Ah, powerpoint...

James told me about this at lunch today. Enjoy.

Chris Corrigan on living systems

Rob and I did our latest Phoric podcast with Chris Corrigan, who was pretty awesome. Chris never fails to provoke and engage and his choice of videos was fascinating.

The first features a guy who learnt how to move huge stones using small ones. He shows how, on his own, he can move a one-ton block 300 feet per hour. Then he shows how he can move a whole barn using the same principles or lift a massive block up high. Remarkable. As I say to Chris in our chat, it rehabilitates the whole of idea of leverage in organisations.

He says that "gravity is my favourite tool" and I love the notion of using the least effort to achieve a result. What a great video - I'd think of showing it to a group of people trying to tackle a challenge as a bit of inspiration.

Chris other choices are equally engaging, and if you listen to the podcast, see if you get as seduced by Chris' worldview as I always do.

Download the Podcast

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Top?

So another of those lists of the world's top brands is out. Meanwhile, Roland notes with scepticism a new list of the "most innovative" companies.

As Roland says

Over 40m US citizens are self employed 'free agents' and 20% of UK workforce will soon be working from home. Whilst the UK would surely benefit from more brands that act as hubs in the global economy, there are many examples of small companies or even individuals who act as powerful nodes which can be more agile, responsive and dare I say it, innovative.

Understated benefits of blogging et al

Euan thought this was good and so do I: 5 Social Computing Benefits that Adoption Rates Don't Show

Shine

Now this looks like my kinda conference:

* 600 social entrepreneurs
* 3 days
* 23 sessions (and counting)
* 1 warehouse on London’s Southbank

Welcome to SHINE, the first ever ‘Un’Conference for Social Entrepreneurs.

This event is created by social entrepreneurs for social entrepreneurs, whether you’re just starting out or more established.

Long presentations, boring speeches and being trapped in closed rooms are out. Peer-to-peer exchanges, info-snacking and flexible sessions are in.

The content is contributed by participants, and there is no compulsory programme. Make your own event.

Getting wow into education

A Swedish teacher wonders how to compete with World of Warcraft. Good question, the sort we might chat about on Wednesday afternoon at NESTA. There's room for few more if you're interested.

Facilitation workshop

I'm planning a one-day workshop for facilitators on July 18th in London. As in the past, the format will be loosely structured and highly experiential. Details here.

Health care

Rob has a thoroughly thought-provoking post about mushrooming healthcare costs. I think Rob finds quests for "efficiency" as suspicious as I do.

Life as a voiceover

Made me laugh.

Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan

Social media, mockery et al

This afternoon Tom Guarriello and I shot the breeze about the Shel Israel puppet story. Sorry, no shownotes for this one. We covered a fair bit of ground: what comic influences do we see here; is the British take on this kind of satire more indulgent; is there a line to be drawn between comedy and bullying; is there a slope and is it slippery. Tom contributes some great cultural context to the backstory.

In the end I think I'm mostly laughing and Tom's laughing quite a lot and also feeling a bit queasy. I could well be mistaken. Enjoy.

Download the Podcast (24mins, 8MB)

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Knowledge Management, Apparently

Our seventh phoric podcast (originally scheduled for April 1) is out.

Rob and I were privileged to host Dr David Vaine of Apparently Knowledge Management. He is a true thought-leader in the area of KM. Hear how his Architecting Space for Sharing (ASS) and Wisdom Managment Programme (WIMP) help businesses avoid the promiscuous knowledge sharing and generally prevent social software from doing anything to disrupt hierarchy.

Among the highlights: Dr Vaine explaining the chief virtue of transparency: the ability for everyone to know their place. The insight that "it's really most important to make sure people do not feel comfortable in their own skin" and "if you put people down, put them down humanely".

As I say at the end, Dr V really does put the Apparently into KM.

Download the Podcast

Showing his mastery of the tools, Dr V made his own video of his performance which shows him off to even greater advantage.

And thanks to Patrick Lambe for persuading the good Doctor to share his wisdom with us.

Those puppets

Somehow the sturm and drang over this has passed me by till this morning. Catching up on it all has been... FASCINATING!

