Harold Jarche

six ways to make sense

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 21:11:19 GMT

One of the big consultancies is promoting ‘six ways’ to make sense of these complex times, or words to that effect. If you believe you are getting leading-edge thinking from these types of businesses, think again. Here is a story about a major consulting company, from one of its own.

“Despite having no work or research experience outside of MIT, I was regularly advertised to clients as an expert with seemingly years of topical experience relevant to the case. We were so good at rephrasing our credentials that even I was surprised to find in each of my cases, even my very first case, that I was the most senior consultant on the team …

I got the feeling that our clients were simply trying to mimic successful businesses, and that as consultants, our earnings came from having the luck of being included in an elaborate cargo-cult ritual. In any case it fell to us to decide for ourselves what question we had been hired to answer, and as a matter of convenience, we elected to answer questions that we had already answered in the course of previous cases — no sense in doing new work when old work will do.” —The Tech 2010-04-09

Is this what clients really want?

So let’s look at these ‘six ways’ to make sense compared to the work of this lone blogger who also runs sensemaking workshops that every major global consultancy has sent their staff to check out over the years.

If you really want to know what is happening, get out to the edges.

1. Be curious

Curiosity about ideas can foster creativity, while curiosity about people can develop empathy. We get new ideas from new people, not the same people we see every day. We get new perspectives from people whose lives and experiences are different from ours. —connecting the curious —2019

2. Deal with ambiguity

“Complex environments represent a continuous challenge for sensemaking in organizations. Continuous ambiguity exerts continuous pressures on organizations to modify their patterns of interaction, information flow and decision making. Organizations struggle to address situations that are precarious, explanations that are equivocal and paradoxical, and cognitive dilemmas of all kinds. This creates a demand for innovative approaches in sensemaking.” —learning in complexity & chaos — 2019

3. See with several lenses

“To work in any complex field, we have to be connected to loose social networks that provide us with a view of the frontiers of our knowledge, says Harold Jarche (@hjarche), a partner at Internet Time Alliance. “We then need to actively engage in communities of practice to develop shared understanding among our peers. Then we can truly contribute as members of teams working on complex problems. None of this costs additional money, only time and attention.” —the frontiers of our knowledge — 2018

4. Experiment

The ramifications of a post-job economy will be significant. Individuals will have to take control of their learning and work in order to be unique and creative. Our economic value will be in doing what machines cannot do. What were once considered soft skills – empathy, creativity, emotion – will become core skills. A machine can get me what I want, but what if I don’t know what I want, or I want to be surprised? That will take a human. —an age of experimentation — 2015

Image: @gapingvoid

5. Broaden your knowledge circles

Diversity is how we can become collectively smarter. Diversity is the foundation for creativity. There are no best practices for creativity, only unique practices, of which we need many. We need to stop looking for the next best practice and create our own emergent practices through our diverse connections. Therefore, organizations have to become knowledge networks. An effective knowledge network cultivates the diversity and autonomy of each worker. Those in leadership positions should foster deeper connections, developed through ongoing and meaningful conversations. These leaders know they are just nodes in the knowledge network and not a special position in a hierarchy. —diversity trumps ability — 2019

6. Share your work

One of the challenges we face in our professional and personal lives is making sense of the flow of information that passes by us each day and then aligning that with our current priorities and challenges. The seek > sense > share framework of personal knowledge mastery is a solid method to help us stay focused in our sensemaking. —finding and sharing information — 2019

nursing care performance analysis case study

Sun, 24 Jan 2021 17:08:30 GMT

This was a presentation I gave to the Canadian Society for Training and Development in 2005.

e-Learning and Communities of Practice in Healthcare

During 2003 to 2004, we worked with a Montreal area hospital to implement online learning for nurses as they adopted the new McGill nursing care methodology, as well as the creation of virtual communities of practice for social workers. From the initial performance analyses conducted on the hospital wards, to the implementation of the open source Moodle and Mambo technology systems, the consultants worked closely with the hospital staff in the development of their knowledge base, using domain ontologies.

Learn about the need to conduct a performance analysis prior to recommending any e-learning intervention
Learn how ontologies can help with the creation of shared professional knowledge bases
Learn about the benefits of using open source software for workplace performance support

My initial role in the project was to conduct the performance analysis. Well, actually I came into the project late and the analysis and solution had already been contracted for — an e-learning program to train nurses. I was able to get two days to conduct what we called — a conformation of the analysis. It was the first analysis because one had not been done. It was assumed that training was the solution.

I wrote about this experience last year, in get out of the office.

Our team had been contracted to develop an e-learning program for nursing staff. I was able to negotiate a ‘confirmation of the analysis’, as I had not been involved in the design process. I was given two days to interview staff on various wards. As I was not hospital staff I was accompanied by the senior nurse.

We learned a lot during those visits to the wards, and even had some procedures changed on the spot as the senior nurse became aware of some redundancies. As a result the e-learning program was cancelled and we developed a few performance support tools and some job aids instead. Training was not the solution to this challenge — getting the right information to trained and experienced nurses was.

On completing my hospital visit I thanked the senior nurse for her help. In turn she thanked me for the opportunity to make her first visit to the wards. I asked how long she had been at this hospital. Two years she responded. I said nothing but was shocked that the person in charge of clinical nursing had never been to the workplaces of the people she was supporting. How many other managers in how many workplaces are in the same situation?

As illustrated in the figure below, an analysis of tasks or job performance included these components — inputs, employee performance, outputs, consequences, and feedback. Each component is essential for the system to function optimally.

Task Analysis

Is the nurse able to recognize inputs and take appropriate action?
Are the results of other tasks (outputs) necessary to do this one?
Are the procedures and workflow logical?
Are the required resources available? [time, tools, people, information]

Work Performance

Are there clear work standards?
Does the nurse understand these?
Does the nurse feel the standards are attainable under the work circumstances?

Skills & Knowledge

Does the nurse have sufficient skills and knowledge to do the task?
Does the nurse understand why the task is necessary/important?
Is the nurse physically, mentally, emotionally prepared to do the task as required?

Results

Are rewards and consequences aligned with the importance of the task?
Do rewards and consequences make sense to the nurse?
Are rewards and consequences timely?

Feedback

Do nurses receive work performance feedback?
Is this feedback — significant, precise, on time, about good as well as poor performance, easy to understand?

The model is focused on the job performance of nurses implementing the McGill approach to nursing care planning. We can see that nurses had inputs (resources, tools) and outputs (documentation), consequences (patient health, better communication with colleagues, patient and family), and feedback (from clients, peers, coaching, etc.). This provides a good picture of work performance and the factors that influence it.

Optimal performance requires all areas of work be addressed. If we address only one of these factors, such as the input in the form of training, without addressing the other inputs (the tools used on the job) or feedback on a successful task, we have no chance of achieving consistent performance on the job. The approach of this analysis was to develop an understanding of the entire performance system and to determine what are the critical factors that need to be addressed on the job to achieve optimal performance of nurses using the McGill model.

