen Inspire Me

Regardless of the outcome at the COP 15 Summit, what I see happening there gives me enormous hope for the future: 

1. I see thousands of people of all ages ( and many once strangers to one another) actively engaged in communication, collaboration, spontaneous acts of sharing and generosity and focusing on issues that affect the whole. 

2. Every form of social media is being fully deployed to enable many-to-many conversations that only result in a greater appreciation for and tolerance of complexity, diversity and ambiguity so necessary if we are to make our way forward. 

3. I see individuals taking responsibility for their own actions, caring for their communities; striving to find a better way; questioning and not just following trends or authorities because it’s the easier path; and
4. I see incontrovertible evidence that people are not just seeking to solve a problem but to find meaning and purpose in their lives. 

And while I was seeing all that, I came across this wonderful post by Calgary-based author, Stephen Joyce, titled What Has Meaning Got to Do with Anything? on an excellent blog, Getting Clever Together. 

Stephen draws our attention to Victor Frankl – a childhood hero of mine – who has shaped a life of thinking and I’ll quote Stephen’s introduction to his post and include the video because it is so uplifting. 

Why do we do it? I mean our work. In 1942, Viktor Frankl stood naked and completely alone in the world in a concentration camp. His captors planned to execute him – he was sure of it. They had taken everything he had in the world away. All those he loved and cared for had either been already murdered or would meet that fate soon.  Those around him were in various states of psychological collapse and were resigned to their fate.

And yet amongst all this horror – Frankle discovered something else – an earth shaking idea as potentially trans formative as the discovery of fire. He realized that the only thing we really have control over in our life….. is the meaning we create from it. Frankle describes the search for meaning as our ultimate quest.

Stephen concludes:

We are the meaning makers – whether we wish to accept the responsibility or not.  In other words nothing has any meaning until we create it and our children are crying out for meaning. We must help them find one and a meaning that enables them to aspire toward the highest potential of humanity.

Copenhagen isn’t just about climate change and geopolitics. It's not even about GDP, growth, targets. It's about mankind's search for meaning. Why are we here? - to lead lives that are prosperous but meaningless or lives that are nasty, brutish and short where the search for meaning is a luxury?  It’s also an event that is showing on our TV screens, in our Facebook pages, on our Twitter and Flickr streams just how interconnected we are; how humanity is converging into one community.It’s a mirror that’s illustrating the deep and exciting evolutionary spurt that’s occurring in humankind; and it’s an important milestone (not an end in itself). That's why I am more inspired today than a week ago..

PS. Stephen's great book is: Teaching an Anthill to Fetch - Developing Collaborative Intelligence@ Work

Leadership 2.0 - Essential Steps to Changing the World

You can read the business and academic literature all you want but to learn how to change the world in 2009, you’d be well advised to listen to two contemporary change agents: Seth Godin and Chris Brogan. Both understand how the rules of engagement and leadership have changed as a result of connectivity. 

Seth started life as a marketer. In his current incarnation, he acts as interpreter and popularizer of modern culture with a gift of the gab and a knack for attention grabbing titles. He has recognized that the art of persuading people to buy a product is remarkably similar to persuading them to follow you. In both cases, the task is not so much about selling but in enabling people to do what they yearned to do – achieve a personal goal and feel a part of something bigger than their individual selves. Seth’s most recent book is Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us.

Chris Brogan describes himself as a ten year “veteran” of using social media and both web and mobile technologies to build digital relationships for businesses, organizations, and individuals. Brogan learned the art of leading by accident when he started Podcamp – an event designed to help others learn about how to use social media.  Podcamp spread as a concept and now operates in 90 countries. Brogan recently published Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation and Earn Trust that, partly thanks to his own tribe, just entered the New York best sellers list. FastCompany are publishing excerpts here. 

