May 2005

Facilitation for Surprise

I'm offering a free telephone seminar on Facilitation for Surprise on May 23rd at 4pm.

Why the title? I see facilitation as a process of improving communication between people to improve creativity, decision-making and productivity.

What characterises good facilitation is that people get surprised – by themselves and by their colleagues. Surprised by what they learn and by what they find they can create together.

When people in conflict move from attacking each other to establishing common ground, they are surprised. When a team trying to solve a problem suddenly get a new insight, there is surprise. When we discover new skills in our colleagues, we’re surprised.

Surprise is the hallmark of learning and collaboration and a sign that people’s attention has been engaged and they are energised. Teleseminar details here.

Open Sauce Surgery

There's one place left for an Open Sauce Surgery on the morning of May 9th. James Cherkoff and I look at the many ways in which collaboration is becoming the hallmark of effective marketing. More information here.

Reboot

I'll be taking part in the Reboot conference on changes in digital culture in Copenhagen on June 10-11.

Here are some of the ideas picked up in my regular weblog in recent weeks...

Change or Die

If you had to choose between changing your life and dying, what are the odds that you'd change? If you are typical, your odds are 9 to 1. That is, you are much more likely to die than change. That's the shocking argument of this article from Fast Company - Change or Die - spotted by Rob Paterson.

It's a good read, taking the example of patients with heart disease, who seem unable to make essential lifestyle changes to improve their health. With obvious implications for why it's difficult to change organisations. It suggests that fear is a less powerful motivator than joy; that you can't successfully scare heart patients into change, you need to show them that their lives will be significantly more satisfying, soon, if they change.

It also concludes that our minds are more plastic than we think, and it the right circumstances, all manner of change is possible. That's something I believe to be true. To be able to do that, we need to get more efficient at letting go of some of the stories we tell ourselves about how the world is. Including (paradoxically) the idea that the odds are against change...

Zopa

Zopa is a new business that creates a market for individuals who want to lend or borrow money - cutting out the banks. It's a sort of eBay for money. I interviewed two of the founders last month and you can listen to their very interesting views online by streaming or downloading the interview from here.

Advertising is toast

Here's a great posting by Jeff Jarvis suggesting push advertising is toast. He also gives a report on Rupert Murdoch's speech calling on the newspaper industry to reinvent itself.

Diversity and Problem Solving

Research suggests diversity is the key to effective problem solving. I comment here.

The times they are a changing

Can you imagine an employee saying this to the CEO of his company?

The fact that [company] is even in this position makes me want to leave and join a different company that won't be pushed around by religious folks. Is that the message you want to send?...Steve, I'm sad. Very sad. This is leadership? What if we were a company in Germany in the 1930s? Would we have taken the same position you just did?

Now, can you imagine him writing it in public, for all to see? And keeping his job?

Welcome to the new world of weblogs. The company in question is Micosoft and the employee is Robert Scoble.

Read more here and listen to quick discussion I recorded with friends in Canada and Australia here.

Standard release

I was amused by this standard corporate press release, created by Christoper Carfi.

[Company name], a [noted | leading | large] provider of [insert industry name here] solutions is [happy | pleased | thrilled] to announce [a new customer | a new product].

[Paragraph with lame details here]

[Paragraph with glowing quote from executive here, that was written by someone else]

[Paragraph with contrived quote from a customer here, that was written by someone else]

[Paragraph from a "Noted Industry Analyst"® here, that took three weeks to get approved through the analyst's business prevention department]

[Pollyanna penultimate paragraph painting priceless predictions for the future of the industry]

[About Company X, a rehash of the lame stuff in the first sentence of the first paragraph]