Networking at the speed of Twitter: social media

Thanks to Matt O'Neill and the London Communicators and Engagement Group for the invitation to this week's April meetup in London and the chance to hear Euan Semple discuss the latest trends in social media.

I like to think I've fair put myself out there in social media terms: besides this blog, you need only have a look at the left hand column next to this post to see that I've taking part in LinkedIn, Xing, ecademy, Naymz and various Ning communities (Applied Improv, Solutions Focus in Organizations Linkup, Sustainable Leadership and Open Source Integral).

But twitter...well until now I've until recently been of two minds, asking myself: How much social media is enough? Or too much...? I was still unconvinced of the twitter's value proposition for my business.


Downsides of twitter

You may already share some of the concerns I had and understand the causes of my hesitation: the short-message format of "tweets" encourages a trend I find sinister, namely the mangling of language and grammar that was begun by mobile text-messaging and has now found its large-scale cousin in twitter.

I've also had a concern about the utility and purpose of twitter - by and large there seems quite a lot of inane, vacuous and valueless noise about the mundane trivialities of people's everyday lives, posted (as put in the article Fear of Twitter) as part of the present day's "look-at-me adolescent neediness, constant-contact media addiction, birdlike attention-span compression and vapidity to the point of depravity."

And to add to the dramas, there has lately been research warning that Twitter and Facebook could harm moral values as the phenomenon of instant/always-on messaging tempts us to act speedily (and emotionally) rather than morally (and rationally). In brain terms, these instantaneous media seem to promote or at least foster and environment in which limbic reactions (and re-tweets) are the norm. People are prone to action without consideration.

In sum, I've been conflicted.


A personal twitter tipping point: channels, concision, choices, currency

Then I had a conversation with Kay Ross in Hong Kong and it tipped me over from the blogosphere into the twittersphere. What did it was when Kay mentioned at least two business opportunities that came about as a result of twitter - that is, with people that she would not have met any other way and that twitter made possible.

This nicely illustrates the first salient point that I took away from this week's discussion with Euan and the London communicators: more channels means more chances to connect with other people whom I might not otherwise meet.

The corollary: different channels serve different purposes. I use LinkedIn, xing and ecademy more or less as calling cards to present my online CV with credentials, background and experience. Ning groups are a way for me to keep up on the events and people associated with particular communities of practice and interest. And I use this blog to share insights and content with a broader community.

The question for me was: would twitter simply duplicate efforts or could it be a useful and complementary application?

The answer to this is the second aspect of twitter that I find useful: it requires concision. Tim Ferriss' outstanding piece on how to use twitter without twitter using you, including his insight that twitter's best use is as a micro-blogging platform - a quick and concise way to share info and ask questions of my network without writing an email or writing a blog post.

As the title of his post also suggests, and a point that was made clear in Euan's talk as well, the explosion of twitter and all preceding forms of social media makes it all the more important to make choices about how much content I post and consume. With social media the brakes are off and constant streams of content are more than ever the norm. Anyone who's ever emerged from endless surfing wondering what happened to the day can attest to the stream-of-consciousness quality of trolling about on the Net.

At base, however, it's about priority-setting; if one lacks direction and purpose, procrastination can as easily happen online as in the kitchen rummaging for snacks. And if you're really not so into hearing about someone's updates on location and activities, you have the choice to turn it off or ignore it. So there is a case to be made for taking personal responsibility - just because it's there doesn't mean you have to use/see it.

As for keeping current with people, Joel Comm, makes the case that twitter "goes to the core of one of our most important needs...connecting with others of our species." But does the currency that "Twit Power" offers really stem from sharing inane details about favourite donut flavours and whether I've shaved today, or is there some onus on me as a micro-blogger to provide some value to the folks who follow my content?

The conclusion I've drawn is that if I am adding to the information stream I want to add things of value and potential interest to others, to be the signal that people seek out rather than the noise they filter.

So I've taken into account the potential downsides and, on the basis of the above four factors (channels, concision, choices, currency) I have now been twittering for a short while.

I should add: online social networking is different in character from the kind of face-to-face networking that's behind my current travels and enables much of my work. More about that in an upcoming post!
TM

Formula for success: good news and a global century

Over the past two weeks in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore I've spoken to locals about topics ranging from Asia's place in the world, expat life, starting and sustaining businesses and, inevitably, the global financial crisis. The result is an Asia-based comment I want to share, but first let me address this last item.

Where's the good news?

A recurring theme I heard is the people are fatigued by the gloom-and-doom media coverage of the GFC (yes, it's even got its own acronym now) with ceaseless bad news and warnings of worse yet to come.

