Trainer, Train Thyself

I've recently completed re-designing our Company website, which launched on 1st September.  No big deal you might think, but until I took on the project around 2 months ago, I knew pretty much nothing about web design, HTML or any other programming code. I'm pleased with the results and I hope you are too. If you're reading this, you're on the emenex.co.uk website.

So, what did I learn from this experience and does it have wider application/implications for  learning and development?

Technology is revolutionising the value chain

The Emenex website is powered by Wordpress, which virtually eliminates the need for knowledge of a programming language - as long as you can work out out how to use plug ins and widgets.  These little applets drop into Wordpress' content management system  (see, I'm a technical wizard already!) and enables you to almost endlessly customise any one of thousands of templates, many of which are free.  

However, the seemingly never ending choice, raises other issues.  If you can do almost anything, then why not do it? 

One example I recently came across is managing creative talent.  A manufacturer who needs creative talent, has recently been going though a re-structure.  As part of that process, it has considered sharing creative resources with its US parent.  This will mean that instead of creating new designs, it will simply adapt existing ones.  That reduces costs and simplifies processes, but what will happen to the creative people in the UK? Technology has simplified their role, but at the same time taken away a key ingredient for job satisfaction.  Creativity is this Company's competitive edge.  Lose the creative element and the UK division risks losing its competitive edge.

Looking at it from another perspective, how is Wordpress changing the web design industry? If I can create a website, knowing little or nothing about web design, then so can anyone else.  Web design used to be all about technical know how - the black art of coding,  php, C++, Java, Python. Facebook might need all of these (and they use all of them), but for the majority, it's just not necessary anymore.

Wordpress and other platforms brings Technology to the masses and shifts  the value we place on technical expertise. Speaking to a friend of mine, Chris Lee  www.bigcheesedc.com describes how his business has come full circle from being a design and branding agency who moved into the web design space.  With the advent of content management systems, he has moved back to his roots developing creative content. Nowadays his clients take day to day control and management of their websites and Chris provides the expertise around branding and identity  Although its been a difficult transition, Chris says it has been a positive experience. 

What this highlights for me is the importance of recognising where and how you add value to your clients. In a dynamic business environment, your expertise can quickly become redundant, regardless of how often you update your technical skills.  The ability to recognise how client needs are shifting is equally, if not more important, and to move your offer and value proposition to keep pace with shifting expectations.

Which brings me to the second point around my website development experience.

Build the website backwards

Because of the myriad of options available to the novice website builder, I started by thinking about what the finished website would look like, what it would or would not do and the messages we wanted to convey.  

In my work with organisations supporting them in managing change, a constant indicator of the likely success of any strategy was whether the senior management had a powerful vision of the future and how well that was communicated in their organisation.  In the same way, the success of  the website's development was largely due to the discussion around the vision and purpose of the website. It took some time for the clarity and understanding to emerge between all the stakeholders, but it was time well spent, minimising the time spent on implementation, Pareto's 80/20 rule comes to mind.

Another benefit was that because i knew what we wanted, the technology just became a matter of how.  I didn't need to spend lot of time researching all possible options, I just needed to find a plugin to add video, or a plugin to encode text and formatting. Technology became a means to an end, rather than the focus.  

This also reminds me of our work on the ExtraMILE model of employee engagement and development.  The model describes the key drivers for employee engagement.  We spent a lot of time trying to find the technology to automate a questionnaire for an individual and organisational survey based on the model.  

What we originally lacked was the vision of how the model could be used within organisations. We focused on the technology, not the value to the wider market. However, as we shared the model with some long standing clients, it became clear that the model was more far reaching than we originally realised. This has given rise to new opportunities for us and added value for our clients, whether or not they already have embedded an engagement or talent management strategy. The technology has taken a back seat as we focus on the value.

Aligning talents and passions

Right through the website development experience, I was constantly challenged to bring the website to fruition.  This suited my career orientation of challenge and sat perfectly with my interest in technology. Being able to deliver something for the organisation that was new, interesting and challenging made for the perfect assignment.  One of my favourite youtube videos is the RSA’s take on Dan Pinks’ Drive.  It’s on the front page of our website and puts some evidence and research behind my experience with our webiste.

Imagine if you could better align your own talents and passions with your organisation’s needs, how would that work for you?

The Dark Side

This week is the 40th Anniversary of the release of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. It’s one of my favourite albums of all time. As I listened to it again this week, it struck me that I don’t listen to albums much any more.  More often than not it’s a play list on my iPod or 8tracks on the web.  