The writing style used in both books is so similar I wonder if they shared a similar editor/ghost writer. For those of you with long journeys ahead, they are good reads but the contents of their combined 400+ pages can be summarized thus:

1. Find and focus on a Cause – let's face it, there’s no shortage. Brogan calls this “be the priest or build the church’. In other words find a group of passionate believers and or something worth changing or building and use the web to create and strengthen relationships around a common purpose. Most leaders start out as heretics – challenging the status quo and only later become heroes.  To quote Godin: So three questions I'd offer you. The first one is, who exactly are you upsetting? Because if you're not upsetting anyone, you're not changing the status quo. The second question is, who are you connecting? Because for a lot of people, that's what they're in it for. The connections that are being made, one to the other. And the third one is, who are you leading? Because focusing on that part of it, not the mechanics of what you're building, but the who, and the leading part is where change comes.
2. Sustain curiosity – in the cause, yes,  but, more importantly, in the followers. As Brogan says – “make it about them.” Constantly focus attention on the followers. In Brogan’s words, they are the rockstars. In William Gibson’s words “intelligence is distributed”. The genius emerges from the group but is supplied one bright idea at a time from an individual. It pays to identify and resonate with their autobiographical filters. Successful movements have coherence – their members’ mindsets are in alignment. 
3. Connect –Godin argues that what people want more than anything is to be missed on the day they don’t show up. He's just created an exclusive online community for those who signed up first. Brogan identifies that there’s something huge about belonging, being on the inside and having exclusive access. Sadly, while exclusivity may be the force that binds, it's also the force that separates and look how that works when issues as complex as health care are up for debate. 
4. Charisma – Godin suggests that charisma comes from leading. The quality and power of charisma to attract more followers emerges as individuals exercise leadership – simply because most of us want to be led.  The celebrated psychologist Erich Fromm in the 50s also identified that few of us want to exercise responsibility either so a charismatic leader provides two services for the price of one!
5. Simplicity – Brogan identifies the importance of keeping the message and the platform as simple as possible and I would add as actionable as you can. People want something to do – as well as to believe in. 
6. Commitment – don’t be deflected. Leading change takes time, patience and persistence but remember that you don’t need everyone.  Quality of commitment is better than quantity and a 1000 committed, passionate followers or fans might be sufficient. It was the “few” that won Britain’s air battle in the last war; resistance fighters numbered in the thousands not millions and paved the way for a continent's liberation. 

• What’s your cause?
  
• Who will you lead?
  
• Are there other qualities we’ve missed here
• Who are your heroes and which agents of change have inspired you?

In subsequent blogs, I'll highlight more contemporary agents of change.In the meantime, sit back and enjoy Seth's inspirational presentation at TED last year.

Agents of Change Busy Rebooting Britain

Thanks to SwitchNewMedia I was able to avoid 8 hours of train travel yesterday and participate in Reboot Britain from the rural heart of the country.

Faced with economic meltdown,  dismally low levels of public trust in political leadership, growing concerns about the ability of big government to succeed let alone sustain itself, there's an urgent need to "re-imagine, re-invest, and re-invigorate our economy and society." These words of Diane Coyle, editor and facilitator, apply beyond the shores of the little island that formed the focus of yesterday's event...

To provoke debate, the organizers (NESTA) commissioned a series of essays that are well worth reading. I also recommend you  bookmark the site as all the presentations will be available shortly and check out #rebootbritain to sense the Twitter pulse.

While the focus was on the public economy, there was plenty of interest to the private sector and associations in all facets of life and business in the UK and elsewhere.

Kudos to Stephen Moore(@stevemoore4good), NESTA and the organizing team for initiating the conversation - even though the format (mostly in the main lecture hall) was surprisingly conventional with limited opportunities for audience participation. Next time, a split screen would enable online participants to see what the speaker was referring to and it would be great if moderators could accept questions from tweeters/bloggers regardless of their location......

It was a rich experience - even from a distance and without the benefit of F2F buzz, but, despite Howard Rheingold's insightful conclusion and optimistic wardrobe, the title left me feeling very uneasy.

