Self organization with consequences

‘When we chat it is no longer we who speak, we are fashioning ourselves then in the likeness of other people, and not of a self that differs from them.’ Proust had it right, we all do this more or less, and it creates an atmosphere of wanting to agree with each other without the basis for agreement that is reached by confrontation and reflection; knowledge of what drives us as individuals and as groups. I think this is one of the main reasons why people in teams seldom reach results quickly and get bogged down in the ‘decision’ process. We like to discuss and meet and are capable of spending hours coming up with a thousand possibilities, but are rarely able to agree on even a single opportunity among them.

Why? Because there is a huge difference between a possibility and an opportunity. An opportunity is a qualified possibility, a possibility that we believe will add value to what we do together. To qualify a possibility we need a shared sense of purpose and insight into each others value systems and capabilities. We need to be able to reflect as individuals and as teams. But that is scary and takes too much time in our ever faster moving world.

When working with the Innovatieplatform (innovation platform) in the Netherlands on setting up a foundation (Nederland Innovatief) to promote innovation in The Netherlands, it was quite clear that there were twelve people or more in the room, discussing something that they did not have a unified view on (innovation) and all had different interests when it came to results. In confronting the project leader with this observation, he agreed and answered that this wasn’t a problem, since they set it up as an organic process and that whoever stayed after July 6th would be interested enough to create value with whomever else stayed. The 6th of July being the date for the committee presided by our prime minister to decide on the proposal on setting up Nederland Innovatief. A lot of ideas were created by the group, but since there were no agreed upon criteria to judge them, all stayed vague and unnamed. The only thing that kept coming back was the creation of a middle man to form a bridge between the Dutch SME and whomever could provide services to help small companies innovate. No innovation there, because this is how the Dutch have been doing business for the last three centuries and there are several middle men already providing this service. The lowest common denominator survived the ‘organic’ approach because there was no other possibility to agree on. I haven’t heard from them since the 15th of June, and I won’t hold my breath for the outcome.

When my partner Mathijs worked for Craftworld on creating new programs for TV that would integrate gaming with a TV show, he ran into the same problem. A lot of ideas, but no common sense of purpose and no idea about the value systems each partner brought to the table. Consequently it was almost impossible to come up with a consensus on the right opportunity. The one they came up with through a war of attrition (let’s say yes, I am too tired to go on) was surprisingly interesting, but unsurprisingly the process has bled to death in the last three weeks.

What was missing from both approaches, and I believe from almost all team approaches I have been part of in my corporate career, is a shared sense of purpose. Not just a problem to solve, but a shared goal reached through understanding of what each of the contributors wanted out of the process of solving the problem and how the results should be based on what they think adds value to their lives. Matches to your individual goals? Great, working together will bring fun and lots of energy to reach results. Doesn’t fit your goals or growth path? That’s ok, go elsewhere and find something that will. Especially in the Dutch consensus based society, this rarely happens. We are all equal and all opinions matter and should be heard and respected. True, we should be heard and respected, but we are not all equal and not all opinions matter, this is context dependent. The result is that people who do not add value remain with the team and instead of focusing our energy on opportunities we waste it by talking about countless possibilities. Self organization without consequences is an empty shell that provides security but no value.

This gets us back to the organic approach; I love the idea. In Nature, everything has a purpose, it grows towards something; this is called Morphogenesis. This is not about all cells of an organism agreeing with each other, but about all cells getting the idea how to shape themselves to promote growth in the right direction. On a higher level; if you take care of your garden you take out the weeds right? Those plants that do not add to the beauty of what you envision your garden to be, you take out! This doesn’t mean no compromises, since you have to agree with your wife on what would look best, and if you have small children you would like it to be safe, so no poisonous plants or sharp rocks please.

What they seem to be focusing on at Nederland Innovatief is the latter part, security. God forbid you make a decision, you might just be wrong. They take no action, because the basis for taking action isn’t there. They leave it to individuals to decide whether to stay or go, instead of clearly stating that some are excused since they will not add value and others should stay for what they offer the team. That to me is an impossible starting point for creating value in this day and age. With a stable environment and predictable and high economic growth, this form of consensus works because it creates a sense of stability which is necessary for managing growth. In our current environment of slow economic growth, constantly changing contexts and rapid globalization, we need to make choices, make them fast and keep making them. That is the only way to achieve growth instead of just managing it. For that we need a basis, a solid foundation to keep us going were we want to go together. To me that can only be a shared sense of purpose based on the value we want to create together and as individuals. It’s not just the journey, it just as much the destination! If you don’t like it? Find somewhere else to go!