And that is a shame, because although I get to hear lots of music I like, I miss out on the experience of the complete album, carefully crafted, with tracks thoughtfully chosen to create the whole experience and capture a mood, idea or moment.

Dark Side is an album that makes this point.  One of the stand out characteristics is its connectedness, not just to the listener, but also in the way every track is connected.  The LP (that’s long player for the digital generation) was conceived as two pieces of music, one per side.  Although a couple of tracks were released as singles, e.g. Time, it's when the album is taken as a whole that everything comes together.

New technology brings many benefits and the advent of portable digital music has certainly brought many, but it as have the potential to destroy - that’s why its called disruptive technology.  It’s been happening for centuries - remember the Luddites?, but is there a point at which we lose more than we gain from the impact of technology?

I made a connection between my Dark Side experience and a book I’m currently reading. In Arc 1.x, a New Scientist collection of articles, Samuel Arbesman proposes that in the near future only computers will be able to make new discoveries. He suggests that in the relentless pursuit of advancement, the world has become so complex that we are reaching the point of being unable to understand the world we live in.  He quotes Don Swanson, who described this complexity as “undiscovered public knowledge”.

What this says to me is that as we create new ways of doing things, introducing new technology to become more efficient, faster, smaller we are in danger of losing the connection with the world and the people around us.  Danny Hills in Scientific American calls it the transition from enlightenment to entanglement - a point at which we no longer understand the systems of our own making.  We are at the point where we can do almost anything. Whether we should do it, is now a more important question. Are we still able to understand the consequences of our intention?

Dry Stone Walls, Holons and Organisations

Recently Ive been walking in the Derbyshire Dales. Even though I live in Yorkshire, it's one of my favourite parts of the country. The weather was kind and the scenery - even though spring hadn't yet sprung, stunning.  One of the things that characterises the Dales are the dry stone walls.  It's easy to forget they are not a natural feature of the landscape - they are man-made, but they just seem 'right' and add to the landscape as much as any natural rocky outcrop or waterfall.

Reflecting on my weekend, the concept of holons came to mind.  A holon is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part. In a dry stone wall each stone is an individual, has its own identity and, at the same time, is part of a larger whole. To exist as a wall, the stones must conform to a structure that has rules. To survive, the wall must continue to meet the intended purpose. Within the larger structure, smaller systems and structures exist. Each stone has a relationship with each adjacent stone and with the rest of the wall. There is no bonding agent other than the relationship between the stones. The careful placement of the stones, keeps them together and creates the wall. Building the wall in this way, enables it to flex and move with its environment. Building a wall requires craft and an awareness of the landscape where the structure will be built. The wall needs to be carefully maintained; rebuilding a wall requires far more resources than maintaining one.

Holons exist in organisations too.  The organisation is an entity on its own, but existing within it are functions, departments and teams.  And of course a team is a group of individuals organised to deliver purpose.  Sometimes though, as with dry some walls we see the landscape but not the individual stone. Yet without each stone there would be no wall.  

When building a wall it is said that once you pick up a stone you can't put it down again until it has been placed in exactly the right spot. The builder evaluates each stone carefully to assess its value for a particular purpose and then handles it respectfully to realise its potential.  That sounds like talent management and succession planning to me. Whatever the size and shape, no matter how big or small, each stone plays an integral role in becoming something bigger. 

Imagine your organisation as a dry stone wall, what would that be like?

If you'd like to know more about the art of dry stone walling, the Derbyshire Branch of the Dry Stone Walling Association would be happy to help I'm sure (other Branches are available) .  If you'd like to know more about how developing individuals can add value to your organisational landscape, contact us.

The Gorilla in the Room

I’m sure that you've come across the elephant in the room – the thing that everyone sees but cannot (or dares not) talk about.  But what about the Gorilla in the room?

Research by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris demonstrated why, when focusing on something specific, we tend not to notice other things going on around us.  In their research on selective attention, 2 groups of students pass a basketball as they bob and weave around each other. With all the movement, counting the number of passes is difficult and requires a lot of concentration.  Try it out for yourself Test of Selective Attention before reading on.

You can also learn more about perception and focus in Dan’s TEDx presentation on Seeing The World As It Isn't.

Now you’re back, I hope I didn't give the game away in the title of the blog.  Around only 1 in 8 people will see the gorilla. It may seem strange or even implausible that someone in a gorilla suit goes unnoticed, but the research shows that the level of focus needed to achieve a particular result, gives rise to some unintended and unwanted consequences.

