“There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”
Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin

To see people who were once labeled as ’sheep’ taking initiatives and putting their ass on the line is the greatest gift of all. Finding out that I am the one now needing to stretch in order to keep up with my Oompa Loompas – instead of the other way around – is a great experience.

When I was appointed as the CIO of our organization I was completely new to this business. I have a background of engineering and until then I had been managing global projects in a multinational environment of product launches, markets and affiliates. All of a sudden I was propelled into the local niche of an HR service provider. Needless to say that my background no longer needed to be at the top of my mind. But then,… what else needed to be at the top of my mind instead?

Foreign Element

From the beginning I made it clear to my department that I had very little knowledge of the sector and that I would need all of their involvement to make the turnaround we much needed. In the beginning that seemed to be radical idea; and I was featuring as the foreign element.

In the beginning the response was quite poor and I remember the skepticism in our department. Soon enough I discovered what people had warned me for: “they are a bunch of sheep”; “dedicated followers with zero sense of initiative”. On top of that, most of the knowledge was trapped in people’s heads and within a growing organization this became more and more a continuity risk.

So there I was with my newly declared Charlie Bucket Approach. First I would learn about the current set-up. Next, I would get as much information as possible. And then – and only then – I would determine a strategy. The only certainty I had at that time: I was not going to pull it off without the Oompa Loompas.

Loompaland

In Roald Dahl’s story, Wonka’s workforce – the Oompa Loompas – come from Loompaland, a small and isolated island in the Pacific Ocean. They are funny-looking characters with strange habits. No use in explaining that my IT department was also being looked at as if they were Oompa Loompas.

Apart from being very busy at all times, nobody really knew what the IT-people where up to, what they were working on, which priorities they followed or whether it was what the business most needed.

Reengineering the Chocolate Factory

With the Charlie Bucket approach in mind, I choose to take on one challenge at a time. For us, the starting point was going to be IT governance and transparency. But it turned out that the Oompa Loompas were not so keen on it.

I remember the discussions we had on serving the internal customer. When I arrived, the Oompa Loompas were providing enhancements and fixes every day. The customer said ‘jump’ – and they said ‘how high’? No thinking, just jumping on whatever they were asked to do.

As an outsider I could easily see that we would definitely benefit from redefining ’service’. And this included saying ‘no’ from time to time and bringing structure to the work.

In the beginning the Oompa Loompas resisted this change, arguing that this would slow down the service to our customers. And eventually it would. Their argument was a valid one. But when we sat down with the customers, we discovered that they did not really need daily enhancements and fixes in their systems. Rather, they prefered transparency, focus and guidance.

This was a surprise to the Oompa Loompas and ever since that moment, they have taken the habit to ask ‘why’ more often and to challenge the things we have taken for granted.

Their Factory

I was lucky to draw Charlie’s golden ticket because I have spent half of my career in Loompaland. I can decode their language and respond in a way they understand. The one thing I learned in Loompaland is never to underestimate what these weird creatures are capable of.  And by now I can say with confidence that I would never have been able to reach this level of change in our department without their involvement.

But challenging their status quo is one thing; gaining their trust is another. Because to the same extent as I was rocking the boat, I needed to provide the psychological safety for people to grow. That’s when I found out that there is a direct relationship between the trust you gain and how vulnerable you allow yourself to be.

In our particular case I decided not to pre-fill the 15 new positions in our department ourselves. Filling the positions myself by appointing people directly would have been the safe-game. Instead we carefully crafted an internal labor market where everybody could apply. My biggest fears at that time: to have a zero response or the complete opposite – a tsunami-response.

Luckily none of that happened. What’s more, people really opened up, as if they had turned a switch in their head. The most touching proof is the one Oompa Loompa in his fifties, who made a complete career-shift. This is a guy who could easily settle for inertia and dozing-off-until-retirement. But he didn’t. To my surprise, he abandoned his burned-out past and is now a dynamic learner and a responsible initiative taker.

Managing Oompa Loompas

I am sure that other organization also have their Oompa Loompas. And I am convinced that – there too – these people are undervalued. So consider the following two points whenever you are in charge of the Oompa Loompas of your organization.

1. How to recognize them
Oompa Loompas are always busy, dedicated and hard working. However, nobody really knows what they are doing and most of the times they look a little distant and weird. This is not good for their reputation and that’s a shame because they are valuable to your organization. Don’t mistake their distant looks for disloyalty towards the organization, and don’t assume that you can put them all in one and the same category. They are a colorful subculture.

2. How to coach them
You have to know that Oompa Loompas have the capacity to engage into the most complex problems of your organization and solve them. However, sometimes they too can get lost in this complexity.

Albert Einstein once said ‘You cannot solve a problem from the same  consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.’ Therefore there are three rules I always apply in Oompa Loompaland:
- I keep it simple and I tell them “If you can’t explain it to your grandmother, forget it”;
- I tell them to make sure to tell their customer what they are working on and what the customer can expect next;
- I use metaphors to explain where we are heading and what we are trying to achieve; this gets us all on the same wavelenght.

As for this metaphor of Charlie and the Chocolate factory, it is probably the one that makes most sense for myself. Because thanks to this metaphor I realized that I was just the Charlie who made the change possible. They were the Oompa Loompas who actually fueled it, completed it and sustained to the present day.

Behind every successful Charlie there is a dedicated team of Oompa Loompas.

“If things start happening, don’t worry, don’t stew, just go right along and you’ll start happening too.”
— Dr. Seuss

As the Organizational Change Practitioner’s group on LinkedIn is about to reach 10.000 members, it’s time for me to look back and wonder how on earth the group got this big so fast? Sure enough, it is tempting to think that it’s all about me. But ego-centered games usually don’t last so long and don’t get so big.

Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants

I am sure you have come across these terms already. They are used to describe the division between generations who are connecting digitally and those who don’t. Unfortunately, most us think this is a generational gap. It isn’t. Today I saw a presentation indicating that the gap can even be split according to year of birth: 1980 seems to be the year of birth that indicates the great divide.

But age is irrelevant. Rather than talking about a generation gap, there is another difference: those who create, contribute and communicate digitally and those who don’t. In short: we are all digital natives once we decide to contribute digitally.

Trust Agents

“The stupidest possible creative act is a still a creative act.” says Clay Shirky, the most cited thinker on new media and digital economy. The thresholds for participating digitally have never been so low and not participating is no longer a matter of being too old or not being computer literate. Shirky underscores that the greatest difference between digital natives and digital immigrants is the difference between doing anything and doing nothing at all.

Chris Brogan, another icon of the digital age published a book in 2009, co-authored by Julien Smith, titled Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust
The authors hand out practical advice for social media etiquette. And they make it all very tangible through the analogy of a cocktail party. They conclude that the internet and all of its tribes and communities is ultimately human because it rewards social behavior and punishes anti-social behavior.

The Bank Account

So the good old metaphor of the emotional bank account that is often used by Stephen Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People still stands. It’s like a financial bank account into which you can make deposits and take withdrawals.

The most important of all deposits into the emotional bank account of trust is empathy – and that is no different in the world of bits than it is in the world of atoms.

Covey defines empathy as: “listening to another person within his or her frame of reference. Empathy tells you what the important deposits are to that person.” And that is even more true on the internet.

The Platform

Of course, there are some principles you need to change in order to make things work in the digital age. That’s where Jeff Jarvis’ advice comes in. In his book What Would Google Do?
Jarvis explains some principles that would even make sense if we would also apply them in the non-digital world.

The first is to be a platform for other people to express their uniqueness instead of a big-hit-final-destination. Second, the insight that you don’t create a community but provide  elegant organization and then the community will let you help them (if you are lucky). You don’t own the community, so getting out of the way is a strength.

The Long Tail

Jarvis’ advice becomes clearer once you have a look at the dynamics and the mechanics underpinning the digital economy. In his book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, Chris Anderson does a very good job at explaining these dynamics in depth.

In short, there are three forces shaping the digital economy and they are bullwhipping the most fundamental laws of economics:
1. The means of production are available to anyone in the digital economy;
2. Transaction costs and shelf-space costs are close to 0 in this digital economy;
3. “Wisdom of crowds“: your brand is no longer a logo or a slogan: it is the story your customers tell about your product.

This means we need to review our basic understanding of transaction costs, distribution, shelf space and (above all) scarcity.

Is the Internet Making us Stupid?

The next question is the dumb-and-dumber question: is the internet sucking every bit of intelligence, education and sociability out of us? Again, looking at the generation Y’s and how they are most of the time behind a computer screen or any other device, it is tempting to say they are dumb and anti-social.

Think again, because what they are tapping into is way more intelligent, social and human than you can imagine. Here are three reasons why I think the internet is making us MORE INTELLIGENT:

1. Multiple Intelligence

First, in 2000 (!) John Seely Brown noted that the internet is the first medium to honor multiple intelligences. He invites us to have another look at literacy. In our narrow view of the world literacy involves only text, but there is also image and screen literacy. The ability to “read” multimedia texts and to feel comfortable with new, multiple-media genres is important.

According to Seely Brown, the new literacy, beyond text and image, is one of information navigation. My ability to watch TV does not exclude my reading abilities, just as my ability to tweet does not exclude my ability to have a decent conversation at the dinner table. They are all new layers of literacy that add up in out multiple intelligence. No need to be afraid of unlearning any skill.

As Seely Brown concludes: “Navigation” may well be the main form of literacy for the 21st century. In my humble opinion, this ‘navigation literacy‘ is being topped by  a new literacy: Collaboration Literacy.

2. The Medium Shapes the Message

Socrates worried about how writing affected the way ideas would be conveyed as opposed to speaking and conversation. Nietsche worried about how a typewriter would affect how his ideas would be conveyed as opposed to handwriting. A 2008 article of The Atlantic explains that the same is true for the internet:

“Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives—or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts—as the Internet does today. Yet, for all that’s been written about the Net, there’s been little consideration of how, exactly, it’s reprogramming us.”

The internet as a medium shapes the message differently than offline. That much is true. But it does not make the connection poorer, nor does it make the participants dumber. The medium merely opened another can of possibilities.

3. Cognitive Surplus

In the below TED talk Clay Shirky takes the example of the platform Ushahidi to explain what he calls Cognitive surplus. In short: “Cognitive surplus = human generosity + digital tools”

Since the post-election violence in Kenya in 2008 the Ushahidi Platform has grown into a large open-source project impacting a number of communities around the world. It was deployed in the DR Congo to monitor unrest; Al Jazeera used it to track violence in Gaza; It was used to help monitor the 2009 Indian Elections; And to help gather reports globally about the recent Swine Flu outbreak.

Anybody can contribute information. Whether itʼs a simple text message from a SMS-capable phone, a photo or video from a smartphone, or a report submitted online, Ushahidi can gather information from any device with a digital data connection.

To me this platform proves that the internet can really make us more intelligent, because intelligence is the ability to interact and make new understanding. A platform that can do the powerful math of “1+1=3″ is a social platform.

