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.