An outlet for musings, observations and futureneering from the company helping you to transition into the connection economy
Recognised experts in any field often rely on nothing more than a hunch. Time (and hard work by others) typically proves them to be right. Where does that innate gut instinct come from? Can you learn it? Can it be transferred? These are questions that get Aiden Choles interested in investigating wisdom continuity as a critical organisational capability.
Continue reading ‘Assessing Wisdom Continuity within your Organisation’
Aiden Choles, an expert in the use of narrative techniques in the corporate world, argues that the rise of the corporate autobiography as bestseller is proof that we need stories, rather than benchmarks, and human connection rather than policy and procedure manuals. In his usual insightful way, Aiden highlights the leadership implications faced by corporates today.
Continue reading ‘The airport bestseller - the role and emergence of corporate autobiographies’
There is a unique situation in South Africa as the white Baby Boomer generation head towards retirement in the next few years.
Instead of wanting to leave a legacy behind them (which is probably the global Boomer desire), South African white Boomers just can’t wait to get the hell out of the organisations that have sidelined them over the last 15 years in the wake of Affirmative Action and Empowerment policies. This is a precarious position as businesses begin to realise that there are not enough Xers to replace them and they run the risk of losing core skills, experience and wisdom. This risk is compounded by the reluctance to engage in transferring their wisdom prior to leaving the organisation.
It was a telling moment when sitting with a client in the electricity industry yesterday who told me directly that we won’t get anything out of these guys - in terms of transferring their wisdom to younger employees - until someone from the organisation stands up and says, “Guys, we’re sorry … we’ve f&*ked this Affirmative Action thing up and messed you around”.
I wonder if the Corporate Ego will allow this to happen?
Recently published: the list of The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived. Pretty interesting: who says you have to be real to have an influence on society? The top 10 are:
1. The Marlboro Man, 2. Big Brother, 3. King Arthur, 4. Santa Claus (St. Nick), 5. Hamlet, 6. Dr. Frankenstein’s Monster, 7. Siegfried, 8. Sherlock Holmes, 9. Romeo and Juliet, 10. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Personally I’m dissapointed that the ugly duckling got such a bad rating.
I enjoy keeping tabs on the narrative pulse of South Africa. By listening out for the narrative take on events I believe we get glimpses into our consciousness as a nation. The same applies to organisations and understanding their own narratives. One really gets to grips with this narrative pulse when listening to comments made by listeners who call in to radio talk shows.
The latest check on the South African pulse takes the form of the wake of events following criticisms pitched against our president, Thabo Mbeki, by a former advisor and the ensuing debate between the ANC, YCL and SACP.
Today, while driving, I was listening to SAfm where the topic was around the “malicious attack and hurling of insults” by the Young Communist League (YCL) towards Mbeki after he criticized SACP leader Blade Nzimande in a speech. By and large the thread to the listeners comments was one of defense towards the Presidency and outrage at how disrespectful the allegations were being towards Mbeki (”dictator” is one specific allegation). Interesting that in a functioning democracy where freedom of speech is enshrined in a broad constitution people were defending the institution of the presidency with a fervour one might expect citizens of a dictatorship to do so. Not only this, they were defending Mbeki passionately as well: highlighting the good work he has done and how undeserved he is of such criticisms.
Mbeki seems to be one of those public figures who has a polished public narrative. This is evident in how people defend him. Another such character is that of our famed Minister of Finance, Trevor Manuel. Manuel has a way of delivering bad news with chocolate coating. One wonders what would happen if news had to break that counters such a narrative … will his narrative tarnish or will it prove resilient? In my opinion, such leaders will need to do a helluva lot to break the dominance their positive narratives have in our society. You see, when we have a dominant narrative on an event or someone and new information come sot light that presents an alternative view is most often rejected for being so contrary to the dominant narrative. It also explains how leader fall from fame so tragically - we cannot really believe that the person we thought was so good is actually so bad!
The public narrative is much more than just reputation. Traditional professionals in this space work hard on reputation management where the standard response to a public saga is to get them holding HIV/Aids babies in front of photogrpahers. Leaders and their associated PR, PA, Media Liaison and spokespersons need to catch a wake up on the public narrative.
A well developed public narrative is almost bullet proof. You want to breed loyalty? Start thinking about who you and how that informs your public narrative as an organisation and as an individual.
I do hope you’ll excuse the therapy analogy here - one nevers knows how severe the lynching may be when mentioning therapy influenced notions in the business context.
Anyway …
One of the roles a therapist fulfills for a client is that of a mirror .This means that the therapist can become a reflective tool for the client who may not be able to see aspects of their story and any changes that may need to occur on their own. This does not mean that the therapist becomes an expert observer in the life of the client, but does help the client see himself more clearly and see the journey better.