The Places You’ll Go

“Online” is a different literacy and even puts an extra layer on off-line communications. I became aware of this when I discovered some new things about friends and family by interacting with them via Facebook (which I restrict to family and friends). Some of them I know for more than 20 years and still I discover things I would otherwise not have known about them.

Is that a sign of bad communication during my pre-internet years? No. Now we just have more than one channel to resonate and each channel shapes a different aspect of my friends and family.

And there is so much more to discover… Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
…

“You’ll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. You’ll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go. So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act. Just never forget to be dexterous and deft. And never mix up your right foot with your left.”
— Dr. Seuss

It was only after I scrolled down in his reply to my own original email that I realized the damage I had done. I am a jerk. And now it’s almost midnight, so calling is not an option.

Bear with me, because ‘Mr. Communication’ is about to reveal a true story and it isn’t a schoolbook example.

Earlier last week I made it clear to Peter (not his real name) that I was not comfortable with the teasers he was sending me regarding our next teambuilding activity. It seemed to me that he was transforming our original plan of visiting a religious sanctuary into a murderer game by asking me to bring mysterious attributes and solving weird questions.

The Panic

Last time I was asked to do weird things like that was during a two year intensive course on transactional analysis involving the deeper levels of group therapy. I was not up for that and this went way beyond our original plan. What was this guy up to? All of my sensors went in red alert.

So I decided to ask him. Or rather: tell him. Because after a night of sleep – during which I could reiterate the panic and wind up some more – I decided to put it all in an email. Yep. An email.

The Solution – Or So I Thought

And it felt better. The panic was out of my system. I could breathe better and the fact that I twisted in some Monday-morning-blues and rush-of-the-workweek didn’t bother me. A bit of slam-poetry can only make things clearer.

I ended the email with the words: “Not with me and not now! And now up to you!“, convinced that he would be as tolerant and feel as light-hearted about it as I did AFTER hitting the Send button.

The Wakeup Mail

Days went by and I even forgot about the email. Until I checked the mailbox one night after coming home late, to find a crushed soul at the other end of the digital line. His response ended with: “Not sure I know what this is all about. But if you want to step out that is OK with me”.

Huh? I didn’t mean to do that! And to justify and rationalize my original intent I scrolled down to read my original email and convince myself. O MY GOD. Did I write that? Like that? I am such a jerk. And now it’s almost midnight, so calling is not an option.

The Best Part

Or: ‘Why this is so embarrassing‘

In my own trainings (see slideshow) I teach professionals that email is silver and phone calls are golden.

Truly a golden rule. One you should never forget. Thank you Mr. Communication… Now walk your talk!

Eventually I did call Peter and we straightened things out. I had the chance to acknowledge the damage done; to apologize and to get back to my original intent: simply to ask him what this was leading to.

Fortunately Peter is a few generations more mature than me and he was kind enough to course-correct and accept my apologies. He called me ‘over-assertive’; a very polite way of stating the facts.

My Own Private Refresher Course

I remember one other mail in my Inbox with the title ‘Have an Average Day’ – by Michael Neill, a remarkable coach I have been following for quite some years. I also remember thrashing that email with the same rush-of-the-workweek adrenalin that I was going to put into my email to Peter.

Now I know that I should have taken that advice and to take the day off from striving and struggling for success – and have a wonderfully average day instead…

Here is how I could have translated that advice instantly: Exceptional emails are silver, but average phone calls are golden.
______________
Related article: Some Mails are Better Never Sent – November 29th, 2007

‘Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-evident.’
Arthur Schopenhauer

As I am writing this the second Twitter Brainstorm of OCPractitioners has just closed. I never thought it would be a confrontational idea for the 150+ followers. But somehow I have the feeling we have not quite crossed the chasm.

Red Monkeys

Cool friend Jef Staes is using the red monkey metaphor since 2007 to denote confrontational innovative ideas. Through the lense of this metaphor you can easily see how you should (and should not) appraoch the introduction of your red monkey (i.e. your idea) in your own forest (i.e. your organization). For example: you can determine where and when to drop your monkey if you want it to have best chances for survival (the answer: at the edge of your rainforest; NEVER in the middle). Another example: you can start to recognize red monkey hunters and diagnose their weapons.

EOI Café – Straight Talk

Last week I was fortunate enough to participate to the first Engine Of Innovation Café – another initiative from Jef Staes. There, I gave the below stand-up talk on my own red monkey: launching a brainstorm on Twitter for the community of Organizational Change Practitioners – a group of more than 9.000 members on Linkedin.

“A Twitter What??”

Although some learning takes place and good conversations are going on, my gut feeling tells me that we can do more with that community. So I created the Twitter Account @ocpractitioner.

It is a very awkward feeling to do something without any prior example. Putting my reputation on the line in front of 9000+ peers is not something I do every day… But I see it as my responsibility to make the community explore new territory. So I had sweaty hands and nothing more than a gut feeling that it might just work.I guess failing forward is part of the game

What Inspired Me?

I figured that even if you take the Wikipedia 1% rule this would mean that a core group of 90 contributors could find one another in an intense cooperation. Sparked by seeing a growing number of people hooking up on the @ocpractitioner Twitter account I drafted the announcement for the first brainstorm.

I always wanted to test how we can brainstorm using new media – thereby learning its strengths and weaknesses. At the same timeI wanted to tap into the wisdom of the crowd of Organizational Change Practitioners in a dialogue mode (as opposed to the forum-mode we are familiar with on LinkedIn).