Dispatches from the Frontier

Heaven and Earth abolish the old and bring about the new,
Then the four seasons complete their changes.
Tang and Wu abolished the old and brought about the new.
They obeyed the will of Heaven
In accord with the wishes of people.
The time and meaning of abolishing the old is truly great!
(I Ching, commentary on Ch. 49)


Crossing Signals was present at The Club of Amsterdam's annual Summit for the Future, and it provided once more a powerful and intoxicating cocktail of intriguing people and exotic idea. Risk was the central theme to the proceedings, and it provided an effective thread integrating the myriad ideas and opinions brought to the conference. We live in a challenging era, characterized by rapid change and an unprecedented increase in possibilities, not all good. Traditional systems and long established habits are being swept away by wave after wave of novelty. We face ever faster technological change, a stunning rate of increase in complexitystupefying most ordinary citizens, and a rapid dissolution of boundaries: between actual and virtual reality, between countries, continents, cultures, political and economic interests. Add to this a number of worrying and potentially disastrous threats like global warming and an ever increasing gap between rich and poor, and you face a pretty daunting reality, a vision of chaos.
The upheaval created by these chaotic conditions at the beginning of our new millennium is exacerbated by the fact that the institutions and systems currently in place to organize and regulate our global societies are proving to be inept. They are the product of an industrial era that lies behind us. Profit driven multinational entities proclaiming a message of “bigger is better”, who measure value only in dollars, and defer social responsibility to governments, are no longer where it’s at. Innovation and technological breakthroughs are the domain of small specialized companies who exist in a dynamic network of partners where trust and collaboration are the name of the game. Your competitor might be your client tomorrow, your business model may become obsolete overnight (something about which the music industry is in a strong state of denial). Centrally managed control driven hierarchies don’t stand a chance in this new context. We see the reality of this in the fact that the bottom-line of large corporations is all about optimization, profit is produced by outsourcing and cost cutting, and there is an absolute limit to the amount of costs you can cut.

The Life Sciences represent a context where the rapid rate of technological development creates truly complex dilemmas. Ahmed El Sheik presented us with a compelling vision of mankind; its past and its immanent future. “Evolution through Acquisition” expresses the great conceptual leap forward that occurred in some early hominids and that has been driving the development of our primitive ancestors towards Homo Sapiens Sapiens trapped in its current condition. There is something unique about the human ability to acquire external objects and use them as extensions of our own capacities. Certain animals use tools as wellchimpanzees catch termites with a stick, sea otters crack mussels on a small rock they rest on their belly, but this behavior is ad hoc, and the tool is discarded as soon as the goal is reached. Humans don’t discard their tools, we cherish them and keep them around; we develop and improve them; we combine them and integrate them into vast systems capable of tasks that transcend the ability of any biological life form.
Simple tools are extensions of simple functions. We have been developing our tools gradually throughout the evolutionary timeline to fulfill ever more complex functions for us. We invented chariots and swords, sailing ships, gunpowder, taxation, non-linear mathematics and jetfighters. We have now reached a level where even our most complex functions, those related to perception and cognition, are performed by tools and machines external to us. Telescopes extend vision, as do satellites; computers extend our memories and our ability to perform calculations. We exist in a symbiotic relationship with this technology, and this symbiosis is becoming ever more explicit. We have started to integrate technology back into our physical systems: artificial joints, pacemakers, synthetic organs. We are experimenting with integrating electronic circuitry in our neural system. Soon there will be no physical impairment that will not have a technological solution.
As more and more parts of our bodies can be turned into machine; as the symbiosis consolidates itself; what does this mean in terms of who we are? What will happen to Homo Sapiens Sapiens? The moral implications of all this are as yet unclear. As usual technology moves much faster than our theories of ethics, leaving us rather empty handed in the light of these dilemmas. We lacked the time to delve into them, it is a big subject, deserving a conference of its own.
This discussion emphasizes a crucial point. Rapid and complex technological change is not an abstract issue, it is not something that happens far away from your living room in the ivory towers of corporate R&D departments. It is going to affect your own personal integrity, your daily life; it is going to change your human identity, it may mean the end of the human race.
Nietzsche wrote “Man is something that has to be overcome”, but are we willing to give up on physical self? Are we ready for our incarnation as cyborgs? Not science, not ideology, not government, not religion are going to help us answer these questions. Some may find the cyborg vision appealing, entice by a profound expansion of our abilities and the potential to eliminate human suffering. We can become magicians: turn a normal cell phone into a tiny implantable micro system and telepathy is a reality. The risk is of course in the technology itself. All technology is subject to technical failure. When technology is master you reach disaster faster. Who is to judge which changes are good and which are bad?
We have no choice but to reconnect to our own internal compass: our. Each and everyone of us will have to address these fundamental questions and come up with unique and personal answers. This resonates strongly with the appeal to self- empowerment that several speakers emphasized. Futurist Glen Hiemstra told us that one of the greatest threats to a sustainable future is the lack of positive visions for the future. That then is what we need to address here. It is true that incumbent systems overshadow the power of the individual, it is true that many of us feel powerless against these Molochs of established power. Yet the only effective way forward is through a process of reflection that starts with the realization that each individual has the power to change our reality. We ourselves are the center of the new world. We have to stubbornly create this mental image of what we desire, and strengthen our conviction by aligning this vision with our deepest values. Our own personal vision is what will guide us as we start identifying new patterns which are emerging out of the current chaos. Our own values will drive this process.