Summary of the Performance Analysis

Positive Forces

New tools are being developed to help with the tasks ahead
Simplification of the patient documentation system
Extrinsic rewards for attending the training session

Negative Forces

Barriers to using e-learning technology
No mentoring system — facilitators, tutors, peers
No feedback system at work
Conflicts with other work tasks
Verification system not yet established
No clear system of rewards and/or consequences

Initial Recommendations

Coach learners on how to use the new technology.
Provide ongoing supervision for learners — technology and content.
Demonstrate that the McGill approach is more efficient, better for the client, etc.
Demonstrate that the work tools will eliminate redundancies.
Develop a comparative table between the (older) Henderson and (newer) McGill approaches.
Teach Ecomap and Genogram tools as a language.
Demonstrate that the tools can be built in an evolutionary way.
Give many practical examples.

Detailed Observations & Comments from the Performance Analysis

O1. There is still some misunderstanding about the usefulness of the McGill approach. Many of the nurses encountered in different departments have only a vision of their own needs, rather than a long-term view of the patient.
C1. Knowledge of why and how to use the McGill approach is a central prerequisite for improving job task performance.

O2. There are many conflicting tasks and priorities. Nurses in several departments (medicine, surgery) report spending too much time with basic care that could be done by an assistant.
C2. Without considering other changes, the addition of elementary care assistants, especially in medicine and surgery, will directly contribute to the more effective use of nurses’ skills.

O3. There is redundancy and duplication in nursing work processes. Some departments, especially obstetrics and pediatrics are satisfied with their system, they don’t want any changes. There is some concern around the implementation of the new paperless system which is to be implemented this fall and become operational in April.
C3. In this project we have to bear in mind that the documentation system used for the paperless system will not be available until we develop the practical applications for distance learning. Therefore, distance learning may not correspond directly to the task to be performed at work, limiting the transfer of training contents to the work organization.

O4. Many nurses lack the time to complete their tasks at work. This is due to the following factors: basic care is not provided by assistants; there are increasing demands that conflict with each other; there is an abundance of paperwork to be completed; and there is a heavy patient load.
While work will be transferred to an automated paperless information system, there are still many nurses who lack basic computer skills. This will make job performance difficult.
There appear to be more training programs planned for the fall, and these programs may increase the demand for attention from learners. For example, the psychiatry department has an intensive training schedule of 80 days/person for this period.
C4. The project team received confirmation that there would be adequate access to computers in the new hospital; however, the lack of computers may be an issue for the success of distance education. Lack of knowledge about the McGill approach was identified as an upcoming problem, and distance education must address this need to ensure job performance. Additional training programs may put more pressure on nurses, and on our ability to implement all the objectives of our training program. Competition for training time will result in a significant number of nurses completing the training requirements.

O5. Standards for completing patient documentation are not understood in the same way by all nurses.
C5. A clear performance standard supported by all departments should make work performance easier to understand.

O6. There are few examples of completed documents in the nursing care plan.
C6. The examples and job aids in the training program will be of great assistance. They are currently being developed by the clinical nurse.

O7. Priority conflicts are a problem, and patient record documentation cannot be completed during a shift. Many nurses report that they perform basic care because of a lack of assistants.
C7. Without any other changes, the addition of more elementary care assistants, especially in medicine and surgery, could contribute directly to a more effective use of nurses’ skills.

O8. According to the management team, almost all nurses have the ability to change their practices to use a new model of care. Many nurses lack basic computer skills, which are essential for distance education.
C8. Lack of computer skills is a central barrier to distance learning and achieving better job performance (use of paperless system). It is essential to align the objectives and mode of delivery of basic training around the e-learning program with the McGill approach.

O9. Many nurses do not understand how a new model of care will help them in their daily work.
C9. Explaining the systemic needs for using the McGill approach will be an essential component of any training program.

O10. Many nurses are not emotionally prepared for other demands of education and change in the system of care. Moving to a new hospital with new concepts of care in addition to information technology, consolidation of departments, etc. all add to nurses’ perceived stress levels.
C10. Any distance education program will require an introduction from small face-to-face groups to clear up any apprehensions that nurses may have about the technology. A support system will be required to overcome nurses’ resistance to technology.

O11. There do not appear to be very serious consequences for incomplete completion of a care plan and its accompanying documentation.
C11. The lack of serious consequences could contribute to a lack of motivation for training, or a refusal to use the new approach at work.

O12. Most nurses feel that there is already too much paperwork to fill out, so most nurses accept that there are no serious consequences for filling out forms incorrectly.
C12. Workplace consequences cannot be dealt with in the training program, but are the responsibility of management and supervision.

O13. The few possible consequences seem to arrive late because there is no informal system of feedback on work performance.
C13. This is another management responsibility not addresses by training.

O14. There does not appear to be a formal or informal performance monitoring program for nurses.
C14. The lack of feedback will make it very difficult to determine the success or failure of the training program.

This post as a PDF — performance-analysis-case-study

a breath of fresh air

Fri, 22 Jan 2021 08:30:12 GMT

Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“Yes. It’s really only since wireless networks got fast enough to stream pictures to portable devices that everything changed, & enabled each individual person to live twenty-four/ seven in their own personalized hallucination stream.” ―Neal Stephenson, Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell

We’re in a guerrilla information war and everyone is a participant.

Here are pertinent rules that apply to the current moment —

a) every single physical event, is won or lost online.

b) this is an asymmetric conflict.

c) you can’t participate if you can’t connect.
—@JohnRobb

What is the Stockdale Paradox? via @robpatrob

Stockdale speaks about how the optimists fared in [prisoner of war] camp. The dialogue goes:

“Who didn’t make it out?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “The optimists.”
“The optimists? I don’t understand,” I said, now completely confused,
given what he’d said a hundred meters earlier.
“The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by
Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then
they’d say,’We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and
Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas
again. And they died of a broken heart.”

BMJ: Uncertainty is inevitable in pandemics, but some simple rules help decision making by @TrishGreenhalgh

Five simple rules for managing uncertainty in a pandemic

Most data will be flawed or incomplete. Be honest and transparent about this.

For some questions, certainty may never be reached. Consider carefully whether to wait for definitive evidence or act on the evidence you have.

Make sense of complex situations by acknowledging the complexity, admitting ignorance, exploring paradoxes, and reflecting collectively.

Different people (and different stakeholder groups) interpret data differently. Deliberation among stakeholders may generate multifaceted solutions.

Pragmatic interventions—carefully observed and compared in real world settings—can generate useful data to complement the findings of controlled trials and other forms of evidence.

“This is a vital addition from @hughes_eilir Respiratory viruses spread faster in winter because we cram indoors and then don’t open the windows. The less ventilation a hospital, school or care home setting has, the higher the risk. The fresher the air, the lower the viral load.” —@DrPhilHammond

Image — Dr Eilir Hughes

retrieving the cooperative imperative

Wed, 20 Jan 2021 15:30:54 GMT

The biggest challenges facing us today are climate change and environmental degradation. The current pandemic is a symptom of these situations. These are complex issues without simple answers or explanations, because with complex problems the relationship between cause and effect is only seen after the fact. As H.L Menken stated, “Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” Thinking in terms of neat and plausible answers only feeds the post-truth machines.