But there are also considerations on the long run:

• First, Organizational Change Practitioners may be the largest network in the area of organizational change. But at present it is just a group, not a tribe. People do not (yet) pride themselves of being part of it.
• Second, I believe that a platform of 9000+ people that gathered around the topic of organizational change is big enough to start crowd sourcing and learning from one another. To me, having this number of people gathered around this very topic is a tremendous opportunity.
• Third, we have a message: Organizational Change Management should be center stage in any organization. We are on a mission and clarifying this mission is what will make this group into a tribe: organizational change management and a focus on the people side of change is vital for any organization. In that sense this is not ‘just another group to add to your profile’. Therefore I grab just about every opportunity to strengthen this network.

The Internet and the Zero-Cost

The internet has given us all the things we need at our fingertips and a smart use of the LinkedIn and Twitter platforms allow us to progress at zero cost. That is: zero cost for setup, subscription, maintenance or travel. We are seamlessly blending free tools that would otherwise be costing us a fortune a decade ago:

• internet (that may be the only part you are paying for),
• email (free Gmail),
• an online forum (LinkedIn),
• a one-to-many chat system (Twitter),
• an online reporting system (Tweetchat and WhatTheHashtag).

So the zero-cost of transaction and the way we can integrate it seamlessly nowadays is a big accelerator. There are no costs in this investment.

Red Monkey Hunters

On a personal level this initiative takes a bit of courage to fight a certain amount of self doubt. You can imagine the voices in my head spinning around when the first reactions on the announcement were rolling in. They were not exactly ‘positive’. Rather sarcastic to be honest.

Then it is a matter of getting out of the way and not letting your ego take over. As a community manager I had to resist the urge to post victim reactions, revenge notes or rescue actions. At those moments you need to get out of the way and let the community to the work. And eventually it did. Trusting the community to self regulate and preparing to accept the course the community will take as a reaction to your prototype is a big thing.

Some Lessons Learned

I have found that the human interaction ‘rules of the game’ are as valid online as they are face-to face. The real value of brainstorming clearly remains: people at the same time in the same (virtual) room. Interaction is key for ideas to come out. It seems like the brainstorm mode is something that is restricted in time and triggered by peers.

This was exemplified by the reaction of a participant early in the brainstorm who tweeted: “Hey is this brainstorm over? Am I alone here?” It makes no sense to have a brain eruption when no one is watching.

Another example is that of participants whose timezone did not match and who contributed later. They read through the tweets; retweeted some and reacted to others. But the dynamic was gone. Looking at a board full of post-its from a brainstorm is nice and can be energizing. You can even add yours but when you notice that you are the only one in the room, the enthousiasm soon fades away.

The 140 Character Advantage

Twitter is not a replacement of Linkedin discussions. Rather, it is a layer of interaction that comes on top of it. The medium restricts you to 140 characters which is an advantage because you really need to craft your reaction before your post it by asking: ‘what is it exactly that I want to say?’

Another fascinating thing is new measurements that automatically come with the platform. ALthough we still need to figure out what they mean and if they are meaningful at all! For example:

• Number of participants: it is important to have every participant tweet at least his  presence so the others know they are not alone in the room and that their brain eruptions will not go unnoticed. Somehow spectators need to be able to aknowledge they are watching;
• Number of tweets: like the number of post-its it is only indicating the volume and not the quality of the discussion;
• Number of RT’s (ReTweets) this is something we will need to educate the participants for: If you like an idea you should RT it. That is a virtual way to vote for an idea. This will allow certain ideas to gain further attention.
• Number of reactions: this is reacting to a tweet of another participant. This may tell us something about the level of listening that occurs among the tweeters.Is it just noise or are we really trying to understand what is being said?
• The timeslot: like a face-to-face brainstorm I have noted that the first 40 minutes are the best and then it seems like the brains have been emptied. However, from the second brainstorm we could experience people retuning to the discussion board the next morning and continue the discussion.
• Follow-the-sun: Never before have I discussed an idea with an Aussie and an LA person while all being at home (this is: early morning, late noon and middle of the night). People log on when it suits them most.

Of course these are findings of one single brainstorm so we need to find out if they remain valid throughout the next storms.

Now What?

My guess is that there were some people participating and a lot of people watching the brainstorm as it unfolded like watching a wrestling game in the ring.

That is OK for the first time, but from now on I would like to take this exceptional first time and craft it into a habit for our community so that one day any member in need for ideas can call out to the community and request a brainstorm.

I hope one day this will become the second nature of our community members. And that’s where Twitter brainstorming really will start to add value to our community.

Tips for First Timers

Finally, for first-timers, here are a few hints:

• Create a Twitter account and start playing around with it; follow some people, Tweet, Retweet
• Twitter is free and if you don’t like it you can simply close down your account
• Don’t know how to tweet? Ask your kids and experience reverse-coaching firsthand!
• Read What Would Google Do? In this 2009 book of Jeff Jarvis you will learn basic principles that you need to embody whenever you manage such a community or a brainstorm. Principles like: ‘Give up all control’, ‘Do what you do best & link to the rest’, ‘Get out of the way’ and ‘Web 1.0 was about ‘look at me’, whereas Web 2.0 is about ‘look at you’,…  are key to understanding the dynamics of communities.

Glossary, Related Articles and Links

• A “tweet“, a message of less than 140 characters;
• Twitter is a platform that enables 140 character conversations – just like a brainstorm session with post-it notes.
• RT stands for “ReTweet”; i.e.: you repeat someone elses tweet to your own followers
• Hashtag words are words preceded by a # sign. Whenever you do that it is easier for Twitter and related programs to follow all tweets that include this word
• A Twitter wall is a screen where the latest tweets appear that use a certain hashtag for example #ocpractitioner
• An earlier article on brainstorming on the web: Web 2.0 Includes Invisible Hand
• You don’t need a Twitter account to follow the brainstorm. Use either of these two links to see how we are doing: WhatTheHashtag or Tweetchat
• The transcript of the first #ocpractitioner brainstorm session
• The transcript of the second #ocpractitioner brainstorm

Spotting Digital Natives like an anthropologist. Catching the first sun after a long winter in Leuven we find students scattered in the park. To me – in my blossoming thirties – a strange sight and a blunt proof of the fact that I have slipped into another generation. Could I be a Digital Immigrant?

