Thoughts and themes from an EE conf in Melbourne

Just wrapped up the Melbourne Employee Engagement conference and a couple of clear themes emerged:

• There's great value to be gained in giving your people access to the senior leaders in your organization - if that's not possible, remember that it's your people managers who will need to carry your engagement efforts.
  
• High salaries and a great safety record only get you so far in engaging your people. If they have to "park their brain at the gate" and get their intrinsic satisfaction (i.e. happiness and real engagement, a.k.a. "flow" experiences) from activities outside work, you've still got your work cut out for you as an organization.
  
• Acquisitions and mergers are a fast way to grow a company and gain needed technology and market share. M&A's attract lots of "bean counters" looking to realize efficiencies...equally important (and too-often forgotten) is the need for people-positive engagement practices. No company ever cut its way to greatness and in the final analysis it's people who make the competitive difference. Great to hear about practical ways to demonstrate the value of the intangible people dimension.
  
• A compelling presentation reminded us all of the power of stories to engage and motivate people. In the same vein, you'll find a tmc-related example of practical application of storytelling in an organizational setting (combined with the solution-focused technique The Affirm) here.
  
• One of my favourite quotes of the conference was from Michael Specht: It's not a social media problem, it's a management problem. If you don't trust your people, if they're already wasting time in other ways, and you give them social media tools - they're just going to go play. Highlights the role of technology as not only an enabler but an accelerator of what's already happening in the organization - hence also an amplifier. If you're disconnected from your people no amount of social media will reverse that trend.
  
• My equally favourite quote of the conference: Change programs [to improve people engagement] are not a sprint. They're a marathon. Enjoyed the insight offered that when leaders and manages fail to communicate using "formal channels," the result is not silence; instead the "informal" communication channels (i.e. the rumour mill) move in to fill the vacuum. For me the interesting question becomes: given that conversations in your organization are happening all the time - what can you do to get positive conversations working for you?

Those are my highlights from the Melbourne conference - tune in next week for an overview of both conferences.

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Group Genius and the genesis of ideas

To continue the Book Review post below of Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration, here are the 10 factors that Sawyer suggests enable Group Flow:

1) Group has a well-understood goal

2) They engage in close listening

3) People have complete concentration

4) Being in control – having a sense of autonomy, competence and relatedness

5) Blending egos – working collaboratively not competitively

6) Equal participation, informed by comparable skill levels

7) Familiarity with performance styles of other group members

8) Communication that’s spontaneous and ongoing (i.e. café/lunchroom talks)

9) Use “Yes, and…” thinking to accept offers and extend and build on them

10) The potential for failure and the value of rehearsals

And in answer to the question, “what is the best balance of planning and improvisation?” Sawyer devotes a chapter to “Organizing for Improvisation,” where he offers another top-ten list of the secrets of collaborative organizations:

1) Keep many irons in the fire – innovative companies experiment with lots of low-cost projects on the go, responding to what emerges

2) Create a Department of Surprise – look for ways to repurpose apparently failed experiments by finding them a home elsewhere in the organization

3) Build space for creative conversation – more on this below

4) Allow time for ideas to emerge – deadlines amp up stress and kill creativity; you can’t rush creativity because it needs incubation time

5) Manage the risks of improvisation – define the right amount of time taken away from other projects, the sheer number of ideas generated and balance with the need for structure and planning

6) Improvise at the edge of chaos – not too rigid to prevent creative emergence, not too loose as to results in complete chaos

7) Manage knowledge for innovation – capture the innovations that emerge improvisationally and make sure other parts of the organization can benefit from the creative sparks

8) Build dense networks – keep groups small enough to effectively interact, ca. 150-200 people (the size of the earliest human societies, and still the ideal size of group to effectively manage changes, including those required in creative processes)

9) Ditch the org chart – break down the silos and get people working across business units to cross-pollinate ideas and discover latent creative forces

10) Measure the right things – instead of spend on R&D or number of patents registered, measure the health of your social networks in the organization to find out just how well people are interacting and how well information is diffused.

I would flesh out a couple of these points in particular as follows. On point #3 (building space for creative conversation), it’s absolutely crucial if you expect people to be creative that you give them an environment that says to the brain: “it’s OK to be creative here”. As an example, Google got this right in their Zurich office design. As the waggish final slide suggests, creativity rarely emerges from cubicle farms.

One other idea that I think is worth highlighting from the list is a combination of points 2, 7, 8, 9 and 10 – the concept that innovative solutions created in one part of an organization can have unexpected and novel applications in other areas to solve problems that would otherwise go unsolved. To put it in a wider context: When I interviewed the Dutch cross-cultural business thinker Fons Trompenaars he pointed out that a surprisingly large number of innovations come from other countries and only appear new because no one ever thought to view things quite that way before. One of the best examples I've seen lately of this kind of innovation came from author Dan Pink, who's understood the lesson well with his latest book, Johnny Bunko published in the manga format popularized in Japan, a first in the English-speaking world and a product perfectly pitched for a the meaning-hungry Gen-Y market:

Johnny Bunko trailer from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.

Book Review: "Group Genius" by Keith Sawyer

In Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration, Keith Sawyer has woven together a range of disparate threads of thought into an enjoyable and practical book on the creative process. He’s debunked several myths regarding creativity and synthesized ideas from several different worlds in a way that left me thinking, “Yes, I recognize everything you’re saying and I’ve seen much of this before, but never so well organized and neatly presented in one place.”

The book has received many reviews since its publication last year and a two awards as well so I won’t offer an overview. Instead I’d like to draw out one thread in particular that informs the majority of Sawyer’s book: the idea of improvisation.