Risk was the central theme. So what is risk? Risk is not a numbers game about expected ROI within a limited period. Such limited conceptions are dangerous because risk is a matter of perception. A perceived risk is a product of our own personal predilections, a mere bias. We fear the disasters that happened to us in the past, and through our focus on this fear we invite the same disasters to strike us again. We should ignore our obsession with the particulars of our own personal past. The true risk is in engaging the future with the same disposition and the same limited values that have defined our past.

Blogging revisited

I have long wondered about the hype surrounding blogging. Sure it's fun to be able to vent, rant or eloquently present your views to the world via the web. To let people know what is happening in your life, how your trip around the world is progressing or what your hobby can mean to other people. We all have fun using it that way. This blog is being read by maybe 40 people, that is not that much, but it's more than in the 'old world'.

But, and here it is, what I see when I look at blogging from a distance is bland drabbness. It is not about self expression to create diversity and new insight, it's about group think and the lowest common denominator. Blogging therefore is just a new means to virtually exhibit exactly the same behavior we show in our real life. I know I am going against the grain here, so here are two bloggers with whom I heartily agree and who can back up their opinion with research in the case of Geert Lovink and with business experience in the case of Werner Vogel.

Being clever instead of smart

We have had a week of guest blogging at the Dutch Marketing site www.molblog.nl. What strikes me is how important it is to be clever instead of smart. Both Mathijs and I have been writing articles on where we think Marketing is going and where it should be going. The resulting discussions showed two things.

The first is that it is apparently less about content then it is about words. In other words most of the responses are rhetoric. In a sense this is understandable, since most who respond are either columnists, or people who want to spread their own message instead of creating a debate on the merits of ours. Especially columnists have a need for sarcasm and the resulting controversy since they live of their ‘street credibility’. They also desperately need to have the last say! What strikes me is that the ones who want to spread their own message use the same mechanism of attacking the words saying we are wrong and then telling a 99% overlapping story in their own words, but with a different ending. Where we say: “Guys, it’s time for some reflection because the ship is sinking and we think this is the reason.” They say: “This is the reason, the ship is just changing course and everything is OK!” All the while, the evidence is staring them in the face and I have yet to see any argument based on content to support their version. It’s all words and isn’t that exactly what most people associate with Marketing?

The second is how easy it is to get caught in the moment and how tempting it is to join the fight instead of debate the issue. The rules of the game for blogging apparently have one that says that you win if you are better at the word game than your opponent. I may not like that rule, but it was very hard to resist since it was an easy way to draw attention to the resulting ‘discussion’. Real value wasn’t created, but the site definitely got more hits, so in that sense there is a rational behind the behavior.

When asked to blog on the site we were very clearly asked to not talk about Crossing Signals. We haven’t and yet one of the responders blamed us for trying to position our own consulting practice. First of all, what consulting practice? We are a network organization that practices what it preaches through setting up a community around innovation and create value together. And secondly why use such a demeaning tactic? Because he does not agree, or because he is scared we might be right? If it is the first, then it is not a valid argument that adds to the discussion. If it is the second, is it cognitive dissonance?

I think the same goes for innovation. To most people it is more important to be clever instead of smart. It is more important to confuse optimization with effectiveness and therefore associate it with innovation, than it is to really innovate and increase effectiveness. Why? Because, old habits die hard especially if they appear successful, and efficiency through cost cutting is successful in the short term.

Isn’t it a bit sad that what we have learned from the past week is: “If you can’t impress them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit!”? Any ideas on being more clever so we can create value by being smart?

Let's stare Karma in the eye!

Being an autonomous and authentic person and at the same time be part of something larger. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? So why do the Dutch treat this as a contradiction? Why does it seem impossible to us to have independent thoughts that make us genuine people while combining that with caring for one or more bigger pictures together with others? I am talking about everyday life here, not about charitable institutions like the World Wildlife Fund or the people who go from door to door to help fight cancer. Why does fitting in in everyday life mean sacrificing much of our independent thought?

