Collaborative Networking

Solving Problems

2007-12-03T15:48:00.000+01:00

For quite some time, we've been involved with a network of people, active citizens, who have formed a platform to contribute to changing the way our society and political system works. The platform calls itself De Publieke Zaak.

Political systems are set up to provide stability and are adverse to change, as by logical extension are the decision makers inside these systems. They derive their power from the investment they have made in using the system to become successful. So much so, that the system provides the basis for their power and legitimizes it. Change is therefore not to be expected from inside incumbent political systems. The facts prove this seemingly universal truth time and time again.

Recently I was invited to join a think tank within De Publieke Zaak. This think tank is to contribute to a report on how to change and improve the functioning of the Dutch government. Part of our discussion was in a number of small groups, which was interesting and fun. There was a connection and the sense of a shared goal. Another part was a kind of idea selection process, dictated by a software system that claims to effectively manage and evaluate large amounts of creative input. We were put in cubicles and each of us had to respond to given questions with ideas. This, to me, was a huge disappointment, suddenly the whole interactive and dare I say collaborative spirit was out the window. Like a group of assembly line workers all my fellow Publieke Zaak enthousiasts were busily typing away behind their screens in the confines of their assigned cubicles. It filled me with horror!

The software system dictating my decision process had a paralyzing effect on me, which lasted for a minute or two, after which I got into a reflective mode. I abandoned my given assignment and started doing something else which I found much more useful; increasing my knowledge of post-modern philosophy. The results confirmed my suspicion on the effectiveness of the chosen software supported selection process. One of the facilitators proclaimed proudly that we had generated over 2000 ideas in the session. 2000 different ideas is no solution to any problem. It is in itself a problem, because which idea do you choose, and for what reason? Disappointment filled me from top to toe.

Then things got worse. After the software stuff a debate about the issues was started with three panel members (including former Minister Pieter Winsemius), with little interaction with the audience. The goal of the debate was to find a road to consensus. On 2000 ideas??? This shocked me. It is impossible to think that this can produce anything good, for the simple reason that a debate produces a winner and a loser. In a debate, by definition, someone always loses. One opinion is victorious over another, like a joust or a boxing match. This is the complete and utter opposite of consensus. In consensus you get everybody, no matter how different opinions may be, to share the same view. How can you dismiss the viewpoint of the one who loses the debate, and at the same time try to reach a consensus which includes that viewpoint? It cannot be done. By definition!

My second misgiving is about the desire towards consensus. One of the panel members mentioned how important it is to reach consensus on certain important values. Reach consensus on certain values? Mmmmm. Again, I don't think this can be done. What makes people unique is the differences in their value systems. Different people, even within the same culture, company or family, have different underlying values. And we at Crossing Signals believe that this is a good thing. These differences are exactly what makes great teams so effective at innovation; they are able to understand their fundamental differences, and use that to gain more insight into the problem at hand, this produces integral and by definition better solutions. When you start generating ideas and in trying to select the right ones, you don't want consensus, you want diversity. There is also the obvious argument that in a complex environment interests and agendas are so diverse that consensus even on simple issues is simply never reached.

In a discussion with one of the facilitators at the end of the session, he asked me what I would suggest if debate and consensus are so problematic. That was an easy question. It is all about creating dialogue and generating solutions where everybody wins. “Debate” should be substituted with ”dialogue”, where the goal is understanding each other’s differences rather than establishing the illusion of one victorious truth. In a dialogue the differences between people add to the solution instead of subtract from the solution space. Consensus can play a part in getting others to commit to solutions, never in creating solutions. Solutions created on consensus have the benefit of providing the illusion of stability, but they rarely if ever rise above a compromise. And what is the definition of a compromise? A solution that everybody can live with on the short term, but nobody is happy with in the long term.

Sports and Innovation

2007-11-13T10:31:00.000+01:00

Last Tuesday we went to a meeting sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs (EZ in short) and hosted by The Netherlands Office of Science and Technology. The meeting was on Innovation in Sports Technology and from the moment we entered the meeting we knew there was something different going on here than what we generally experience.

On stage was Erika Terpstra, former Olympic Athlete, former member of Dutch Parliament and current member of the Netherlands Olympic Committee. I hope I am not insulting her when I say that she doesn't show how smart she is. Actually, on stage, she doesn't take herself very serious at all. She jokes about her own short comings with abandon, but there is no lack of ambition and passion when it comes to what she has come here to say. She takes her message seriously: Sports unite people!

The atmosphere during the breaks and in the afternoon break-out sessions is relaxed, informal and enthusiastic. Everybody is passionate about sports and it shows. People are open and willing to communicate with each other, there seem to be no, or far less hidden agenda's. A breath of fresh air compared to the frantic, 'In your face' atmosphere of a business context. On most business seminars people are openly hunting and for most there is a lack of passion for what they do. Most attendants keep their cards close to their chest; so unlike the sports context which is clearly about more than the bottom line! However vague the goal essentially is, everybody wants to improve the enjoyment of sports. Sports is about being active and doing something that acknowledges your body and thereby yourself and your team mates.That experience unites the room.

We talked with two American Professors (MIT and Virginia Tech), and two Europeans, one from Austria and one from Germany. The funny thing was that the American professors who have to work in a competitive environment were very open about what they did and we should call them anytime to discuss and share ideas. The professors from Austria and Germany, who are used to working in a collaborative and government supported environment were cautious and had both had bad experiences where people stole their ideas and left them in the cold. If ever there was a contradiction. Funny thing is, the American Professors are jealous of the European way of doing government sponsored research, in stead of their 80% business sponsored research model that is more and more characterized by fighting over IPR's instead of doing valuable research. Apparently they hadn't talked to their European colleagues yet.

Coincidence? I am afraid not. In the US model you need to constantly prove that your research can improve the bottom line of the funding companies. A nice statistic is that US universities make much more money on 'selling' research than they do on IPR's, 80% to be exact. Even including Stanford and Google. In Europe mixing business and research is a taboo, and therefore can never be about improving the bottom line but has to be research that stimulates the European Knowledge economy. This is pretty vague, so who decides whether it does? Civil servants off course! Based on Government and EU policy. That makes getting funded about two things. Knowing how the system works and knowing what the politicians and by extension their civil servants find interesting. A good idea that is not politically favourable doesn't stand a chance. Suddenly it is about doing research that helps a politician gain or retain power. Call me a cynic, but if you are a person with a good idea, in Europe, you will always see the big companies get the big subsidies. Hundred and fifty million (yes, 150.000.000€) from a Dutch innovation fund to a marketing campaign for the Philips Senseo tea springs to mind.

Europe shouldn't copy the US system, it is far from perfect. At the moment, Universities are more and more fighting over IPR's with research funding companies. All with the hope of owning the IPR's for the next Google. This is highly illogical in face of the earlier mentioned statistic. For Europe, I am of a mind to compromise between the two systems.

First, whomever funds the research gets the IPR! Let us copy the open sports mentality. Off course the individual athlete doesn't like his improved shoe, skate or training methods known to other athletes before he has won some medals, come to think of it, he probably won't like it until he has won them all. But, he also knows that if it improves the whole of his sport, there will be more spectators, more opportunities for sponsoring and more money to be made in his relatively short professional life. Some even want a level playing field in order to really show they are the best. In the end isn't it about the record books? We all still remember Bob Beamon! So, let's offer the athlete who contributes to successful research a sponsorship to last him the rest of his short career. He'll love it, takes his mind off of sponsors, management and on to the task at hand, improving and winning. I see some nice parallels with universities here. They are good at research so let's keep them focused on doing their job instead of managing IPR's.

Second to this openness, let us also copy the approach of sports towards innovation. It is about teamwork and involving as many disciplines as possible. An athlete in the current environment can not win alone. Not even Roger Federer can do without a trainer and a coach during the Grand Slams. Roger is a team effort. The team can not be copied! Don't go for point solutions, go for integrated ones that are much harder to copy and by extension have a much longer life cycle.

Third, and this is something I think is also already happening in Sports, combine the power of governments to improve the infrastructure for education and research (providing the people with places to do sports), with the power of business to select ideas with potential and fund them on an individual basis (sponsor the talent they believe in and fits their image). Ideally that would mean 50/50 funding between government and business so government facilitates and business helps to choose, both supporting development in their own way.

But I am probably just pissing everybody off for inviting the Devil to dinner. The US universities for having to share power with the ever untrustworthy government (didn't George W. Bush singlehandedly prohibit stem cell research?) and European Universities for reducing their independence from the ever untrustworthy business. Still I have some hopes, because all professors I have spoken to this year are jealous of the other continent's success. Funny thing, human nature.

Same emperor, new clothes

2007-10-22T10:02:00.000+02:00

It’s a grey gloomy Tuesday morning in October, and we are on our way to the Dutch bible belt. We are again invited to Cordys’s annual Cordial meeting at Kasteel Vanenburg in Putten; a day full of networking and lots of tech talk on the frontier where technology meets business. Location and catering are again impeccable, and though we can’t escape the feeling that there are less people each year, a good crowd has shown up for this year’s meeting. Last year was all about Service Oriented Architecture, this year the emphasis is on Business Process Management. A different take on essentially the same solution.

Cordys is a Dutch producer of Business Process Management software based on a Service Oriented Architecture. It’s headed by Jan Baan, former CEO of Baan, the ERP software producer that notoriously went bust in the late nineties. He is one of the keynote speakers this morning, and presents us with a history lesson. Baan is eager to show that history has some tough lessons to teach. His vision on business process management software, he confesses, was “naïve” (he uses the word four times) and has taught him lessons that have off course been incorporated in the Cordys solution. Monolithic systems are a thing of the past (take that, Oracle and SAP!), it is about flexibility and has to be human-centric. I will return to the human-centric demand! He seems remarkably open as he speaks of the mistakes of yesterday and the pain of today, he even mentions his time in prison.

It is interesting to see how content driven this guy is. He really sees, understands, and cares about the complexities of his models. Here is a salesman with a passion for the product he’s selling. It’s a rather unique combination, and it’s convincing. The Cordys Suite (an all in one SOA and BPM solution) wraps all of your existing data and applications. It is a solution to a stubborn and expensive problem; legacy software. The solution is flexible, modular, and can be used to design any uniquely structured process without having to give up on existing investments. It really puts the user in charge. Or does it?

After a number of other speakers and plenty of complex diagrams I am struck by a fairly obvious absence of the knowledge worker in all of this. The term ‘human-centric’ is used, but it is being used to refer to tasks that can be set before the user and managed using the system. Tasks are not people! That is what you get with a process oriented approach; a focus on tasks and activities, not on people. The only one addressing the fact that people are event driven and not process driven is Hans van Grieken of Capgemini. I am afraid though that nobody in the room got the difference. We are not driven by having a mobile communication service, we are driven by the phone ringing.

We share Cordys’ vision on the importance of reality driving the software design process, and not the other way around. ICT is a means to an end, and in the end business considerations are what counts. Flexibility is a crucial aspect of the applications of the future. The days when knowledge workers are forced to adapt their preferred way of doing things to the design limitations of their software tools are behind us (and we’re all much better off because of it). Technology should serve not dictate the work process.

Information and communication technology should be and in the future will be as flexible as the whims and desires of the knowledge worker. Our children, the next generation of knowledge workers, are growing up with the internet and mobile technology everywhere. They will have completely different and much higher expectations of the software tools they work with. These technologies will need to provide them with instant information on what they are working on, and instant access to friends, family and other knowledge workers (even those not working for your company). Their social lives will inevitably blend with their business activities. Get used to the idea! There is nothing you can do to stop it! Whether you block Skype, Facebook or MSN, or are open about it will become a reason not to work for you in the future. These new communication tools are how young people gain information and exchange experiences and they expect its myriad possibilities from their future workplace.

These kids will not only be your new workforce, but your customers as well. Most of the process and client knowledge resides in the heads of your current knowledge workers. In our view it is not necessary to make a great effort extracting this knowledge from the knowledge worker in order to feed it into some kind of system. The best thing to do is to facilitate and support the knowledge worker herself, empower her to be flexible about what the software can do so that she is in control of the customer experience and not the system. The system is not as flexible as a human being and will not be so in our lifetime. Help your employees by providing better insight in customer behaviour and the best products they can offer a specific customer, but let them decide based on their experience and customer contact. You are better off training your workforce to trust their instinct then to put them in process driven straight jackets that will make them lose interest, become indifferent to your customer’s needs and burn them out. You may win a couple of thousand euros a year on efficiency, but will loose millions in missed opportunities and reintegration costs for burned out employees.

The Cordys pitch very explicitly addresses issues of control, the main concerns of management, not the knowledge worker. In the end the main motivation behind using the Cordys suite is realizing a steady flow of real-time, up-to-date, reliable information, so that management can control and optimize processes. If you have had SAP experts over at your company, this must sound terribly familiar. Efficiency and management information are still the main selling points. The software primarily addresses and solves problems important to management. Even though the Cordys software has the potential to empower the individual knowledge worker, making them more effective in addition to being efficient, these needs are not addressed. It is a one dimensional approach and shows a top-down, efficiency driven, old school, industrialized perspective on organizations and processes. The globalised world can not be conquered with a one-dimensional approach. The best you can do is prolong your suffering while slowly dying out like the dinosaur you are.

We see the market catching on to a number of important work related trends. ICT systems need to be designed around existing realities and processes, and need to be based on a client focus. Flexibility is key, which is what mass customization means. But it is still wrapped in old-school values. Your knowledge workers need much more control over what the systems can do for them, not just for you as a manager. They are closest to your clients, they have the most valuable knowledge, and ICT solutions should really be planned around their needs. This requires a bottom-up approach next to the top-down approach Cordys promotes. Both are needed and management needs to bring focus to enabling and facilitating next to monitoring and controlling. We see the need for a fundamental change in how organizations are structured, how and where decisions are made, and what it means to be a global knowledge based service provider. Network organization 2.0 anyone?

The Cordys technology responds to some of these needs, yet it is also clear that the Cordys proposition is based on the old paradigm. Power and control in the top and little attention to the needs of people and how to get the most value out of them. There is a lot of work for us to do still…

To affinity and beyond; Paradoxical Leadership

2007-04-27T13:23:00.000+02:00

Peter Drucker said: “Management is doing things right, leadership is doing the right things.” Doing things right is easily measured. All you need to do is define criteria for efficiency, cost reduction, etc. and put a reward structure in place for meeting these criteria. Doing the right things is another matter entirely. There are no easily measurable criteria that I know of; the bottom line seems to be the only one in use. The quintessential question for leadership few managers ask themselves is: “What are the right things to do and am I doing them?” Answering this question and actually doing the right things is what sets leaders apart. The knack of knowing what things to do and acting upon this knowledge is not given to everybody.