An interesting straw in the wind

If you get excited about where social media might take us all, you'll probably enjoy this post by Grumblemouse: San Fran torch relay is a social media extravaganza. The notion of a guy helping to organise a protest in San Francisco by watching a livestream of NBC and sending updates via Twitter, from his kitchen in London, is pretty cool, I think.

Living a lie

Hugh's latest:

Open Space Innovation

Nice post from Jack Martin Leith on how he used Open Space as part of an innovation process. Seems nice and human to me.

Interesting job alert

As you may know, I’m currently doing some work for NESTA and in particular its NESTA Connect programme.

NESTA has been through a bit of a transformation in recent months and is doing some good stuff based on getting people together to support innovation. They’ve certainly hosted some good events featuring some of the many interesting voices relating to things Web 2.0 etc. And they put seed money into some great projects like the recent Sicamp.

Anyhow, Roland Harwood is responsible for this programme, and he’s hiring. Which creates what might be a great opportunity for someone out there. Roland’s looking for someone to help him take NESTA Connect forward. So if you are someone - or know someone - who can help NESTA make connections out there, please give Roland a holler. There's a job spec on this page (currently the second item, with links to more details).

Torching empty rituals

The recent disruption of the Olympic Torch ritual fascinates and, frankly, excites me. I'm glad to see China's Tibet policies challenged and I also see this as part of a wider pattern.

I think they've been doing the torch run thing for decades and it never created much fuss. That's because, like many things surrounding the Olympics, the athletic energy has been turned into an empty, boring ritual.

And in a networked world, being portentous and boring is a massive invitation to those who have genuine passion. They can take your empty ritual and, with a simple intervention, fill it with energy and meaning. In London, perhaps the best manifestation of this was one man with a fire extinguisher. A simple visual act, and a simple sound bite accompanied by images of him being hauled off, and he'd engineered a PR coup.

Of course, his actions took place in the context of protests which were pretty well co-ordinated in what looks like a textbook Here Comes Everybody fashion.

As for the blue-track-suited Chinese security team, well they managed to look like heavies who'd been rendered weightless - a rather powerful propaganda blow for the regime, I'd say.

Gaming for good?

I've been thinking a lot lately about games and their relevance to organisations. Online gaming is massive and I'm intrigued by what these games provide that so engages their participants. And I wonder: could our organisations do with some of it? I'm also a big fan of using things like improv in groups and seeing how an approach based on games can help people to collaborate more effectively. There's something about how apparently "pointless" games create more interest than meetings about supposedly important subjects.

Another thing that has really struck me is the story of a friend of mine who works in the care system. He doesn't like video games, but decided to learn to play as a way to better relate to his young clients. He decided not to be dismissive of games but chose to engage.

Anyhow, my friend David Lundblad and I are gathering together a few people who are interested in this topic for a chat. We're calling Gaming for Good for now. This will be informal and we'll see where we go from there.

We're meeting on Wednesday 16 April 4pm-6pm and possibly afterwards in the pub.

UPDATE: I'm pleased that those nice people at NESTA are going to host us. If you want to come, please go to this registration page.

Conversation vs Diagrams

Talking about our recent podcast, Matt writes:

There was a whole bunch of stuff I put together in a mind map just prior to the show that I never used. The actual conversation was far more interesting than that...

The pitfalls of confidentiality

Annette Clancy's recent post on the pitfalls of confidentiality in client relationships prompted her, Matt Moore and me to record a podcast chat about it this afternoon.

Download the Podcast - 29m - MP3 (9 MB)

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Annette has posted it on her blog and I'm repeating here for regular listeners.

Annette's done some good show notes which I'm just copying and pasting them here to save time. Obviously these are a rough guide so don't take them too literally.

Thanks to Annette and Matt for a good conversation.

Disclaimer: These are a rough summary of the conversation accompanied by flexible/rough timings.

0.0 Annette
How important is confidentiality at work? and how much of my product offering as a consultant is the guarantee that whatever is told to me will be held in confidence? Are consultants professional secret keepers? and how much of our work is containing and sanitising misdemeanours offering them back as palatable organisational learnings? What or whom are we minding?

