About a month ago I attended the 20-minute presentation of MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte at TEDx Brussels. In case his name doesn’t ring a bell: Negroponte is the face of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). Their mission is to provide a means for learning, self-expression, and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education.

Yep – these people are on a mission.

Children as Agents of Change

During his 20 minute talk Negroponte explained the basic idea behind the project: development through primary education. The fundament is the inspiring and radical idea to “leverage children” and the way we think about them: no longer as recipients of information, but as agents of change. According to Negroponte they had no other choice: “When you are faced with illiteracy numbers such as Afghanistan, where 75% of the girls don’t go to school, building more schools will not close that gap.”

Just imagine the resistance and laughs Negroponte must have gotten when he first started talking about this project. For example, even now people resist the idea of dropping laptops in desolate areas where people hardly know what a laptop is. “You know what?” Negroponte continued, “You can! Just a few days after we have dropped these OLPC’s we saw connections taking place and activity on those laptops and networks.”

So they decided to change the way they look at children. And when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. To their surprise, looking at children as agents of change has led them to unexpected results: teachers coming back out of retirement and children teaching their parents!

By the way: as you are reading this each kid in Uruguay has an OLPC. Duh… think about that – there might be a lesson in there about belief and commitment.

What’s to Learn for us?

It makes me wonder: if dropping laptops in desolate areas of developing countries can make them leapfrog literacy, couldn’t connecting each employee on Twitter have us leapfrog economic growth?

You may say this is a stupid idea.

You may say it’s impossible.

I say it might just work.

I say it costs you nothing.

I say if employees are your most valuable asset, maybe it’s time to tap into their potential.

I say what do you really mean when you talk about Human Capital Management or Talent Management? Do you mean carrot-and-stick, or do you mean passion-and-growth?

I say it’s time we start looking at employees as agents of change instead of recipients of information.

I say what have you got to lose?

I say it’s a project with a name: OTPE: ‘One Twitter account Per Employee.’

Let’s open up a little in 2010 – shall we?

Bonus for the heart: below is the A to Z of OLPC, I must have played it about a million times: it touches the heart.

A few weeks ago a friend told me that the only thing he can do as a parent is to stand behind his kids – both hands open – saying: ‘I will cath you if you fall". He continued: "For example: a three year old carrying a big bottle from the kitchen to the dinner table is a breathtaking sight for most parents. We are tempted to say ‘careful’, ‘don’t let it fall’, ‘hold it with both hands’, etc. Now, if the bottle arrives at the dinner table unharmed, is that THANKS TO our verbal support or is it NOTWITHSTANDING our comment?". 

How would our children grow and learn if we would be more at ease with the circumstances they are in? Whenever we comment / advise / suggest our children with all of our hearts, our support and the lessons learned from our own from bruises and breakdowns; aren’t we just pushing them into learned helplessness?

In my opinion, this is the very point where the skill of education stops and the art of parenting starts. Like a balancing act, both empowerment and protection are necessary for a healthy development.

As the above drawing indicates, the development of children (and grown-ups) needs a perfect mix of nudging and nurturing; a balance between empowerment and protection. It is exactly at that same point where the skill of management stops and the art of leadership starts.

To your opinion, where is the best place to learn that art? At Harvard or at home?

Related articles:
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 6) – September 21st, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 5) – May 24th, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 4) – March 1st, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 3) – February 21st, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 2) – February 16th, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 1) – February 9th, 2009

In the below video you can see Dr. Wayne Dyer as he makes a distinction between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’.

Imagine the following scene:

You are in your house. You’ve got your care keys in your hand. The lights go out because of a power failure. You can’t see a thing. You stumble around in your living room and you drop your keys.

You look around for a moment and you realize that you are never going to find them in the dark. But you look outside and you notice that the streetlights are on. So you say to yourself: "Hmmm … I’m not going to sit around here in the dark and grope around looking for my keys when there’s a light on outside. I’m going to go out here – under the street light – and I’m going to look for my keys."

So you are outside, groping around and looking for your keys until your neighbor comes along. He asks:
- "What happened mate?"
- "I dropped my keys"
- "I’ll help you look for them!"

Now the two of you are looking for your car keys. Finally your neighbor says:
- "Excuse me, but where exactly did you drop your keys?"
- "Well… um …I dropped them in the house"
- "You dropped your keys in the house and you are looking for them here? This doesn’t make any sense!"
- "Well, it doesn’t make any sense to grope around in the dark when there’s light out here!"