In many ways, this is what I believe we do as TomorrowToday. We hold up a mirror, so that companies can assess who they are in establishing competitive advantage in the Connection Economy. If it is really more about who you and and less about what you sell, it is important that businesses (including ourselves) have a mirror they can reflect themselves against to get to grips with who they are, what frameworks can aid in the process and help discover the answers within themselves.
Perhaps a crude analogy, but one I believe is pertinent. Your thoughts?
In this article, Aiden deals with the complex issue of change management, convincingly showing why many of today’s interventions fail. He provides a new starting point, using Organisational Narrative Mapping as a mechanism for profound change.
Continue reading ‘Facing up to problems and their solutions’
I’m a firm believer that your story is your story. As it is rooted in your experience and by virtue, your story is a simple retelling of your experience. It is not then a ventured opinion that is open for debate and scrutiny. When this understanding is in place, it opens room for everyone to learn from the stories they hear and to be touched by the significance of the story. We affirm this point in all the work we do with companies when mapping their Organisational Narratives. But in recent days there has been a news story that has made me question whether such reverence of experience is valid. It is the furore stirred up by Pope Benedict quoting a Byzantine leader who slated the impact Mohammed had on the world in spreading Islam.
The Islam community has lashed out at his speech and the inference regarding his belielfs on Islam. Their response, understood as a story, has been characterised by pain and hurt. As a Christian African Westerner (sho, a mouthfull) I have found myself believing that the Muslim world has just misinterpreted the quote and not seen it in the grander picture of what Benedict is trying to achieve: greater tolerance and acceptance. But then, in listening to an interview with a Muslim cleric on TV this morning about the issue, I wonder if I have fallen into the trap of subjugating the “story” the Muslims are telling us? For the Muslims, from what I can understand, the issue here is that Bendict did not distance himself and his personal stance from the content of the quote. By virtue of this not happening, his has covertly stated he is anti-Muslim. But, I do not know if I am right on this.
How do we really open ourselves to the messages and lessons behind stories? How do we open ourselves to another’s story, no matter how different and imcomprehensible it seems to us?
Amazing how our burdens change over time. A few years back, some of the questions you’d ask when moving around were: will there be a road, will petrol be avialable, will there be a telephone, with there be a fax machine, will there be cellphone reception and now today … will there be a plug point available to aid my ailing battery. Bump into me at any Wifi hotspot and you’ll find me appendaged to a plugpoint charging my laptop, cell phone and iPod. It’s no secret that I’m not an HP fan. Currently adding to my PC-woes is the fact that the battery life on my laptop is nearing a max of 45 minutes. Working virtually, I demand a lot from a power supply. But I do wonder if a battery that is just shy of 1 year old should detoriate as quickly as it has? So, I best make this post a quick one lest my time is cut short.
To be fair, my issue here is not as much with HP as it is with the limits of science. It is well known that Moore’s Law promises us with better times to come in terms of computing power and speed. However, little is said about battery technology’s ability to keep up with that sort of development and need. Damon Darlin and Barnaby J. Feder report today in The New York Times how scientists are running into some basic hurdles of chemistry and physics when it comes to packing more energy life into smaller battery packs. The key issue: the more energy in a small package the higher the volatility. The recent Dell recall of 4.1 million laptop batteries is testiment to how a microscopic metal particle suddenly makes you wonder when last you backed-up (and they are not even covered by warranties!!!). I bight my thumb at those who worry about cellphone waves frying my brain … phwah, talk about the spontaneous combustion ability I pack everday. We should all actually keep our distance!
It is stated that the energy capacity of batteries is increasing a mere 5 to 8 percent a year, while demand is exponential. I do wonder how much easier my life would be if I did not have to run through a mental checklist before going to bed while standing at a plug-point in my wall: cellphone, laptop, handsfree, razor, iPod.
Point of order this week: purchase new battery (also known as piling money into the coffers of manufacturers who have no incentive to make batteries last longer.)
Have you noticed how busy everyone is? It’s almost as if the phrase “things are hectic” is usurping the inimitable response of “fine” when asked, “So, how are you?” Shawn Callahan over at Anecdote has termed this the busy-ness meme. So, as a unit of cultural meaning, is this meme a representation of how busy we really are or a self-defense for not being busy?
Can change be managed in organisations?
Aiden Choles looks at the business critical issue of retaining talent, highlighting some of the mistakes that companies make when trying to manage their talent. He argues that a certain amount of churn is inevitable, and possibly even healthy if managed properly. But that requires a shift in perspective on what talent is.
Continue reading ‘Are you sure you want your Talent to stay?’
While watching the first episode of Survivor South Africa last night, Sam and I wondered how the series would differ from the US version and whether we’d see a distinctly South African flavour come out of the tried and tested Survivor script and screenplay. At first we reckoned that we’d see how much more tolerant South Africans are of our fellow earth-inhabitants than those of our American compatriots.