The best way forward is through cooperation and the engagement of a diverse set of human abilities. Cooperation is freely sharing among equals in order to benefit the greater whole. Hierarchies, such as those found in most institutions and organizations are useless in the face of complexity. As Yaneer Bar-Yam explains in Complexity Rising, hierarchies have diminishing usefulness as complexity increases.

Climate change is a direct result of pursuing profit with no regard for what are known as ‘externalities’ — polluting our oceans, destroying forests, or decimating other species. The competition we see in markets is a game that does not live in reality but is based on the dreams of economists. But new thoughts for a cooperative, networked world are emerging from economists like Mariana Mazzucato.

“What we need is for this call to action to fundamentally change how we think about the governance of all organizations that produce value: how to organize dynamic government agencies outside static silos; how to rethink corporate governance structures so that they are more focused on the long term and they reward all the actors that help create profits; and how to listen to the movements in civil society — whether the green movement or those calling for better healthcare — to formulate the missions of the future that can drive innovation for the decades to come. The populist wave around the world is evidence that this will not succeed if it is not truly participatory, allowing different voices to come to the table, and to negotiate healthier deals, creating an economy that is more innovative, sustainable, and inclusive. I believe it is very difficult, but truly possible.” —Mission critical

Mazzucato goes on to show how markets and business must change.

“The climate crisis is also a public-health crisis. Global warming will cause drinking water to degrade and enable pollution-linked respiratory diseases to thrive. According to some projections, 3.5 billion people globally will live in unbearable heat by 2070. Addressing this triple crisis requires reorienting corporate governance, finance, policy, and energy systems toward a green economic transformation. To achieve this, three obstacles must be removed: business that is shareholder-driven instead of stakeholder-driven, finance that is used in inadequate and inappropriate ways, and government that is based on outdated economic thinking and faulty assumptions.” —Avoiding a Climate Lockdown

There is an emerging — often feminine — voice leading us to a cooperative future. Our patriarchal systems for the past centuries ignored 50% of the population. We need all of our best minds to cooperate and work on facing our challenges of adapting to climate change and cleaning up our messes. The market form can no longer dominate our societies. Neither can the institutional form of dictatorships and totalitarian states address these complex challenges.

If you are in government — increase diversity.

If you run a business — pay a living wage so people more willingly cooperate.

If you want to save the environment — engage young people.

It’s time to cast off the vestiges of male-dominated, control-oriented systems of domination. We are all on this planet together and it’s now our prisoner’s dilemma.

Evolutionary Game Theory, as put forth by Professor Christoph Adami, backs up our need to cooperate.

“We found evolution will punish you if you’re selfish and mean. For a short time and against a specific set of opponents, some selfish organisms may come out ahead. But selfishness isn’t evolutionarily sustainable.” —Prof. Christoph Adami

overcome by events

Tue, 19 Jan 2021 15:22:00 GMT

I wrote the following in 2009 —

Workplace learning in 2019

Much of the workforce will be distributed in time & space as well as in engagement (part-time, full-time, contract mix).

More learning will be do-it-yourself and gathered from online digital resources available for free and fee. More workers will be used to getting what they need as they change jobs/contracts more frequently but remain connected to their online networks (online/offline won’t matter anymore).

Work and learning will continue to blend while stand-up training will be challenged by the ever-present back channel. Successful training programs will involve the learners much more – before, during and after.

Conferences, workshops and on-site training will become more niche and fragmented (smaller, focused & connected online) as travel costs increase and workers become more demanding of their time.

The notion of PKM will have permeated much of the workplace

These changes will not be evenly distributed.

It seems that most of these speculations have arrived, not evenly distributed, as forecast. Several have been accelerated by the pandemic. I was wrong about travel costs, for now. The current situation is that many people will not or cannot travel. After the pandemic, if that time ever arrives, travel costs will likely increase as many carriers will be out of business or hurting financially.

I have seen an increased interest in PKM — or self-directed & networked informal learning — with more people registering for the online workshop this past year. We recently completed a social learning program based on the Seek > Sense > Share framework at a global financial institution which will be rolled out to tens of thousands employees over the next couple of years. The Working Smarter with PKM field guide is a reference for this program.

So here we are, with work and learning becoming more closely integrated. Learning and development departments that ignore this integration or keep workplace learning in separate containers and evaluation systems will likely become obsolete. Do not be overcome by events — read the writing on the silicon walls.

moving beyond training

Tue, 12 Jan 2021 14:32:39 GMT

Working smarter means that everyone in an organization learns from experience and shares with their colleagues as part of their work. Training is not enough — see the missing half of training. We cannot know in advance and prepare formal instruction for everything that people need to learn on the job today.

The 70:20:10 framework shows that learning at work is based, generally, on these ratios:

70% from Experience
20%: from Exposure
10% from formal Education

This framework provides a rule of thumb for resource allocation for workplace learning support. It is based on four key activities:

Exposure to new and rich experiences.
The opportunity to practice.
Engaging in conversation and exchanges with each other.
Making time to reflect on new observations, information, experiences, etc.

People need tools, skills, and work relationships to get things done. Tools are required to do the work or learn how to do it. This is the focus of the field of Human Performance Technology (HPT) and performance support. Also, individuals need the skills to be able to learn for themselves and make sense of their work and their lives. Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM) is a framework that supports self-directed learning. Finally, all workers have to be able to work with, and learn from, others. This is social learning, which can be supported enterprise-wide through policies, practices, and technology.

Some practical ways to implement the 70:20:10 framework include:

Help people move from a fixed to a development mindset, encouraging learning at work.
Open up lines of communication, especially between new and experienced staff, in an environment of psychological safety.
Develop and promote communities of practice for learning among peers.
Provide high quality on-demand resources at the point of work.

These practices and the 70:20:10 rule of thumb can guide workplace learning but first, learning and development specialists have to become adept with new skills based on models perhaps outside of their previous experiences of content delivery.

Learning programs are often based on the premise of reducing errors at work. But organizational performance improvement means increasing insights in addition to reducing errors. The former is even more important in addressing complex issues such as shifting to remote work across the enterprise.

The transition to a modern approach for workplace learning can be built upon nine practice areas (below). This approach, initiated with a collaborative workshop, has already been successfully used by a global financial services organization and other companies, including software development firms.

A focus on social and informal learning will help organizations face more complex challenges and promote a proactive learning culture rather than a reactive system that focuses on problems after the fact. We can start by preparing people in learning functions across the enterprise to model the emerging behaviours required for an increasingly complex business environment.

This is the social learning workshop.

“This workshop helped focus and situate the core elements that needed consideration in the development of a learning transformation strategy at a major financial institution contact center.” —Nancy Slawski, Senior Learning Consultant

an assumption of knowledge

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 08:30:54 GMT

Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“Word of the day is ‘sequaciousness’ (17th century): the blinkered, unreasoning, and slavish following of another, no matter where it leads.” —@suzie_dent

“As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.” —Albert Einstein

“What we learned in 2020? That oil is worthless in a society without consumption. That healthcare has to be public because health is public. That 50% of jobs can be done from home while the other 50% deserve more than they’re being paid. That we live in a society, not an economy.” —@mhdksafa

You Think You Want Media Literacy… Do You? by @zephoria

“We know that you can’t combat depression through rational discourse. Addressing depression is hard work. And I’m deeply concerned that we don’t have the foggiest clue how to approach the media landscape today. I’m confident that giving grounded people tools to think smarter can be effective. But I’m not convinced that we know how to educate people who do not share our epistemological frame. I’m not convinced that we know how to undo gaslighting. I’m not convinced that we understand how engaging people about the media intersects with those struggling with mental health issues. And I’m not convinced that we’ve even begun to think about the unintended consequences of our good — let alone naive — intentions.