Introductions

How important is confidentiality at work?

0.50 Johnnie
It’s ‘very important’. It means different things to different people at different times – is it a way of addressing status – I had to sign an NDA etc. Sometimes it’s a status play. It is a way of entrapping the other person in something – am I doing you a favour or am I inviting you into a trap? It’s complex isn’t it?

2.08 Annette
How much of the conversation around confidentiality is in fact a seduction – around secrets?

2.18 Matt
One way of taking someone into your confidence is to offer them a secret and that has all kinds of levels and layers – does it happen once? Several times? And what happens when you break that trust?

Matt talks about his role as an internal consultant and how people entrust him with their secrets and the complexity of the messages and seductions contained within those secrets.

5.18 Annette
Annette notes that both Matt and Johnnie are talking about ‘intimacy’ and asks how we set up the conditions for that to take place. Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips talks about how we can set up the conditions for romance but there’s no guarantee that romance will happen – what kinds of ploys do Matt and Johnnie use to set up the romantic conditions for intimacy in the workplace?

6.32 Johnnie
Johnnie professes his interest in intimacy and his interest in web tools which foster intimacy.

Johnnie talks about the shift from confidentiality as control to a more open sharing of information via Open Space and other similar processes. He talks about relinquishing his role as ‘consultant confessor’ which has become an uncomfortable role. Am I getting in the way by holding a secret?

9.19 Annette
What burden is placed on someone designated as ‘knowledge manager’ to manage hidden knowledge – how does Matt manage the externalised ‘known knowledge’ with the internalised ‘unknown’?

9.41 Matt
Matt admits to being a hypocrite! The official versus the ‘real’ version of events often conflict. Matt then goes on to say how hypocrisy works in practice – including sanitising stories; the pleasure of being taken into someone’s confidence; the manufacture of intimacy and how hypocrisy functions as a social lubrication.

13.13 Annette
Consultants are also politicians in organisations and are we talking here about the context we create (or wish to create) rather than the content of what people are saying?

13.40 Johnnie
Creating explicitly ‘confident’ scenarios aren’t particularly enjoyable and neither do they work. Johnnie talks about how this works in practice.

15.43 Annette
There is often an assumption that the stories revealed in confidence have more truth than those revealed in public and also we are not capable of hearing or speaking truth in organisations. Does being an internal consultant add another layer to that mix?

16.23 Matt
Openness versus closedness is an interesting concept – we need to keep some things private. Matt is often asked to take sides – to join a tribe - and secrets are a way of extending this invitation. Matt talks about respecting the invitation while not getting pulled in..

19.15 Annette
Scepticism is useful – our relationship with secrets and confidences is influenced by splits good/bad; useful/unhelpful – can we strike a balance between them? Respecting what this intervention has to offer for this system?

20.12 Johnnie
Explicit confidentiality agreements can serve to shut down the sharing of confidences and sensitive information – the opposite is often the case. The paradox here is that less is shared when the discussion is explicit – when it becomes ritualised it becomes less effective. Johnnie talks about the difference between hard and soft trust.

22.07 Annette
There is a dance in negotiating confidence – in removing that dance we give a message that there is apart of me or thoughts I want to share that are unacceptable.

22.48 Johnnie
Johnnie asks about what that negotiation means – is it explicit? Is it implicit? What does it look like?

23.21 Annette
Annette talks about unconscious and non verbal negotiations that invite revelation – seeking permission to inquire about someone’s personal story.

23.50 Matt
We prefer to have soft trust – informal trust but we fall back on hard trust and the rules when that isn’t guaranteed and when there are issues of power and status at play. If you are genuinely sharing yourself you make yourself vulnerable and organisations are treacherous places…

25.07 Johnnie
Perhaps it’s our job to be the ones who are willing to be vulnerable – it’s easy to revert to rules but it’s useful to talk about our own vulnerabilities as it gives permission to those we work with to talk about theirs.

26.16 Annette
We have all kinds of things in our consultancy toolkits but feelings are the primary ones that I draw on

26.30 Johnnie
Suggests pausing the conversation there for now..

27.07 Annette
Thanks to Matt and Johnnie for sharing their thoughts.