I wonder?
One might suggest that because of our legacy as a country and the role prejudice has played post-94, we’ve developed a sincere and genuine acceptance and tolerance of each other as South Africans. Pre-94, aggression and open conflict with one another was pretty much rewarded by the system (regime) and of late the system change no longer rewards that behaviour. So, is the tolerance we see around us genuine or perhaps a pseudo form of tolerance to simply please the reputation(delusion) we have of ourselves as a forgiving and reconciliatory nation? In fact, I wonder if we as South Africans even know how to handle conflict?
Your thoughts please.
Everyone once in a while someone walks on this earth and does things that the staunchest East Rand boytjies (not sure what the global equivalent is?) would never do … stick their head into a crocodiles mouth … for fun … as a career!? Steve Irwin, the legendary Croc Hunter died today after being stung by a stringray while filming an underwater documentary.
Kudos to Steve.
Read the reports here at The Australia Zooand CNN.
Penguins represent a paradox of innovation and narrative in organisations. Penguins are considered one of the most sociable species on the planet, and often live as a flock on an iceberg or cliff. Both fear and food reside in the same place - in the water. The fish as food and the sharks as fear.So now, how do you get the first of the flock into the water? The answer: the flock pushes the pengiun closest to the edge into the water to see if it is safe. This paradox is ironically labelled as “co-operation in a competitive envirnment”. It is the same paradox we find in organisation when they have to innovate i.e. “great idea Bob, you go ahead and try it!”
When one gets to grip with the organisational narrative of a company, one often finds that they are a company just waiting for someone to be pushed off the edge to change the Story. So, in some cases, when a company has gone through a particularly tough patch the narrative pattern, as an indicator of the culture, is one dominated by a lack of meaning and mistrust in leadership. This organisation is just waiting for a leader to emerge, and will often put one in place, to find out if it is safe to move on and change the Story/culture or not. It is in this space that an organisation is just yearning for a hero to come along and lead them out of the mire. This may sound counterintuitive to my logic above regarding the pengiuns. The truth is however that organisations, as collectives of employees, often do not see their inherent ability to “push” someone off the edge and the leadership, instead of seeing the opportunity, embody the dominant negative narrative without seizing the opportunity to step forward.
Some fo thsi thinking comes from an audio clip of Peter Engstrom’s found here.
It’s a rare occurance that we point towards formal academia that underpins the stuff we speak of on ?ic and in our TomorrowToday frameworks. So, as a treat, I’d like invite you to step away from our uber-sexy TmTd language and delve into some academic viewpoints. Why, you may ask? Well, it’s because a few customers of late have asked me what research and background we draw on in our frameworks. Somehow, the answer of “killer experience and superior intelligence” have not ellicited the responses I was hoping for. Oh, and because I sometimes find comfort in reading academic stuff. So, let me point you to a journal article on Organizational Change & Development by Weick & Quinn (from Michigan Business School). Yep, I can already hear you yawning. Let me say that I found this article very useful as it provides some background to what we say around the current age of discontinuous change, how we “do” change in organisations and what role culture plays in the midst of change. Here’s a snippet:
The basic tension that underlies many discussions of organizational change is that it would not be necessary if people had done their jobs right in the first place. Planned change is usually triggered by the failure of people to create continuously adaptive organizations.
The reason businessmen speak of gurus is because they cannot spell the word “charlatan”.
Courtesy of The Witch Doctors by Micklethwait & Wooldridge. For those of you that want to make sure that somoeone actually said this, please note that I have intentionally left out the reference to American businessmen because the example is equally relevant on a global scale.
If Pete Laburn has ever cornered you into a coffee shop, he has no doubt told you about Orchestras & Jazz Bands. It is a metaphorical analogy that compares companies (and how they have adapted to our age of discontinuous change) to the difference between orchestras and jazz bands. But let me not steal Pete’s thunder. For now, my point is that there is a definitive way in which musical organisations mirror and relfect what happens in companies. The modus operandi is different, but the structural, systemic processes are similar. In doing some reading on organisational culture I stumbled upon the Symphony Orchestra Institute. The SOI was founded by Paul R. Judy who “was motivated by a lifelong passion for classical music and a keen interest in how organizations functioned, coupled with a serious concern about the longer term effectiveness and sustainability of the existing American symphony organization model.” The SOI is a great example of an organisation that understands the dynamics of culture and how they play out in organisations. I recommend reading their series on Organisational Culture.
We know the lesson: if you ask your Talent to stay, they won’t. So, the alternative is to create an invitation that “pulls” them towards your organisation in a manner akin to swarming. The metaphor, care of Cognitive Edge, of a swarm of bees is a valuable metaphor: if the beekeeper can capture the swarm after it has left the hive, then it can be put in a new hive and will become productive. Swarming involves creating the equivalent of a bright light and seeing what comes to it.