In a related experiment, Trafton Drew found that 83% of radiologists missed a matchbook sized picture of a gorilla when they were examining medical slides for cancer nodules.  They only saw what they what they were expecting to see and disregarded anything that didn't fit their reality.

In the current business reality of austerity, it’s not that hard to get fixated on cutting costs for example.  With total focus on one thing, it’s easy to lose the bigger picture, or miss out on opportunities for innovation.  That’s one thing that Steve Jobs apart. As well as being fanatical about detail, he could also see the bigger picture.

One unintended consequence of a cost driven focus is the impact on employee engagement.  Management is reduced to completing tasks without considering their effectiveness or contribution to the organisation’s purpose. Staff feel increasingly under-valued and stress levels increase. Have you ever tried squeezing play dough?  The harder you squeeze the more it slips through your fingers.

I’ll leave you with a question.  How is selective attention impacting on you and your business?  Where is your focus at present and what might you be missing?

Is there a gorilla in your room?

Thanks to my friend Ann Herrmann at Herrmann International (www.hbdi.com www.hbdi.co.uk) for bringing this to my attention. 

From a Negative to a Positive

Don't you love digital photography? Take as many photos as you like, edit them, upload them, email them, even print them. And if you don't like them, delete them. Everyone is a photographer now, but I feel something has gone missing.

I went to a small exhibition recently where the photographer had used a 100 year old box camera, made the plates herself and could only take 6 photos because that was all she could carry. Each photo could take up to one hour to take and there was no second chance, so the composition had to be spot on first time.  Then there was the developing.

At a recent client meeting the subject of developing negatives came up.  It made me think about the art of photography and in particular developing prints in the dark room.  Developing photographs, like people, is an art.  It takes time, the right mix of ingredients along with the patience and expertise of the photographer.

And it needs time and patience. As the image develops, the fine detail and contrasts slowly emerge. Too soon or too long and the photograph never achieves its potential. It's a difficult balance, a bit like developing people. Too fast people burn out, too slow and they fade away.

In a digital world, there's still space for the personal touch.

Remembering Alice Pyne

Last Saturday following a six-year battle, 17 year old Alice Pyne succumbed to cancer. Over the last 2 years, Alice inspired thousands of people by documenting her story in a blog and in particular her bucket list. It wasn’t a list full of completely unachievable things –although she still had dreams. One dream was going to Kenya (she got to Kent - ya), but it was also a list of things that she could achieve, like enter her dog Mabel in a show and buy a static caravan for her charity.

One of her dreams is that everyone creates their own bucket list and it got me thinking. I thought bucket lists were about big things and they are. But they are also about the small but no less significant things, silly things even. It’s about momentum, starting small and maybe even staying small, but always moving on and having fun along the way.

So Alice, here’s the first item on my bucket list – tell people about your dream and invite others to start theirs. Buckets are for filling, start filling one today.

The Power of Teamwork

Yesterday, Team GB exceeded their Beijing Olympics medal haul and by the end of the London Games, will have reached their highest total in the modern Olympic era.  Not only that but on a per capita basis, Team GB would head the medal table.

There are many reasons for this success, not least the years of hard training and sacrifice by the athletes, the coaches, medics, nutritionists, psychologists, engineers, and all the other backroom men and women that make Team GB. 

Yet there is another group of people that athletes from around the world have paid tribute to for contributing to their success – the spectators.

The designers of the Olympic Stadium engineered it to amplify the crowd.  They recognised how the roar of the crowd would help build the atmosphere, urging the athletes on.  And it worked.  The spectators are definitely Team GB’s 12^th man. The athletes themselves, spurred on by the crowd go faster, higher, further and cite the crowd as a key contributor to their performance.

So, who are the 12^th men and women for your organisation? 

Who are the people that help build the atmosphere, that are passionate about what you are trying to achieve?

Who offers their unconditional support, shares your highs and lows, attaches no blame, asks only that you do your best?

The track cycling team have exemplified the science and business of winning.  Their planning organisation, innovation and execution are a testament to teamwork.  But even they can’t engineer the support they received over this last week.  Those levels of support have to be earned.  The crowd has to see the passion and determination, as well as the skill and ability.

Who is your sporting hero? What is it that gives them that level of recognition in your eyes?  What are the qualities that take them beyond technical ability?

How can you take those qualities into the workplace?

What do you need to do to harness the power of the 12^th man?