It's a prime example of the media's primary business model and, coincidentally, an answer to the age-old question of why we don't see more good-news stories: the media broadcasts bad news to drive people into an alarmed limbic state - because fearful people crave more information to develop their survival strategies and thereby become regular consumers of more and more (bad) news. It's an endless cycle.

So I want to counter this and encourage you to do so as well.

For my part, I've taken to posting feel-good news snippets and stories via the twitter micro-blogging platform (you'll see some examples in the top left-hand side of my main blog page). If you're interested, tweet yourself to some free "feel-goods".

What can you do? Turn off the news and go talk to people (like I've been doing). My hunch is that you'll enjoy a much more nuanced, detailed and interactive picture of what's really happening "out there" and you'll have made a genuine human contact as well. We're social, tribal creatures - I suggest we can all benefit from getting informed of what's happening with real people and tone down our consumption of the media's abstract and incessant stream of global bad news.


In other Asian news...

With this weekend's Chinese Grand Prix race the F1 returns to Asia. How appropriate, really. During my travels I observed that the GFC-besotted world right now is a lot like an F1 race.

The ceaseless quest to go ever-faster has produced a multi-car pileup on the track. When this happens the yellow flag is shown, all cars must slow down and no passing is allowed - in other words, it's a holding pattern. Eventually, the carnage and debris are removed and the race resumes as the green flag is shown.

As I see it, when the global green flag flies again and the race resumes, the cars at the front of the pack will all be Asian. Following behind are the rest of the global contenders (some Europeans, Canada looking peppy with its conservative fiscal practices, and a host of others).

And what of America? Well, well with its shaken confidence, and its balance of trade and spending deficeits, it's a bit like a car running on low-grade fuel with borrowed tires. With President Obama now heading up the pit crew, it'll be interesting to see if the performance can be tweaked before the green flag is out again.

The Asian Century

A running debate has existed since the mid-80's about the ascendancy of Asia and whether the 21st will be the Asian Century. Whether viewed in economic or demographic terms, a shift is undoubtedly taking place.

The 19th century has been called the British Century, followed by the 20th, American Century...but it's not as though a changing of the guard happened in the year 1900. Rather, a complicated dance has taken place between these two empires and continues to do so (witness, for example, the pre-GFC ascendency of London to replace New York as the world financial capital). So it will be with Asia as this century unfolds.

That said, you could say that Asia's current advantage in the "global financial Formula One" stems from having done this sort of thing before: in 1997 there was the Asian financial crisis and in 2003 the SARS outbreak. Experience counts a lot in fostering resilience (the London bombings of 2005 were only the latest in a series of assaults on the British capital, and did not have the same deep psychological impact as did 9/11 on the US) and coping strategies.


What about a "Global Century"?

Taking a wider holistic view, there are many signs that humans are getting things pretty spectacularly (and unsustainably) wrong - not just financially but environmentally, interpersonally, and in our development as individuals.

Success in this global F1, I would argue, will require more than just pole position and ever-faster innovations to increase the speed of business-as-usual. Increasingly compelling global events show that we need to apply our energies to something different. I would argue that instead of an F1-style contest in which countries endlessly chase each other on a circular track that is actually a road to nowhere, a useful shift in focus would be to move beyond shifting regional hegemonies represented by the British/American/Asian Centuries and foster an integrated view - the Global Century.

In this way we would be much better placed to have integral and holistic global solutions to the ceaseless stream of global bad news that the media deliver for our consumption - which would put us all in a more cheerful frame of mind. A formula for success indeed.
TM

Understanding resistance to change

What's the difference between resistance to change that's driven by emotional reactivity - and resistance that's actually useful feedback?

One of the greatest challenges we all face is to manage our emotional reactions better, so the energy they produce is directed in more useful and productive ways. When we're able to do this, we function better - not just at work but in all our interactions across the board. And chances are we can be more contented in life, equipped to deal with setbacks and celebrate successes.

My previous post was about the nine predictable reactive states that people enter when faced with what their brain's fast emotional limbic system perceives as a threat.

Today I want to expand that concept to talk about how managing those states (in ourselves and in others) can help bring people along on the change journey by enabling them to act in more productive ways.

An article in this month's Harvard Business Review offers useful context to this discussion. The following excerpt is quoted from Jeffrey D. Ford and Laurie W. Ford's "Decoding Resistance to Change - Strong leaders can hear and learn from their critics" (added emphasis is mine, numbers added for reference and addressed in order below).

When change initiatives run aground—as they so often do—change agents can be quick to point a finger at the people who never got on board. The assumption is that they resisted a perfectly logical move, so it fell apart.