The fascinating part of being aged thirty-odd is the realization that you don’t really  belong to the Digital Natives and you can even less identify with the older generation that is often nicknamed Digital Immigrants. We are the lost generation: opinionlesly born in the middle of the chasm; endlesly contemplating on whether to commit to social media or to deny instead; constantly feeling unconfortable. Too much confusion. Time for a second SOS VideoClass.

Again, the video is in Dutch (with my own Flemish accent ) and you will find the English transcript below.

Native Spotting

We are here in Leuven and behind me you can see the next generation. The generation we could refer to as the Digital Natives. They are enjoying the afternoon in the park.

One thing that amazes me – and it may amaze you too – is the ease with which they handle things like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs. To them it’s like a second nature, whereas for us it is sometimes a bit frightening.

FaceCrime

What we often see is that we trust adult people of our age – the working generation – to go to the bank, to obtain a loan, to buy a house or to raise a family. However, once we come to work, we are treated like children. No LinkedIn, No Twitter, No blogs. And no Social Media. They are building a safe firewall around us.

This makes me think of the book 1984, written by George Orwell in 1949 and mandatory reading when I was at school. In chapter 5 Orwell introduces the concept of FaceCrime – a term that sounds a little like Facebook. It is a crime you commit by demonstrating too much of your personality, by displaying too much emotion and by giving away too much of your authenticity.

Today we can observe that social media has penetrated 76% of the population. For the people behind me this percentage will probably be way higher than that. Just imagine: 76% of your customers, your suppliers and foremost: your workforce is using social media.

Nuts

To me this means that you have to be nuts as a company not to be present on that market. That you have to be out of your mind to lock your workforce out of that space. Particularly if you take note of the fact that we operate in a knowledge economy here in Belgium: We have no natural resources; We cannot produce something with added value faster or cheaper than the countries surrounding us – let alone the countries that are further away. Our raw material is knowledge; we’re smart – and that’s what we need to take advantage of.

Changing the way we look at things

The added value of knowledge increases the more it is shared and the more it is exchanged. What our economy needs at this very moment is more knowledge that evolves faster. And that is the reason why we have placed the lifebuoy right here, in the safe and protected kindergarten: it is time to stop overprotecting people. It is time to take both feet off the breaks. It is time to see social media no longer as a threat but as an opportunity.

What is the value of feedback when I can’t frame it, understand it or act upon it? Will I be labeled ‘resistant’ if I ask to reframe it over and over again? Feedback – yes but… feedback that is not actionable and measurable in my world will not empower me.

Blessed with a pair of craftsman hands, a good sense of humor and a healthy dose of common sense, my dad challenges me to widen my perspective from time to time. And he beats any management guru, scholar or business school with the advice that he gave me upon graduating:

“Do right and fear no one.”
- my dad

Kyoto & Copenhagen

Recently my dad installed a new condensing boiler and the system is said save a lot of energy compared to his 30 year old oil boiler. As one thing leads to another, my dad soon started looking for a measure. How much am I saving compared to my old boiler? Although you wouldn’t allow my dad to join the Davos, Kyoto or Copenhagen conferences his quest is one of high importance and high direct impact on current levels of energy spending. The question is the following: ‘How can I see the Euro amount of energy I am spending?’.

Struggle for Meaning

So here is what we did: we called the gas distribution company and asked how we can track our spending in Euro. Turns out that it was the first time they were confronted with this question. But after a few minutes the helpful helpdesk correspondent managed to get an amount of Euro Per KiloWatt-hour.

Unfortunately there is no such thing as a KiloWatt-hour meter on our consumer side. We do have a meter, but it reads volume (cube-meters). It would take a simple conversion with a factor 10 to make the calculation. However, this would not be a good measure for monitoring the energy spending because there are about 10 other parameters that influence the final invoice.

The Whyway

Contrasting this simple question to the TV news reports on Copenhagen, Kyoto and Davos I imagined a Yes Men scenario: stating the obvious question in the middle of a powerful crowd of leaders who are trying very hard to look the other way.

My dad is asking for a simple dashboard to monitor his energy spending; stating that he, his neighbors and every family can reduce 25% of their energy spending.  If only they had a proper dashboard to monitor. Like the dashboard of a car, the display of a gasoline pump or simpler: the price tags in a grocery store.

So we rang the gass company about three times until… Well. Until it felt wrong. We felt like behaving annoying and offensive. Embarrassed. Uncomfortable. That’s the price you pay for asking WHY too many times.

In his 2004 bestseller The Seven Day Weekend, management guru Ricardo Semler stesses the importance of asking why. It is one of the most important mechanisms for navigating out of the control-zone and back into the area of what matters most. In his company SEMCO, they even have a name of it: they call it the Whyway.

But it takes guts and perseverance according to Semler:

“Ask why. Ask it all the time, ask it any day, every day, and always ask it three times in a row. This doesn’t come naturally. People are conditioned to recoil from questioning too much. First, it can be perceived as rude. Second, it can be dangerous, implying that we’re ignorant or uninformed. Third, it means everything we think we know may turn out to be incorrect or incomplete. Last, management is usually threatened by the prospect of employees who question continually. But mostly, it means putting aside all the rote or pat answers.”

The Result? The Wattson!