In other words, I think that there are a lot of assumptions baked into how we approach educating people about sensitive issues and our current media crisis has made those painfully visible.”

Bohmian Psychology: The Undiscovered Continent of David Bohm’s Worldview via @nancydixon

“Bohm used a metaphor to describe how we should hold onto our assumptions. He said, think of a blind man who is holding a stick to tap the ground ahead of him as he walks. If he grips the stick very tightly, he can’t really use it to tap and sense the ground. But if he holds the stick too loosely, it is also useless and he is liable to drop it. So the blind man needs to hold the stick with a reasonable amount of firmness, but not too much. And that is how we should hold onto our assumptions—firmly enough to make use of them, but not so tightly that they are counter-productive.”

The Most Important Knowledge KM is Ignoring by @nancydixon

“Dialogue, where members do not try to solve a problem, rather work to understand the problem they are jointly facing, is a necessary precursor to discussion. Dialogue requires us to listen respectfully to others, cultivate and speak in our own voice, and suspend our opinions about others and their ideas. It is the precursor because until all members come to a common understanding of a problem, any discussion just becomes a power struggle. Dialogue is the precursor because it develops the needed relationships and trust between those who are talking together. And most importantly, it is the precursor because, over time, holding dialogues changes the culture of an organization to one in which, even when in discussion, it is possible to maintain trust and relationship with others.”

our crisis in network leadership

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 20:43:17 GMT

This pandemic has become a crisis in network leadership.

Last June, I wrote — our wake-up call

On 6 June 1944 the First Canadian Army landed at Normandy. It had never been tested in battle as a formation. The complications of drills in England had been replaced by the complexity of war and the chaos of battle. By the end of August, two brigade commanders and five commanding officers had been removed as they were deemed unsuitable.

“[In Normandy] There still remained, however, that proportion of officers who were not fully competent for their appointments, and whose inadequacy appeared in action and sometimes had serious consequences.” —Breakout at Falaise

How many organizational leaders today are in the same situation as those inadequate officers in the Canadian Army — unfit for the post-invasion reality?

Only last week I wrote — sometimes perfection is the enemy of good

Understanding what domain of complexity we are dealing with is now an essential requirement for decision-makers. At its outbreak the pandemic was chaotic and required immediate action. Developing vaccines went from complex to complicated. Dealing with people and how groups react to the pandemic oscillates between ordered and unordered domains but has mostly been complex. Clear and simple communications can help to avoid confusion.

Today, many of those in leadership positions remain confused, not understanding if they are dealing with complicated, complex, or chaotic problems. They think in clear — but wrong — images, not understanding their state of confusion.

He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images,

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact,
Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion.

—In Broken Images, by Robert Graves

The digital networks that now connect all of us globally give us a new sense-making platform that many of us and most of our leaders ignore or use inappropriately. I have said many times here that leadership today is helping make the network stronger, smarter, and more resilient.I have seen few cases where government knowledge sharing is making any of us smarter.

Today, in my province of New Brunswick, Canada, we are moving to the Orange level. The descriptions of what is allowed are confusing and often at cross-purposes, as are similar public health directives in many other jurisdictions. For example, there are single household ‘bubbles’, but strangers may gather and share the same air in a bar or restaurant. Schools, with their dated ventilation systems, remain open.

It is too bad that we cannot fire all these poor leaders and replace them with people who will help make their networks smarter. Some people are stepping up and using social media for knowledge sharing and sense-making. I use Twitter as a way to create human knowledge filters. I wish our political leaders did this as well. My pandemic knowledge filters include:

best finds of 2020

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 08:30:31 GMT

Here are some of the best of my fortnightly Friday’s Finds of 2020. Happy New Year 2021!

“Hope and fear cannot occupy the same space. Invite one to stay.” —Maya Angelou

“The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.” —Ernest Hemingway

“To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.” —20 Lessons on Fighting Tyranny

“Don’t attribute to stupidity what can be explained by incentives.” —Mike Elias

“Any idiot can impose and exercise control. It takes genius to elicit freedom and release creativity.” —@DeeWHock

“propaganda does not need to be persuasive, only pervasive — its secondary purpose is to convince — its primary purpose is to exhaust” —@delphina777

“My new favorite definition of Gamification — the process of pouring behaviorist chocolate over instructionist broccoli. Via @bjfr.” —@csessums

“The public has a distorted view of science because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries.” —Freeman Dyson 1923-2020

“The coronavirus teaches us a lot about the true nature of our economy. The most important lesson: for decades, we’ve fundamentally misunderstood how our economy works. Our Civic Economy drives our Market Economy. Not the other way around.” —@edmorrison

“When experts open up and become part of sense-making networks, their expertise travels to become part of informed choices of non-experts. It’s a better option than pushing packaged solutions via authority lines assuming that people are not able to understand complex matters.” —@mathemagenic

Commencement Address 2018 by John Seely Brown (PDF)

“The ‘Catch 22’ of wicked problems is that one cannot learn about the problem without probing it or trying solutions, but every solution you try can have lasting unintended consequences that are likely to spawn new complex problems … But, by now, you must be wondering: how can I keep developing better ways of sensemaking or interrogating context, or, simply picking up new skills given that the half life of skills seem to be shrinking to 5 years or less, and new tools are emerging, almost daily. One approach is to develop a broad and diverse network of colleagues that provide access, insights, and learning opportunities, starting with the connections you have already made here … Perhaps, maybe we can even create the Age of Imagination where we can fuse the arts, humanities & sciences, creating a new kind of alloy having properties that will differ significantly from those of their individual components.”

Collaboration and empathy as evolutionary success stories, via @mbauwens

“If Homo sapiens sapiens wants to continue its fascinating yet so far relatively short evolutionary success story we have to evolve wise societies characterized by empathy, solidarity, and collaboration. Wise cultures, societies and a wise civilization will ‘manage the household’ with wisdom (oikos + sophia) and a love for all life (biophilia). Humanity’s challenge in a constantly changing, complex world is to establish a set of guiding questions that focus our collective intelligence on responding wisely to often unpredictable and surprising change.”

@workchronicles — Prevention is better than Cure. But which one makes a better story?

carol of the masks

Fri, 25 Dec 2020 08:30:38 GMT

Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds and these are the last ones for 2020, a year few of us will forget.