There also is this other part to leadership. The decisions about what to do cannot be delegated; someone has to make them, on his/her own. If they are the right decisions: you are revered as a champion, if they are not, you are likely to fall hard. Either way you are in a very lonely position. There are plenty of choices about what to do in today’s world, and the risks involved in actually choosing and acting upon the choices made are continuously increasing. That is why we have so very few leaders, not many men or women would take the burden of today’s complex choices and increasing risks and bear them alone.

Let us go back to management. There is an old saying: “If all you have is a hammer, all your problems become nails.” Let me add: “If you are in a hole, stop digging!” Most managers today seem to combine the two and are only using shovels, so all their problems are converted to needing bigger holes. They are getting rewarded because they meet all criteria of good management, but they’re not being judged on doing the right things. For the sake of space I will not go into examples. You know what I mean, and if you don’t, just open any business oriented newspaper or magazine and look at the amount of money that is being rewarded for shoddy work. (Enron, Parmalat, Ahold come to mind). At some point in time digging is not the best thing to be doing, filling the hole might have been a better idea.

We recently got a request for helping a department of a big consumer electronics firm to adapt its management style to what its employees expect, thereby empowering them and making optimal use of their unique talents and abilities. Different cultures were also part of the equation, but for the sake of convenience I will leave that part out of this picture. Most people associate management style with finding your affinity as a manager, bringing out the ‘you’ in your behaviour as it were. They believe that congruent behaviour (authentic and predictable) will help you develop a style that is effective and suits both you and your employees. If style where such a simple thing as being friendly, being tough or being thoughtful, or any other one dimensional trait, there would be a point to all this albeit a very limited one. But consider this: all your employees want you to be friendly to them. They also want you to be tough on people who step out of line. Come to think of it all your employees want you to think things through, for them.

Unfortunately life is not this simple, being everything at the same time to everybody is impossible. In our world the context changes continuously and so should the accompanying management style. Every context requires a different approach and so does every employee you have. The question is not whether your management style fits you, but whether it fits your context. Management style is not about you it is about how you respond to what is happening around you. Context is superior in the relation you have with it, reality drives all events, so don’t let your ego get in the way.

Now we come to the central point of this piece. To us Management style is context dependent and is about your ability to show the right style given the context you are in. Every individual has certain affinities, preferences for dealing with situations. Some managers like to control a situation whereas other managers would rather provide the freedom to act. These managers do see when a context is better dealt with through control or freedom, but under pressure they will act according to their affinities and go with what they feel instead of what they know they should be doing. The point is, that your natural affinities will make you effective in one situation, thereby successful, but those very same affinities might prove disastrous in another situation. If the context requires control and the person’s first inclination is to give people freedom . . . . . Well you can paint the picture yourself. The wisdom in leadership is in understanding these two things: is your natural affinity (‘style’) effective for this context, and if not, can you produce the appropriate style or do you need someone else? Someone that is preferably already a member of your team!

This is where Paradoxical leadership comes in, recognizing how to act given your context and who to put in charge given this context. As the manager of a team of people, you should always keep an eye out for people’s egos taking on contexts that should be dealt with by those better equipped to deal with this context. That is why you need to know the affinities of the team of people you are leading and let them deal with contexts they have affinities for. Not only does this solve the “It’s lonely at the top” aspect of leadership - you are delegating your leadership according to who is best suited to deal with the situation - it also solves the earlier mentioned department’s empowerment issue and the use of its team’s unique talents and abilities. Three flies in one stroke!

Paradoxical leadership is about reflection on what is happening around you and acting accordingly, even if your actions seem to contradict earlier actions. This reflection is much easier if done with a diverse group of people, as is the subsequent delegation process of leadership. There are very few leaders who do the right thing in any context, because the individual that sees any context for what it is, is a very unique individual indeed. Under pressure we all revert to our natural affinity, which means that most people will use their hammer even when their problem is a hole. The solution in this case is very simple; build a team of people with different affinities that has the ability to choose and adapt as a whole!

Let us take a start-up as an example. First you need the freedom to generate ideas, structure them into concepts, package them into products that you can sell, sell them and make money. Second, you need to put rational goals in place to grow your business. Third you need to set up internal processes to improve efficiency, control the flow of money and manage the risks. Fourth, if you grow big enough, you need to support your employees with career opportunities, training, et cetera. The first is about freedom and focus on the market, the second is about control and focus on the market, the third is about control and internal focus and the fourth is about freedom and internal focus. The challenge is, that though these are phases, certainly by the time you reach the fourth they all happen at the same time. Paradoxical leadership is not only phase dependent, that would make it easy, it is about adapting to the challenges you meet when confronting them all at the same time.
Back to the manager stuck in a hole. Why not help him gather teams around him with the ability to look at the same situation from different viewpoints, with different tools to adapt and in the process give him an opportunity to continuously adapt his leadership to the given context? In other words make a paradoxical leader out of him!

Behoudziekte

2007-03-05T11:31:00.000+01:00

De verbureaucratiseerde mens
in de pluralistische
egalitaire
vergadercultuur
produceert slechts woorden.
Argumenten zonder kracht
die slechts leiden to afleiding
vullen het vacuüm
met leegte.

De sprekers komen tot
beslissingen
die niet leiden
tot actie
niet voortkomen
uit toewijding
noch verbinden
noch inspireren.

Het platgeslagen
van inhoud ontdane
compromis
regeert,
alsof de eeuwige
behoudzucht
ons bestaan
met zin
vervult.

De toekomst wacht
en luistert
en hoort
van ons
slechts onmacht,
vervreemding.
De verdwaalde massa
produceert
een onthand
en roerloos
zwijgen.

Loosing a running battle

2007-02-25T16:25:00.000+01:00

Why is it so hard to make long term decisions? Why is it so hard to break out of conventional thinking when the facts tell you you should? There is a recurring theme here; why is it so hard to change when we know we really need to? I have been pondering these questions for many years. Last night I was watching a program on the battle against cancer showing that we are essentially loosing it. Not that the research into cures is without results, but the number of people getting cancer is growing faster than we can come up with cures. The holy grail of genetics is proving to be harder to find than we had hoped and can only be applied to very specific cases at high costs and at the moment you need to take the drugs for the rest of your live.

In the fight against cancer more and more treatments are found to alleviate suffering, halt tumor growth and postpone death. We are growing towards a situation where cancer will become a chronic disease like diabetes or asthma, with the lifelong dependency on the taking of drugs as a result. In this it is very much like the way our society deals with some of its most persistent problems such as multi cultural integration, social security and the ever growing pressure of economic growth on our environment. We create stop gap solutions that keep everybody happy on the short term without solving the issues on the long term. Hello asbestos, oil dependency and the hole in the ozone layer. Not to mention global warming.

When fighting a war, it is good to know who does most of the propaganda. The pharmaceutical industry as a whole has a vested interest in cancer as a chronic disease. Ninety-five percent of the annual budget for cancer research goes into finding new treatments; the meager rest goes into prevention. There is no drive to change the distribution of funds towards prevention, even though the scientific majority states that how we deal with our environment in preventing cancer will very probably deliver far better results than finding cures. This absence of willingness to change is completely in line with the political clout and deep pockets the pharmaceuticals have when it comes to deciding the agenda for cancer research. If we look at the part of the budget that goes to research into the mechanism of metastasis, the factor that causes ninety percent of all cancer related deaths, it is only ten percent. Metastasis is apparently too complex a mechanism to research and takes too long to provide a return on investment. Don’t get me wrong; from the standpoint of the industry this is a very valid reason not to pursue research. Why then are our governments not stepping in to fill the gap through sponsoring the scientific community in performing research into prevention and metastasis and provide legislation to prescribe the distribution of funds?

They do not know any better, pharmaceutical lobbyists have a vested interest and the power to get an appointment. The oncology professors with the knowledge to make a change lack the time to do a running battle with pharmaceutical lobbyists who not only have the time to plan their attack, but also have the time to translate their message into easily understood one-liners. Let’s face it, we did not choose our representatives for their superior knowledge of cancer, so we can hardly blame them for choosing to go the route of easily understandable sound bytes instead of the thorough route of understanding all the complex mechanisms involved in fighting cancer. If we can not cope with cause of death number one and prevent people from getting cancer in the first place, what does that tell you about the society we live in?

It is not the fact that our representatives do not make an effort. They do and do so with our best interests at hart. The problem is the way in which they do it. They are not making a collaborative effort together with industry, science and patient organizations even though they think they do. They go to big conferences, speak to all parties separately and then draft a proposal with their civil servants, a proposal that is then sent to the involved parties for their OK. The result is a compromise with all pieces of the puzzle and no holistic view of the whole. Talking to all parties involved and giving them a voice may be politically correct, but is by no means the same as collaborating with them to get win-win policies.

To ensure you have all the relevant pieces and a holistic view to combine them in the proper order, you need to work together closely with all parties involved. Not sequentially, but at the same time and with proper interaction between them all. The only way to make informed long term decisions is with all parties with a vested interest. For this you need a process to synchronize their value systems, provide a common goal and meet all individual goals at the same time. This takes hard work and strong direction, but certainly less time than the current approach, so why not give up the running battle for funds and start the battle against cancer?

Collaborative building blocks

2007-02-09T12:29:00.000+01:00

When talking to customers, partners or just interested people, the topic of collaboration is always an interesting one and a pretty contentious one at that. They are interesting discussions because everybody wants to improve their collaborative efforts and they are contentious because everybody has their own idea on how to approach improving these efforts.

What all seem to agree on is to look for complementary skills in the other party. Be it an individual or a company. E.g. one has an interesting product and the other the means to enter an interested segment of the market. Another subject most can agree on is to look for efficiency opportunities in working together. E.g. outsourcing of administrative or IT tasks. As a consequence of the previous two most agree on the fact that these kinds of collaborative efforts are transaction based; tit for tat. This is a very successful strategy, but also one that is very easy to copy.

I like to look at things from a different perspective. All of the above see the building blocks of collaboration in portions of individuals or companies. In other words, the individual or company is an indivisible building block, not a configuration of micro building blocks itself. This creates the premise for the aforementioned transaction based and sequentially structured value chain for collaboration. A way around this is for two or more companies to start a new one, with all the growing pains that are involved. I on the other hand want to look at the micro building blocks of the individual or company and use these not only to create value in their own chain, but add to this the option of integrating, combining and recombining parts of the individual’s and company’s micro building blocks into something new; the possibility to enter new value chains and create opportunities that neither can do alone or together as they are now. This approach also results in a new block to build with in the original value chain without having to go through setting up a completely new entity. Two flies in one stroke!

It is more than an interesting train of thought because our global village is forcing us to adapt to ever changing circumstances and alliances faster and faster. Companies and individuals can not get away with defining themselves as fixed macro building blocks, this is just not flexible enough anymore for our times. Even in partnerships, efficiency gains are not enough to compete against the far lower wages in the East. Their technology ‘disadvantage’ is slinking fast, so in five to ten years only wage will matter and they will still not be anywhere near western wages. We in the West will only be able to compete by changing the playing field. What better way to do so, then by integrating the context dependent best micro building blocks for a situation when they are needed. The Chinese, Koreans and Indians are building on such a large scale, that this will be a very hard act to follow! To change the playing field, we need to look beyond the exterior ‘brand’ of individuals and companies and create new collaborative efforts and ‘brands’ based on integrating the best building blocks suited to a new or changing context.

There is no such thing as coincidence. The pieces of the puzzle are finally starting to fit on more than a scientific level. Not only do we have the means to measure the strengths of minor building blocks and create insight, but we also have the means to aggregate this insight on a macro level and create new building blocks ready to tackle change and direct innovation.

Who Am I?

2007-02-03T13:21:00.000+01:00

There is a new trend that is becoming increasingly noticeable. The business of change management is taking inspiration, and even incorporating, ideas and concepts from traditions that can properly be designated as spiritual. New Age seems to have matured and is moving into the business arena. Spirituality is an important subject, an aspect of being that deserves attention and cultivation, even though there are quite a lot of diverging opinions on what the latter may imply.

We are not really philosophers at Crossing Signals, although we certainly share philosophy’s love for abstract thought and affection for truth. So, while investigations into the nature of spirituality are not part of our activities, spirituality is part of the reality we live and work in. It is profoundly human and expresses itself in behaviour, communication, symbolism and even attitudes to change.

Spiritual traditions are occupied with an investigation into the nature of the ‘self’ (or the nature of our ‘consciousness’, or the nature of our ‘awareness’) and specifically investigate how the nature of our awareness is related to the universe itself. Not just the mind as a cognitive subject, but the ‘self’ at a ‘deeper’ level. The philosophy of consciousness is an extremely elusive and tenacious subject. It is very easy to produce little more than mystification on the subject, vagueness and obscurity after all are very good places to hide. Since our western society constantly reminds us to be afraid of globalisation, terrorism, global warming, losing our job, et cetera, the possibility of salvation and our own distinct role in this salvation may explain the current popularity of all things spiritual. It is easy to create illusions that appear to be profound, but are not.

Theories of spirituality are theories of the ‘self’; spirituality is about what we really are. It seems to me that this will always be the most profound question: “Who am I?” In coming up with answers to this question we, in the west, have a cultural bias about the self that was expressed strongest by Rene Descartes. “I think therefore I am” means that I am fundamentally a cognitive agent, and as such (and because of it) I am separated from the world around me. Two considerations are crucial here, because this view of the self implies:
• I am the thoughts inside my head and,
• I am separated from the world around me.
One might call this a basic Cartesian dualism. Even in ego-bashing models of transcendence or enlightenment espoused by organizations such as Enlightenext, (see previous post) the idea of an inner self seems crucial. It is called the authentic self and is contrasted with an image of an evil, greedy, arrogant “ego”. Higher consciousness in this model is still MY higher consciousness, and as such these hierarchically structured concepts serve the discriminating tendencies of this school of thought.