My dad is not a university professor or an academic of any kind. Instead he spent his life on the production shop floor experiencing first hand what works and what doesn’t. So when he asks a ‘why’ question he is not playing an intellectual game. He is on to something.

How much am I spending on gas? Why can’t we monitor our energy spending? Why can I see my energy spending instantly when I drive my car but not when I am heating my house?

As a coincidence I was reading Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein. They explore he psychology of our every day decision making and argue that we make poor decisions due to the architecture of how choices are presented to us.

As it turns out my dad and I have nothing to be embarrassed about because one of the nudges that they illustrate responds almost exactly to our monitoring quest. Have a look at the Wattson device below:

The Wattson monitors our energy spending for electricity in a currency we understand and care about. We like that. We want that. And we also want one for the gas spending!

The Takeaway

What can organizational change practitioners learn from this story?

First,  that the ‘whyway’ is the road less traveled because people run the risk of being labeled ‘resistant’ in a split second. Peter Block warns against the paranoid habit of some consultants interpreting every line manager’s objections as resistance (see: Sometimes it’s not resistance).

Second, ‘why’-people may drive you crazy, but they prevent you from project cocooning and other defense mechanisms. Think about it: what would happen if you were to replace your ‘Resistance’-labeling-machine with a ‘Whyway’-labeling-machine? The label is not an ending point to ditch people into a category – period. Rather, it would be a starting point to improve and fine-tune the project at hand.

Finally, involving the whyway people creates buy-in and stimulates their ownership of the project results. Remember: Why-people take a risk because they care. Why-people take the risk of feeling embarrassed because they are committed. Why-people leave their comfort-zone for a good cause. Outside their comfort-zone they are vulnerable. And if we follow common change-management methodology we are most likely to label them as resistant and to treat them in a belittling way. Should we not suspect ourselves in the first place?

Whyway-people go a long way to reframe the feedback they receive. Feedback that is actionable and measurable in a currency they care about. Actionable and measurable feedback empowers people and accellerates their change-readiness … by 25 %. OK – this is a bold statement. So bring it on. Prove me wrong. For I do right and fear no one.

“Communication is not the message sent, but the message received.” You knew that. Because like me, you are smart. Like me, you may have used it to outsmart other people when it comes to criticizing their message. But can you make a better message?

Ehhhmmmm… while the statement “It’s not what you say – it’s what they hear, stupid!” is a direct way to demonstrate the flaws of a communication, coming up with a better alternative requires different ammunition. And that’s exactly the word to cover this article. Did you know that military operations and military field manuals can help us a great deal in achieving better communication?

Uncle Sam

In their 2007 bestseller Made To Stick the Heath brothers (Chip and Dan) are setting a new standard for SUCCESful communication. The SUCCESs acronym is a communication stickiness checklist and stands for: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotion, Story. For the first part of the checklist – Simple – they draw heavily on the US Army Combat Maneuver Training Center in order to get to the core of the idea.

Like no other, the US Army knows that the distance between the intent and the operation should be kept as short and as straight as possible. Else they risk inadequate mission accomplishment. The way they do it is through Commander’s Intent.

The commander’s intent describes the desired end state. It is a concise expression of the purpose of the operation and must be understood two echelons below the issuing commander. . . It is the single unifying focus for all subordinate elements. It is not a summary of the concept of the operation. Its purpose is to focus subordinates on the desired end state. Its utility is to focus subordinates on what has to be accomplished in order to achieve success, even when the plan and concept of operations no longer apply, and to discipline their efforts toward that end.

What’s in it for you: Focus

I never thought that Uncle Sam would be of any help for explaining things to my grandmother – which is my ultimate bottom line. Commander’s Intent helps you to achieve focus, because when all plans fail you better not freeze and grind to a halt. In case you’re not convinced, consider the quote of Mike Tyson below:

CI is the military version of “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” Urging their leaders not to make the battlefield planning too complicated because in the heat of battle, innumerable variables will dictate the proper course of action.

The CI technique

The US Army teaches their leaders in all echelons the following technique:

=> Complete the following sentences:

1.)  If we do nothing else during tomorrow’s mission, we must ________________________.
2.) The single, most-important thing that we must do tomorrow is _____________________.

=> By answering these questions, you have basically written your intent.

=> Remember, your intent statement provides a framework for the operation. It does not tell your soldiers what to do. It does give them the overall picture of what you say the company needs to accomplish to be successful.

=> By making your intent a clear, concise, and focused statement, you greatly increase the chances that your soldiers will continue the mission, even when the operation doesn’t go as planned.

Your Mission Statement

Here is a great video by Dan Heath explaining why the US Army had better invaded our business schools and most of the corporate off-site strategy workshops. In this video he explains how to write a mission statement that doesn’t suck. The moral of his story for corporate mission statements:

1. Use concrete language

2. Talk about the WHY

My Granny flies Southwest

Southwest Airlines is a company that discovered the secret behind a Commander’s Intent to get to the core of their success, as their CEO Herb Kelleher asserts:

“I can teach you the secret to running this airline in thirty seconds. This is it: We are THE low cost airline. Once you understand that fact, you can make any decision about this company’s future as well as I can.”

In short: next time I outwit my colleagues by telling them: ‘If you can’t explain it to your grandmother, forget it’ – I can rely on Uncle Sam to complete the action.

Communication is not the message sent but the message received. But when the receiver reacts opposite to our expectations we tend to blame the receiver. You are right and they are wrong. There is a name for this game;  it’s called “game over“.

But hang on – here is the good news: if you to stop being right and start to investigate the choice architecture of your message, there is a great chance for you to improve your communication.