So shaken as we are, so wan with care,
Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,
And breathe short-winded accents of new broils
To be commenced in strands afar remote.
—Henry IV

“A friendly reminder: Your inability to understand science is not an argument against it.” —@Konfytbekkie

Dave Trott — Words Beat Data

1842 — A member of the [Children’s Employment] commission asked a young writer to help with a pamphlet to turn public opinion against the cruel treatment of the poor.
To bring the greed of the wealthy to everyone’s attention.
The young writer’s name was Charles Dickens, and the pamphlet was to be called: “An Appeal to the People of England on behalf of the Poor Man’s Child.”
Dickens visited tin mines in Cornwall, and Field Lane Ragged School in London’s east end.
What he saw there made him too angry to write a pamphlet.
Reason alone wouldn’t change anything.
Someone else could do facts and figures — he needed to move people emotionally.
He said to the head of the commission, Dr Southwood Smith: “You will certainly feel that a sledgehammer has come down with 20 times the force of the first idea.”

And Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol.

A conversation with economist Mariana Mazzucato on the case against Scroogenomics

The state actually has been massively essential for capitalism to work by investing in the physical infrastructure, the social infrastructure, the deep tech stuff that I talk about “The Entrepreneurial State.”

That’s the myth about the free market. Without the state, we wouldn’t have capitalism.

New Evidence That Grandmothers Were Crucial for Human Evolution via @kristinwolff

For years, anthropologists and evolutionary biologists have struggled to explain the existence of menopause, a life stage that humans do not share with our primate relatives. Why would it be beneficial for females to stop being able to have children with decades still left to live? … “Grandmothering gave us the kind of upbringing that made us more dependent on each other socially and prone to engage each other’s attention.” This trend, Hawkes says, drove the increase in brain size, along with longer lifespans and menopause.

Image: LnDpity

sometimes perfection is the enemy of the good

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 17:35:59 GMT

While many of our professions and organizations can deal with some complexity, few are adapted to deal with chaos on a large scale. Chaos — violent political action, climate change, pandemic — require structures that promote curiosity and resolve. With frequent chaotic events to deal with we have to organize in temporary, negotiated hierarchies that can quickly form and re-form in order to test novel practices. The ability to do this requires diverse thinking, open structures, and trust among those doing the work. So I concluded in our wake-up call in June.

Six months later and what have most Western democracies learned? Not much. In the USA, EU, and Canada, half-measures continuously get added to already complicated and difficult-to-understand protocols. Instead of stopping the ship-of-state and taking it into dry-dock for a refitting to deal with a viral sea, we are haphazardly patching the vessel and missing what is below the water line.

Meanwhile the second wave of the coronavirus is bigger than the first wave. Governments are focused on a technological fix — vaccines — while providing little leadership and poor communications to their citizens. As Boss Godfrey says in Cool Hand Luke, “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” Yes we do, as Professor Devi Sridahr described the situation in the UK.

“Creation of complex rules (with numbers of people, households, exceptions) varying by tiers, has created a perverse system where people look for loopholes. Instead, focus on why this virus is risky, what we can all do to avoid getting it, and passing it on, and the underlying science.”
“Simply: transmits in indoor, poorly ventilated & crowded settings. Don’t go into other people’s homes. Keep distance, meet outside, & err on the side of caution. While older/vulnerable more at risk of dying, younger people can get seriously ill. Russian roulette with health.”

Perhaps the clearest advice came early in the pandemic, and went unheeded by most governments. Doctor Michael Ryan, Executive Director WHO Health Emergencies Programme spoke in a press briefing on 19 March 2020.

“If you need to be right before you move, you will never win. Perfection is the enemy of the good when it comes to emergency management. Speed trumps perfection. And the problem in society we have at the moment is that everyone is afraid of making a mistake. Everyone is afraid of the consequence of error. But the greatest error is not to move. The greatest error is to be paralyzed by the fear of failure. I think that is the single biggest lesson I’ve learned in Ebola responses in the past.”

Worried about the new mutant strain? Don’t understand genetics? Me neither. Here’s some advice:
—avoid crowds
—don’t share air
—wear a mask
—ventilate e.g. open windows
—get vaccinated

Clear communications help us to collectively face complexity and chaos. Don’t complicate the message.

Over the holiday season, take a look at Martin Berg’s festive rendition of the Cynefin framework showing the five domains — Confused, Clear, Complicated, Complex, and Chaotic. There are times for action and times for analysis. It is becoming critical to know when is the right time for each.

let’s stop the war of words

Sat, 19 Dec 2020 16:06:54 GMT

A November 2019 article in the British Medical Journal showed how difficult it is to change peoples’ minds, especially with regards to vaccinations. Facts don’t change peoples’ minds.

Lesson 2: don’t bring a fact to a narrative fight

Experts and health professionals can arm themselves with white papers, peer reviewed studies, and symposia; but if these are our only weapons, we will only ever get so far. In an era in which experts are increasingly distrusted, the “we know best” mindset is counterproductive.

Those wishing to encourage vaccination need to identify and amplify the stories that emerge from the real lives and lived experiences of people in their communities (to start, they need to listen for them). It is no coincidence that the most effective climate advocacy in the world right now comes from the improvisations and stories of a 16 year old girl rather than the strategic plans of a generations old institution. —BMJ: New Power versus Old

For example, a mandatory education class in Ontario, Canada — complete with videos and health care professionals to advise — has been useless in getting parents to accept vaccinations for their children.

‘But since it was introduced in 2017, thousands of mothers and fathers have dutifully watched the video, collected their “Vaccine Education Certificate” — then continued to duck the shots.

As one public health manager put it: “We had a zero percent conversion rate.”’ —National Post 2019-03-15

But the experience in Québec, Canada has been quite different, using a different approach. EMMIE (l’Entretien Motivationnel en Maternité pour l’Immunisation des Enfants), in English — Motivational Interviewing in Maternity Hospitals for Child Immunization.

It [EMMIE] uses a method of counselling called motivational interviewing, an empathic, non-confrontational communication style developed by psychologists to bring about behavioural change.

“We are here to understand them and to give them the answers they need to make a good decision about immunization, and to help them to build a stronger decisional process about immunization of the child,” said [Doctor] Gagneur … [In the case of one mother] Just 19 and living in rural Alberta at the time she had her first child, Coulis said she did a lot of reading, a lot of which she didn’t understand fully. “I felt confused and unable to parse the information about this study versus that study.” There were big claims by anti-vaccination literature, but Coulis didn’t see those acknowledged by the government materials or by public health nurses … “The message from public health was, ‘Just trust us, we’ve done the thinking for you,'” she said. —CBC 2020-12-19

As Dan White so succinctly stated, “Sorry to break it to you but arguments and facts don’t change people’s minds. It’s been proven neurologically that only relational warmth, not a war of words, can light up our neocortex awakening us to something new.”

So far, the narratives presented by many of our authorities have not been very compelling. It’s time to meet people where they are and listen. We have to not only get through this pandemic but prepare for the next, and more importantly deal with the climate emergency.

a global clown show

Wed, 16 Dec 2020 20:44:37 GMT

In 2007 I was concerned that Facebook was selling personal data. That same year I asked if there could be a public alternative to Facebook. By 2010 I had left the platform.