Isn’t that exactly what we do when we have a difficult problem or a struggle that is located inside and we are looking for the solution outside of ourselves? Expecting somebody else to change or something outside of you to get better in order for you to make your life work, is something you have to take a hard look at. You are the one with the difficulties.

This reminds me of another quote by Bob Procter:
"You are the only problem you will ever have and you are the only solution."

I have used the evenings of the month of August to pull together this draft of a business fable. In fact, this fable is my way of coping with the ambiguity of workplace dynamics and games people play.

It helps me to make sense of pressure, tension, stress, indifference and breakup.

Is there another way of going about with pressure and tension?

In my world there is.

In this adventure three fish discover that there is always a choice.

Click on the image to download the document. If that doesn’t work you can always copy-paste this link into the address bar of your browser:
http://www.reply-mc.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/the-pond.pdf

And please please please let me know your feedback, as I intend to complete this fable by integrating all the afterthoughts into the line of the story.

Happy reading!

Since the beginning of this month school has started. For many families this indicates a moment in time where habits need to be switched and children need to make a step into a next level of development, be it in reading, writing, independent tooth brushing, cleaning up the toys, etc.

A thing that works pretty well with children is the use of a simple scorecard (mostly a board with all the days of the week, some targets and banners to be attached for every succesful achievement). All of a sudden agreements, targets and progress become visual and this seems to be very motivating. However, the thing that really makes this board succesful is the discussion prior to setting up the board: this is where buy-in happens!

For instance, some questions that are commonly covered in those conversations:
- When do we get a medal for an achievement (i.e.:‘What exactly does good performance look like?‘)
- What happens when we fail to meet the target (i.e.: ‘What does failure look like?‘)
- WIIFM: What’s In It For Me when I meet all targets?
- etc.

That’s how we get to SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Tracable. Although you can find this acronym in any MBA course, the added value of parenting is the insight that CONVERSATION and DIALOGUE is the one and only way to make smart goals. The below drawing outlines what this results into for a work setting:

Next to that, there are actually 3 kinds of KPI’s that work pretty well with kids – provided that they are SMART:
- Do new things. These KPI’s will measure new things that were not in place before;
- Do things better. Basically, these KPI’s come down to putting new tagets on existing measures;
- Stop doing things. These KPI’s measure the fading away of bad habits.

There is no reason what-so-ever to assume that a KPI at work should be more complicated than setting KPI’s with kids. It’s all about making agreements and working out the measurements TOGETHER. Forcing a balanced scorecard upon people and making people adhere to KPI’s that they didn’t buy into – or even understand – is an absolute recipe for disaster.

For people to be motivated, you will need to set goals that have been agreed upon with all parties involved. Finally – once you’ve got it all together – what’s even more important is to set positive targets instead of negative ones. For instance, you may be targeting a less than 2 per cent mistakes on deliveries or a 98 per cent of success-ful deliveries. They both measure and target exactly the same, but which one will motivate people most to perform?

Related articles:
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 5) – May 24th, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 4) – March 1st, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 3) – February 21st, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 2) – February 16th, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 1) – February 9th, 2009

In the below video we see Pat Zigarmi underscoring why involvement of your target audience is the single factor determining the success of your organizational change endeavor. She makes her point incredibly well by stating: "People who plan the battle rarely battle the plan."

People don’t resist change, they resist being controlled. And if we are smart enough to involve people in every step of the project lifecycle, they will be the best drivers of change we could possibly hope for.

In her research she distinguishes 6 primary concerns for change:

1. Information concerns. People respond when they know what you know, see what you see, understand what you understand.

2. Personal concerns: what’s in it for me? Will I win or lose? Will I look good? Is this a picture of the future I can succeed in?

3. Implementation concerns: where can I get help?

4. Impact concerns: will the change make any difference?

5. Collaboration: how do we get everyone involved?

6. Refinement and improvement concerns

Finally she also challenges us to redefine how we look at "concerns": they are not negative, they are just unanswered questions!

Related articles:
- Know-Feel-Do = Bottom Line of Communication – December 28th, 2008
- Music and Leadership – July 20th, 2008
- It’s About Involvement, Stupid! – June 1st, 2007

In addition to the articles on parenting as a management skill that I posted in February 2009, there is one more insight I’d like to add. I found out that the epicenter of organizational change management is hidden in the simple mechanism of cause-and-effect. And I found out about it by being home between television time and dinner time on an average working day.