I am exaggerating to make a point and thinking out loud here, but I think that Dutch culture has reduced everyday life to following rules. All the written rules you need to adhere to when rebuilding your house, the rules for being an employee, the rules for setting up a new company, build a house, etc. All the unwritten ones, where you need to ‘act normal’, be politically correct and above all to not stick your head above the corn unless you want to get it chopped off. Being part of something larger in this (Dutch) context means following rules, it does not mean independent thought or authenticity. Worse, though we rationally understand that independent thought and authenticity could very well lead to excellence, we Dutch think in problems associated with breaking the rules linked to the possibility of failure, not in opportunities associated with excellence. Who wants to be associated with failure? It’s safer to maintain the status quo and follow the rules! I can screw up as much as I please, as long as I can demonstrate I did it by following the rules! Hey, it's not my fault, it's the system!

After the fact, most people say they didn’t know they didn’t want to do the things they did. Why? Because they were not being authentic, they were just following the explicit and implicit rules without thought, or at least no more thought than that of the ‘here we go again’ kind. They may have been beaten by the system for so long, that they couldn't even conceive of doing things differently and break the rules. I am not talking about the law here. Our legal system is not at issue as it is the basis for our democracy, but rules are not laws and as the saying goes; most of them are meant to be broken! And should be broken, because all the while, a win-win solution has been staring people in the face and they felt they could do nothing. No wonder we have such a high burn out rate! What does it take for people to realize that the only way they can create lasting value is by being autonomous, authentic and be part of a diverse group of people with the same goal in mind and the tools and methodologies to get there?

If you believe in karma, we (the Dutch) are currently getting what we deserve; a political elite that hasn’t got a clue about its constituency, a slow economy, little or no innovation and an increasing part of our population that is growing up without a future. Our educational system is turning out students who haven’t been taught to think for themselves and are only taught how to follow rules, academic, scientific or societal ones. FIT IN OR ELSE! I won’t go into the emigration issues here, it would be too easy. We are going nowhere collectively, because we wear straight jackets of rules that limit the expression of our independent thought. Thereby limiting the means to find kindred spirits and create value together instead of alone. That’s what individualism at its extreme means, being alone. I don’t believe in that kind of individualism. Nobody wants to be alone and nobody wants to be so much part of a community that the self becomes indistinguishable from the group. We want to enjoy the freedom to participate as ourselves! Freedom is also a state were we work without unwanted restrictions. That doesn't mean without rules or restrictions! Just ones we've chosen to accept as an individual and as a group!

So, what are we to do? Are we going to look karma in the eye and change the rules, or wait for it to sneak up on us and bite us in the ass? Do we have the 'oomph' to do things we are afraid will tempt karma to get back at us, while believing that in effect karma will reward us for creating value for each other? What do you think? Let us know and share your thoughts!

Does the walker choose the path, or does the path choose the walker?

Looking back on what we have done lately, I wonder about the path I have been following personally. I have always been on the forefront of new products or services. Products because I am what others consider a gadget freak, services, because as a consultant I was involved in rolling out new services and as an account manager I sold new types of services for Capgemini. Four years ago I was responsible for a company that had information retrieval technology and a knowledge management concept that were ahead of their time. Two years ago when working for an e-learning company I was intrigued by the possibility of using e-learning tools to create an extended enterprise/eco system for companies. Now I am working together with some interesting people to combine all these aspects into a concept that uses collaborative networks and learning to set up a culture for innovation and provides a path to innovate in a structured manner and provide the energy needed for change. Be it services or products.

Though always involved in innovative products or services and always being able to think in multiple boxes at the same time, not to be confused with out of the box thinking, I wonder whether the end result is a conscious choice. Or have I just been lucky? Did I make it happen, or did it happen to me? Much of what I have been doing the last three years has been trial and error and do I recognize a central theme because of cognitive dissonance, or have I been making conscious choices that led me here? It’s probably a bit of both, because we humans think we are such rational people, while in effect we are extremely emotional ones as well. I may never know the real answer, but one thing I do know. I don’t believe in coincidence. In Holland there is a saying that says that luck is with the dumb. In English I believe it is luck is with the bold. As just stated, I don’t believe in luck. I believe in being prepared, prepared to go for an opportunity when it arises, prepared to be open minded enough to seize the moment when it presents itself. Change is the only constant, never more so than today, so today, I believe, is the moment to seize. Whatever path chose me before, now is the moment I choose the path and start walking.

Check out our path over here!

Sparing someones feelings by denying them?

There is something that has been bugging me for a long time. Why do people think they can spare someone’s feelings by denying them? I have been in several situations where people were in serious emotional distress and everybody left the room, literally or metaphorically. It is especially clear when someone has been diagnosed with a life threatening disease, everybody asks how the patient is feeling, but very few really want to know. When the real emotions are on the table, most people try to immediately change the subject. When asked why, it is invariably to spare the emotions of the patient, their friend. WHAT??? Are they so afraid of death that they can’t handle the emotions involved in dying or in less serious cases failing? Even when their close relative or friend is the one needing help to deal with it himself? True or not, I always think of these people as cowardly and selfish. The funny thing is, I am a minority and as such the majority blames me for being rude and insensitive. In effect I am to them, but they change it by telling everybody it is to the one in distress. The western way is to ignore the emotions so the subject can as well and continue with his or her life. Dying doesn’t influence this at all! Aren’t we westerners lucky.