Perhaps it was sheer serendipity that exactly in the same week we went to a Club of Amsterdam meeting on the Future of Consciousness I came across the work of cell biologist Bruce Lipton, who has a controversial albeit scientifically corroborated theory. Lipton argues that the regulating mechanism of cells, the mind of a cell, is its skin: the membrane around the cell. To him this is a logical consequence of the fact that cells constantly interact with their environment. Through chemistry, exchanging molecules, through electromagnetism et cetera. All of a cell’s behaviour is directly related to this interaction. Since we are in essence communities of cells, this has implications for us as human beings as well. Relative to cells we are super organisms arising out of the integration and collaboration of the billions of individual cells that form our body, much in the same way as cultures are super organisms produced by the complex interactions and histories of individual humans.

Our cerebral cortex grows out of what is still skin tissue in the early embryo. Lipton’s model suggests that not our brain, but our entire nervous system - distributed as it is throughout our body - and our sensory organs is the basis of our consciousness. This means that there is no centre of awareness; it arises out of millions of sensory and other interactions that go on all the time. Our whole being is controlled by a dynamic balance of constant interactions with our environment. The idea that there is a central director of these experiences and perceptions - an ‘ego’, a seat of consciousness - is just that: an idea, and therefore just as much a part of the constant chaotic dynamic stream of consciousness that is the nature of mind. The idea that each of us has more than one, and sometimes many personalities in his head can be traced back to the work of Sigmund Freud. Our active personality, which is the dominant voice we think of as ‘self’, is subconsciously selected based on its suitability to the given context we are in. Our (re)actions are triggered by the situation around us in ways invisible to us. Psychotics and schizophrenics hear ‘voices’ in their head, and are as such not very different from all of us who are sane. Sanity is just a matter of holding on to the assumption that all the different voices in our head, produced by conflicting wishes, desires and/or frustrations, are one person.

“The mind”, “our consciousness”, “the ego”, all are constructs to attempt to understand ourselves as wholes, as one being, as an individual, as a single personality. But we’re not. We are a set of gates and portals that constantly interact with our environment. We are not IN our context, we ARE our context.

This idea has important implications. I recently read an article by Professor Ganzevoort of the University of Amsterdam’s Business School. He argues that change is impossible on a fundamental level because we have an unchanging essence of self, a ‘soul’. You can change your look and adapt your behaviour, but you can not change the soul, it is your unchanging essence, it is “I”. If we consider the previous paragraph and its conclusion, this ‘unchanging essence’ cannot be real. We need some kind of internal stability in our awareness, and we call it ego, but it’s just a construct. This may be a very scary thought to most of us, but the good news is that if true, change is always possible because it is constantly happening. There is no fundamental obstacle to change. We are creatures of habit who react mechanically in many situations, and thus change seems so difficult to achieve. But real change is possible in every single moment. Change IS the only constant! Fundamental change can happen in seconds. Really excellent teachers, doctors and therapists know this and use this fact to be as effective as they possibly can and thus produce the ‘magic’ they produce. Bandler and Grinder’s original publication on Neuro Linguistic Programming was called “The Structure of Magic”.

This is a powerful insight and one that strengthens our conviction that what you need to understand about change and innovation is the interaction between people and their (social) context. That is exactly what we map with our Collaboration Scorecard, and is the foundation of our understanding of change potential, leadership potential and collaboration potential. This is why we believe it is so important to change the context to enable a group to change, and that is what we do in our workshops. Context is a powerful way to use as leverage as it speaks to us on so many different levels, our perception, our emotion, our intuition, our communication, our sense of connectedness, all of these are powerful aspects of our effort to create and change. This connectivity together with the idea of interaction on multiple levels is the essence of our vision of collaboration.

Quantum spirituality?

2007-02-01T12:34:00.000+01:00

Isn’t it just time for a new piece. We’ve been busy doing so much constructive stuff, that there has hardly been any time to write about what touches us. Be it negative or positive. But, and here goes, the last couple of weeks we have had many an interaction with spiritual individuals and groups and something struck me hard enough to not be able not to write about it.

One meeting was about spiritual activism and the other on the future of consciousness. The first was about the contradictions between spirituality and activism, the second about how we can reach a higher consciousness as a species. Essentially they have the same goal; make the world a better place. They also share the borrowing of concepts from quantum mechanics.

Let’s take the spiritual activism first. I have no idea why the two should be mutually exclusive to begin with, but that is for another time. The meeting heavily leant on the “Zero Point Field” theory from quantum mechanics. Zero point energy is the amount of energy associated with the vacuum of empty space (I believe Einstein was one of the first to state this). It is the lowest point energy a system can have and can not be removed from the system. The Zero point field is roughly the electro magnetic energy field that is still there even at absolute zero (-256 C or 0 K). Now, I am not an expert, and certainly make no claim at understanding this or other QM concepts to any serious level, but when you start translating this concept into it being the field that connects us all and that we can all tap into, and that it has finally been proven scientifically, I start to wonder about your sanity. When you start telling me that it can be used to keep me young, sadly, all wonder is gone.

The message was: “Don’t think do!” Use the ZPF and we will change the world for the better! All kinds of unverifiable examples were given as examples of this happening already. The only verifiable one was an experiment in1956 were a group of seventy year olds was transported into the world of their childhood (language, dress code, housing, activities, etc.). All began showing symptoms of becoming more youthful, both mentally and physiologically. This off course was all due to these old folks being able to tap into the ZPF and reach back to the body and energy of their youth. People were lapping it up and I felt pretty alone. The fact that other people have looked at the results of this experiment, interpreted them differently, came up with other explanations, and that putting seventy year olds on a light fitness regime produces even better results, makes never no mind to the attentive audience. Skepticism is reserved for outsiders.

The second meeting was on the evolution of consciousness. Here ego was the big enemy, and for convenience sake not defined as a prerequisite for sanity, but as a monster that constantly threatens to gobble us up and keeps our consciousness from evolving into a higher state. When it came to consciousness, the uncertainty principle was brought to bear. Since the outcome of what will happen is uncertain, we as observers can influence this outcome through our higher consciousness. Look at us humans having been granted a consciousness that animals have to do without. I smell the beginnings of a hierarchy and a minority complex shielded by trying to prove our superiority. Any actual real world examples of the so-called higher consciousness couldn’t be given and those who tried were righteously smitten down for being wrong by definition. Mystification and vagueness are good places to hide! In the following discussion, the attendees trying to come up with what could be examples of higher consciousness are, according to the guide, proving they have no higher consciousness by the mere act of trying to prove it and can therefore be treated condescendingly. The latter off course is done fervently since the poor soul does not understand and needs to be forced, whoops guided towards a higher consciousness. Am I the only one who thinks pity is petty?

What was being referred to as scientific proof for a higher conscience was the uncertainty principle. In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle (Heisenberg) is a mathematical limit on the accuracy with which it is possible to measure everything there is to know about a physical system and predict its future state(s). On a micro level, the more we know about a particle’s position, the less accurately we can say anything about its momentum and vice versa. So, what the esteemed spiritual guide was actually talking about was not the uncertainty principle, but the observer effect. Not only condescending, but wrong as well! The uncertainty principle is a result of wave-particle duality. Will what we measure act like a wave or a particle? We won’t know until after the observation. If the outcome of an event has not been observed, it exists in a state of superposition, which means it is still in all possible states at once. The most famous example is Schrödinger's cat, in which the cat is neither dead nor alive until observed. The effects of both these principles on the macroscopic world are negligible. I so hope I am not insulting real physicists by putting it this simple, I freely admit to not knowing any better.

Back to the meeting, it was stated that a higher consciousness can and will influence the outcome of the aforementioned superposition of the possible states of our society in a positive manner – as in the previous meeting there is this need for something better then a willingness to deal with what is. The easy way out, while pretending it is even harder then just dealing with what is. If you can’t impress them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit. What is consciousness? No consensus could be reached other then on “being aware”. If that is consciousness, what is a higher consciousness? Surprise, surprise, it was off course the ability to use our awareness to influence the outcome of events in our favor. The fun I would have if that were possible. A statement proven through the argumentum ad ignorantiam, since it is impossible to prove wrong, the fact that it can not be proven right makes never no mind, again. Where had I seen that before? It left me thinking though: “What if our Ego is such a smart monster, that it is capable of fooling us into aspiring to a fictitious higher consciousness and thereby getting its narcissist way?”

What struck me both times is that in searching for ‘deeper meaning’ in our lives, the complex and deeply philosophical QM theorems and concepts are flattened, simplified and translated to the point of loosing not only their context, but also their meaning. In looking for ‘deeper meaning’ the spiritual people I met are opportunists who use whatever is convenient and chuck out whatever they can not use, understand or explain. Yes, it is most probably out of fear and pain and is a completely, dare I say it, subconscious act, but that is no excuse to reduce these concepts to platitudes. I really do not understand QM to the level I would like to, for me all the more reason not to appropriate its concepts in the name of higher consciousness and spirituality. But hey, I am not enlightened anyway and am therefore to be pitied and looked down upon. Their consciousness is higher than mine! Funny isn’t it that all this talk about higher consciousness in the end comes down to feeling superior over others. History always repeats itself and god put fossils in the ground to fool Darwin.

Self organization with consequences

2006-07-26T17:23:00.000+02:00

‘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

2006-05-22T22:47:00.000+02:00

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

2006-03-31T09:32:00.000+02:00

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

2006-03-17T13:52:00.000+01:00

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!

2006-02-28T10:32:00.000+01:00

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?

2006-02-16T22:15:00.000+01:00

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?

2006-01-25T15:01:00.000+01:00

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

2006-01-17T02:09:00.000+01:00

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

2006-01-16T23:11:00.000+01:00

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

2006-01-11T12:20:00.000+01:00

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

2006-01-06T08:24:00.000+01:00

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!

2006-01-03T20:43:00.000+01:00

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

2006-01-03T16:38:00.000+01:00

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.

New year's resolution

2005-12-31T13:29:00.000+01:00

Don't trivialize your life. Think of how you can add value to you by thinking about how you can change to add value to those around you. Give meaning to your life by creating value for those you love. With sincerity, integrity and a lot of fun.

Value management

2005-12-30T12:32:00.000+01:00

We were at a meeting recently where somebody confidently proclaimed that time management no longer exists. Time, according to Einstein is just as reality an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. But that’s not an answer, to our mind time is real, and so is the ability to manage it. What he meant was this: today’s work processes involve so many different (micro) tasks as well as constant interruptions, that on any given day or week you will not be able to finish your To Do list. You can no longer expect to neatly work your way through the set of tasks you, your boss or your family have defined for you. You are unable to finish every single task at the end of the workday or week.

Our work has become more intense, non-linear, unpredictable and sadly, frantic. Information technology has increased productivity, yet it has not given us more time. We still end up with less of it; one of the cold ironies of modern life. We answer our remaining e-mails in the evening, listen to our voicemail driving to work or a customer, our meetings are interrupted by mobile phone calls, there is the morning newspaper to read, but also the newsletters you receive through e-mail subscriptions, RSS feeds and what have you. Your computer contains all the information you use to get by in a day and helps you produce whatever your boss is willing to pay you a salary for. God forbid your computer breaks down, it will freeze up all your productive possibilities! But that might just be a blessing in disguise for many of us; finally some time to reflect and something to blame for not being productive! If that’s the only way to get some peace of mind; forget about managing time, you will never succeed.

There is a way out of this. Stephen Covey has described it in his comprehensive book on 'The Seven habits of highly effective people’, Peter Senge tells about it in ‘The fifth discipline’. The challenge is no longer organizing your agenda, it is prioritizing your tasks and working together with others to learn how to deal with everything that comes your way. The leading consideration is no longer time, it’s value. There are too many tasks to do, so do the ones that add most value. Value involving (at least) four dimensions: personal, social, creative and financial, which we coincidently capture in our assessment of network value.

So, Time management becomes Value management. This requires us to address an entirely different set of questions. Task lists are easily filled, if not by ourselves, others will gladly oblige us by defining tasks they would like us to execute. Value management requires an internal mechanism for determining what is important, an inner sense of direction, an awareness of what pursuits are meaningful and an awareness of the consequences of choosing those pursuits for yourself and others. Value management therefore requires personal leadership.

Personal leadership emphasizes a vision and an understanding of what you want to achieve and what you need to do to achieve it. What most people tend to forget is that it is also very important to know how far you are willing to go, what you are willing to sacrifice in order to achieve your goals. We can have great ambitions, but often prefer to achieve them the easy way. How far are YOU really willing to go if push comes to shove! The same goes for the people you work and share your vision of the future with.

Making the switch from Time management to Value management implies that profound considerations need to be integrated into your daily routine; your shared Vision and resulting goals drive the choices you make and are a constant presence in everything you do. Discovering your own values and how they influence others is an arduous process, determining and sticking to what you really believe in is challenging. It becomes a lot easier if shared with others!

The benefits are substantial. When we master Value management, decisions really tend to become simple and straightforward. This is what Stephen Covey calls a principle centred lifestyle. Some might even say that the satisfaction you feel as a result of an achievement is proportional to the amount of suffering and sacrifice that was required. No pain no gain.

Making it simple

2005-12-21T08:54:00.000+01:00

We get a lot of interest and enthusiasm when we explain what it is we are doing. When we ask people to commit and together start solving an issue they have, we often get the objection that what we do is too difficult. “Why don’t you make it simple?”

Define simple. Easy, clear, elegant, clean? Stupid, dumb, slow? Where one man finds his paradise, another comes to harm! Even defining the word simple is not ‘simple’ and at the very least context dependent. Yet we all strive for our lives to be simple, always in relation to elegant and clean, but most of all easy; live the good life! People confuse simple with easy.

People always say that things where better in the old days. Life was simple when you just had to tend your land and live from the produce! Sure peasants who had to work 18/7, 365 days a year and give half of their proceeds to the robber baron who owned their land had a simple life, but it sure as hell wasn’t easy. It was especially hard during winter, disease ridden and they had a very short lifespan. Nothing romantic about it! Only a very limited number in the upper classes had it easy, the rest stole and plundered and even that isn’t as easy as it sounds.