However, blaming resisters not only is pointless but can actually lead to destructive managerial behaviors. When managers perceive resistance as a threat, they may become competitive, defensive, or uncommunicative. They are sometimes so concerned with being right—and not looking bad—that they lose sight of their original goals (3). In stubbornly pushing things through without understanding the resistance, they sacrifice goodwill, put valuable relationships in jeopardy, and squander the opportunity to engage skeptics in service of a better plan. They don’t hear about missing pieces and faulty assumptions. And, in true us-versus-them fashion, they presume that only the other folks—the resisters—need to alter their behavior and that the change would succeed if not for the resisters’ irrational and self-serving actions.

It’s true that resistance can be irrational and self-serving (2). But like it or not, it is an important form of feedback. Dismissing it robs you of a powerful tool as you implement change. It takes a strong leader to step up and engage when a change effort meets with pushback. If you can gain perspective by paying attention to, understanding, and learning from behaviors you perceive as threatening (1), you will ultimately deliver better results.

Taking these highlighted parts in the numeric order I've assigned:

(1) The lattermost comment makes the useful point that reactive behaviour can easily provoke reactive behaviour and produce an escalating emotional chain reaction that undermines any chance at a productive outcome. Leaders of a change initiative therefore need to carefully monitor their own reaction to the (potentially hostile) behaviour of team members. Unmanaged, such a reactive spiral may throw the leader off kilter just at the moment when clear thinking and a level head are most urgently needed.

(2) Yes these strongly emotional reactions are irrational and self-serving - and, I would add, for good reason! They are irrational because they're driven by the emotional limbic brain, not the rational neocortex, and furthermore are geared the the ultimate self-serving purpose: one's own survival. Leaders should therefore not be surprised that emotion-fuelled resistance is both tenacious and enduring.

(3) So what would it look like if that powerful emotion-fuelled response was channelled into more productive, rational responses? And what might those responses look like?

Taking the second question first, in a team setting these more productive, rational responses take the form of eight key team roles:

• Explorer / Motivator
• Inspirational Coach / Facilitator
• Promoter / Strategist
• Practical Problem Solver
• Creative Change Agent
• Visionary Planner
• Auditor / Organizer
• Driver / Completer

Limbic vs. Rational - Reactive vs. Productive

Now how can you tell if someone is being, to put it bluntly, a pain in the ass, or is genuinely engaged in the role of "practical problem solver"? Well, it pays to be able to identify whether that person is being emotionally reactive or rationally productive.

In other words, are they working from their emotional limbic brain response or from their cognitive, rational brain.

Here the comment I've numbered (3) about people who are "so concerned with being right" is instructive. When you find yourself absolutely convinced that you are right about something, there's an excellent chance you're operating from a limbic space.

This is because the limbic brain's function (to ensure your survival) dictates that it must act fast - that is to say, before all the facts are considered. This makes sense: if you stopped to take a long look at the thing that might just be a snake and it turned out in fact to be a snake, it could well have bitten you and you'd be dead before you could say, "My word! Is that a...eurk!!"

Clearly in these situations there's not a lot of room for considering alternatives and taking the time to be open to different points of view. What this looks like in an interpersonal conflict situation is there are one or more people's limbic brains screaming at them (via hormones and neurotransmitters), "Your survival is at stake! This needs to happen MY way, Right Now!!"

Does that sound like any conversation you've been involved in recently...?

The rational brain, meanwhile, evolved later and makes up the majority of our grey matter. It's the bit that distinguishes we humans from other creatures and does the tremendous cognitive heavy-lifting - the sort that allows for playing the violin, designing hybrid cars, calculating your tax return, and thinking of clever things to say in 140 characters of less on twitter. :)

By design, then, the limbic response is the classic knee-jerk reaction - act first, then consider.

Meanwhile, the rational brain is capable of weighing options and alternatives, gathering data and information - consider first, then act.


How this applies to "resistance to change"

Having made this distinction between the two sorts of behaviour (and the associated forms of resistance to change - i.e. reactive vs. productive) I hasten to add: there's no point trying to disconnect the emotional reaction to change. It WILL happen, no matter any leader's well-meaning efforts at avoidance and minimization.

The change leader's task is therefore as follows:
(1) First and foremost: manage your own reaction. Like the air hosties tell you, make sure your own oxygen mask is in place before you attempt to engage with others.

(2) Assess the most likely limbic responses of the members in your team and incorporate active measures to address the underlying survival concerns that produce these fight-flight-freeze limbic responses.

(3) Their knee-jerk reactions thus calmed, team members are now better placed to activate their rational brains and channel that emotional energy into productive action.