To me this is a contradiction I haven’t been able to solve. What I do nowadays is hang around a little longer and do my thing when the rest has left the room, or before they enter it. I show serious interest and even try to make someone laugh by playing a little. My reward is that the one in distress starts telling everybody that I have surprised him or her by being a nice and interested guy after all, while everybody has been telling him or her that I am insensitive and self involved. I get some strange looks, but the attitude towards me remains the same, complete misunderstanding. As I said before, I am apparently a difficult person to be with until you know me and god forbid that they are the ones in need of change. It's much easier to cling to the earlier made judgement and feel safe by forcing me into the expected role. Such a shame that a square peg doesn't fit a round hole, but let's keep trying, because I am sure he's round!

What it has taught me is that the people I respect and who continue to learn and grow in life have one thing in common. They understand the following two sentences have the same words, but definitely not the same meaning: “We work on ourselves to work for others and work for others to work on ourselves!” That by the way is also the essence of innovation!

Fairies at the bottom of the bottle

Is the bottle half full, or half empty? These days I first ask what’s in it. If it’s vinegar it’s half empty, if it’s wine . . . well you get were I am going at. If it’s medicine, it starts to become complex. A patient’s expectations are a lot stronger and more complex. This will cure me! I will be given back the control over my life and be whole again. The doctor providing the medicine suffers from the same delusion of control. The decease has been named, I am its master and here is its cure. Actually most of the time we have no idea about the root cause, but the symptoms have been diagnosed and the medicine has proven that it works to alleviate the symptoms. This is an accurate description of what we do in medicine. Especially when diseases are life threatening. When you are a doctor treating a difficult disease the bottle is half empty and you hope for the best. When you are a patient, you hope for the best and the bottle is half full. At the end of the bottle, fairies will have magically taken care of the disease, we hope.

Whether it is chemo therapy, vitamin supplements, or the new wonder drug of omega 3 fatty acids, we all suffer from this expectation of fairies at the bottom of the bottle. The patients and the doctors both. We should consider ourselves lucky that most doctors have the sense to do some research first to see if there actually are positive effects and try to eliminate the worst side effects.

It is no different in the world of business. When you provide innovation services to companies, generally everybody hopes for magic bullets and wants to do as little as possible against as few costs as possible and without any risk whatsoever. They do like to talk about innovation though. Consultants take advantage of these desires by catering to them and providing the illusion of magic bullets, of systems that have proven their worth in a specific context and have been generalized as a one size fits all solution. I am sorry, but there are no fairies in business either! We are not cute old ladies with wands who tap you on the head, smile friendly, twirl in the air, wink at you twice and take care of all your problems, and then present you with a bill you might not be willing to pay: your soul.

To deal with your challenges we make you face up to what is at the core of these challenges, help you select the right diverse team of people, help you act decisively and work hard, very hard, to innovate and make sure it is not us, but you who takes care of your problems. This is a powerful package of inspiration, dedication and creative fun. Not willing to invest in such a relationship? Not willing to go the distance to get to the core of a challenge, name it and make the decisions needed to tackle it? Not willing to stand firm and defend what you believe is right? Not willing to act and do the work necessary to change in order to innovate? Check out this site, you’ll love it. If you are, check out this site!

About desire

I have just had a fantastic week full off mastering moguls and black slopes in the snowy mountains of Austria. I went there with my brother who had the brilliant idea in the week before to book a trip while the snow was good. The snow was great and so where my discussions with him when we were not having fun carving. I learned something about him that I hadn't realized before; we are very similar people. Everybody always wonders how we can be brothers because we are so different. I am sorry to disillusion those so opinionated; we only express ourselves differently. We more and more seem to find each other without necessarily agreeing and I love him for it. Haven’t we written about this here before? Trust, respect, values and personal drive?

Where I get enthusiastic about something new, he is interested, but much more cautious. We both revere integrity, we want to be the best at what we do and have a passion for sports; I over analyze, he tends to think as little as possible. We are both very stubborn people; he listens, pretends to agree and then still does his own thing, I listen, tell you I disagree and then do my own thing. Which people interpret as me not listening, but that is another story. We are both opinionated and emotional people, we even found we partly share the same taste in women, music is debatable. We both are enthusiastic people, he just needs two more beers to show it. Where we differ is, as I said, in our expression; I wear my emotions on my sleeve where he is pretty hard to read. I anger easily, but forget just as quick; he has a higher threshold, but he does simmer a lot longer. I am not an easy person to be around unless you know me, he is an easy person to be around until you want to get to know him.