First, some background. For some years I’ve been involved with the Applied Improvisation Network (AIN), whose aim is to “spread the transforming power of improvisation.” The AIN is a collaborative “community of practitioners and clients who value the use of improvisation skills in organizations to improve relationships, increase authenticity, promote spontaneity, foster trust and build communities of practice.”

Improv enthusiasts have every reason to be ecstatic over Sawyer’s book, since it echoes what they have been saying for years and lends to their arguments the triple weight of his academic research (professor of psychology and education at Washington University in St. Louis, he took his Ph.D. in psychology studying creativity with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, originator of the concept of “Flow”) his practical business savvy (following his computer science degree at MIT he designed video games for Atari and then did management consulting on innovative technologies with Kenan Systems) and his artistic flair (he is himself an improviser as a jazz pianist for over 30 years, spending several of those years playing piano with Chicago improv theatre groups).

In contrast to the traditional notion of the “lone genius” being responsible for great creative breakthroughs, Sawyer’s thesis is that all creativity is actually collaborative and that improvisation is the ideal format for getting the creative juices flowing. To understand and promote successful collaboration, it pays to focus on the moment-to-moment interactional dynamics. Innovation emerges over time as team members practice deep listening, build on each others’ ideas, allow for emergent meaning creation, create room for surprising (and unanticipated) questions and allow the process the time and space it requires to unfold according to its own pace and flow.

In an organizational setting there is an clear need for structure and strategic planning. Yet he gives real-world examples to show that improvisation is often more responsive and effective than heavily scripted approaches. So what is the best balance of planning and improvisation? The answer (expanding on the concept coined by his former supervisor Csikszentmihalyi) is what he’s termed a state of Group Flow, enabled by 10 key conditions that he describes in the book.

OK this posting is a long one and I want to discuss more thoughts prompted by this book, so I’m going to extend this review over a few posts…and why not. For now it’s good night from Melbourne.
TM

How to go with the Flow and reboot your brain

To help hang on to the pleasant glow of the Easter holiday weekend, here’s a posting with a different focus. In recent months I’ve been enjoying the natural beauty of my adopted homeland Australia by splashing around in the surf here at Manly Beach.

While surfing can be a rigorous and sometimes punishing exercise, it's also very good for focusing the mind and “rebooting” my thought processes. I always come away with fresh perspective and insights. Here are a few I’d like to share:

Humility – the first time I went into the surf with a surfboard, I immediately noticed one thing: the ocean’s utter indifference to my very existence let alone what grand plans I had about "hanging ten". Any notion of my being in control of the situation vanished and was replaced by a healthy respect for the power of the natural forces at play and to which I was now subject. From what I’ve seen, the best surfers sense and work with these forces to create powerful displays of artistic athleticism. Overall, I find this insight is a hugely useful antidote to one’s own controlling tendencies and a good reality check.

Patience – a surfer with 20 years experience said to me the other day, “only about 20% of waves are really rideable, the trick is to know which ones so you have fun instead of getting pummelled!” In a busy lineup at a popular beach you can’t get on every rideable wave that does come in. That means over 80% of your time is spent sitting on your board watching the horizon. Again, this is a useful refocus on what you have control over and what you don’t; you’re not in control of the swell and when the sets come in, but you can control your positioning, location, and level of acceptable risk (as in, “Oh hell, not sure if I can make this one, but I’m going for it!”). It’s also about matching your sphere of concern to match your sphere of control, being aware of what you can and can’t influence and focusing your energy on where it’s going to make the most difference.

Determination – I can tell you now: the fitness level that surfing requires is far beyond what anyone who’s never done it can imagine, and the skill it takes could never be guessed at just by watching the guys who are out there…they make it look so easy...! The secret to success is to have a go, to just get out there and ride waves. So in parallel with patience to wait for the waves to come in, you need to resurface after a wipe-out, get back on your board and get paddling – there's no time to float around the break zone feeling sorry for yourself or cursing your luck because the next wave will be on top of you. It can be hard and frustrating learning new skills but we grow by learning and the challenge helps us to discover just how resourceful we are.

Gratitude – when I (finally) do catch a wave, it’s amazing!! Despite the frustration of being a beginner, this experience helps foster the playful attitude of “aww come on…just one more wave!” that takes me back to my childhood days at the beach when I never wanted to leave the water. It’s a curious thing: like anything worthwhile, when you have to work at it to achieve, the appreciation is greater and the activity becomes very attractive. I think there's more to it than being grateful for the fun to be had. Experiencing the powerful forces of the ocean in this way fosters an appreciation and sense of awe for the natural energy flow of the planet, for something deeper and profoundly older we are. Like the surfers have long been telling us: "Dude…just go with the flow!"

Turns out they're on to something.

The psychologist Csikszentmihalyi has written extensively about Flow. Most of us have been in a “flow state” before, where the goals are clear, feedback is immediate, there’s a balance between opportunity and capacity (i.e. your skills are pushed to their very limit of application), focus and concentration deepen, you are highly present and in the moment, sense of time is altered and the sense of one’s own ego fades as you are immersed in the environment and “become one” with the activity. It’s a good place to be for your body and mind and I find surfing’s a great way to get there.

But don’t just take my word for it: “It’s worth remembering what John Paul Getty said when he was asked in an interview what was the best thing he’d ever done in his life. He said it was when he was a teenager, when he and his friends picked up surfboards, paddled out and rode the waves. This was an old man, who’d been the richest man in the world and done whatever he wanted, and surfing was better than all of it.” [Chris Hines, quoted in High Surf by Tim Baker]

**I invite your comments on what you do to get into a "flow state". It could be a hobby or a passion, could even be something you did over the long weekend. To write your comment just click on "comments" below and a new window will open for you to enter your thoughts. I look forward to reading what you have to say!

TM