Unfortunately, a “bright light” can not be conscripted. One needs to tap into the informal talent network in your organisation to understand what that light may be … because that is where the answer lies, and it is there! Again, the argument is to really get into the mind of your talent before instituting cosmetic changes to your culture (ala flexible working hours, relaxed dress code, etc). Cosmetic changes are popular beacuse they provide a false sense of security in believing “right, we have done soemthing”. While these changes have worked for other organisations, your organisation is a different system.
NYTimes reports today that Australian Prime Minister John Howard has called for expansion of the country’s capability to produce and export unranium … for economic interests. At a time when urnaium enrichment in countries less ally-friendly to the US, this development potentially adds more sleepless nights in the White House. Howard is quoted as saying, “For Australia not to reap greater income from its vast uranium deposits would be akin to Saudi Arabia not exploiting its oil”. Further, he declared that Australia could become an “energy superpower.â€?
Australia have no intention (publically or officially) to confront Washington’s policy on limiting the enrichment club to a handful, but wish to benefit economically from it’s rich uranium deposits. When countries like North Korea decide to enrich and test, one questions thei intent. When Australia now comes to the party under economic rationale, do we not ask the same question?
More often than not the accussation of “telling tales” reminds us of our childhood when our parents would admonish us for being naughty and use this phrase in a far-from-covert ploy to get us to tell the truth. Well, JetBlue is now actually encourgaing the telling of tales … customer experience style. By establishing a Story Booth customers can, via megaphone, express there feelings about the airline. Or, you can submit a story to their story web page here. The Motley Fool reports that close on 2,000 anecdote have been gathered to date. A nice way for a company to embrace the power of narrative.
Tomorrow marks the start of the annual rugby Tri-nations tournament between South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. As usual, the cultural banter between the countries rises. I couldn’t resist sharing this story.
From SuperRugby, care of Reuters: “Australia have upset near-neighbour New Zealand with television advertisements depicting some of their rugged rugby players carrying women’s handbags.
The NY Timesreports today that as China ages, a shortage of cheap labour looms (free registration required). Since the 1950s, China has held a competitive labour differentiator based on Mao’s encouraged population explosions. However, shortly after Mao died, a one-child per family policy was adopted. Today China stands to lose its prized labour position to countries like Bangladesh, India and Vietnam as a significantly sized workforce a) does not have the masses to be replaced, and b) are being replaced by young highly educated and empowered people who are not cheap.
From the article, “As workers become scarcer and more expensive in the increasingly affluent cities along China’s eastern seaboard, the country will face growing economic pressures to move out of assembly work and other labor-intensive manufacturing, which will be taken up by poorer economies in Asia and beyond, and into service and information-based industries.”
In our Mind the Gap framework we speak of how Xers cannot remember insitutionalised apartheid. I am one of them. Graeme posted earlier about the Youth Day public holiday on 16th June here in South African that commemorates the youth riots of 16th June 1976. Being a white 26 year old South African I have found the last decade and a half of transformation quite bland. This is for a few reasons. In part, I was sheltered from the news and experience of emergency state-like events of the 1980s because of propogandised media and the comfort of white suburbia. And then, as Barrie would say, a fish does not know it is wet as it has no benchmark of dryness to measure against. I grew up, and began my conscious awakening amidst the changes in South Africa, not really knowing where we had come from in terms of institutionalised apartheid.
And so, in recent years I have begun to explore my history as a South African … the history not taught to me when I was in school. I visited Soweto for the first time on June 10th this year. Feeling surprisingly safe, I drove past a sign that pointed to the Hector Pieterson Memorial. I decided then to visit the Memorial before the 16th. The Memorial requires a post of its own, but on the day I picked up a book called I write what I like by Steve Biko. In wanting to get in touch with significant characters of the past few decades, I’d heard a little about Biko and thought this book would be a nice starting point to learn about the man who headed up the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa.
For millennia Stories and the telling of stories have been central to human existence. From the Hunter-Gathers who told of the day’s conquests around the fire, to friends who tell of what they were doing in December 2004 the exact minute the Tsunami hit while on holiday in Phuket, humans have woven their existence together with stories. The value of a story lies in its ability to convey complex multi-layered ideas in a simple and memorable form to culturally diverse audiences.
Today stories seem less important to our functioning as they were in ages gone by. We find that our preferred modes of operating are void of metaphor, symbolism and imagery. Often, when looking at management science employed by managers, the ‘softer’ value of viewing issues through the lens of Story is relegated in preference to good practice and sound expertise that over-complicate simple ideas. We are more comfortable in the realm of Story when it is applied to parenting as children thirst for the quenching that stories provide their imaginations.
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