While eye and ear catching in its modernity, the concept of  ReBoot, is on reflection merely a 2.0 version of "kickstart." It implies an assumption that a traditional economy, which has gone into nosedive, can be brought back to life with a reset button and all will be well. Remember, it comes after the messages: "Abort", "Retry", and "Fail"! But the intent of the conference suggested that it isn't a reboot that's needed but an entirely new operating system, based on a fundamentally different set of operating assumptions and guiding principles - far greater even than a switch from PC to Mac! I notice that some other bloggers came to similar conclusions separately.

The term ReBoot also implies that a new economy (networked, open, lightweight, environmentally responsible, socially just, creative, agile and resilient...) will come about as a result of external intervention when, in fact, it's already emerging because the conditions are right.

Truth is, we're being carried forward by a host of change forces that have generated sufficient pent up energy to cause a tectonic shift in perception regarding who we are as human beings on a finite planet and how we should behave...

Talking about 2.0 versions of government, marketing, journalism, healthcare, leadership, HR and manufacturing is really healthy but will only move beyond talk to action when we can sustain our attention spans long enough to understand these deeper forces and harness their dynamics. It's ironic that here we are a pivotal point in human history when we could become conscious of our own evolution and the technology that binds also shatters our attention into tiny fragments such that we seem to be viewing reality through a kaleidescope rather than a microscope.

One agent of change never shy to use the term Paradigm appropriately and forcefully is Don Tapscott (@dtapscott) who, like David Weinerger and crew (Cluetrain authors), and Tim O' Reilly cut his intellectual teeth on IT problems but has just gets wiser and more insightful with age.  For those of us whose time is limited between meetings, tweets, emails, the following 2 minute video clip reminds  us that it'll take more than a reBoot to move Britain forward.

Another agent of change, Paul Hawken, recently author of Blessed Unrest also affirms that the ground is already shaking beneath the feet of traditional institutions. Every time I watch the following clip from the Bioneers conference a few years ago, I am reminded why we're living in such an exciting time, so full of opportunity, so filled with consequence.

BEATING THE ODDS - SIX WAYS OF ENABLING CHANGE

It’s New Year’s Eve and I’m snowbound in Santa Fe near the Ortiz mountains where over 28” of the white fluffy stuff has fallen in 48 hours. Yes, Denver has all the attention but New Mexico is least able to cope – four snow ploughs in Santa Fe for a city of 675,00. Yet another sign that Mother Nature is intent on reminding us who’s boss. Very fortunately for us, the pantry and cellar are well stocked and nature’s display of power has not yet impaired our enjoyment of this peaceful season between Christmas and new years.

So this as good a place as any to reflect on whether 2007 will be the year in which major changes in direction and focus will occur or whether we as a species continue to rush like lemmings towards our own particular cliff.

For the first time in human history, both the weapons of mass destruction as well as tools of mass construction are equally available to individuals like you and me. As highlighted by my dear friend and business partner, Leon Benjamin in the UK, “business as usual” in 2007 is simply not an option – if it ever was. In his Dec 02 blogpost, Leon quotes: Sir Crispin Tickell, director of the Policy Foresight Programme, James Martin Institute at Oxford University and Chancellor of the University of Kent at Canterbury, England when speaking to the American Association for the Advancement of Science earlier in 2006.

Earth's most pressing problems are of our own making. Population increase, degradation of land and resources and the destruction of biodiversity are transforming the Earth's environment in unsustainable ways, leading global researchers to conclude, "the business-as-usual way of dealing with the Earth's system is not an option. The idea may be hard to accept, but in its long history the Earth has not been in this situation before.

However, humans already know how to prevent and repair these environmental threats, "if we have the will to do it." He said that basic conservation, pollution reduction and social changes such as improving women's education would take care of most environmental worries without complicated technological fixes. (For the whole speech, see here).