In my experience, simple (easy) answers are always based on either 20-20 hindsight or blind faith. Whatever you think of these options, they are a clear indication that finding simple answers is not easy. Let’s take an example. Philips and Douwe Egberts (Sara Lee) put the very successful Senseo coffee machine on the market a couple of years ago. Elegant machine that provides a clean way to produce a cup of coffee that can be tailored to your taste with easy to use sachets. It’s a bit of a bother that you can produce only two cups at a time, but since we live in smaller family units, that’s not an issue in daily life; for parties we just use something else. This answer to making the coffee we like individually is simple, but do we really think it was easy to get there? Both parties had to build trust, a working relationship and contracts to start working together; can’t have been easy. They had to segment the market, come up with the right target group and they had to come up with a business model that would provide both with a healthy profit margin; can’t have been easy. They had to decide on spending millions on setting up production facilities, marketing campaigns, etc., on a product that still had to prove itself; can’t have been easy. Then they had to roll out, train and negotiate their sales channels, prepare to diversify the different taste options and keep their fingers crossed; can’t have been easy. They only succeeded in combining the resources of two companies and go through a difficult collaborative effort because they had faith in the success of their new product. Now, with 20-20 hindsight it’s a simple no-brainer, but if it was that easy, why did the other efforts Philips set up (with e.g. Nike) not work out?

Because collaboration and innovation are basically simple processes but aren’t as easy to do as we hope they are. When we need to invent something new, or solve a problem, we first need to define exactly what it is we need. Finding the exact need and solving the resulting contradictions to everybody’s satisfaction is the most difficult part of innovation; it takes collaboration. Why? Because there is no room for compromise when solving contradictions, all the while need is a perception which differs depending on context. The more people you aim to help, the more contexts your solution needs to be tailored to. That is not easy! It is best done with a multidisciplinary team, since they provide a multi context base to work from, align people and get them committed. Working with people is fun especially when it leads to something simple, but again it is not easy.

Wasn't it Einstein who said: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." I am affraid most people cross this line to make things easy. What is simple about what we do, is that we provide a path to follow. What is simple about how we do it, is that we do it together. What is simple about why we do it, is that we address a need in all of us; to want to learn and improve. The fact that it’s not always easy, is icing on the cake!

Coming back to the initial question. The question that should be asked is: “Why don’t you package the result of what you do in a simple way?” Good question! To us, what we do is simple while we know that what we want to do is not going to be easy. I think that is where the miscommunication occurs. We separate easy and simple on a conscious level, whereas most of the people we talk to do not. Simple things to us are never easy and we love a challenge. So when we talk about simple, we just don’t connect and when we talk about it not being easy we feed the resulting insecurity. This then is our biggest short term challenge. We’ll keep you posted.

Individualism doesn't exist

2005-12-20T15:23:00.000+01:00

Individualism doesn’t exist! I have said it before and I will say it again. Egoism yes, egotism sure! The strongest reason to stay in line? Peer pressure! When you are part of a group you conform to the rules of that group or you are out. When you are part of no group, you die! Literally!

I have stated before that the reason why our European governments are concerned over growing individualism is that they are afraid it will split our society, at least their version of it. The current US government has a different point of view, they create their own society/reality and do so through the conviction of faith, a dynamic enforced by the large group of born again Christians who have the firm believe that ‘God’ is in the White House through George W. Bush. They are using the very strong bonds that people form when they agree on principle and see their leader act on that principle without any doubt, and sadly: reflection. Easy certainty. Truth is less important than truthfulness. If enough people have faith in you, however wrong you are, you’re right! We see some changes now, apparently you can’t fool all the people, all the time. Wonder where it will end.

The European reaction to ‘individualism’ is more rules to keep people in line with the prevalent socialistic credo. Our governments limit our choices and how to realize our dreams in the name of efficiency and equality, and now with the web (and other sources of information) giving us more freedom to make our own choices instead of theirs, we have become individualists and don’t care about each other anymore.

This is an understandable reaction from people who have completely lost touch with their voting base and are caught up in ideals that are not prevalent anymore. They hang on to their ideals and make more rules to trap people in their idealistic nets. Their problem is that it has not been working for the last three to five years and will only exacerbate their and our alienation and so-called individualism. People don’t recognize themselves anymore in their so-called leaders, because they only see their leaders limiting their lives instead of providing paths and opportunities to improve them. That is not individualism, that is giving individuals the means to join other original thinkers and come up with new ways of improving our lives, creating new products, services and cultures that benefit the groups they are part of or create new ones that see the potential of doing fun things together. Those individuals that create stuff that has no value will stay individuals and connect to others or drop out of our society, so if there is such a thing as individualism, just use the perspective of the egg and not always the chicken and stop over regulating; whatever individualism there is will become extinct in no time. Communities will be the driving factor of our society. The ‘White House’ seams to be on to this and with the way they have done it, will sadly scare Europe into holding on to old school believes a little longer. See what is happening in the US; we don’t want that to happen here now do we! An argument we hear over and over again. What is happening is the ‘disruptive technology’ version for political institutions; the most discerning aspect of a disruptive force is that the ruling class doesn’t have a clue and in the aftermath is left wondering what happened.

All this may sound idealistic, and in a sense it is. I have an optimistic view of what people are capable of together and for those who think it will result in anarchy, they are just scared of loosing power. We still have such a thing as a legal system that has been set up to deal with crimes and excesses and we should be very careful about keeping it strong and functioning. Rules and regulations that limit our lives though should be a thing of the past. I sincerely hope that we renew our search for excellence and give people the means to connect and work together in ways they think best and create fun new stuff. That will certainly not be done through individualism, but by individuals who together form communities that benefit their members.

Let the buyer beware!

2005-12-18T15:53:00.000+01:00

We are working with the University of Twente to come up with a tool to measure the value systems of collaborative networks and their impact on the performance of networks. Whenever I talk to people with a scientific background they invariably ask me about the research protocols and how the research is done in a controlled environment that ensures the research can be reproduced. These are not wrong questions to ask, but they are not really applicable to what we are trying to achieve in the short run. We aim to use the results to drive innovation, improve people’s lives and - not unimportantly - provide us with a living. Considering the latter it is important for us not to be bogged down in a discussion on scientific methodology. Since our approach seems to be ‘working’, we are at this point in time less interested in why. We will put a research module, to measure results in the different value domains, into everything we do. It will provide us with an essential feedback loop, but will also ensure that we can provide a scientific basis to what we do in the long run. The research is important, but we have to apply it at the same time.

This is a trend the internet is fuelling. More and more research is being published on sites that are set up specifically for the purpose of spreading research (or is simply done through blogs) without the much praised and, according to many scientists, essential peer review. The upside is clear, the insights can be used right away (Barry Marshal admitted that their find of helicobacter pilori and it’s consequences for the treatment of peptic ulcers would not have been accepted by science any sooner, but would probably have saved hundreds of lives if the internet had been there when they made the discovery), it can be critically reviewed right away, improved by others outside the specific discipline, etc.. The down side is that there is no way of testing the validity of the research done and the information used to produce a new theory or solution.

Apart from the fact that this down side can be remedied by peer review, that is not without it’s problems either. Just look at what is happening around the cloning controversy in South Korea, the paper is still not retracted, since all authors of a paper have to agree to retract it. Another issue with peer review is the selection of peers. As in other contexts, science is put under more and more strain to produce, that means it is easier and easier to find peers who are willing to take a risk in co-authoring a new find so they can make a name for themselves. It is not that such eager scientists are deliberately being fraudulent, but cognitive dissonance does play a larger role in deciding to support certain research. It is like preaching to the choir and clearly not as transparent as throwing it on the internet, but at least there is a validation process. A process that is not in place on the internet.

Neither of these approaches to the development of knowledge is perfect, certainly not in today’s information society. Primarily because neither solves the most important issue that everybody has to face; how to make sense of the incredible amount of information the internet is offering us. Whether you are a scientist looking for new ideas or feedback on your theory, or a sales man looking for new products to sell, you get so much information on a daily basis that it has become impossible to digest. We try to do what we always do and that is filter this information. On the internet it is called search! Sure there is the emergence of tagging, but that is still in its infancy and for most internet users still unknown and in my opinion useful from an individual perspective only, not from a group perspective.

On the internet there is no certainty of having seen it with your own eyes (even in the real world there never was, but at least we ‘saw’ it with our own eyes), so we have to rely on search engines to filter the information we are looking for. I always had this problem that I couldn’t do a search on a concept itself. You always have to make a difficult formula of words, using AND, OR, etc., to get what you are looking for without too much noise.

Google has found a way out of the noise thing, it made a deal with AOL so that the top results of any search show those links that AOL will benefit from and Google will share the profits. There goes transparancy and independence in one stroke? Looks like Microsoft isn't so bad after all, they said no to this AOL proposal because they found it unethical!

How are we going to make sure we get the information we are looking for from sources we can trust? I sure hope someone will come up with a business model that excludes the kind of deals Google is making and provides us with a transparent means of finding stuff that supports our explorations and get's rid of most of the noise. The only thing left for me to say to all of you looking for information of your interest: “Let the buyer beware!”

Challenging Orthodoxy

2005-12-17T12:56:00.000+01:00

Why can’t a hen be an egg’s way of getting more eggs? What makes it so difficult for us to look at things from a different perspective then what we have been taught, or have gotten used to? We like things to be as crisp as a winter morning, so when something makes that much sense, why think about it further? It becomes an orthodoxy and is stated fact! I think there is no absolute prove for any theory out there. In history, every theory has been proven wrong, completely or partially. Complete new theories are rare, extremely rare, especially today. What we are doing is make incremental progress and build on existing theories. The funny thing is that most real breakthroughs where created through challenging orthodoxy. The earth is flat!

The last real breakthrough in physics was quantum mechanics. Einstein, having been a revolutionary in promoting his own theory of General Relativity, opposed the thought of infinite possibility; “God doesn’t play with dice”. With all his brilliance he couldn’t accept a universe built on chance and while having contributed to it in the early stages, became a counter revolutionary to the theory of Quantum Mechanics as stated by Bohr and others. Einstein’s orthodoxy was a mechanistic view of the universe, cause and effect! In his mind, there was no room for a context where the observer was the deciding factor/influence regarding the state of the observed. The results of the observation are relative to the position of the observer, absolutely, but created by the observation? That was just a bridge too far, chance had nothing to do with it. At this moment everybody in physics is trying to produce the great unifying theory, combining Einstein’s Theory of Relativity with Bohr’s Quantum Mechanics; the main issue being Gravity. Einstein’s objections have still not all been fully countered, but through them, Quantum Mechanics has made quantum leaps in providing us with many applications, from lasers to transistors and even new religions.

The point I am trying to make is that by creating new theories, we are creating new opportunities and new orthodoxies that limit other opportunities ergo they will be challenged. The question; shouldn’t we challenge the challenge to orthodoxy is like the opening sentence; a semantic joke to cover up our confusion. It is human nature to create contexts we are comfortable with. If we don’t like what a theory can potentially do to our comfort zone, we challenge it and try to come up with something that either sustains the status quo, or creates a new one we are comfortable with.

Why write about it here? Well, we are on the brink of a breakthrough regarding our thinking in setting up successful organizations and even defining success. Our theory - by no means new, but certainly not an orthodoxy yet - is based on a networked model of organizing and a different approach to value systems. The network members are motivated not only by financial gains, but by the relationships they have and make, the new knowledge they gain and produce and by the personal growth they experience. According to current believes, the hen - the financial value - is the essential ingredient, because it provides a basis to invest in the other three values. What we are trying to promote is the perspective of the egg; by building the other three values, we provide the basis for optimizing financial growth.

added Value creation

2005-12-09T12:08:00.000+01:00

Why only Value with a capital? Because that is the central word here. The fact that we want to add value means we have to create more then there already is and sometimes need to create it from scratch. This is always a joined effort and to make value creation sustainable, sustainability needs to be part of the process of value creation.

Why now? Because we have just had an enjoyable round table and I want the next one to be fantastic. We talked about valuable concepts, shared valuable experiences, engaged in the proces of innovation and interacted as a diverse group of people genuinely interested in each other. In a sense priceless, but we are all still searching for answers when it comes to how to innovate and work together. That's why I used the word enjoyable.

Where we succeeded was in creating an atmosphere of trust and sharing ideas, where we failed was in the combination of focus and engagement and therefore sustainability. We talked about high level concepts that did not paint a rosy future and are not easy to connect to daily life, depending on concept, part of the audience reacted and part took a leave of mental absence. Then we went into a session that explained all about innovation and only when we started putting it into practice did people really engage and it almost became a chicken run. Fun to see, and we should have started doing that sooner.

Were we failed, was not in our setting of the stage, not in our thinking, it was not in our sincerity or in the selection of people present, actually, that is what made the day fun. What we should have done better is engage people in telling stories and add value to each others story that each of us can take home and use to improve our lives. Storytelling is a powerful means of creating value. It touches things we recognize and engage with, it makes it easier to learn things and it makes you want to add your own experiences to the story. In the end it will not be his story or her story, it will be ours. Then and only then will we all start to actively spread the message by retelling the story and engaging other people.

We have three to four months to prepare for the next one, so we'll do our best to put what I just said into practice and have a fantastic third round table! If you have any suggestions, don't hesitate to leave a comment.

The second installment of our round table!

2005-12-08T15:10:00.000+01:00

We held the second installment of our round table yesterday. Some could make it again, others were new to what we try to accomplish. As before, a very diverse group of people. This time we wanted to test our progress from social networking, to innovation through collaborative networks and have fun at the same time.

Mathijs started by welcoming everyone to our own collaborative network and explained what is happening in our businesses and why innovation is desperately needed. He discussed the reality of business not sticking to their ‘allotted’ function in the value chain. Your competitor today, may be your supplier tomorrow and your customer may become your competitor. He skipped through the global equilibrium shift and resulting Asian threat to our welfare, since we are bombarded with that on a daily basis and went on explaining the ‘efficiency trap’ we in the western world are in. A double bind where cost cutting and efficiency to the point of anorexia are rewarded by shareholders and driven by fear of loosing what we have. Combined with the ‘Red queen syndrome’, a slow but sure path to an early grave and almost impossible to escape without changing your value system and thereby who you are, as a company and as a manager/employee. Kudo’s to IBM!

Most where engaged by the picture that Mathijs was painting, but I saw some people starting to wonder: “What did I get myself into here?” First, it’s no fun when your value system is brought into question like this. Second, our cups are brimming with concepts and ways to improve things that we see as going in the wrong direction. Yesterday that cup spilled a little and I am really thankful to our network for sticking with us and instead of mentally leaving the room giving us new insights through asking the questions that needed to be asked. Mathijs finished of by stating that the only way we could counter the processes he described was by re-inventing ourselves and innovate.