In a recent book called Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein explore the psychology of our every day decision making and argue that we make poor decisions due to the architecture of how choices are presented to us.

This includes food decisions, investment decisions and all kinds of well-informed decisions (that’s the frightening part!).

Choice Architecture and Door Handles

Below is a excerpt from chapter 5 explaining the core ingredient of their book “Choice Architecture”

“Early in Thaler’s career he was teaching a class on managerial decision making to business school students. Students would sometimes leave class early to go for job interviews (or a golf game) and would try to sneak out of the room as surreptitiously as possible. Unfortunately for them, the only way out of the room was though the double door in front in full view of the entire class (though not directly in Thaler’s line of sight). The doors were equipped large handsome wood handles, vertically mounted with cylindrical pull about two feet in length. When the students came to these doors, they were faced with two competing instincts.
One instinct says that to leave a room you have to push the door. The other instinct says, when faced with large wooden handles that are obviously designed to be grabbed, you pull. It turns out that the latter instinct trumps the former, and every student leaving the room began by pulling on the handle. Alas, the door opened outward.”

Further in that chapter the authors continue:
“At one point in the semester, Thaler pointed this out to the class as one embarrassed student was pulling the door handle while trying to escape the classroom. Thereafter, as a student got up to leave, the rest of the class would eagerly wait to see whether the student would push or pull. Amazingly, most still pulled!”

With this example Thaler and Sunstein point out that the doors display bad choice architecture because they violate a simple psychological principle called Stimulus Response Compatibility (SRC). SRC means that you want the signal you receive (the stimulus) to be consistent with the desired action. Flat plates say “push me” and big handles say “pull me”. So don’t expect people to push big handles! This is a failure of architecture to accommodate to the basic principles of human psychology.

From Handles to Heamophilia

Saying “red” when you see a red light go on is an example of high compatibility. Having to say “green” when a red light goes on is an example of low compatibility. This has far reaching consequences, even in the medical world. Below is an example that I have experienced multiple times.

Patients with haemophilia A cannot produce a protein known as factor VIII (FVIII) and must get it from somewhere else. KOGENATE® Bayer is a FVIII product that a patient can use instead of natural FVIII. KOGENATE® Bayer is a great product which improves the lives of many haemophilia patients. But it’s also an expensive product, burdening social security with more than 100.000,- Euro per patient per year.

Needless to say: we better don’t waste a drip of this precious and expensive product! Yet, this is precisely where the engineers of Bayer have failed to cater for some SRC into the design of their injection bottles. Have a closer look at the instructions below: the fluid (drawn in black) is in one part and needs to be mixed with the powder in the other part. Movements A to J must be performed a few minutes prior to injection.

To cut a long story short: figure C and D is where it mostly goes wrong – even with well trained nurses, parents and patients. The normal way of using ‘fluid-and-powder’ products is to screw on and inject. That is what the design communicates: “screw and inject”. Yet – as you can see in C and D, there need to be two separate pushes (followed by a ‘click’) prior to adding the fluid. The latter is so counter intuitive that I have literally seen thousands Euros being flushed onto the ground before my eyes.

Even trained parents and nurses who are familiar with this product need their full attention or they miss the crucial C and D.

OK for door handles. Not OK for social security.

From Heamophilia to SAP

To me the link with communication in big organizational change projects is obvious: communications are vital and precious for the health of an organization. And expensive too. Nevertheless communication sometimes turns out in the opposite direction. This is mostly due to failed choice architecture and untested stimuls response compatibility. When respondents fill out the wrong details, use the wrong settings or insert their card upside-down, it is easy to call them ’stupid users’ or to tell them RTFM (this stands for “Read The F** Manual”).

I still remember the day that the logistics responsible typed the article number in the weight field when we were implementing SAP in a large chemical plant. The automatic interface that we were so proud of automatically blocked all the transports available of our 51 neighbouring plants. We had to write a program to unlock all those transports. And guess what we said: ’stupid user’. However, this did not prevent other users from committing that same mistake.

From SAP to Traffic

Next time you build a survey or a communication, a note or a manual requiring your receivers to fill out something, to use a system or to take an action of any kind, consider how SRC-proof your communication is by testing its usability at full length PRIOR to sending it out.

As a final thought I could easily link this idea to the communication articles I have written before. Whenever I talk about communication I tend to use the metaphor of traffic and this one fits in pretty well; If communication would be a mission to bring a vehicle (i.e. your message) from point A to point B, then you want this vehicle to be equipped with an SRC button. SRC will avoid your vehicle from going in the opposite direction when you accelerate.

How can we un-learn management science and get back to the common-sense of teamwork? Switch-off all the rules, check-lists and scorecards we have been spoon-fed in our management education? A scenario for disaster you may think? Quite the opposite as I witnessed yesterday.

Dull libraries on leadership, knowledge management and communication came to action right in front of me.  It all happened as the musicians performed their scores at the rehearsal of the prestigious B’rock ensemble.

So…?

In this rehearsal B’rock gathered for the forthcoming ‘Adieu to the pleasures’ performance. Nothing spectacular about this rehearsal you may think, except from a management point-of-view.

As a management consultant I spend most of my time between shopfloor, project cockpit and boardroom. When you travel that path long enough you will find that management speak and lengthy checklists melt down to their essence.  For example: ‘always remember the 3 C’s: communication, communication, communication‘. Damned if you do – damned if you don’t.

I was curious to find out how the musicians were going to pull it off, given their limited time, budget and different nationalities involved (sounds like a real project, doesn’t it?). Almost immediately I was struck by their effortless communication. So I took my camera and captured what the 3 C’s look like from a B’rock perspective. Have a look…

1. Tuning

This is the first part of any teamwork of musicians – be it a rehearsal or a real concert. They tune their instruments and make sure everyone is on the same wavelength BEFORE they start playing. Have a look at the video below. These musicians are saying: hey this is my bottom line – what is yours?