Tickell is an authoritative commentator – a voice of warning sounded way ahead of his time. His 1977 book Climate Change and World Affairs was one of the first to bring the problem of human-induced climate change to wider public attention.

So if it’s not a question of capacity then it must be a question of whether we have  the vision, the will, the courage and the determination to create our own future – a better, safer , more harmonious, less vulnerable future?

That question in turn begs another question - what conditions are most conducive to behavioral change in humans? This is key if we’re going to slow down let alone turn the collective human Titanic. And at first glance, the prospects are not encouraging. Alan Deutschman’s excellent post Change or Die starts with a salutary tale:

“What if a well-informed, trusted authority figure said you had to make difficult and enduring changes in the way you think or act? If you didn’t, your time would end soon – a lot sooner than it had to. Could you change when change really mattered. When it mattered most. Yes, you say? Try again. Yes? You are probably deluding yourself. You wouldn’t change. Don’t believe it? You want the odds? Here are the odds, the scientifically studied odds: nine to one. That’s nine to one against you. How do you like those odds?”

In the remainder of his excellent blog on this subject (shortly to be available and expanded in a new book of the same title); Deutschman cites evidence for human resistance and reluctance to behavioral change. For example, he draws heavily on evidence from the medical profession that suggests that 80% of our escalating health care budget is consumed by just five behavioral issues people are  reluctant or unable to change: too much smoking, drinking, eating, and stress combined with too little exercise.

Based on Deutschman’s ideas and those of others like Kotter, I think would-be change agents have to create at least six conditions if they want to succeed:

1. Create a sense of urgency
2. Encourage and enable people to both see and feel a better yet often different future.
3. Focus on positive imagery.
4. Provide pointers to practical and incremental action steps - things that peeople can do - to bring about the desired result.
5. Deliver positive feedback
6. Provide sustained support through the period of transition.

Catch the next six blog posts when we’ll explore each of these more closely.

In the meantime, may all of you out there in the blogosphere and anyone reading this, enjoy all Health, Wealth and Happiness in 2007. Just don't assume that past experience will  be of much use in this strange new future we face. Keep your wits about you!

A Brief Story of Our Time - Part 1

Is the pace of change getting you down? Do you ever feel tired and bewildered? Ever heard yourself say – stop the world, I’d like to get off? Do you agree with Ogden Nash’s observation “progress is great, but it has gone on for far too long”?

If you are a baby boomer, like me, watching the horizon date called retirement and financial independence move ever further into the far distance, then take a look at the this chart. No wonder we feel full. We’ve lived through at least four major “ages” or “Economies” and are about to move into a fifth. Our parent’s generation only had to cope with one!

I prepared the chart  to illustrate the pace, extent and nature of change that underlies all human activity as we enter the second decade of the third millennium and to provide a framework for understanding where we might be headed.

As Agents of Change, Ginger and I see our role as helping our corporate and personal clients navigate their way through this pervasive and radical change to better position their company or personal selves to compete effectively.

The subsequent Parts 2 and 3 of this story (next blog posts) summarise my personal experience with these stages

The New Economic Order

In the old economic order of scarcity, companies aimed at specific target segments, armed themselves with the capital, talent and products or services and then fired them in order to acquire revenues, market share and profit at the expense of competitors.

In the new economic order of abundance, communities of like-minded people seek direction within to find the source of their passion and purpose, align the diverse interests of their community members, in order to attract and engage their partners – the  customer and supplier -- in a process of co-creation that creates value where none existed before.

The old model is outer directed and involves pushing out. The new model is inner-directed and involves attracting or pulling in.

The old model is serious and hard and energy draining. The new model is playful, easy and energizing.

The old model is a march. The new a dance.

Which do you prefer?

The Transformation Economy

Global connectivity brought commoditisation as informed and discerning customers search and compare products with unparalleled ease and speed. Current business wisdom suggests that successful companies either out-produce their competition at lower prices or out-create / out-innovate through better design and experience delivery (see Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind). 