Valeri Souchkov took over at this point and with a skill honed by years of experience started to explain his concept of structured innovation. Building on TRIZ – a Russian acronym for A Theory of Solving Inventive Problems – he trains engineers and business people in using a structured approach to innovation and solve contradictions. TRIZ is the result of 40 years of research of more than 300 people (and still evolving). His version of Systematic Innovation further expands TRIZ by adding new tools (e.g. root cause analyses) and organizes the process of innovation. Providing a path to follow and have a fun experience exploring new knowledge, be creative and get results. Since TRIZ has been brought outside of the ex-USSR in 1990, it is today recognized by several world-leading organizations such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Procter & Gamble, Samsung, Mitsubishi as the best practice of innovation. Check his site for more details.

We ended the session by taking a challenge from the audience and pull it through the initial TRIZ stage of problem solving. First we defined the problem in the form of a contradiction; the positive effect we are looking for and the negative effect we get as a result. We then used a matrix where we could look up the inventive principles that have always been used to come up with an ideal solution. These we had to translate to the context of the challenge at hand and see which one came up with a satisfactory direction for solving the issue. We didn’t have enough time to really finish the process, but it did give the owner of the challenge some fun new insights into what he is facing.

During drinks and diner some very lively discussions where going on. On topic, but also about other things that touch our lives. We ended the day with high spirits and I sincerely believe we have the opportunity to create value together as a network of multidisciplinary people.

Thanks everybody for providing an enjoyable afternoon!

What do you want to become when you grow up?

2005-12-03T12:39:00.000+01:00

I was asked this question via SMS yesterday. Fifteen minutes after an exciting discussion with an unconventional thinker who feels trapped and is getting a lot of energy from talking to someone who has been where she is, literally! She feels trapped because she works for a company with a very conventional culture and though being appreciated on an individual level by her co-workers, there is no room for her to play and act on her unconventional thoughts and ideas. The culture won’t let her, even though it is being asked of her to play the role of an unconventional thinker. Interesting contradiction!

For the last ten years, I have always given the same answer: ‘I really hope never to find out!’. My fear being that as soon as I know and in a worst case scenario, become what I ‘want’ to be, I am over the hill. I reckon Roger Federer had a dream of becoming the number one tennis player in the world, now that he is, he wants to stay there and become the best player ever (he already is, but let’s not tell him yet). It is in his character to even after his tennis career look for something else to excel in, in his own quiet way. Johnny Mac in his not so quite way, thought to find it in music and though it probably still is his favorite past time, he has devoted himself to tennis again and through hard work and dedication is soundly beating players ten to fifteen years younger on the senior tour. In the process providing all tennis lovers with some serious fun watching him be the genius he still is. Imagine him sitting on a porch enjoying life with his friends. Well let’s put that doom scenario behind us quickly!

Putting the discussion in perspective, I find that the questions she should be asking are: “What creates meaning in your life?” and “What value do you add by what you do?”. These are far more interesting, or as she says sexier questions. They free up your thinking, they open up new possibilities, and they provide a basis for lifelong growth and renewed purpose. They lay the foundation for new experiences and discovery, in your own life and in those of others. That’s what life is about!

A sense of wonder

2005-11-30T08:25:00.000+01:00

You can polish your house al you want, without friction, it won’t shine.

By starting with a multi-disciplinary team, we create a conflict of ideas that facilitates a drive to explore and create value together. Mother nature did it before us; homo sapiens became the dominant species on this planet through strife! The beauty of it is, that this is a self-sustaining process. Because of an experience that remains with you for a very long time, if not for life, the team will always be able to fall back on each other and they know it! The wonder of discovery! In yourself and in others.

We create friction, we create excitement, we create trust and a common enemy in the contradictions that need to be solved to innovate. People become excited about themselves (personal growth), about the contradictions they need to tackle (creative growth), about the group of people (social growth) they are playing with and about the results they will achieve (financial growth)! The group doesn’t have to work together, they don’t simply want to work together, they love to work together.

We provide a team with the means to stay in touch and keep sharing experiences and innovate their lives long after we are gone. That’s what our approach to structured innovation is for; it’s a path to follow together to create meaning and value for ourselves and those around us. That’s what our web hosted platform is for; to facilitate learning, communication, the sharing of ideas, and a path to follow to realize the winning ideas.

Where is your sense of wonder?

The Value of the Intangible

2005-11-29T15:52:00.000+01:00

We are running a research project with the Technical University Twente and Nikos (Dutch Institute for Knowledge Intensive Entrepreneurship) , to investigate the value of existing networks in organizations. As such we aim to provide an insight into which aspects determine that value. The results will give decision-makers mechanisms to nourish and stimulate the collaborative network, thus creating more value. Most of a network's values are intangible; we explicitly recognize human, creative and social capital as value domains complementary to financial capital. Ideas (creative value) cannot be touched, yet can generate huge revenues. Relations (social value) are amorphic context-dependent dynamic interactions, as intangible as things get, yet they are crucial to business, whether they be relations with suppliers, investors, customers or employees.

Analysis of intangible values in a business context is not something we have invented. The work of Verna Allee provides a smart and practical way to incorporate intangibles in your business and marketing strategy.

We have designed a questionair that assesses all relevant aspects of value, across the different domains. With that accomplished I realized there is something odd about what we are measuring. The questionair is real enough, and so the answers will be real too. But none of these can be considered ‘objective’ realities. People are asked to judge what they think and feel about certain aspects of their context. They are asked about their personal judgements about what aspects create value, and how much of these aspects is realized, how much of what they think is valuable do they observe in the world around them. This is highly subjective.

We are therefore investigating subjective realities, and one might argue if that is a questionable aspect of our research. Is research not supposed to be about objective facts?

In fact, we do exactly what we should be doing. Value is created by people, inside their own consciousness, even the objectively tangible value we measure in cash. Revenue is still te product of people making choices to buy products and services on the basis of what they personally value; what subjective decisions they make.

This is perhaps less striking for marketeers and psychologists, who fundamentally explore the domain of the intangible and subjective, but in a world that pretends to be so much about hard cash these are relevant considerations.

Individualism my a...

2005-11-29T11:34:00.000+01:00

There are many individuals with their own opinions and their own way of looking at things, but there is no such thing as individualism. As our government wants to blame everything and anything that is going wrong in our society on individualism, I get more and more pissed off. Where are our values and what is the norm we hold people up to? We are social beings and depending on context filter our daily life to make sense of it. We subdivide people and situations in categories to give them meaning and the means to talk about them. We create new norms and values everyday of our lives. We innovate and change!

When our government tells us we are growing more and more detached from society each day, don’t care for each other anymore and are only asking the what’s in it for me question, I have just one response to that. Wake up to the changes around you. Stop talking and start listening! Observe what is happening with an open mind and don't try to force your stupid values on us! Yes, they are stupid when you have to force them instead of enforce them! The only reason you blame everything on individualism is because you refuse to let go of old categories that used to make sense of ‘your’ society. People have moved on and found new ways to make sense of their lives, time for you to do the same!

Necessity is the mother of all invention!

2005-11-27T16:15:00.000+01:00

It seems like people don't want to think and make relevant choices to their own lifes. When it comes to knowledge we are always looking for a fast food chain, a quick fix. When we need to make choices on where to go, we choose to stay afloat by treading water instead of swimming to shore. When we want to be part of something, we think we get there by fitting in. We want to belong so much, that we strife to become one while our strength lies in our diversity. Work, money, ambition, we bury ourselves in it without wondering why. It’s like a rubber band, we are being drawn between what we want to do and what we have to do. The only thing that will guide us is a personal strategy of what we want, what we have to do and how far we are willing to go to reach our goals!

The essence of strategy is focus! While we are not without focus, the problem is that most of us do not realize what we are focusing on. It has become a subconscious thing because we lack a conscious strategy. In times of prosperity, this kind of behavior is a societal benefit. Since we are not working on a conscious strategy and just want to belong and fit in, there is very little conflict. The resulting stability is what is needed in times of growth. The phrase never touch a working system applies! In times of adversity, this starts to work against us. To improve the situation, we need to come up with a conscious strategy and make hard choices. Choices based on the vision of a better future. The never touch . . saying does not apply anymore. The problem is; the fact that the system is not working anymore is not registered and acted upon. Worse, we cling to our ‘working system’ in fear. Just pretend nothing is wrong. No strategy, no focus.

Reality drives all events! We can cling to non-working systems all we want, it won’t give us anything but a false sense of security. An illusion that will be shattered when reality finally hits us in the face. Talking about illusions; most CEO’s and government officials are in office, but not in power. They are not in the game, they are not playing and learning new stuff in the game and still they pretend to know the game based on ten year old experience. It’s called being over the hill! They are just using the carrot and the stick. Putting the fear in us for the unknown without explaining, or promising us riches without providing a basis. It’s a sign of our times.

Luckily for us, necessity is the mother of all invention. There are always people who see their own needs and those of others and they will come up with strategies and visions to improve our lives. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a platform (business, process and technology) for people to work together, to prosper and create value together? I think so!

Because that’s what it means to be part of something! It is not just fitting in, it means contributing to something that has meaning, to add value and to be valuable! Maybe then we will not be afraid to grow (old), because our life won’t lack meaning!

The end of process? I think not!

2005-11-27T16:07:00.000+01:00

I read a challenging statement from Ross Mayfield on the end of process. I don’t buy it! Process is what provides us with a comfort zone, a path to follow, especially when times get hard. Processes change in time to adapt to changing contexts, they will never disappear; sorry Ross, not even formal business processes. The fact that some organizations are in a downward spiral when it comes to innovation has a lot to do with the shareholder induced efficiency and cost cutting dogma’s. This is not about process, this is about context! We just need to recognize the changing context and adapt. To adapt we need to work together in multi-disciplinary teams (Toyota) instead of squeezing every last drop of life blood out of our employees and suppliers (GM) to gain short term advantages at the cost of optimizing ourselves to our grave. The processes should be owned by the people who act them out, not forced to wear as straight jackets by the top brass.

A good process is like a good contract. It doesn’t deal with any and all we want to do together, it describes what we want to do together and provides handles for when we hit an exception to the rule. As soon as a process or contract doesn’t, they become straight jackets instead of a means to provide direction and the necessary safeguards to get there. Flexibility built in! Innovation is for the most part recombining existing solutions and there are proven processes with which we solve our contradictions to innovate. Practically every contradiction has been encountered before and people have come up with principles to deal with them. What we need therefore is not a process to innovate, but a process to come up with the right way to innovate within our context. Try putting that into a contract! You can in a process!

Ross' product is a first step to support part of the needed flexibility with web based technology from a more human point of view. I hope he keeps improving on socialtext, I just hope he won’t forget the role processes play in our daily life.

A unifying theory

2005-11-16T17:56:00.000+01:00

A unifying theory? Sadly not in Physics, I am not half intelligent enough for that. What it is, is an elaboration of what Mathijs hinted at in his piece on A new Philosophy. A unifying vision on the Marketing/Customer Knowledge/Scenario planning, ‘classical’ KM and the Learning organization.

Because we are in an environment where change is continuous, with new competitors constantly appearing, where new technology (e.g. mobile) is making new possibilities a reality almost daily, organizations have to continuously re-invent themselves. At the same time they have to be super-competitive and looking out for the ‘next big thing’. So, any organization that wishes to survive must be simultaneously effective in all three dimensions of innovation and change:

Understand
Is about the monitoring, development and recombination of products/services, to meet ever changing needs.
Renew
Over time, new products and services are constantly demanded by the market and new solutions must be invented.
Exploit
Is about rapidly responding to market opportunities, for which we must use top resources to be a first mover.

The dimension of Understand relates to people’s sensitivity to trends, scenario- and ‘what-if’ planning, an organization’s Market forecasting and to elements of CRM and Business (Competitive) Intelligence. Understanding is of no value if there is no attempt to translate this understanding into new products and services.

The dimension of Renewal is about translating our expectations on future demands into new products, services, capabilities and so on. This is essentially the capability development and the Learning Organization part of collaborative networks. It also stresses the point that a Collaborative network is selling knowledge and can always re-train its people to ‘deliver the new knowledge’.

The Exploit dimension covers what might be called ‘classical’ KM - e.g. Re-use, sharing, best practice, communities of practice and so on where we are trying to maximize the return on the knowledge assets we already have. If an organization focuses on renewal but does not fully exploit new opportunities while ‘the window is open’ it will never create the funds for future investments. It is not enough anymore to Exploit, with shorter and shorter product life cycles, the advantage of being first mover will soon disappear.

The key point we are trying to make is what Collaborative networks, when seen in totality, are driving. Collaborative networks of diverse specialists around a strategic topic are ideally suited to understand, renew and then; drive the exploitation. That is what successful innovation is about; the future growth, prosperity, relevance and survival of an organization - any organization!

Man's natural condition

2005-11-13T10:44:00.000+01:00

When looking around me, it seems to me that people are not taking time to reflect. They are in their cars, going at a 120 miles per hour, racing to the next red light or traffic jam. It seems like it is man's natural state to go nowhere in a hurry. Reflection is for when you are young! When you go to school and learn! When you enter you're first years of corporate life! As if the reflection benefit ratio is only in the plus during the amount of time it takes for us to 'mature'. Hurry up and stay! Now is the time to produce and become a 'productive' member of society! Play is over! No time for frivolous thoughts or discussions on subjects not directly related to being productive. No chatting allowed! Retirement at 65!

This is wrong on so many levels, that I don't really know where to begin. Peter F. Drucker just past away at 95, he started his career in 1946 arguing that managers should give workers the power to make decisions and take the initiative. Why are many companies still not following this very sensible advice? I think it's because for that to happen you need to know where you want to go, how you want to get there and what you are willing to do to get there, as an individual and as a group or company. That is impossible without wisdom and wisdom is impossible without reflection. At the current speed with which we are changing, it is also impossible to do alone.

