July 2005

By Johnnie Moore on July 13, 2005 10:35 AM | Permalink

It's been a busy few weeks, which have included several facilitation and research projects. I also ran a successful session at the Reboot 7.0 conference in Copenhagen - this featured material from my OpenSauceLive workshop. The workshop gives insights into new ways to succeed in marketing when the world is smarter and better connected than ever before.

If you need some fresh thinking on marketing, or support with team building or facilitation, give me a call. If you think marketing and facilitation are two very different things, then I invite you to think again... great marketing these days has to create real conversations with stakeholders and that requires a different mindset from the brute force branding of the past.

And here are some of the things I've been thinking about lately...

Podcasts

I've recently been experimenting with Podcasting. A podcast is like a radio programme - only instead of being sent out at a fixed time over the airwaves, it's downloaded, or streamed live, on-demand over the internet.

Here are three podcasts I've recorded since my last update. On most systems, just clicking the "listen" link will play the show on your computer.
Blowfly

An interview with Liam Mulhall, the CEO of Blowfly Beer. Blowfly is a brewery that is just launching an IPO on the back of considerable success, challenging the established breweries in Australia. Liam has marketed his brand with minimal advertising and maximised word-of-mouth. It's a great example of how marketers must adapt to a networked world. The interview lasts about 18 minutes.
More info about the interview. Listen to the podcast.

Unconferencing

An interview with two Canadians exploring how to make conferences more interactive and engaging. It lasts about 20 minutes.
More info about the interview. Listen to the podcast.

English Cut

Thomas Mahon was just another tailor on Savile Row. Then he started a weblog - and saw his business transformed in a matter of months. Another remarkable story of how the internet, and changing trends in society, are transforming marketing. I chatted with Tom in this 16 minute interview.
More info about the interview. Listen to the podcast.

Playing by the Rules

Fritjof Capra said this about structure in organisations:

Human organisations always contain both designed and emergent structures. The two types of structures are very different but every organisation needs both kinds. Designed structures provide the rules and routines that are necessary for the effective functioning of the organisation... Designed structures provide stability.
Emergent structures, on the other hand provide novelty, creativity and flexibility. They are adaptive, capable of changing and evolving. In todays complex environment purely designed structures do not have the necessary responsiveness and learning capability. They are deficient in learning and changing and therefore likely to be left behind. There is always tension between the organisations designed structure which embody the relationships of power and the emergent, structures which represent the organisations aliveness.

The central function of future leadership is to create harmony between the two

I explore this a little further in a posting here.

How bullshit seduces us

In the [psychological] study two people, A and B, were seated on opposite sides of the dividing wall, looking at a screen. Each person was instructed to learn by trial and error how to recognize the difference between slides of healthy cells and sick cells. For each slidee, they had to push one of two buttons in front of them, "Healthy" or "Sick," at which point one of two lamps, labeled "Right" or "Wrong," would light up.
Person A received true feedback, meaning that his "Right" lamp would light up when he was correct and his "Wrong" lamp would light up when he was incorrect. These people - the A's - learned to tell the difference between healthy and sick cells with a high level of accuracy. Person B's situation was quite different.

From Tom Asacker's new book on branding. To see what happened, and why it's significant, check out my post here.

What Ceausescu teaches us

In a recent speech, I expounded some thoughts about the fall of Nicolai Ceausescu - and what it tells us about authority in today's world. Read more. (And here's how the Observer's weblog picked up on it.)

Funagalo

Having observed a lot of meetings and team activities I have concluded that many workers speak "Office Funagalo"...Office Funagalo has no words to express support, acknowledgement or appreciation. Speakers can give or receive instructions, or criticise others. But such language leads to impoverished interactions among team members and damages performance.

- Tony Plant, facilitator. Read more.

Creative teams

I think it's useful to see creativity as a social phenomenon and get away from the genius-in-attic model. Working with teams, I try to highlight how we are all co-creators of our reality, and try to resist the notion that some people are inherently creative and others are not.