This year, after our local newspaper closed, I commented that we are now dependent on this global corporation — that uses our data to manipulate us — as our main form of communication. It is as if we live in a company-owned town, and buy all of our goods from the company store, using a party telephone line that the bosses listen in on. This is directly the fault of government, organizational, and community leaders who have either been lazy, ignorant, or perhaps malicious in promoting this control platform to engage others.

I have faulted our common natural stupidity for following along with the costly convenience of using Facebook as the default communications medium. Christopher Wylie, the whistle-blower for the Cambridge Analytica scandal, said that, “The internet is part and parcel of democracy now, whether you like it or not … Do we need rules that we as a society agree on, with independent regulators who are on our side, not on shareholders’ side?”

So, does Facebook control society? Not really, but it can influence the ‘persuadables’.

“You don’t need to change everyone’s mind, argues Brittany Kaiser, former director of business development at Cambridge Analytica. You just need to change the minds of the ‘persuadables.’ And the way you identify them is through understanding not just what they buy or say about themselves, but how they think. Through harvesting personal data, Cambridge Analytica could, and did, identify and persuade them.” —Vox 2019-07-25

And there is no doubt that our social networks can influence us, as shown in the research Christakis and Fowler did for their 2011 book Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives — How Your Friends’ Friends’ Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, and Do — “As part of a social network, we transcend ourselves, for good or ill, and become a part of something much larger. We are connected.”

But Facebook is not an all-powerful entity that is smarter or better than society collectively. Zuckerberg just got lucky, like “a clown car that fell into a gold mine.”

Can they [Facebook] prevent you from learning about a local city council candidate by blocking that person from advertising? Absolutely. So absolutely they can swing elections. Can they convince you to vote for someone you know about but don’t want to vote for? No. But they can make it so that you never learn about somebody or a proposition that you might otherwise be interested in or dislike or whatever.

So I do think that they have power. I just don’t think they’re secretly hypnotizing us. I think these people are — I’ll use a Zuckerberg quote about Twitter, which is a great quote — “a clown car that fell into a gold mine.” —Matt Stoller

The current court actions in the USA against Facebook may be the beginning of the end for this clown show. It cannot happen too soon.

Pexels image @cottonbro

the selfish and the selfless

Fri, 11 Dec 2020 08:30:52 GMT

Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders.” —George Carlin

The Lesson We Should Have Learned From 2020 — But Haven’t by @umairh

What is the thing the East had that the West didn’t — that made all the difference in fighting Covid, much more so than money and resources and so forth? Sociality. Social cohesion. Social bonds. Trust, relationships, ties. An economist might call that “social capital.” You can use that term if you want — I won’t, because, like I said, this lesson goes so, so deep that I want to take pains to really explain, and you can tell me if I succeed.

What the East was able to do was cooperate as societies to fight Covid. And it turned out that you couldn’t beat Covid without cooperation at the largest scale — the social scale. The scale of a city or town or block just wasn’t enough. And it was because it enjoys significantly higher levels of sociality that the East was able to — as we say in the West — “pull together” and beat off Covid.

The Pandemic Heroes Who Gave us the Gift of Time and Gift of Information by @zeynep

Still, as the good news from these vaccines rolls in, we should remember and celebrate the gift Dr. Zhang and his team gave us, perhaps the most important ones for fighting a pandemic: the gift of time and gift of information. Dr. Zhang acted without being incentivized by the huge amounts of money that the companies will receive — Moderna’s stock has increased almost 700 percent already — and he faced down potentially catastrophic consequences for himself and his lab.

For many years, we will be analyzing the failure of many governments and our institutions in their responses to this pandemic. But the successes are real, too. More than anything, we should also remember those who bravely stepped up when it counted: the healthcare workers and the researchers around the world—starting with Professor Yong-Zhen Zhang and Doctor Li Wenliang of China.

Yale: Study Shows Which Restrictions Prevent COVID-19 Fatalities—and Which Appear to Make Things Worse

In other words, across multiple analyses, Spiegel and Tookes identified a fairly consistent set of policies that seemed to help (mask mandates, closing restaurants, stay-at-home orders, limiting gatherings to 10 people) and a fairly consistent set that seemed to hurt (closing low-risk businesses, limiting gatherings to 100 people). Other policies, including closing schools, appeared not to affect fatality rates either way.

Spiegel and Tookes are continuing to collect data and hope to refine their results in the future. One big unanswered question is how different policies interact with one another. “It might be that as long as everyone’s wearing masks, a given policy is less effective,” Tookes says.

What might this mean for policymakers? The data suggests that closing certain businesses can reduce fatalities, but “we all know there are other costs,” Tookes says—and what’s worth it depends on context and priorities. “Our goal wasn’t to prescribe a particular policy, but to help inform the decisions.”

We Have No Idea What Happens Next via @timkastelle

But everyone in the world has suddenly been exposed to problems they had never seen before. They’ve become aware of new risks. New constraints in how they live, work, and play. A whole new set of perspectives on how to keep your family safe, run a business, and use technology.

Some of the changes that will bring are obvious. We’re already better and faster at creating vaccines than we were a year ago. Doctors are more knowledgeable. Remote work is more efficient. Travel is less necessary.

Then there’s a second tier of change: perhaps using our new knowledge of mRNA vaccines to treat other diseases, like cancer. It seems likely, but who knows.

Then there’s the big unknown: the crazy, disconnected, counterintuitive change set in motion this year that we’ll only be able to piece together in hindsight. The kinds of things that only happen when seven billion people have their lives thrown upside down, experience a bunch of stuff they’d never imagined, and are either motivated or forced to do something completely different than they had considered in January.

No one should even guess what that might be. The unpredictability is the point.

Online disinformation and the EU’s response

Fake news’ and disinformation – information deliberately manipulated with the aim of fooling people – have become an increasingly visible global phenomenon. Social media and their personalisation tools have made it easier to spread bogus stories. They often use emotions to capture attention and generate clicks, for economic or ideological reasons. Even young, digital-savvy people find it difficult to identify manipulated news. Significantly, six in ten news items shared on social media were not even read first by the user who shared them. Some 85 % of Europeans see ‘fake news’ as a problem in their own country, and 83 % view it as a problem for democracy in general. This compass will help you navigate the ocean of information, and find your way through waves of lies and disinformation.

Image: EPRS

get out of the office

Thu, 03 Dec 2020 15:02:44 GMT

In one of my first projects as a freelancer 17 years ago, I was brought into an existing client relationship with a hospital network. Our team had been contracted to develop an e-learning program for nursing staff. I was able to negotiate a ‘confirmation of the analysis’, as I had not been involved in the design process. I was given two days to interview staff on various wards. As I was not hospital staff I was accompanied by the senior nurse.

We learned a lot during those visits to the wards, and even had some procedures changed on the spot as the senior nurse became aware of some unnecessary redundancies. As a result the e-learning program was cancelled and we developed a few performance support tools and some job aids instead. Training was not the solution to this challenge — getting the right information to trained and experienced nurses was.

On completing my hospital visit I thanked the senior nurse for her help. In turn she thanked me for the opportunity to make her first visit to the wards. I asked how long she had been at this hospital. Two years she responded. I said nothing but was shocked that the person in charge of clinical nursing had never been to the workplaces of the people she was supporting. How many other managers in how many workplaces are in the same situation?