The problem is, this takes time and effort and we are so busy getting faster, that we do not want to take the time or effort to reflect on where we are going. I am not saying everything we do is getting nowhere, that is just an exaggeration to prove a point. The point being that we are not taking the time anymore to wonder were we are going, let alone whether we even want to go there. What about enjoyment, what about being master of your own destiny, what about personal leadership. A case in point. In the Netherlands the media is full of the lack of leadership in our country. I agree with the sentiment, but not with the proposed solutions. What we forget is that most leadership is context dependent. Being context dependent, it is essential we give our potential leaders the time and space to find out how their leadership potential fits into the context within which they are to operate. They need to be given room to grow into their potential and that takes play and reflection, individually as well as in a group. It also takes time to gather experience. The problem is; we seem to think that training is enough. Another quick fix to satisfy our need for speed.

There is a very old saying; Think before you act! Take time to reflect on the challenge you are facing and look at both the short term and long term impact of possible solutions. Talk with different people and cherish the dissonant who forces you to look at what you are doing from a different perspective. We need to change our natural state from one where we go nowhere at a 120 miles per hour, to making sure that we get to were we want to go!

Moving out of our comfort zone

2005-11-12T12:54:00.000+01:00

I have been trying to write something sensible on why it is difficult to start something new and gather enough people around us to make it stick. I have come close, but no cigar. Until I read Danah Boyd's latest blog here. It's been staring us in the face all the time. We create enthusiasm and interest, because what we deliver is a new experience and a new way to experience. It addresses something on an emotional level that has been bothering many people; how can I be valuable, how can I contribute?

We try to constantly move people out of there comfort zone; discuss what motivates them together with others with different backgrounds and viewpoints. By stimulating a discussion/conflict on a topic approached from each individual's different viewpoint, new insights are created. This is a very stimulating experience that you long remember as invigorating. Based on these new insights, people become creative and innovate. To support the latter we provide the means to do this in a structured way, and in a sense provide a comfort zone for realisation of their new idea. There is your added value!

What struck me in the article - the challenge we face - is that as soon as we gather a significant number of people around us, we start to think the same and slowly become homogenous and start preaching to the choir. We strife to become one when our strength lies in our diversity., and there goes our advantage. How about that for a contradiction! In order to keep sharp, we need to constantly meet and discuss with diverse and new groups of people. We need to constantly diversify! Our own private version of the red queen syndrome.

This is a serious dilemma. Why? Because it is very hard to sell something that needs to change in order to stay valuable. We need to address the short term financial value of what we do in order to sell, but since the added value is based on human, creative and social values as a catalyst for change and creating financial value; we are having difficulty in providing a stable product and a consistent market approach.

Mathijs' piece on pennies from heaven, provides the basis for our grounding. I am looking forward to constantly moving us out of our own comfort zone.

Pennies from Heaven

2005-11-09T16:18:00.000+01:00

Knowing what to do is not the same as doing it. Realizing the necessity of taking a certain action is usually not sufficient motivation to actually make a move. Such is man's proclivity for inertia. Is it fair to project this idea onto our prospective clients?
One important aspect of our idea is our approach to values. When we talk about value and added value we have four different dimensions in mind: human value, creative value, social value, and... yes, financial value. These distinctions don't always resonate with our prospects. The issue always seems to be reduced back to: how and when do you produce financial value?
This question is asked for every new initiative taken, implying that we are all in fact very careful to make only decisions that create a certain and fair amount of return on investment. How can we then explain the burst of the internet bubble? How is it that our economy has been in a rut ever since that time?

Financial value... hmmm. We live in an experience economy as much as we live in a knowledge economy, this is illustrated by the high value we put on experiences. We are quite willing to pay good money for experiences in our personal lives; we go skying and scuba diving, drink quality wine, and pay exorbitant prices to see our favorite artists perform. The essence is always the experience. How odd to value such a transient intangible 'thing'?
Financial value is not the bottom line at all. Money in fact is not the most important factor in life, and neither in business. (Life includes business, therefore what is valid of life is valid of business: there is no business without life)
Why then do we limit our conception of value so much in our professional lives? Someone told me recently:"If it doesn't make you any money, you shouldn't be doing it."
That's bullshit. We have to stop this systematic application of a double standard. Return on investment is not the important issue, added value is. If we act only out of financial gain, we paralyse all value adding processes. All financial value is produced by people working together creating and marketing new ideas, it is a consequence of succesful processes in other value dimension (human, creative, social). The surest way therefore to create financial value is to invest in these other dimensions. Of course everybody knows this, and we have known this for years, yet it still seems difficult to act on this common knowledge.

Full circle

2005-10-31T22:30:00.000+01:00

In response to Mathijs’ story on a new philosophy, we set up a meeting to discuss how to position ourselves to overcome what we all have our own issues with, ranging from incredulity to frustration. First of all one point needs to be clarified. It’s not that we want to completely replace existing organizational structures. E.g. financial control is not something we want to get rid of or replace.

What we want is a new kind of enablement. Every part of an organization is confronted with issues surrounding the flow of information, most problems that arise, even in rather conventional areas, are in areas of complexity (of information flow). These issues are simply easier to tackle through collaborative networks than through hierarchical control.

Back to the original subject. Individually, some of us have been at this for years and almost 12 months ago we had the idea to start our own company using collaborative networking to innovate. We had discussions within our own network and when we told people we were going to set up innovation projects and manage them for service oriented companies, the answer was always the same: “What differentiates you from all the others?” We thought ‘what others?’, since there were maybe two or three parties out there doing what we do, and they were not that successful at it. Still if we would be successful, copycats would crawl out of the woodwork, so this was a legitimate question. One that we countered by telling people that we would set up multi-disciplinary teams who would be supported by tools to connect, communicate, learn and work together, and our real differentiator; measure their success not only in terms of finance, but a wider spectrum of values. Manage and share people, not knowledge!

There is a differentiation if I ever saw one but, as you can tell from Mathijs’ article, not very successful either. So there we were last Friday, breaking our heads on how to reposition ourselves again. Since most people lost us in translating our concept, but tried to hang on desperately, we arrived at the conclusion that what we are trying to do is apparently worthwhile, but also very difficult to bring across, and apparently even more difficult for our audience to translate within their own organizations. To cut a long story short, we decided to go back to our roots and tell people that we define and set up innovation programs and run the resulting projects.

We have been testing this for four days and suddenly nobody is asking questions anymore. All understand and congratulate us on having found our niche and promise to spread the word. What the hell just happened? We have come full circle and suddenly nobody is asking questions? I can only think of one answer; in the last 12 months we have had a tipping point. It is completely acceptable to set up and run innovation projects because people now see the need. Since they see the need, half our work has been done for us; it is enough to be one of the first to be able to support it.

So, we set up innovation and help you run it! We help you select the right people to tackle the strategic challenges you face, we help you build these people into a team, train them and pull them through a tested and proven methodology for systematic innovation. All this supported with a system that supports communication, collaboration, learning and specifically the innovation process.

A new Philosophy

2005-10-27T22:41:00.000+02:00

As we have been making the first moves towards applying our ideas to concrete market situations, a number of issues are propping up. I’ve been thinking about one in particular; the seeming discrepancy between the power of our concepts and conviction and the apparent lack of response, or at least commitment, from the market. Interest? Yes! Enthusiasm? Yes! Committment? Maybe later!

What is it that we are trying to sell? How can we understand the reluctance in our partners and clients?

In thinking about these questions the following ruminations entered my mind.

There are a number of tools, methods and concepts out there that also cover some of the issues we are addressing with our collaborative networks. There is the notion of ‘communities of practice’ championed by Etienne Wenger, which is certainly collaborative and valuable, but does not involve our multidisciplinary approach; there is 3^rd generation knowledge management, which recognizes the fact that people--not information or systems--should be central to any approach to knowledge management. There are things like ‘competence management’ and ‘personal development’ which pay attention to the aspects of work that are important, and in fact essential, to individuals, and yet difficult to translate readily into financial (shareholder!) value. All of these ideas are being used to organize and implement better, more effective/profitable, ways of doing business.

So what value are we adding? What convinces us so profoundly that we have a unique contribution to make to the general theme of people-centred collaborative models? First of all I would say that we integrate the important elements of existing models. But this is perhaps an easy answer.

The main idea we’re selling is, that what is needed is not some extra method or toolset to add to the organizational structure, what is needed is a whole new way to organize as such: a new philosophy of organization. The centrally managed organization, diversified into divisions and business units, obedient only to shareholder interest, is too inflexible to respond accurately to changing markets. More importantly internal organizational boundaries seriously sabotage integration of information across processes. Responsibilities are completely fragmented. In addition to this the organisational departmentalized structure significantly hampers the exchange and creation of knowledge. We are victims of our own ‘knowledge is power’ adagio.

We need to let go of the desire to control processes from the outside, from some kind of distant higher-up management perspective. All the solutions to the problems of efficiency, and more importantly effectiveness, are already available to the people actually operating the processes. Involve them and your innovations are sure to come, your changes are sure to last…
We claim to provide solutions to this transition, and I am convinced we can deliver. Let’s create the opportunities to do so.

Tribe or community release 2

2005-10-24T15:24:00.000+02:00

Read Danah Boyd's article on Autistic Social Software. Clearly a rebel with a cause and a smart one at that. She sees through all the technology driven social software raves and as a conclusion states that there are three ways to approach setting up and developing technical solutions in social contexts. Read it!

Amongst others, she adds a third option to the 'Tribe or community?' article (see friday october 21st); the possibility to create bespoke technical solutions based on indepth knowledge of a group's dynamic and to make the resulting technology ubiquitous. I would like to call that; First time right!

On the one hand I think that is the best way to go. Infinitely superior to technology push and better than trial and error. On the other hand I am afraid we do not live in a utopian world and the best we can hope for is a mix of the trial and error approach with the 'first time right' approach. The more we understand the context of a target group, the more the balance will shift to the latter!

In the end we need technological solutions that fit within the context of our lives and support us in doing what we do best, which is to build a group of people around ourselves based on trust and shared group memory. We've been doing this for tens of thousands of years and I think pretty successful so far!

The amorality of Web 2.0 by Nicholas Carr

2005-10-22T12:42:00.000+02:00

I have just read, belatedly, an article by Nicholas Carr (here) on the amorality of web 2.0. Finally someone not only has the guts, but also the smarts to put into words what some of us have been thinking for quite a while. He states that the religious fervor with which people follow the web 2.0 bandwagon in hopes of transendance is misguided to say the least. Read it yourself, for he expresses it better than I ever could.

I agree with his conclusions on the amorality of web 2.0 and the fact that it contains many competitive and possibly destructive business models for existing business models. I do not think however that it will kill existing culture. That is not something a machine (as he calls it) can do. That can only be done by people. What we see in many western countries - a levitation of main stream culture towards the lowest common denominator - will happen in web 2.0. That is our sacrifice for living in a democracy. The only hope I nurture is that people will get 'first choice' through web 2.0. First choice meaning the choice that fits you, and not the one that is forced upon you through economies of scale. Amazon is a nice example; sixty percent of their sales are books outside their top 150.000. So there is hope for us yet!

Tribe or community?

2005-10-21T19:32:00.000+02:00

We got an invitation to join a ‘meeting the expert’ panel on providing services to set up communities / tribes. In thinking about this from an Internet Service Provider's perspective I realized there are two ways to do this. You can go the lowest common denominator way and try to attract as large a crowd as possible, or you provide the means for many small communities to do their own thing.

The first route is what Hyves does. You set up a meeting point for people (specifically the 13 to 21 group) to gather around and meet like minded spirits, but you keep it simple. Easy search algorithms (I am 17 and he/she is 17 and we live nearby) to find each other and easy ways to start communicating with each other, share pictures, etc. OpenBC has a business approach where you can meet entrepreneurs to team up and as an entrepreneur find people who can deliver services you need in setting up or expand your business.

The specific challenge with this approach is that you have to constantly provide new services to keep your tribe interested in your specific platform and off course be very entertaining by creating the right events to make sure people keep using your services. Tribes are nomadic, so the bandwagon effect is something you have to take into account when setting this up. It often becomes a fad that people (the tribe) follow and fades out after the initial enthusiasm fades and a new fad (competitor) starts.

The advantages are easy set up and maintenance as a trade off against the maintenance effort in keeping the tribe interested and the need for constant vigilance to provide new events and services. This approach is a bit of a hit and miss approach with potentially short lifecycles.

The second route is to provide a framework for creating small groups around specific topics. Provide these communities with the means to find other people with the same interest, share information in a structured way and to separate the good from the bad apples. Let them manage themselves and provide them with limited means to create their own services.

The advantage is that these communities will maintain themselves as a trade off to the initial investment in time spent on helping people start these small groups and in building a simple interface to build your own service (look at ning). Once you got the thing going, people will start to use it and create their own communities using your service framework. This approach is a trial and error approach with a long life expectancy for resulting communities. You will also have to create many to create a large enough revenue stream. You would be a first mover, since large scale is what dominates the web today. A longer lifecycle can be expected!

What is important when doing either is that you start communicating with the people who are using your services. Communicate in a way that you build the trust needed for them to tell you what to do next. Create a system and processes where people can Pull you where They want to go!

The choice you make is up to you. Both have the potential for differing business models (from advertising to subscription, to pay per use) and I personally think there is no best way to go at this time. Just choose the path closest to what makes your own company tick. Just remember though that much of the large scale market is being cornered by Amazon, Ebay, and the likes of Yahoo and Google. You need to differentiate yourself from very powerful players.

The hard fact on the soft side

2005-10-18T16:28:00.000+02:00

There is very little research on combining the way people interact with the way technology should support interaction and communication. It’s mostly one or the other and rarely both. There is also very little research on the combined value systems of networks and how they can be synchronized to produce a concerted effort. There is a lot of research on one and very occasionally two angles (Financial and Social), rarely from a combined value system (including Creative and Human capital). At Crossing Signals we are doing holistic research in this area and want to capture the resulting strategic value of a network given its context.

The hard fact is that nobody seems to be interested in the soft side of innovation and collaboration. The contradiction is that given that most attention goes to one dimension (money) there is no way organizations can set up successful collaborative initiatives to innovate, because they do not apply to our basic nature (to improve ourselves), nor to our passion, nor do they align behaviour or empower people to explore for themselves. It has to make money now! By focusing on one dimension, it will never make money in the long term, only on the very short term. Again the ‘red queen’ syndrome, we need to run faster and faster, just to keep up.

