supporting people in the vital work of changing their minds
"Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us."
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Good morning from John Diefenbaker International Airport in Saskatoon. I’m headed back to Vancouver after a great session with a group of leaders in a credit union on empowering and motivating staff. I know I’m certainly motivated after working with them! In my travels over the past few days I’ve been reading Don Tapscott’s and Anthony Williams’ “Macrowikinomics” http://www.amazon.com/Macrowikinomics-ebook/dp/B0045U9U8Y/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339508373&sr=1-2 which another credit union management group and board were kind enough to gift on the weekend.
I’ve been really enjoying reading it. I am intrigued by the image of “collaborative learning.” While this is important, even vital in educational institutions, it is at least as vital inside of your organization, or your team. The idea is simple, in the words of a great teacher of mine, Juanita Brown, “the collected wisdom of any given room is exponentially greater than the wisdom of the person standing next to the PowerPoints.” The question becomes, how to tap into that wisdom. The answer lies in the containers we create.
There are obviously times when a more directive approach is required; as a leader I may well need to tell you what to do, when to do it and how to do it, especially when you are first starting out in a job. But, more and more, and especially with younger people, having been educated in a far more collaborative system than their parents, once I know the basics, I want to learn in my own style, and on my own terms; more often than not, immersively and group learning are the keys to success. That is not to say that people with the knowledge already in hand are not useful; but rather than standing at the front of the room telling us what to do next, the appropriate role is standing/sitting within the group, guiding and coaching. Watch a group of kids learn to skip rope, or play a game of street hockey. The wisdom is already in the group; there may be an older sister or brother who explains the basics, and corrects and guides, but it is the kids themselves, immersed and in the group who actually play the game; and with practice become very adept at it. The worst thing the older sister or brother could do would be to line all the kids up in a row, wheel in a data projector and give a 1 hour lecture on skipping rope or playing street hockey. So why on earth would we expect that education, training and learning in our organizations or teams would work any differently?
And note here that I am not excluding teachers, trainers, and facilitators. Those of us in the craft know first-hand how powerful immersion and group learning can be; our focus point is moving though from the front of the room, into the hearts and minds of the people we teach and the groups we facilitate. We know about case studies; we know about powerful questions to spark dialogue and exploration. And so as leaders and managers we are called to the same shifts; our role is no longer to sit in the corner office; come out and participate, come out and learn with the group. Help construct the container in which the group will thrive, and keep them safe and secure in that space of learning and exploration.
And the adventure continues! It is good to be busy, especially when busy and learning a lot. My journeys over the past couple of weeks have been many and varied, but also filled with delayed flights and near miss tornadoes! It’s all good!
And life continues, as we struggle and thrive in our work lives, the far more important issues remain; relationships begin and end, children are born, elders die; and sometimes, like at the moment, those dramas take on personal colours as friends make new discoveries in themselves and in their relationships, an old friend wrestles with a chronic illness and the related effects of the drugs, and other friends (tragically a young Mum) face aggressive leukemia. And the journey continues.
These events, both near and far, remind us that life is far more than work. In the words of Tom Peters, “you can scour the world’s grave yards, you’ll never see a headstone that reads, ‘She Made Budget.’”
For this week, may each of us make the time to touch someone’s heart; to sit for a while longer with an upset colleague, to call a parent far away, to hold the door, not just for the next person, but for the next three people, to give yourself or someone else a hug, just because. You are a light to someone’s darkness and it may be your own.
And, to be what little help I can, the young Mum with leukemia’s family has sent out an urgent call for folks to register for bone marrow transplants. It’s a relatively simple process to register, and if you are a match for someone, a sight amount of discomfort for you, can save the life of someone else. For those of you in Canada, below is a link to the "One Match" bone marrow registry run by Canadian Blood Services (CBS). Information about the registry and forms to complete are on this site: http://www.bloodservices.ca/centreapps/internet/uw_v502_mainengine.nsf/page/Join_OneMatch?OpenDocument Thanks very much, and please keep this young family in your thoughts and prayers.
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Holy Cow! What a couple of weeks it has been! A week or two, like yours I’m sure, full of adventure! I’ve been in Labrador, in Toronto, in Vancouver and in Central BC. And in the midst of that there was an email transition internally and I temporarily lost access to the list of people on this email. Hence, I behind about a week on Leadership Notes. It is good to be back on track!
One of my adventures was a fascinating conversation where I learned an interesting fact about Canada’s Houses of Parliament. The Parliament Building, the famous building with the Peace Tower in the Centre Block that is so emblematic of Canada, is in fact an unfinished building. The architects designed it that way. To this day there is a mason who works away, finishing the building, but never finishing it. New sculptures, new carvings are always being worked on. And the reason for this ‘unfinished symphony’ is that Canada herself is unfinished; she is growing, she is emerging, she is changing.
And I think this is an amazing metaphor, not only for Canada (and other nations as well), but for organizations and individuals. The organization you lead, or the team you lead, is always growing, always emerging; it too is an unfinished symphony. You as an individual, your colleagues as individuals are always growing, always emerging, you too are an unfinished symphony. I wonder then what the implications of that incompleteness be? What happens for you as a leader to know that not only is your organization unfinished, but that you are unfinished? Might you look differently at your team? Might you look differently at yourself? What new sculptures, what new carvings are being worked on? What new carvings, what new sculptures have yet to emerge?
May this week find each of us finding new possibilities in our unfinished symphonies.