NB - the bonus step: engage in a facilitated process to help identify team members' particular talents. Everyone can naturally manifest at least two of the eight roles listed above - and when you have all eight covered, your team's extremely well placed to achieve extraordinary results.

tmconsultancy offers focused training programs to help you identify the emotional reactive behaviour patterns and the productive rational styles that manifest in every team. To find out more, email me.

TM

This weekend I slept with Trinny & Susannah

On my flight this weekend from Melbourne to Hong Kong I enjoyed the unaccustomed comfort of a First class berth on Qantas, along with the unexpected overnight company of Britain's fashion gurus, authors and TV presenters, Trinny and Susannah. 

Now before Qantas has a Ralph-related meltdown, allow me to assure them and you that when I say "slept with" I mean nothing more salacious than a trio of unconscious travellers just trying to make the best of a 9-hour plane trip. 

So with apologies for the tabloid-like headline of this post, there is a serious point to be made and it has to do with celebrity.

Celebrities - people like you and me?

Today it's possible to get information - however dubious - about the doings and private concerns of any number of celebrities in the world. This week, I noted in passing, "Brad walked out" and Madonna's quest for a matching set of black babies was thwarted. 

It's an open question whether this information enriches my life, but there you have it - every newsstand screams out lurid titillation with the dramas of people I don't even know and (barring future coincidental meetings in First class Qantas cabins) will never meet.

So-called "reality TV" shows have increased in number - if not in good taste and quality. We need only look at the famous (and too brief) life of English media personality Jade Goody to understand that for some, "being famous" is a more viable career option than going to university or pursuing vocational training. 

Certainly this is the conclusion drawn by a surprising number of young people: a British survey reported in 2007 that the number one career ambition of one in seven 16- to 21-year olds was to become a celebrity or "socialite" like Paris Hilton.

What IS "celebrity" then? Are celebrities people just like you and me? Certainly in my admittedly brief experience of them, Trinny and Susannah seemed nice enough people, not at all the tyrants and bullies some famous folks are reported to be. 

Susannah even chose the same breakfast as me, though I have to say Trinny looks a hell of a lot better in the morning than I do.

Our tribal origins

In the quest to unravel the strangeness of "celebrity" it's helpful to remember our origins. Humans are not well designed to live alone and so we form social groups to ensure our survival. Having done this for so long, and for such a compelling reason, our brains have evolved accordingly.

Dunbar's number (named for British anthropologist Robin Dunbar) suggests that humans are ideally suited to exist in a group of between 20 to at most 150 people in our "tribe". 

What that means is in a tribe setting of up to 150 people we are pretty well suited to getting along with each other without resorting to hierarchies, stereotypes or other means of simplifying the complexity of social relations/interactions. Beyond that it starts to get a bit dodgy.

In such a tightly-knit tribal group, if you knew someone else pretty well and they didn't view you as essentially competition or food, chances are you counted him or her as a "friend". I think this is where our fascination with, and confusion about, celebrities comes into play. 

Our basic neural wiring tells us that if we know personal stuff about people then they must be our friends. Technology, meanwhile, delivers truckloads of personal information about celebrities and, thanks to social media, loads of people who may be seeking celebrity on a more or less limited scale. What these celebrities and would-be celebrities have in common is that they are not only outside our optimum tribe of 150, we don't actually really know them at all. 

The result is a "does not compute!" disconnect between what technology enables us to do and what our brains can handle. We are essentially glorified chimps suffering from information overload. This is where Brad and Madonna (and some people's hundreds of Facebook "friends") confound us: the presence of personal information says friend while our brain's capacity to keep track of it all says not part of my tribe. 

This is not to say that we should limit our interactions to a select 150 people - hardly practical in a connected world. Rather my brush with celebrity has encouraged me to think more closely about fostering a quality and degree of connection to others that is a) manageable given the limits of my own brain and therefore b) helpful if I'm to engage fully and effectively with other people. 

Circles within circles

Accepting the fact that we'll all have an inner circle and varied degrees connection to others whom we get to know, here's a first pass at some relational boundary-setting (NB: membership in multiple categories is possible):

• friends - potential tribe member (per the loose description offered above)
• acquaintances - those with whom I share interests and memberships (as part of the constellation of people in my extended network) and between whom I may occasionally make connections on the basis of their common interests
• colleagues/clients - relationships of a commercial nature, transacted in an adult, professional and pleasant manner
• strangers - I'll not be so naff as to say "a friend I haven't met yet" since that in itself is a violation of the tribal friends distinction - but offering a smile and a friendly comment certainly isn't amiss in this realm
• celebrities - those whose career involves raising their image and profile into the public domain; I think the useful distinction here is to always bear in mind that, "hey I recognize that celebrity" does not automatically imply a relationship, least of all one of "hey I know that person". 