I know of one company for instance that has a substantial intranet, where their employees ‘abuse’ newsgroups to spread client briefings. Instead of finding out what a newsgroup offers to move people to use it that way, they take a short cut and come up with a new application (technology) and force everybody (rules and regulations) to use it and appoint managers as the moderators (enforcers) for the new system. I have said it before, and I will say it again: “If you don’t give people a vote, you give them a veto.”

People have looked at how forums and newsgroups work (or not) and concluded that only through moderation can we direct the way a network of people is moving and keep everybody involved. Bullshit! We know how to do this, it’s been known for over sixty years and it has been done for over 20.000. We need to empower people to moderate themselves. For this to happen we need to ground them in a common purpose and empower them to find the best role to contribute by themselves. Leaders, workers, coaches will emerge! As Steven Covey said: “It is as if we are still practicing bloodletting, although we know all about bacteria and how they work”.

I will give you an example of progress. In e-learning we are moving from web based course catalogs, reusing existing content and using the internet as nothing more than a new transmission channel, to a story based approach of coaching and redesigning the way we learn. How did we get there? Trial and error is how we did. Story based learning is as old as the human race, but with the advent of new technology we completely forgot about it and sold the technology bigger than it could deliver. Only now are we slowly moving back to our roots, because e-learning didn’t deliver on its promise or even premise. We apparently have to hit our head into a brick wall (preferably at high speed) to realize we should be doing things differently.

At Crossing Signals we are trying to turn the tables and look at what motivates people to want to use certain solutions, what values trigger him or her to do so and how that makes them interact with other people from other disciplines and backgrounds. Within their combined context! First build the community, than worry about the technology. We need to know how people want to work, what they value in themselves, the people they work with and the body of knowledge they expand. Only then do we start thinking about the enabling technology.

As logical as this sounds, we run into a chicken and egg problem here. There is no perception of short term financial benefit. Worse, the financial result of our work can only be estimated once the initial research phase has been done and we have a clear picture of were the company wants to go and the network can. The fact that this led Boeing to save billions of dollars on doing the right innovation projects and killing the rest, or Samsung to create an innovation culture around perpetual crisis is apparently not enough for the vast majority of companies to follow this route. All are interested in the research and its results, but no one wants to be the guinea pig. I can tell you that in live, we are all guinea pigs. The hard fact we have to deal with is that our challenge can apparently only be met by going the e-learning route. Trial and error it is! So let us make huge promises to be able to sell and then deliver incremental steps with small financial pay-offs.

Welcome to the twenty-first century!

P.S. There are about three subjects in this article that deserve more attention, so expect these to return here.

Composing a collaborative network

2005-10-13T12:00:00.000+02:00

When it comes to networking, there is a lot of theory on the subject. The same goes for collaboration. Both can be taught and learned. They are a logical combination, because one is an extension of the other. So, why are so few people in the Netherlands doing it?

A nice analogy is composing a piece of music. Everybody can be taught how to do it, what method to use and what tools to apply. The problem is, having a correctly produced piece of music, not necessarily makes it something people will want to listen to, or even make it sound like music. Apparently 95% of us can learn how to produce a piece of music, but only 5% of us are real composers, talented people who not only know how to write/compose a good piece of music, but also know what to put into it for people to enjoy. A very small number of those even have that divine spark needed to become a Mozart or Beethoven. Still a large number of people enjoy making or listening to music others have composed. We just need the right composers to lead the way and provide the pieces for us to play. Play being an important word here!

When ‘composing’ a collaborative network to create an entrepreneurial mindset and drive innovation, the logic is; we need a producer to facilitate and composers to combine the different instruments (disciplines) into a collaborating team of musicians (specialists). Our goal; to dare produce new music (entrepreneurship) and find new ways to produce music (innovation). We run into three issues. The first is what’s in it for the producers (c-level management)? The second is who are the composers (the leaders, coaches, mentors, creationists)? The third is what methods and tools (algorithms) can we use to deal with complexity and shaping a team out of people from different disciplines? I am excluding context to make a point, in reality all these questions will have context dependent characteristics.

Regarding the first issue, I suggest you read the rest of this blog, all the answers are in here. Lower risk, accelerated capability building, agility, etc. All you need to deal with the ‘red queen’ syndrome. It’s a no-brainer.

The second is an interesting challenge. Who are the people who not only form a group of different specialists around them to tackle a strategic challenge, but are also capable of sustaining the network to bring out the agility and innovation potential? No, these are not automatically current top management or middle management. Shareholder power has transformed most organizations into risk avoiding, optimization oriented creatures and has produced the management to suit its needs. The required skills and mentality for optimization is a small part of what we need in a composer. We select the few that not only have it in them to compose, but who have the spark to create and the passion to pull through and inspire people. Who are in control of their own destiny through personal leadership. We revive the hopefuls in current management positions and provide a path for high potential composers to come to the fore and take their place in the creative and innovative process. A process that brings us to the third question.

The third is about the means we have to put at a composer’s disposal to support them in composing with their network. What can we offer to pull people through an innovation process? Starting with generating a viable idea and going forward by putting that idea in practice; providing the right benefits to stakeholders involved, selecting the right tools to implement and plan the implementation. There are many tools to do the latter, but very few to generate the right idea. Of the tools for doing the first there are no integrated solutions to provide the network with a place to work, learn and communicate with each other. At the moment we are researching our own environment to build context dependent solutions.

Getting back to the initial question: “Why are so few people in the Netherlands doing this?”. I think we neither have the right means nor the passion to produce interesting new ideas anymore and for the few that do, our optimization paradigm prevents us from seeing the added value. A nice contradiction in our social welfare state; with all the leisure time available, there is no room to play anymore. So, I’m finishing my article and together with my colleagues going out there to preach and provide a path for people to follow and to have fun following.

Everyday life

2005-10-11T18:04:00.000+02:00

Having just started using a potential platform (open source) for our collaborative networking efforts, I find it hard to get some involvement going. The reason is, I think, just as simple as the reason for writing here. An event, or in this case the lack of an expected event, triggered my imagination and the need to share that in writing. In other words I needed to be moved, called, addressed, remembered, et cetera, to write this article. I also needed to find the inspiration and resulting energy to actually start writing.

Coming from a brief stint in e-learning and knowledge management, I always thought that a system that facilitates choosing the right subject combined with delivering the right content would be enough for people to gather around, use and add on to. My mistake! In the beginning the subjects where forced (top-down) upon the masses and if you don’t give people a vote, you give them a veto!

Our bottom up approach and giving them a vote does not take off as expected either. We provided a group of people a choice of subjects, the sub-group choosing ours, we provided with content, books, presentations, links, we even provided the means to add whatever the group wants to itself. In direct interaction with the group, there is energy, enthusiasm and drive, maybe not enough focus and own initiative, but the first is a matter of experience and if the experience is a happy one, own initiative will follow. By the way, if that is naïve, let me know! The result is that there is some activity, but most still happens outside our environment.

The lesson learned so far is that any system that facilitates collaboration not only needs to be bootstrapped (which we did!), it has to be kept going by creating events that are interesting and motivate people to make the next step (which we are apparently having trouble with). An interesting subject and the right content is clearly not enough to keep things going.

Is it the system, is it the group using it, are we not providing enough triggers/events to make the network self sustaining? We are still doing research and looking for the answer, but I have a sneaky feeling that the way we behave in everyday life (chaotic and triggered by the events occurring around us) is what we will have to emulate until the network becomes self sustaining. This means that any system supporting collaboration in networks will have to offer the means to create many different events and will have to provide a wide array of services and the mechanisms needed to choose the matching service. Different groups may well use different services to cover the same event! In other words, it needs to emulate the non-linear way we interact with each other and our surroundings. Looks suspiciously like everyday life.

Qapla'

2005-09-29T19:46:00.000+02:00

Why start a new blog with the Klingon verb for success you may ask? Well, there is no such thing as coincidence. While attending the Cordial event at 'Kasteel de Vanenburg' in Putten I had an energizing discussion with a very interesting consultant/nerd/show man; Daryl Plummer (Group VP at Gartner). He ‘performed’ a fantastic presentation on the need for Service oriented architectures and its evolution to include event driven architectures. A technology presentation filled with human experiences, metaphors and lots of humour. When the phone rings, that is an event, when you pick it up you use a service to communicate with your neighbour who tells you that your dog is trying to eat their cat, which is an event. Your neighbours would probably consider it a service if you could prevent Butch from eating Fluffy. A beautiful and extremely funny way of describing the difference between a service and an event. He then went on explaining that day to day live is based on events first and on the choice you make regarding the service to deal with the event second. That is a concept that is near to my hart and part of what we are doing here. Networks are event driven and we want to empower people to not only ease the choice of service through the sharing of information and experience with others, but to empower them to build their own services to make their lives easier. Using his words, we want to compose networks by assembling the needed disciplines and orchestrate its direction (give it a self sustaining purpose).

I am not easily impressed, but this was an exception. In a meeting afterwards we discussed how we could enable business people to not only drive the development of new applications, but also make it so easy that they can develop simple event driven services for communication and collaboration without any coding knowledge. During the discussion the word Qapla' came up; I should have known he was also a 'Trekkie'. We do not only share the same view on the use of technology, but we also share a love for all things Star Trek (with the possible exception of Enterprise which they cancelled when it finally began to show some promise). We also both laugh ourselves silly when it comes to the extreme lengths some people go through to dress as their heroes. We're plain clothes fans. There is no such thing as coincidence and I may just take him up on the invitation to visit the Dragoncon event in Atlanta next year in September.

When I look back on the two day Cordial, the meeting with Daryl and the presentation of Futurologist Paul Ostendorf on the first day including the resulting discussion together with Colby Stuart and Jonathan Marks where the highlights of the event. Paul gave us a video supported view on the future and role technology will play. He did this on his own presentation software which looked superior to Powerpoint in more ways than one. I will have to look into that on www.neoversum.com, I wonder if there was fruit involved. Colby already described his presentation and the resulting discussion in her blog, so read it here!

I also had a short discussion with the founder of Cordys (Jan Baan) on the topic Colby ended her blog on the Cordial with. Where is the human element? He was initially taken aback because he linked my question with the organisation of the event, so I rephrased my question to: How will people drive the development of applications and drive the role of applications in how they collaborate? To him their product is more about human beings than it has ever been. I think he meant that it is for the good of human beings working in organisations and using services because it reduces complexity, is easier to maintain, easier to build and hopefully easier to use, but that still did not answer my question. With a thank you for the invitation, that was the end of our discussion though.

Cordys is using the terms business collaboration and excellerate (excel and accelerate) on every corner. I see application integration through an enterprise system bus and an orchestrator that can be used to accelerate application development through process modelling. This will make the ICT architecture of any company more agile. Bravo! I do not see collaboration between people or a search for and nurturing of excellence though. These are human concepts that technology can enable, but not inspire or replace. While I am very impressed with their product offering I think Cordys has a challenge in that their staff is very homogenous, very technology driven with the exception of a few sales & marketing people. I see a company that is very good at technological innovation, but seems to lack the ability to innovate their business to make money. They still do things the nineties way. To close the gap between their technology prowess and the business need of their customers, they choose to partner with consulting oriented system integrators. In my opinion, these companies have the same problem as Cordys; they are not focused on adding the human being into the equation. The paradigm shift from technology driven development ‘here’s technology and this is how you must use it’ to user driven development ‘this is what I want to do, who will create the service?’ (think of blogging and tagging as an example) has not reached them yet. They will need to reinvent themselves or repeat the late nineties mistakes of many of their predecessors and become a takeover target within the next six months.

Broaden your scope!

2005-09-27T00:04:00.000+02:00

Collaborative Networking is most often associated with knowledge management. Immediately all the doomed KM projects spring to mind and it is perceived as old wine in new bottles. First of, KM is for a large part a ‘contradictio in terminis’. Knowledge is not something you can manage directly; knowledge is a unique combination of information and experience that resides within people. So at best what you can manage is information, people and the sharing of experience between them. When by KM, people mean that knowledge is to be governed as a strategic asset, it becomes interesting for us. If knowledge is a strategic asset, who is to actually govern it?

Almost all KM projects have been top-down and micro managed, pretty unsuccessful I might add. The actual actors, the practitioners who use the knowledge, have rarely been involved in setting up KM solutions. These actors form social structures (networks!) to share information and experience within their field of expertise, because almost any field has become too complex for any one man to fully cover. In a sense they are already governing their own field of knowledge. Most KM projects ignored these social structures to their ruin. This is where Collaborative Networking comes in, to support this governing process and give the means to direct the knowledge and energy of a network to the actors themselves. To define the field they are responsible for, to support the social structure, interaction, capture of interesting communication (stories, cases) and to support an infrastructure to store and share information, methods and tools and to learn together.

Without top down commitment however, this will be as doomed to fail as the original KM projects. Top management is needed as a facilitator; to put in place the support structures, the reward structure, the infrastructure, etc. We help directors put a value to the networks within the knowledge field(s) they are responsible for. We help them define those fields from a strategic view point, we help them to understand, appreciate and direct the performance of existing networks and have the actual practitioners of non-networked fields of knowledge create new ones for them. This is done by benchmarking networks and potential networks on their social, human, creative and financial value, by monitoring their progress and by giving directors the means to ensure they do not fall below minimal thresholds for these values. We help pick the fertile combination of knowledge and available practitioners and help directors grow new opportunities through innovation, agility and a broadened scope.

Do we need a common enemy release 2

2005-09-23T12:10:00.000+02:00

Though there are only two comments visible on the previous article, when I include e-mail responses it's the most controversial article so far. Reactions varied from one end of the spectrum to the other with little in between. Discussions I had on the subject mirrored these responses. Apparently there are two ways of interpreting the question. One is from a point of view where we have to fight a physical enemy that is threatening our lives (fear); the other is from a point of view where we need focused conflict to achieve and learn anything. Both are formed by our experiences and prevent us from looking at the question from a more philosophical point of view.

As both commentors point out, what we need is something to gather around and put a concerted effort in by applying to peoples need to create and add value. But, what is that something? If we want to extinguish poverty, isn’t that out of love for our fellow man, with poverty as our common enemy? When we tackle ignorance, again we do that out of love for our fellow man with ignorance being the enemy. To stop child labour we are uniting in not buying products from companies who use children. The first example is pretty clear, the second and third get muddier. Does our fellow man feel ignorant? If he doesn’t, he is not going to like our interference, if he does, will he understand that we are helping him? The parents of child labourers are desperate, because they need the income their children generate to survive with their family. It’s not about good or bad, or war and peace! Without a little empathy for all parties involved, it’s easy to create a new enemy out of love!