Summer has arrived “full on”. The trees outside my office window appear near bursting with colour and vitality. It is that image, and not the screen with email, messages, and even digital photographs that is seared into my mind. Look up, smell the life, life is right here, right now. I’ve been reflecting over the past couple of weeks about the theft of what my friend, the photographer Martin Knowles http://mkphotomedia.com/ called my ‘digital ecology’. And one of the places I have gone in my thinking, is to ask myself about my ‘real world ecology.’ I don’t mean necessarily the environmental ecology, rather, the real world ecology is; the love of family, the light kiss of a friend on my cheek, the presence of loved ones, the ache of missing friends, the health and vitality of solitude, the deep laughter of a shared joke. And as interconnected as we are, and as much as I enjoy my digital ecology, I love my family and friends.
Some folks have commented on how well I seem to have taken the theft. It is the case that I was angry and frustrated, and, I was surrounded by love, compassion and concern. At least three people, including my dear father-in-law, pulled me aside and offered me money if I needed it. I enjoy my gizmos, I love my family and friends.
And so, reflecting on leadership; we are a gizmo filled workplace these days. And many of those gizmos are amazing; I have been wonderfully entertained writing my own music on airplanes recently with “Garage Band” on my iPad for example. And as much as fun as that, as a leader I might ask myself what music are we making together in this group, on this team. We can use the technology to assist with the making of the music, but in the end, it is still the humans in the band working together that give the music life.
This week, may each of us find the time to make music with one another, and to honour our own real world ecologies.
My friend and brother-in-law, Paul Alofs’ new book, Passion Capital has been very successful in it’s first couple of weeks. And now there’s an excerpt in Fast Company magazine. http://www.fastcompany.com/1837853/8-rules-for-creating-a-passionate-work-culture
I for one really enjoyed the book, and I’m not just saying that because we’re family! And I think the folks at Fast Company have done a great job in highlighting these “8 Rules”. What struck me though was how absolutely vital ‘story’ is to make the point. So for example, in Paul’s book, he quite early tells stories about Alice Cooper, Ken Thompson and Albert Einstein. And of course, Fast Company’s version picks up on this. In order to talk about how to succeed in business, we need to tell stories, and to understand how business works, we need to hear stories.
And then, how often do we sit in presentations and look at numbers?! A key to successful communication about your business or your department, is to tell the story the numbers to which the numbers are pointing. For example, at the conference in Cincinnati that has figured prominently in Leadership Notes, a young man got up to talk about the group he works with in Cincinnati. It’s a hip-hop group that works with young people from various neighbourhoods. Now, he could have given us numbers, he could have said “we have helped x number of young people find community and themselves and x percent are now working in ‘straight’ jobs. And the largely white group in the conference room would have been impressed, and even thought that some good is happening here. Rather the young man brought a poster up to the front of the room, and pointed at people’s photographs on the poster. He grave a brief bio of where they had come from, and what they were doing now, because they had encountered this hip hop group. Story. And then he pointed at the photograph of a young man and said, ‘three years ago, when he was 12, this guy was living under a bridge. He joined us, and became a DJ. He’s really good. But what he really wants to do is be a doctor. So there’s another guy, from a few years ago, who was with our group, and he’s now in Med School. And he’s a really good DJ. So we put the two of them together. And the guy in med school is mentoring this 15 year old, encouraging him to do the work necessary to get into med school.’ And then he sat down.
You could feel the passion in the room.
So, if I may Paul, I’d like to add a 9th rule, or maybe it’s Rule 2(a) under Communication; find, listen for and tell the stories of passion in your workplace. Like collaboration leads to more collaboration, innovation leads to more innovation, passion leads to more passion.
And may we all find some more passion in the work we do to make a difference in and for our communities.
What a wild couple of weeks! My apologies for missing last week’s edition of Leadership Notes. A thief made off with my wallet and contents of my briefcase, and so I’ve been frankly preoccupied with getting back on line and making changes to protect my identity and so this work has taken a necessary back seat. I have however had lots to think about and, this event will influence my thinking for some time. And please know, all is well, no one was hurt, and I’ve been very impressed with the speed and compassion with which people in various organizations, including credit card companies, drivers license offices and my colleagues at CUSource getting me back on line and up and running so quickly. Thanks.
That said, I was at a fascinating conference in Cincinnati last week with Peter Block, http://peterblock.com/ John McKnight, http://www.abcdinstitute.org/faculty/McKnight/ and Walter Brueggerman, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Brueggemann exploring community building. About 90 people from across North America, the Caribbean, and South Africa gathered to explore what it means to build and enhance community. Of the many insights gained in the two days, a top one for me was the important difference between a citizen and a consumer. To put in bluntly, consumers don’t rebuild communities after disasters like a flood, tornado or hurricane, citizens do. Peter, John and Walter all stressed that the concept of citizens has been eclipsed by the market defining us as consumers. And we are so much more. We are the people who clean up after a riot. We are the people who show up to feed the hungry. We are the people who give young men a chance to grow into their dreams. We are the people who have passion for their work and lives. We are the people who risk something big for something good. We are the people who work with you, beside you and for you. We are our neighbours. We are our friends.
So my challenge for us all in the coming days; stand up, you are not “a consumer”. You are a human being who sometimes purchases products and services, but you are much more complex than any poll or market analysis will ever give you credit for. The beginning of recovery economically, lies not in what the consumer in us will do today, it’s what the citizen in us will be today.