When I ask my 3 year old son to stop watching television and to come to the dinner table, I’m most likely to receive a ‘No!’ and when I persist in my plan, tears and other forms of ‘Resistance’ will follow for the next ten minutes or so.

However, when I get involved in his frame of reference, I tell him that the television will be shut down when the clock turns seven or when the episode he is watching ends. I can also tell him he can count to three for me to turn off the television, etc. It’s a game he gladly subscribes to; running to the dinner table – eager to start dinner.

What happened here? In the first situation I would be using my parental authority to reinforce an action. This likely results in ‘Revenge’, ‘Regret’ or ‘Rescue’. In the second scenario I am using a different approach: instead of pushing harder I take one step back – BUT I STICK TO THE OBJECTIVE, i.e. television out and on to the dinner table.

By stepping back I inverse the cause-and-effect relationship: I let him be the cause instead of the effect of the situation. This is more likely to result in a ‘Responsible‘ response: I give him the opportunity or the ‘ability‘ to ‘respond‘ positively to my request.

The same is true for organizational change efforts. The point is that you can achieve most of the goals by underscoring the objectives, stepping back and then leaving people the opportunity to become involved in the solution. Instead of pushing harder straight on to ‘Resistance’ you are stepping back and allowing ‘Relationship’ and ‘Respect’.

I bet one can’t learn that lesson so profoundly and deeply at Harvard or Wharton the way I did between the dinner table and the TV set.

Related articles:
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 4) – March 1st, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 3) – February 21st, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 2) – February 16th, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 1) – February 9th, 2009

Crushed by the sadness of an illusion that evaporates. Quality time is a lie. And everything else that is based on this idea is falling apart.

Coming home from a hard day or a tough week at work I used to say to myself: ‘from now on it’s quality time’. Quality time is a time-slot dedicated to high quality. Instant happiness; no place for weak moments. And since this seems to work for everyone else, instant happiness is the norm. So if it doesn’t work out you are not OK or your family is not OK. Welcome to frustration station.

Instant Happiness… NOT!
Quality time is top of the pops in the category ‘Happy life – the way it should work out’. Pretty stigmatizing – so shut up and don’t you dare to question it.

The truth is that I was surprised to find that work, work, work and then – quick snap – quality time doesn’t work out that well. First of all it puts a tremendous pressure on the time-slot with significant others. All of a sudden unwinding is not allowed. Second, it does not take a genius to figure out that the stress and exhaustion  of work, work, work do not lead to the kindness and sensitivity of so-called quality-time.

Before the joy of quality time can appear we need to unwind, be tired, be bored, find our place in the family setting, argue and work our way in. But we refuse to do so – because it eats up the precious time-slot. So we find ourselves in a strange, tense and phony situation.

Quantity Time
The solution is not Prozac or cocaine. The solution is quantity time. Yes – work, work, work at work and then: work, work, work on a different level: trusting oneself, finding an emotional balance and taking care of oneself. Your significant others need quantity time – and you do too! A fixed time-slot and high expectations are the last thing you need if you want that to occur.

By the way, did you note that when it comes to balancing the human factors at work,  measurements and KPI’s are the best recipe for failure?

So let’s redefine quality time as a moment we set apart at work. Quality time for an issue we all agree is critical. Quality time for a problem that is worth waiting for until all stakeholders have shared their concerns. Quality time as a strategic instrument.

Please let us stop confusing this term with moments that simply stop existing once you measure them on a time-scale and benchmark on unrealistic expectations. Let’s be professional during work and let’s be ourselves at home.

Related articles:
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 4) – March 1st, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 3) – February 21st, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 2) – February 16th, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 1) – February 9th, 2009
Dump your Blackberry and get a life! – September 9th, 2007

I am currently reading The Manager’s Book of Decencies – How Small Gestures Build Great Companies, by Stephen Harrison. Actually, it is more a field guide than a book, because it’s packed with real-life examples of decencies that result in major business impact, and that you can put to use in your company.

Examples include: Greet coworkers personally. Remember to say thank you. For meetings you convene, be the first to sit down and the last to get up. Welcome visitors by name. Answer your own telephone. Give away recognition when things go well; hoard responsibility when they don’t. Convey bad news in person. When you make a mistake, admit it and apologize.