In our small town of 5,000 people, the local hospital was going to be closed. Last year the CEO of the health network met with protesters to explain the reasons for the closure. She was asked how we would support the needs of our students. The CEO did not understand why this would be a problem. It was explained that we are home to a university with about 2,000 students in residence. These are in addition to our official population count. The CEO did not know this.

The university was established in 1839 and has been the top ranked undergraduate university in the country for several years. But the CEO had spent her years in the job in the Provincial capital, 200 kilometres away. In a province of 780,000 people it is not a major challenge to visit every city and most of the larger towns. The CEO could not be bothered to learn about the communities she served.

The idea of ‘leadership by walking around’ seems to have disappeared. But in complex systems, a degree of understanding is needed by people in leadership positions. It cannot come just through the chain-of-command.

“There is a limit to how much honest feedback most leaders really want to hear; and because we know this, most of us sugar-coat our opinions whenever we speak to a powerful person. In a deep hierarchy, that process is repeated many times, until the truth is utterly concealed inside a thick layer of sweet-talk.” —Adapt: Why success always starts with failure

Source: Damian Corbet quoting Janice Kaffer CEO of Hôtel Dieu Grace Healthcare, Windsor, ON

Getting managers out of their offices is a low-tech method that can reap major business benefits. Incorporating this mindset into the use of social media then increases the speed of access to knowledge and provides a reality check. Have you been out of your office — real or virtual — lately?

trusted spaces

Tue, 01 Dec 2020 13:42:53 GMT

In my PKM workshops we discuss the differences between communities and networks. This includes the dark sides of communities as well as the constant doubt and outrage on social media. My general advice is to seek diverse perspectives in social networks but to seek more private, trusted communities for deeper conversations and understanding.

I use Twitter to show how to seek new ideas and opinions by selecting who to follow to create human knowledge filters. The list feature on Twitter is useful in following specific topics and fields. Following, or muting, certain hashtags can also refine what you find on Twitter.

The best feature of Twitter is that you do not have to follow people who follow you. The relationship is asymmetric, just like blogging. In addition, you can still set your stream of people you follow to “see latest tweets first” so that the Twitter algorithm does not decide for you. Of course you have to constantly switch to latest tweets, as Twitter prefers to feed its algorithm to you. Twitter is not your friend. You don’t have to be on Twitter, but I still find it a useful platform for teaching about online social networks. There are also, for now, third-party applications for Twitter, like Tweetbot.

Dr. Natalie Ashton, a philosopher at the University of Stirling, states that Twitter is useful for seeking marginalized voices — Why Twitter is (Epistemically) Better Than Facebook

“On Twitter I only need to click the follow button for my feed to be regularly updated with another user’s posts. They don’t typically need to agree to this, and they won’t automatically see my posts as a result. This one-sided mechanic allows users to connect with a wide range of people they’d be unlikely to encounter otherwise, and is much more conducive to elevating marginalized voices.”

But Dr. Ashton goes a bit far in stating that Facebook can be a place for ‘epistemic respite’ because, “On Facebook, interactions mostly take place among mutual, symmetrical friendships”. Facebook is not a useful platform for teaching about community, other than to show that its insidious algorithms are designed to manipulate behaviour. Facebook is not a community because you cannot trust the inherent design of the system. You see what the algorithm wants you to see and you are constantly under surveillance. This is not a community platform. It is a place for Facebook to find and sell access to ‘the persuadables‘.

“You don’t need to change everyone’s mind, argues Brittany Kaiser, former director of business development at Cambridge Analytica. You just need to change the minds of the ‘persuadables’. And the way you identify them is through understanding not just what they buy or say about themselves, but how they think. Through harvesting personal data, Cambridge Analytica could, and did, identify and persuade them.”

I belong to several online communities. They are on platforms controlled by the community. For example, the perpetual beta coffee club is on a private WordPress site. I monitor all conversations but the community of about 90 people is self-policing. We have a monthly Zoom call which is recorded but the recording is deleted after a couple of weeks. I do not want these conversations to sit around for a long time and perhaps be taken out of context. We have nothing to hide, but we do not have to share our conversations with the world.

Networks are not communities. Communities are trusted spaces run by and for members. Facebook is not a trusted space.

get out to the edges

Sat, 28 Nov 2020 20:04:50 GMT

In March [making sense of our digital world] I wrote that my own understanding of the COVID-19 disease started with centres of networked expertise — WHO, CDC, Public Health Agency of Canada. By September [connecting knowledge] I wrote that I see information from the WHO and CDC as lagging indicators, and no longer my first stop to find out what is happening now.

I should have known better and gone back to some of my earlier understanding of sensemaking in complexity and chaos. These formal organizations are hierarchical and bureaucratic. They have institutional blinders. According to Mark Federman, “Organizations are made too complicated in response to complexity.” That complication blurs our vision.

To understand our current situation we need to move to the edge or find others who are there already. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote — “I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over; on the edge you find things you can’t see from the center.” On the edges the answers may not be clear, but they are less obscured than in the centre.

People on the edge mostly do not work for the likes of WHO, CDC, or PHAC.

In March, people on the edge like Trish Greenhalgh were advocating non-medical masks for all.

Many months ago, people on the edge like Michael Mina were pushing for rapid at-Home COVID Testing for all.

This Summer, people on the edge like David Fisman were warning that keeping indoor establishments open in Ontario into the Fall would be disastrous — it is.

We would be in a much better situation today if our decision-makers and policy influencers had better connections to the edges of their fields, especially where they overlap with other disciplines.

If you work inside an organization in any professional capacity then engaging with the edges of your expertise is a critical skill. Everyone should be the eyes and ears of the organization. As they say in software development — given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. In our complex and sometimes chaotic world, we cannot say it is not our job to engage outside our daily tasks or that it is ‘beyond our pay-grade’. If this pandemic has shown us anything, it is that we are all in this together and will all suffer the consequences of silo thinking.

To work in any complex field, we need to be connected to loose social networks which provide us with a view of the frontiers of our knowledge. We then need to actively engage in communities of practice to develop better understanding and knowledge among our peers. Only then can we truly contribute as members of teams working in a complex environment. Connecting these three spaces requires a new network literacy — personal knowledge mastery.

Here is the rest of the Vonnegut quote.

“You think I’m insane?” said Finnerty. Apparently he wanted more of a reaction than Paul had given him.
“You’re still in touch. I guess that’s the test.”
“Barely — barely.”
“A psychiatrist could help. There’s a good man in Albany.”
Finnerty shook his head. “He’d pull me back into the center, and I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” He nodded, “Big, undreamed-of things — the people on the edge see them first.” ―Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

Let’s not stay stuck in the centre of our bubbles, let’s get out to the edges.

moscow rules

Fri, 27 Nov 2020 08:30:39 GMT

Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“In the past every village had an idiot, and we could all deal with that. Now the internet is allowing idiots to connect and it is normalising idiocy.” —@snowded

“Most victims of suicide are men, Most people in jail are men, Most victims of violent crimes are men, Most victims of murder are men, Most victims of police killings are men; Most shamed for mental health is men.” —@birgitta

“One of the biggest differences I discovered: poor folks in Germany realise they are poor and mostly vote for parties advocating for poverty relief measures. Poor folks in the US see themselves as ‘temporarily not rich’ and vote for policies benefiting mostly the rich.” —@LyssasLounge

The fireman of global health: The WHO’s emergencies chief is put to the test — 2019-10-30 [read that date]

Climate-mediated natural disasters. Conflict-riven failed states. Massive displacement of people. And, as always in this type of work, expanding human populations, encroaching on the natural habitat from which new disease threats emerge.