Some food for thought - leave me a comment to let me know what you think!

TM

Change is a long car trip with kids in the back

Spare any change (ideas)...?

Melcrum's Change Communications conference in Melbourne has wrapped for the week and has, I think, been quite well received.

A major theme that I heard as I chaired the conference was that those in attendance wanted and needed communications professionals to take a strong advocacy role for change in organizations, to remind leaders of the people-related consequences of change.

The intention was clear, yet the frustration was palpable. What came through was that communicators find themselves largely unable to play this vital role in their organizations.

Many attendees questioned how to effectively counsel leaders who advocate secrecy, low information-sharing and last-minute revelation of tough messages, on the grounds that they "don't want people to react" to the changes.

In fact this seemingly thoughtful intention causes no end of drama, as communication professionals (or anyone on the receiving end of meagre information dribble and too-little, too-late change messages) can confirm.

The reason for this is simple: human beings are neurobiologically hardwired to react to the things that happen around them - and the greater the perceived threat, the stronger the reaction. 

Our advanced survival system

In the interest of survival, we have evolved a system (the limbic system) that is brilliant at bypassing our slow and ponderous rational brain by reacting at lightning speed to possible threats. Whether that's an object that enters our visual field and just might be a snake/spider/other nasty, or an announcement that puts in question our ability to earn a living, threats produce a reaction in the brain long before the rational mind even begins to absorb the more subtle connotations and factual details.

So, in short: people cannot NOT react to things. 

What can and sometimes does happen is people become aware of the reaction and choose to use that powerful emotional energy in a different (ideally, more rational) way.

Communicators can therefore help themselves and, by extension, their stakeholders and clients, by learning about the nine predictable types of limbic reaction and tailoring their communication plans and key messages to calm down people's agitated limbic responses. Doing so makes it more likely that people will be able to manage their own reaction, as the rational brain is given the chance to become more engaged to give a more balanced hearing to the rest of what is being said.

Change is a journey

Speakers at the conference often made the point that "change is a journey". I would agree, though I'd modify that slightly: change is like a long car trip with unruly kids in the back seat, where the kids in question are the reactive emotional responses that people's limbic systems produce. 

Why kids in the back? Well the limbic system, for all its power to help us survive, is not very sophisticated. It is located in some of the most ancient parts of our brains - the ones we share with all sorts of other mammals - which means when we're operating solely from our limbic brain, we're about as sophisticated as a poodle or a goldfish. 

Or a five-year old kid. 

Such childish reactions can take a variety of forms - bullying, sulking, throwing temper tantrums, and a range of other knee-jerk reactions.

So as we consider our leaders and communicators in the front seat trying, like mom and dad, to move forward with the journey AND keep the peace and sanity in the car, let's take a look at the nine kinds of little kids in the back seat of our car journey:

1. "We all have to follow the rules! Mom! Dad! Johnny's touching my side of the car!!" (Perfectionist/Rule-followers)
2. "Is everyone OK? Daddy, do you want a neck rub? Mom, can I sing you a song to make you happy?" (Giver/Carers)
3. "Can't we get there faster? Hey let's race the car next to us! Let's visit every attraction on the list!" (Performer/Achiever)
4. "Didn't you bring my special seat for me? Awwww no one understands me, I have special needs..." (Romantic/Individualist)
5. [says next to nothing, watches everything and everyone, probably tracks the route on a map and notes everything with interest] (Observer/Data-gatherer)
6. "Are you sure you know the way? Do we have the right map? What if we run out of gas? Were we supposed to take that last exit...?" (Loyal sceptic/Paranoid)
7. "Hey! I've got a GREAT idea, let's have a singalong! Let's play count-the-cars! Hey who wants a game of rock-paper-scissors? Ohh, I know...let's stop and eat at that place, that looks great!!" (Epicure/Fun-seeker)
8. "We're going to stop NOW. I want OUT of this car. No actually I changed my mind, we're going to drive ALL night and get this over with!" (Protector/Bully)
9. "Hey, let's calm down everyone. What can we all agree on? What do you want mom? And you dad? How about you, sis? OK so the consensus is..." (Peacemaker/Facilitator)

If you'd like to find out more about these nine kids (and their adult counterparts that you may be currently experiencing in your workplace...) email me for further details. If you were an attendee at the Melcrum Communications Conference in Melbourne last week, be sure to inquire about the special "Change is a long car trip" offer.

That's all for now - enjoy your weekend!

TM