In management speak: they are setting up a service level agreement (SLA). And they do it BEFORE they start to play. There is a lesson in there: an SLA is negotiated upfront to create a common understanding about services, priorities and responsibilities.

Tuning is not a quick-fix for a troubled relationship in the middle of the play: the relationship is tuned upfront. And yes: that makes an awkward and unusual sound.

2. Feedback

Once the instruments are tuned, the ensemble is ready to kick off. For the first time they play the scores that each musician has carefully prepared at home. For the first time they hear how they sound within the group. Have a look at the fragment below to see how that works.

You will note that the ‘project leader’ behind the harpsichord defines the context and shapes the meaning of the piece they are performing (at 00′:30"). Although every musician knows the scores and plays outstanding as an individual, they now feed-back to one another how they can make teamwork happen (as of 01′:30"). Note that during the break one of the musicians revealed to me that the most important instrument during a rehearsal is actually a musician’s pencil!

There you are: outstanding performers rely on each other in order to adapt their scores for the benefit of team performance. In this setting it would be absurd if they didn’t. Yet, where I come from I see most of the good performers touting their horn so loud that the team performance suffers.

The musician later added: ‘you feel when it’s your turn to say something‘. And that’s exactly what it felt like: this was no feedback as we know it; what I witnessed was feed-forward. Not as a task or an obligation, but rather as a game bringing the performance forward.

3. Performing

This is when the communication rubber meets the road. After individual preparation, tuning of the instruments and adapting the scores for team performance it is time to give it a go. I invite you to look at the below fragment twice: once with the sound on and once with the sound off.

There are two things that you can see clearer when the sound is off. First, the musicians don’t stop communicating when they perform. Continuously they look up from their scores to exchange cues. Second, as a result of this exchange you can actually see the resonance among the musicians.

Although they are all playing their individual score you can see that they are in resonance. One of the musicians saw this resonance as a growing process as he reported: ‘during the intense days of rehearsing you kind of grow into the performance’.

The Moral

Preparation, tuning, adaptation and continuous exchange of cues results in good performance. The moral of this story isn’t hard to fetch – but it may be hard to swallow for those of us who have their MBA education tattooed all over. This rehearsal reframes the question: why does management education exist? None of these musicians has ever studied, examined or attended a course in communication, teamwork or feedback.

Think of what we said last week about barefoot running: your company is not broken by default – just like your feet are just fine the way they are. Once you go barefoot your body automatically adjusts. Effortless.  In terms of management education B’rock musicians go barefoot. And they go a long way.

By the way …

This goes without saying that B’rock is a project-based organization (in management speak): the performance at hand determines the staffing, their level of commitment and … their leadership style.

In case you wonder how I got into that setting in the first place… well … together with B’rock and other top-notch musical ensembles we are discovering Arts-based Learning. I’m quite proud to be scouting learning methods and workshop possibilities in this exclusive and (until now) closed setting. A bizar experience … that’s why the initiative is called BizzArts.

Below you can see B’rock performing Vivaldi ‘for real’.

No doubt about it: Belgian finest Baroque can only be performed when excellence & passion are mixed with barefoot empowerment. And now you have a witness.
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Related articles:
- Music and Leadership – July 20th, 2008
- Music and Management Consulting – September 27th, 2008

During large programs it is very difficult to keep an eye on what is cooking inside the organization and how people’s perceptions of the upcoming change are evolving. Hence, a commonly used instrument to check this ‘change readiness’ is holding surveys. Last week I mentioned the Top-10 signs your employee survey needs to change.

In addition to that list, Naomi Karten describes 6 recommendations for conducting surveys and avoiding that they become a waste of time.

1. Set survey objectives. Define those objectives before you start, or you will end up with a list of questions that are unanswered because they were unasked.

2. Keep survey length under control. Avoid nice-to-know-but-so-what questions. A well-designed survey can be completed in less than ten minutes.

3. Make the survey action-oriented. Surveys are often full of thermometer questions. For example, "Did this course match your expectations?" is a thermometer question. Responses may suggest the existence of a problem, but provide too little information for you to understand the problem or recommend changes. If, instead, you ask questions like ‘are you now able to go back to your workplace and put what you have learned into practice?’, ‘Which difficulties did you experience when making the exercises?’, or ‘which topics will require extra attention before using them in practice?’ , you can use the responses you receive to plan a course of action.

4. Balance open-ended and closed questions. Closed questions ask respondents to select from a set of fixed responses. Respondents can answer these questions quickly, and responses can be tabulated, summarized, graphed, charted, analyzed and reported. Open-ended questions, by contrast, ask respondents to answer in their own words. Responses take time to review and are subject to interpretation. However, open-ended questions frequently provide a level of insight into the customer perspective that is impossible to obtain from closed questions. 

5. Ensure an adequate survey response. To generate interest, set the stage by publicizing the importance of the survey in helping you improve your service effectiveness. Explain your objectives and how quickly the survey can be completed. Marketing, branding the survey can dramatically influence the level and quality of the responses you will receive.

6. Tell stakeholders about your survey findings. This is the most important and yet most forgotten about element. Inform stakeholders of your findings and changes you will make as a result of their feedback. When you implement suggested changes, announce that you’re doing so because of their feedback. Don’t overlook this essential element of providing feedback to customers about their feedback to you.

Gathering feedback and taking no action based on the findings is worse than not gathering feedback at all!