When it comes to this last one – apologizing – I just finished an interesting chapter that matches last week’s post particularly well: Executive Humility Decencies. In that chapter, Harrison explains that apologies are serious business.

All or Nothing

He even cites a research by Jennifer Robbennolt, Professor of Law and Psychology at the University of Illinois College of Law. In two studies, participants, ages 21 to 70, read a scenario describing a pedestrian-bicycle accident. They were asked to take on the role of the injured person and evaluate a settlement offer from the other party, based on information about the injuries, the other party’s conduct, and each party’s responsibility for causing the accident.

Professor Robbennolt found that when a full apology was given, 73% of the respondents would accept the settlement offer. When no apology was given, 52% would accept, but when a partial apology was given, only 35% would accept. Even when she changed the scenario and made the evidence of fault less clear, a partial apology was still often perceived no different to no apology at all. Results also showed that the severity of the injury mattered: the more severe the injury, the more the need to fully apologize. It seems that a late or a bad apology is WORSE than no apology at all.

The 4 R’s

Not surprisingly, when we dig a little deeper in order to find out more about the anatomy of an effective apology, we end up in the field of medicine. Apparently, a lot of health care providers understand and practice what to do after unexpected outcomes – to apologize (*). Most of them use the 4 "R"s of Apology:

Recognition: knowing when an apology is in order. An apology needs to ensure that the injured party knows that you understand specifically what you did wrong.

Regret: responding empathetically. This is an indication that you accept personal responsibility for the injury. Here it is important to remember that an expression of regret is not an admission of guilt or fault.

Responsibility: owning up to what’s happened. Be accountable for the problem, even if it was unforeseeable. This is the part where most apologies end up being partial expressions of regret, impoverished by exceptions and ‘but’ statements. As the above research of Professor Robbennolt points out, a bad apology is worse than no apology at all.

Remedy: making it right. Explain to what’s being done to correct the problem and express your commitment to not make the same mistake in the future.

Finally, back to Harrison’s book, from which I’d like to quote how he links apologizing and vulnerability to leadership:

"During the course of his or her career, every leader will be tested by adversity, and sometimes the leader will fail. At these times, employees and other stakeholders are watching very carefully. When they see the leader as a fallible person who makes mistakes and has the decency to acknowledge them, take responsibility, and apologize if appropriate, the will not abandon the leader. Followers demand neither flawlessness nor omniscience. (…) In the end, followers demand leaders who are worthy of being followed."
__________
(*) Source: Healing Words: The Power Of Apology In Medicine, by Michael S Woods, Jason Isaac Star, Hilda J Bruckner

The past three weeks  I have argued that parenting and family life outperform any MBA education when it comes to learning some essential leadership skills: taking care of oneself (I’m not kidding; even Peter Drucker wrote about it!), understanding and accepting how people develop, and setting boundaries. Finally, there is another leadership characteristic we can instantly learn from being a parent: it is how men and women’s brain architecture and hormones are fundamentally different.

Woman tend to think in webs of factors, not straight lines; therefore biological anthropologist Helen Fisher labeled this broad, contextual, feminine way of reasoning as ‘web thinking’. Men are more likely to focus their attention on one thing at a time. They tend to compartmentalize relevant material, discard what they regard as extraneous data, and analyze information in a more linear, causal path. Helen Fisher calls this male pattern ’step thinking’.

Fisher’s evidence is further supported by biologists, who found that the female brain has more nerve cables connecting the two brain hemispheres. Apparently, the male brain is more compartmentalized, so sections operate more independently. On top of that, testosterone tends to focus one’s attention. Women’s lower levels of this hormone may contribute to their broader, more contextual view.

Ok – so we can learn about that in business school by having a philosophical group discussion. After that, we go home and we safely end our day while the kids are already in bed. Now consider the less conventional way of getting this point across: a young male human being coaxing three toddlers through dinner, spoon feeding the youngest as the other two are bouncing off the walls – unwinding from a hectic day at school; getting them to bath, brushing teeth, bed time story, etc. At the same time: phone is ringing, there is somebody at the door and you run out of diapers. I guarantee: learning occurs instantly and closing that skills gap takes far more courage than attending any widely accredited business course that pretends to get the same point across.

No need to paint a picture or to write a scientific article about it: women outperform men when it comes to splitting attention and multitasking. Nevertheless, do read this article by Helen Fisher on woman and leadership!