According to Shaw and Ivens, authors of Building Great Customer Experiences (2002), “customer experience companies will focus on stories, theatre, emotions and memories to stimulate the customer.”  Their book concludes that “the customer experience is the next competitive battleground”. Sadly, there is absolutely no reference in the 2002 edition of this book to the seminal work on the importance of experience, i.e., Pine and Gilmore’s, Experience Economy (1999). Sadly, because Pine and Gilmore have a much more long-term view. They could have rested their laurels after identifying the importance of staging emotionally positive customer experiences. For most service companies have barely climbed the ladder to staging experiences. Instead, they speculated further into the future by identifying The Transformation Economy as the likely next phase in the increasingly complex saga of consumption.

Experiences are not the final offering. Companies can escape the commoditization trap by the same route as all other offerings: customisation. When you customise an experience to make it just right for the individual – providing exactly what he or she needs right now – you cannot help changing that individual. When you customize an experience, you automatically turn it into a transformation….

They go onto say very presciently:

With transformations, the economic offering of a company is the individual person or company changed as the result of what the company does. With transformations, the customer is the product! The individual buyer of the transformation essentially says, “change me”.

In the Transformation Economy, the customer is an Aspirant seeking some form of real and meaningful personal change – for example, a better figure; a new career, a larger sense of possibility; a deeper understanding of identity and purpose. In the Transformation Economy, the provider is an elicitor, supporter, or guide be he or she a personal trainer, coach, therapist, gardening coach, lifetime financial advisor etc.  If the Experience Economy is the commercial expression of the networked Knowledge/Information Age, then it is fair to say that the Transformation Economy is the outer, transactional expression of the emerging Age of Meaning when finally the needs of a human’s spirit and soul are met in the marketplace of ideas and personal services rather than in the cloister, temple or mosque. 

And here’s the rub. Transformations cannot be extracted, made, delivered or even staged, they can only guided. Transformations occur within the customer and can only be made by them. Transformative transactions are truly co-creative. The Elicitor or Guide can create the conditions that assist the transformation but cannot guarantee it. In this economy, equal emphasis must therefore be placed on four aspects of the transaction: 1). correct diagnosis of the need; 2). development of a shared agreement regarding the desired aspiration and the context in which that aspiration is expressed and anticipated; 3). the provision of support and guidance towards breakthrough; and then 4). sustained, long-term follow through. 

All of this implies a number of things: the Elicitor has to genuinely care about the Aspirant as well as be able and willing to enter into a relatively intimate, trusting and long-term relationship. It could mean that in many cases the Elicitor needs to be skilled and versed in the principles and practices of transpersonal psychology or at least have developed their emotional (EQ) and spiritual quotients (SQ) to a level above average. But it also means that the Aspirant has to assume equal responsibility for the outcome and cannot assume transformation as the outcome of nothing more than a series of appointments or encounters.  Finally, it also requires that both parties – Elicitor and Aspirant – share a common worldview, paradigm or set of values, beliefs and assumptions about how the world works, why they are here and their individual role in it. Challenges will inevitably occur if enither party is skilled in understanding what their own worldview ooks like and how it might differ from that held by the other party.

All of which imply – especially on the part of the Elicitor – a higher level of self awareness, hence this blog. All corporate and community leaders cannot ignore the public’s increasingly rapid movement through Maslow’s hierarchy of need. In the Transformation Economy, familiarity with the concepts and tools of depth and transpersonal  psychology will be essential. More on that later! For now, we’ll let a poet/playwright have last word - for now!

.....Thank God our time is now when wrong

Comes up to face us everywhere,

Never to leave us 'til we take

The longest stride of soul men ever took.

Affairs are now soul size.

The enterprise is exploration into God.

Where are you making for? It takes

So many thousand years to wake

But will you wake for pity's sake?

Christopher Fry, A Sleep of Prisoners