“We’re not ready,” Ryan said. “If we can’t stop Ebola” — referring to the ongoing outbreak in northeastern DRC, on the cusp of beginning its 16th month — “what hope do we have of stopping … Disease X? [AKA Covid-19]”

A Twitter thread by David Whitney [which should have been a blog post so I could have just linked to it]

One of the things I see absolutely plague developers is time management.

We’ve all been there, and we’ve all seen it:

“too many meetings!”
“I can’t get my work done because of all these meetings!”
“I don’t feel like I have control over my time!”
Here are a few things I’ve done to get things done over the years.

1. Diarise your own time.

Your calendar doesn’t exist purely for other people to fill your time up. It is yours. You can use it.

During consulting gigs where people bombard you with requests, literally the moment someone asks me to do something, or look at something, I’ll block out a slot in my calendar of *at least* one hour to actually do the work and think about the problem.

This:
– Helps you remember to do the thing
– Organises your day
– Stops meetings preventing work

This is a great trick to help set expectations of when people will expect to see results from you and embraces the fact that doing any work takes time and space.

This is perhaps the easiest way to make sure meetings don’t get in the way of doing.

2. Politely reject meetings that do not have agendas or stated outcomes.

Many meetings are formless & ineffective, becoming unstructured thought & conversation. All meetings requests should come with either an agenda or an explicit goal.

Help by making sure your own invites do.

3. Leave meetings where you are adding or gaining nothing.

I suspect the biggest cost-waste in most organisations are meetings with passive participants. Respect your own time by observing the law of two feet and politely excusing yourself to get other things done.

4. Be present in the meetings you do attend.

No laptops unless you’re taking notes or doing some meeting related activity. It’s simple, it’s respectful.

If you feel like you have to brain space to do other things, see point 3 – observe the law of two feet and get up and leave.

5. Get into the habit of circulating meeting outcomes

There is no need to minute or notate the vast majority of meetings – but any outcomes – decisions, should be circulated to the exact invite group of the meeting after the fact.

This gives people the confidence that if they cannot attend a meeting in real time because of time conflicts, that they will be able to understand the outcomes regardless.

This is part of the respectful contract that not everyone you wish to attend a meeting, will be able to.

6. Decline meeting invites if you cannot, or do not want to, attend.

To solidify the human contract that people will circulate conclusions and communicate effectively, you need to let people know if you’re not coming.

You don’t have to tell them why, but it’ll help them plan.

7. Don’t miss mandatory team communication meetings.

There’s a pattern of fatigue that develops when meetings start to feel rote or useless. Don’t respond by not attending, respond by “refactoring your meetings”.

Discuss cancelling pointless recurring events to free up time.

8. Schedule formless catchup meetings

It’s easy for meetings to devolve into chatter, especially in 2020, where we’re all craving human contact. Set meetings up with this goal.

A social meeting is not a crime, it’s optional, and people that are craving contact will thank you.

9. Consider doing work in meetings rather than talking about it.

Many meetings can be replaced with mob programming sessions, where you do the thing, instead of discussing it.

Doing the work is the best way to know if it’s right & valuable.

Prefer this format where possible.

Moscow Rules via The Spy Museum

unity, not uniformity

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 14:07:21 GMT

One hundred years ago, management pioneer Mary Parker Follett wrote that “Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. We attain unity only through variety. Differences must be integrated, not annihilated, not absorbed.” Her words ring true today as we dance between complexity and order. How can we achieve unity through variety and the integration of our differences? We can start by better understanding alignment.

What is workplace alignment? The recently published MirrorMirror white paper states that alignment is “a shared understanding between people” and that alignment leads to engagement, collaboration, and effectiveness.

“Alignment is not people ‘thinking the same thing’, it is compatibility – making room for differences and challenge, new ideas and change.”

Some of the underlying causes of misalignment include people saying yes but not taking action, teams making conflicting actions, and disconnects between functions or departments. While diversity is a positive attribute of any organization, it can lead to misunderstandings, and management direction is not sufficient to ensure alignment. People have to trust and understand each other without management interventions.

“Researchers have found that alignment includes shared understanding and team behaviours. They found that you cannot tell people to align.
People need to make sense of things on their own terms. They need to internalize meaning as relevant to their own context, through a common language with others.”

The MirroMirror method uses surveys, interviews, and discussions to help teams see themselves ‘in the mirror’. It is a non-judgemental approach. The alignment report is a starting point for teams to make changes to their strategy, learning, and support services.

The survey highlights strengths and weaknesses

While the survey is just the start of any performance improvement initiative, it helps to create a shared understanding of the current situation.

The alignment process gives direction

Disclosure: I am trained to facilitate MirrorMirror alignment surveys.

put on your dance shoes

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 13:17:23 GMT

(Let’s dance) for fear your grace should fall
(Let’s dance) for fear tonight is all
—David Bowie (1983) Let’s Dance

Creative work is a constant dance between complexity and order, or curiosity and resolve, as Jony Ive explained in his acceptance speech as the first recipient of the Stephen Hawking Fellowship in 2018.

“You see, in the mode of being unreasonable and resolute, you have to solve hard problems. But solving those problems requires new ideas. And so, we’re back to needing ideas and back to having to be open and curious. This is not a shift that occurs once or twice in a multi-year project. I find it happens to me once or twice a day and that frequency of shifting between two such different ways of seeing and thinking is fantastically demanding.” —Jony Ive

The automation of routine and standardized work is moving human work toward non-routine manual and cognitive tasks. We see today that any piece of work that can be mapped and analyzed will be automated. This means that more people will be doing the constant dance between complexity and order, adding intangible value, sharing implicit knowledge, and learning informally and socially. More and more human work will be creative work. Creative work is anything that requires us to create something new. It can be written, physical, or a new way of doing things.

I noted in Cynefin & PKM that all organizations are likely to face complex challenges more frequently, and that they should organize in forms that can address this.

Teams can be semi-permanent and collaborative in ordered domains but should be quicker-forming temporary negotiated hierarchies in the complex domain.

Formal communities can provide continuity in ordered domains but informal communities are needed to provide more flexibility in crossing expertise silos and disciplines.

Established knowledge hubs provide all the structured information that an established discipline requires, but open knowledge networks are better when facing complexity as there is a need to quickly incorporate new findings and knowledge, often from outside the discipline.

So not only does the creative knowledge worker have to metaphorically dance between work teams, communities of practice, and professional communities, but also between the ordered domain and the complex domain. Ladies and gentlemen, please put on your dance shoes. The 21st century has arrived!