What if this is the same for most of us? What if we have the same desires, but just express ourselves so differently that it looks like we don’t? As brothers, there is this blood tie that keeps us trying to get to know each other better; the beer during the Après ski probably helped as well. What if we can facilitate this process of getting to the core of other people and get a real understanding of what drives their behaviour and desires so we gain more respect for each other as me and my brother did during our trip? Without copious amounts of alcohol, but with a lot of falling and getting up and probably some conflict on the way.

I have been thinking why we appear to be successful at building trust and mutual respect and apparently are able to facilitate the process just mentioned. Churchill said: “Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” We approach most of what we do with a healthy dose of self-mockery, so there is no lack of failure. Because we believe in what we do and desire to be the best at it, we provide a lot of enthusiasm mixed with our vulnerability and we try to teach that it’s not desires that are a problem, it’s that they are too often too small. Too small to ignite the spark of creativity in people, too small to spark necessary change, too small to bother getting up in the morning. There is something else Churchill said: “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” Now isn't that something to desire and aspire to?

Upside down

Over the past few days I’ve been learning about and playing with new technologies like Mambo and Joomla, in preparation for constructing our own website, which is planned to go live soon. Both mambo and joomla are content management systems (CMS), they are both free software, distributed under the GNU license; in other words: open source. I do not posses the technical skills to navigate myself through a LINUX operating system, and so open source has been somewhat of a philosophical discussion for me. I really like the concept of open source technology; as a way to stimulate innovation, as an example of collaborative networks creating real value, as a political force opposed to proprietary corporate standards, and even for the democratic almost anarchistic implications of the open source movement, but I’ve had very little personal experience with open source technology. Until last week that is, when I became intimately acquainted with Mambo, Joomla and WAMP (the open source server technology that supports the mambo and joomla CMS platforms). The results are impressive. I don’t get too excited about digital technology anymore: I’ve been around computers for too long, but I find myself being very enthousiastic about this stuff. I like it. It is intelligible, it is fun and it works! An interesting paradox has revealed itself however.

I started out with Mambo, but upgraded to Joomla because of a Database bug in the Mambo version I was unable to fix with the help of the appropriate online forum. Joomla is essentially the same technology as mambo, it evolved from it, but it is stable and – as far as I can tell – free of bugs. What Joomla gives you is an elaborate dashboard with which you can manage your website, and it’s very complete. You can add search functionality, dynamic menu’s, login and mail services, forms, news, surveys, RSS feeds… you name it.
Adding such fancy functionality to your website is a matter of pushing a button. I remember when I was working for a large software company a few years ago we would build such content management tools ourselves, and sell them for good money. Now everybody has access to this stuff. What used to be complex – and expensive! – has become remarkably easy. The easy stuff however…

When I got involved in technology I started out as a web designer. Designing and building websites, templates, interactive CD-roms, stuff like that. I am used to having total control over the design surface, and being able to put any element wherever I want it. Almost no creative limitations. The design tools I would use would really empower me in this aspect of my work. Designing was easy. The tools allowed for so much flexibility you could try out numerous ideas quickly, get feedback, make improvements, publish results, all in a matter of literally minutes. It was easy.
With this new CMS technology that has changed. The easy things have become complex. For me to reconfigure an existing template, or create a new one, I need to have detailed information about the software components that make up the webpages in terms of functionality. I need to understand the connotation of the parameters and see what parts of the design are in the template and what parts are taken care of in the style sheet (CSS).

The difficult stuff became easy, the easy stuff has become difficult. What can we learn from this fascinating juxtaposition?
In a world of primitive technology, where functions are not integrated, every step in achieving a goal takes effort, resources and time. In such a world it is crucial to always understand why you are making the effort.
In a world where creating systems with very complex functionalities becomes a matter of clicking some buttons; realizing ideas is easy, fulfilling desires is cheap and we tend to jump right into the process of creating new stuff. Realizing complex functions at the flick of a wrist becomes an automatic drive, with a limitless domain of application: there is always some other function to integrate…

In this context it is easy to forget why we are doing what we’re doing. “Knowledge management” is a discipline in which this folly has been playing a clear role. The vision is muddled, the goal absent. What used to be simple, knowing why you are doing something, even if it was only because someone else told you to do so, is now a complex question. We should realize this. More often than not we tend to pay too little attention to why we are doing what we are doing. And it is crucial to the process. It takes effort to understand the why, to develop the vision, to share it and to start living it. Once you have invested the necessary energy in this initial phase the difficult stuff becomes easy, our knowledge and tools will take care of that. Innovation can be catalised with a structured process, challenges can be met easily, solutions can be discovered in no time at all.

The necessary illusion of control

Yesterday I was called by someone from a company we had lengthy discussions with about half a year ago. They have their own vision on innovation and a wonderful set of software tools to support their process of innovation and decision making. We stopped our discussions when it was clear that they were too far ahead of us to match what we both wanted; to support innovation in the Netherlands. Too far ahead doesn’t do it justice, since what we wanted to do didn’t completely match where they were going and they were too far ahead for them to wait for us to catch up to them or take a step back and choose a joined path to explore. No judgment here, I am not talking wrong or right, I am just telling it like I saw it.

I have long wondered why, since the overlap of what we both wanted is great enough to make a joined effort. In our discussion yesterday, something became clear to me. In six months time their vision, concept or processes haven’t changed, but their message has. They are not selling innovation anymore, they are selling solutions. Office optimization, ICT optimization and Business building. How to optimally organize your office (space, enjoyment, privacy, etc.), how to optimize your ICT (costs, function, etc.) and how to pick the right ideas and bring new products and services to market, in other words, build your business. Innovation processes are still the essence of what they do, they just don’t mention it anymore. What they offer is a means to lower and control costs in the three largest cost factors (aside from the pay roll) companies face. Our discussions weren’t beneficial to finding their approach to market, they diffused and confused the issue. They had been there and why go through it again with another party? Especially when some of the things they were doing were having effect! Their processes fed the need for consensus in our society and it worked, so why change? Completely understandable, through their discussions with us, some of their mechanisms for control where questioned (rightly or wrongly isn’t the issue here) and they weren’t prepared to give them up, they had put too much effort into them.

Back to the title. Their company has basically found, through trial and error (though I don’t think they would agree with this classification) a way of offering their customers the illusion of control. Even better, by naming and focusing their solutions and having processes and tools in place to roll them out they have provided themselves an illusion of control as well. This is working! So why do I call this an illusion? Reality drives all events! Their processes can not cover all events, so they can not control reality! People know this, so they had a hard sell talking about innovation from a process point of view. They do not talk about innovation anymore, they do not talk about their processes anymore, they act and by the results prove they are right. They have mystified the means by which they reach results, even to us, they have been secretive to the point of paranoia when it came to their processes and tools; NDA’s came up even before we had discussed anything. Since there are results, they must be right, but are they really offering control or just the means to set up the illusion of it?

I am not trying to demean anything here, because what they do strikes a chord with me that they have found something that works which they are proving with their customers. In positioning it they are just the victim of human nature. Believe is stronger then scientific prove; we are lost without a sense of control. Worse, when we feel out of control, we get physically sick because our immune system starts to work less efficiently. To stay healthy human beings, it is absolutely essential that we have at least the illusion of control over our lives. So here’s to them for having found a way to provide us with that illusion!

One size fits all, NOT!

Have you ever tried those one size fits all sox? Then you know that they never really fit. When running they cause blisters, when walking without shoes they slip, etc. Still this is what we aspire to when designing a product. It has to be good for everything and everybody, so when we design a new programming language it has to be able to do everything (Java). In the end it will run on web based platforms and you have to buy into 'the network is the computer' philosophy as well, so it's not for everybody. Since it's Open source it's very hard to make money on it other then through services. From a programmers point of view it's not for everybody so we come up with new stuff like Python, which is more flexible, scaleable, etc., etc. Java apparently wasn't as 'one size fits all' as we thought. I can name many other examples (SAP a.o.), but for lack of space. . .

One size fits all only works as long as there is no real competition (Microsoft Windows/Office). Even Henry Ford wasn’t able to stick to any colour as long as it was black. TV started out as an almost round black and white thing to gather around and see moving images. Nothing really new about it; wires, tube, lamps, antennas, everything was already there. Someone (Farnsworth?) put things together differently – and we got TV. Just look around you today; CRT, LCD, Plasma, Computer included, DVD included, Dolby Surround, HDTV, 20" to 65" and even beamers. In a mature market there is no such thing as 'one size fits all'. The higher we go up Maslow’s pyramid of human needs, the more we demand differentiation and diversification. When consumers have their primary needs fulfilled, they want new features, features that differ per individual taste. They need to personalize their stuff. Individuals can be segmented as target groups, and if the target group is large enough and willing to pay enough, a new product or service variation will be launched. Not even Apple’s iPod escapes this fate, as we can see from the questionable way that video has been incorporated in the latest version. The original innovators rarely if ever survive the transition from one size fits all to diversity (only IBM comes to mind). Even Microsoft is constantly changing its business model and diversifying. Though services is still a hard sell for them.

At Crossing Signals we are exploring new territory, sometimes we hit the right spot, sometimes we miss. What people tell us is that we need to find something that is recognizable by all and that we need to sell solutions, not an approach to come up with a solution. Doesn't sound like we're to boldly go where no one has gone before. We are that first TV, there is nothing really new about what we're doing, we just combine features in a way that apparently hasn't been done before. I think we need to avoid the trap of selling one size fits all solutions, our society is too far up Maslow's pyramid. It's also what's killing the consulting industry. Since they know they can't deliver an exact end result they therefore refuse to take the responsibility for any end result. Customers are increasingly reaching the same conclusion; if that’s how it is, why not just do it ourselves?

We have an answer to this question. Most of today's challenges can not be solved alone. Everyone of us needs to work together with partners, customers and suppliers to come up with a product or service that benefits all participants. Surprised as we are by the fact, it appears we are very good at building the needed trust and transparency to work together, help define the exact challenge and provide a path to jointly solve any challenge. We work with our customers, not for them. We believe our approach is the best at guaranteeing that the right ideas are picked to meet a challenge and solve the underlying contradictions so everybody wins. Magic Bullet? By no means, but when it doesn't pay off we sure as hell had a meaningful experience, learned a lot and will do better next time. Controversial? Absolutely, because it goes against the current business rational of protecting your assets and defending your position, an understandable and even necessary approach, but don’t we all know instinctively that our approach is just as necessary for growth as the current rational is for survival? So why not do both? We're convinced it can be done, easily. We don't know the end result in the initial phase, but as soon as the group commits, so do we, because we are part of the team. One for all and all for one!

Implementing Trust

We are in the final stages of working with a multidisciplinary research team at the Technical University of Twente in Enschede. Together we are constructing a tool for assessing the value of a collaborative network and its potential to innovate. Enschede is a small provincial town near the German border and actually the place of my birth. Every time we make the trip to meet the students and discuss the progress of the research, something marvelous happens. We reap the benefits of what we created at the very start of their research assignment. Both as a group and as individuals these students have surprised us with their commitment and creativity and impressed us with their ability to collaborate and constructively engage challenges. Even working on Christmas day to reach a dead line.

At our very first meeting we did something we call Socratic Discourse. In a Socratic Discourse we try to have a dialogue on the essence rather than the appearance of whatever subject we choose to treat. A Socratic Discourse about collaboration therefore involves a discussion on personal drives, goals and values. It seeks to achieve mutual understanding of the existing diversity in a group. A diversity that we believe is essential for innovation. Our idea was that such an understanding would help build trust and provide the basis for our kind of collaboration; mutual respect. We were right; apparently even more so then we initially thought.

Building trust is a crucial aspect of any collaborative process, we believe it needs to start as soon as people get together to set themselves to a new task. Being homo sapiens we consider ourselves quite the rational beings, we are, but it is not our primary state. This becomes clear with an issue like trust. You invoke a whole array of subtle and diverse mechanisms for gathering information about what your partners in a dialogue are doing and more importantly why they are doing it. Does what he is saying match what he is doing, do his eyes match his stance, does the timbre of her voice match the importance of her message, is he fidgeting while he is talking, does she dare look me in the eye, etc., etc. So many of these messages are non-verbal, yet we have very fine tuned subconscious mechanisms to discern them, use them in our interaction and use them to decide whether to trust someone or not, without conscious thought and in a split second. Whether we are aware of it or not, our actions are driven by implicit believes, preferences and mechanisms that seemingly have a history and logic of their own. Talking about these believes and seeing them reflected in the eyes and words of others produces a great deal of knowledge of self and provides a greater understanding and respect between the members of a group. It is akin to the process that happens when therapy sessions are successful.

At Crossing Signals we start with the idea that trust is a function of the transparency of our goals (what we want) and our motives (why we want it). This transparency of goals and motives is what we achieve in a Socratic Discourse. We create an open atmosphere by setting the example: showing, not telling, people that it is alright to be vulnerable. We make room for reflection on what each of us contributes. What is there to learn? What is valuable about what you hear the other person saying? What do you recognize? What differences do you experience? How far are you willing to go for the other?

What encourages people to drop their natural defences and open up like this? Trust and reflection! They are a reward in themselves; there is an immediate intangible benefit that comes with reflection and trust. Reflection, gaining greater insight into oneself, is a valuable thing, we instinctively recognize this. The same goes for trust. Operating in an environment of trust is fulfilling, it makes us happy. In addressing fundamental questions in an open atmosphere and by creating space for reflection and acceptance, we have created a way to implement trust. The quality of the relationships between the group members and the collaboration between them are a direct result of this trust. They trust each other, we trust them and they trust us. This reality has created a tremendous amount of value in terms of creativity and results, not to mention the personal growth each member has experienced on many levels during our time together.