With al due respect for those who do not agree with the metaphorical representation of an enemy being needed to unite people, there are so many examples to prove this point. To get equal rights, women had to unite against the male establishment, something we are still seeing today in many muslim countries. Men are not ‘the enemy’, but their views are. While still loving their men, women fight against their views that brand them as inferior. In the Netherlands I visited a meeting of ‘De publieke zaak’, literally translated ‘The public cause’. This public forum was created to bring change to a government that is estranged from its citizens. One of the remarks of a former minister was that citizens only seem to unite when a government project threatens their quality of live. Such as a new railway track, highway, etc. In this he stated the government responsible for this project is not perceived as the enemy by those protesting, it’s a conflict of interest between citizens (represented by our government) who need the extra tracks and those who get them through their backyard. Does the committee against the track see it this way? Come on! The government at the very least chose sides and became the enemy. In order to create a new government, we have to destroy parts of the old one. Do you really think the ‘to be destroyed’ parts are going to thank us ?

All change is perceived as a threat because people do not like to change the status quo, even though status quo does not exist in human society, but that is food for another article. Perception is truth! Love is an important ingredient and trigger for change, but whether you like it or not, in order to get a critical mass of people to enable change you are going to be perceived as the enemy by those who do not want to change. They become your enemy, however much you love them. If you want to create, build, and add value you, love can be used to tap into the creative potential inside all individuals, but to focus it and maintain it, you need something more. Love is just too tricky and subjective to be used as anything but a catalyst. My simple conclusion is this. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck! One of the laws of nature; in order to create we destroy something else. I think we need a common enemy to unite against, but whether we do or not is irrelevant, by our actions to change things we’ll get one anyway.

Do we need a common enemy?

2005-09-19T16:36:00.000+02:00

As I was looking at a very successful TV series this weekend something struck me. What most successful series have in common is that they have an antagonist, an enemy to fight, metaphorically or physically. Somehow this is essential for people to be interested and keep watching the show.

If we take a look in the real world, people gather around the subjects of their interest, but real commitment to a group only seems to happen when there is a common enemy to fight. Something most governments seem to exploit to stay in power. Create a common goal and a common enemy to fight and the fear, anger and frustration of the people is focused away from the leaders who created these in the first place.

I have always thought that metaphors were essential to creating a group conscience and focus its energy. It appears that the enemy metaphor is no exception. Monitoring the metaphoric representation of the enemy is essential, since it becomes an instrument to direct the energy of a group.

Still I wonder. Do we need a common enemy to create collaborative networks? Am I being naïve in hoping that this is not the case? If it is, is the metaphoric approach the way to go?

Vive la evolution!

2005-09-14T23:52:00.000+02:00

Getting our message out there is easier and more difficult than we expected it to be. Easier because we have mostly been preaching to the choir; people who already think something worthwhile is happening. Vive la revolution! More difficult because just outside our own group, most parties we talk to have not come to this conclusion, or do not want to get it and lack the curiosity to explore. Letting go of the bars that hold you is a painful process.

It’s all well and good to find confirmation with people who agree with us, and who comfort us and give us a warm and fuzzy feeling by belonging to a group. In the end what matters is that what we see as essential - to awaken an entrepreneurial spirit and have fun innovating together - is shared by a critical mass of people. A critical mass that takes our ideas a step further and starts bringing in more and more people, until finally we have achieved what we want by evolution instead of revolution.

Most people lack our curiosity and are happy with the way things are going; never touch a working system, we have always done it this way, et cetera. This is fact, not condemnation! Resistance to change is a fact of life, even if the grass is greener on the other side. We need to find a path where people feel safe and need to provide quick wins to keep them on it. I am not one of those people who say that the journey is more important than the destination. If you say that about Rome, you have never been there! I do however agree on there being more ways then one to Rome, in which case we’d better pick the fun one.

To those we try to convince this might seem condescending, but since they do not read this blog and I am preaching to my own choir, I will leave you with the assignment to find ways to include people and make us as much a part of them as we try to make them a part of us!

New Orleans

2005-09-05T15:46:00.000+02:00

Though not even close to being an expert on American politics, I would say that the White house is very good at 'Economies of Scale' and it is blatantly obvious how bad they are at 'Economies of Scope'. I will not go into the Iraq case, because it has more angles to prove my point than I could write down in this blog. The New Orleans situation is a much clearer case where executive-style leadership, 'We've got good people in all the top positions, we're hierarchical, we plan' is how the Whitehouse is trying to recover the situation. They are going with their strength to a point of weakness. No way can you plan for such a disaster. The governing chain is managed very efficiently for day to day operations, but is vulnerable because its staff lacks the room to manoeuvre and the chain collapses with these kind of disruptions. In my view, the only option is to empower local authorities to deal with local situations and give them control over what is needed where. They are the ones with a clear scope of what is happening and what is needed, but are powerless to do anything with this information until someone on a federal level approves. The interview Ray Nagin (Mayor of New Orleans) gave is a painful statement to this effect.

I always have this optimistic hope that we learn something from these human tragedies, sadly it always ends up a ‘blame game’ with the first signs already showing. Let’s hope this time we can move past blaming people and start empowering them.

Economies of Scope and Scale

2005-09-05T13:59:00.000+02:00

It’s a topic that has passed here before, but not explicitly. Why? It is hard to explain the differences between ‘Economies of Scale’ and ‘Economies of Scope’ and more importantly why that matters. Telescopes are a beautiful metaphor where this can be made visual, no pun intended.

It all started with the Dutch using two lenses to bring distant objects closer (so they could recognize incoming ships earlier and use that knowledge on the stock exchange) and Galilei using it to study the sky. Through the centuries they built bigger and bigger lenses (telescopes) to capture more of the sky in greater detail. The bigger the lens, the more photons you could capture. The clearer the lens the more efficient it became. Today bigger and clearer lenses are not an option anymore; they can not carry their own weight and any clearer is not cost effective. The solution to getting better resolution is simple, put the telescopes far apart and connect them to each other to combine the images. The visible spectrum was not enough to gain new insight into distant solar systems, so radio telescopes where introduced. These can be linked efficiently and size is not an option anymore. You can link 2000 radio telescopes and combine the resulting images; together with the visible spectrum of 50 linked telescopes you gain new insights into the how and what of the universe.

To those of you who have been reading my blogs, this should sound familiar. The ‘Economies of Scale’ aspect is the bigger lens; the ‘Economies of Scope’ aspect is linking the telescopes. Through efficiency more could be done in the same time, through combining different locations and disciplines (a network!) new insights led to new discoveries at lower cost. A beautiful combination!

That is what we are about. Not replacing one approach with the other, but expanding the possibilities. Efficiency is an important ingredient of today’s business, so ‘Economies of Scale’ are essential. Agility and flexibility are just as important, and this is where ‘Economies of Scope’ come in.

Collaboration and trust; you can't have one without the other!

2005-08-29T12:56:00.000+02:00

Collaboration, co-development, joint venture, whatever the name, working together is based on trust, dependence and risk sharing. Building trust starts in that split second where you realize there is something to like in the other party; you start sharing history and realize you share common goals. When you realize that all parties together can achieve dreams none of the parties can achieve alone, you realize you depend on each other. Trust fuels the bonding process; because it provides the assurance the other will not to abuse this dependence. Then comes the moment where you decide to share the risks of your joint venture based on the strengths of the individual partners. It’s also the moment you should be discussing contracts, to provide a legal base for the newfound relationship.

Sadly, we seem to be living in a society that thinks it can skip the first phase. Contracts seem to replace trust in many cases and a realistic view of interdependencies and a realistic sharing and resulting management of risk does not happen. As a result, specifications are fixed and the flexibility and manoeuvrability needed to tackle the challenges we face in these times are lost.

We need to change this attitude and understand that without trust there is no real collaboration. Strengths and weaknesses need to be shared not hidden to position for contract negotiations. Without a clear understanding of the interdependencies of the parties involved there is no realistic risk sharing. Without realistic risk sharing the joint venture will collapse at the first sign of trouble.

Am I asking everybody to trust each other? Of course not! Just remember that building relationships takes time and a substantial investment from all parties involved. There is no magic bullet and there certainly is no magic contract to cover all contingencies that we might encounter while trying to realize a common goal. My message is to start building relationships based on trust now, we need them to grow in order to deal with the challenges ahead.

What makes a good CEO?

2005-08-24T13:32:00.000+02:00

In an e-mail exchange following the ‘Entrepreneurship and innovation in the Netherlands’ article, it was stated that project managers are best suited to become CEO’s in these times since they are the ones best qualified to work with multi-disciplinary teams to achieve a target. I had a discussion with a renowned international program manager (Peter Luiks) on this reaction. He is of course of the opinion that program managers make excellent CEO’s ;-)

The definition of what constitutes a project and what constitutes a program is not always clear. Let's assume for this discussion that a project involves a clear target with a limited number of disciplines needed and a program involves setting up an umbrella project from a holistic viewpoint and integrating a number of projects to reach a specific goal. Main differences is therefore size, number of disciplines involved and overall impact.

Both project and program managers know reality drives all events and they know what reality is driving events in their business or process. This insight at the very least qualifies them to take an advisory role to any board of directors. Transparency being such a buzz word of late, a CEO would be stupid not to listen. Programs and projects are run by people as companies are run by people; all need to show visible successes to thrive. For a CEO this quality is essential.

We can identify the following differences between Project management and program management in general:

The first is about limiting your scope to achieve your targets; the second is about broadening your scope to be successful.
The first is about reaching deadlines; the second is about staying on course.
The first is about point solutions; the second about managing situations.
The first is about being there for your team; the second about being there for all.

A program manager is capable of a more diverse range of roles than the average project manager. In this sense, the best project manager will not necessarily become a good program manager or vice versa. I believe project managers are rarely good CEO’s because their focus is too narrow. They need clear concise targets handed to them, are very creative at executing in multi-disciplinary teams, but most often lack the kind of creativity needed to self start. They rarely become good program managers for the same reason. A program manager is a political animal without showing it and he or she is self motivated. Is a good program manager CEO material? I don’t know, the ones I thought were really good didn’t want to become CEO. So maybe those are!

Basically, I don’t care where a CEO comes from, the most important quality is leadership! CEO’s are the ones to envision the strategic programs (with a little help from us) and lead them. Lead being the key word here, not manage. That’s where I think collaborative networking comes in; around the strategic programs, multi disciplinary teams tackling issues to come up with solutions and projects to realize them. A CEO is there to inspire, motivate and make sure things move in the right direction. But that’s just my opinion.

Efficiency a risk?

2005-08-24T12:54:00.000+02:00

Efficiency is a word that has appeared in this blog several times. Most recently as something that is not enough to save us from the Asian onslaught. Something occurred to me just now and I had to write it down to get my mind around it.

We have made efficiency one of our top priorities in recent years. It started from a competitive advantage PoV and has now been reduced to cost cutting, which is just a subset of competitive advantage. The results are that we have very efficient business processes, very efficient sales processes, very efficient economic processes, et cetera. What we have less and less of is slack in these processes. You know, the room to maneuver if things don’t fit pre-ordained specs. We have become so efficient at what we do that any disturbance of our regular paths leaves us vulnerable.

In short, the more we increase efficiency, the more vulnerable we seem to become and the higher the risks are if something goes wrong. We just don’t see it that way. Why? Because it is hard to let go of Dogma’s and I believe efficiency has become a modern day dogma.

A case in point. To increase customer service at lower costs, we have divided customer requests into categories, automated/scripted the replies, increased efficiency and reduced the number of representatives. Still a large percentage of people do not fit into one of the categories or are not satisfied by the scripted answer. This percentage is making more and more noise and is ruining many established reputations. The people designing and running the customer care centers look at the figures and are wondering what is happening. According to the figures, they are being very efficient and successful. They are not facing up to their vulnerability and to the fact that even small numbers can ruin big reputations. There is a contradiction here that needs to be solved; how do I keep my customers happy without solving all their problems?

I like to make a case here for collaborative networking, people from different backgrounds, working together to solve apparent contradictions. Making a car lighter and more fuel efficient is not a contradiction, it is optimization. Making an engine more powerful and making it lighter is a contradiction. To make it more powerful, it needs to be stronger, in order for it to be stronger it needs thicker walls, with more material it becomes heavier. Only if you bring together people with different understanding of the subsystems and the systems they impact on, can you solve this. It’s a non-linear and relatively unpredictable process until you come up with a solution. The only thing you can do is look at how people have tackled these kinds of problems in the past and use their way of thinking in your approach as a multi-disciplinary team.

That is the dream our network members and I are striving for. The fact that it brings back some humanity in an over regulated system is an added bonus.

Entrepreneurship and innovation in the Netherlands

2005-08-16T11:30:00.000+02:00

A recent OESO survey shows the Dutch at the bottom of the list when it comes to entrepreneurship. Two thirds of our population does not want to work for themselves, but wants to work for somebody else. Only ten percent of our listed companies are younger than 40 years, while in the US the number is eighty percent. Another survey shows that people in the Netherlands do not take pride in their work anymore. They only work to be able to pay for having fun outside office hours, for full time employees an average 6.7 hours! It is not surprising we are also at the bottom of the list when it comes to innovation.

I am pretty annoyed with the way the Dutch look at innovation. Innovation is about efficiency and therefore doing things better. We are very good at this! As stated before, it is also about doing better things. The latter is something the Dutch do not seem to grasp anymore. We are still cutting costs (through efficiency of our processes) and only looking at short term financial impact. Margins are only up temporarily because revenues are not increasing. We are slowly but surely destroying the capital we have built through entrepreneurship in the preceding centuries. Since it’s a silent crisis and not a plane crashing, we do not seem to mind or care.

This slow degradation of capital (human, creative, social and financial) is happening in most of our larger companies, our educational system, in our health care, and in our governmental institutions. We do not seem to realize that the still raining Taylor dogma of compartmentalizing our work through defining every process detail in the name of efficiency stifles innovation and the leadership needed to innovate. People are just performing routine jobs, haven’t gotten a clue to what is happening two steps down the road (or up) and consequently don’t care anymore about what happens outside their immediate (very limited) sphere of influence. As soon as you try to step outside the confines of your job description, somebody will immediately cut of your head. Where is the pride in what we do?

We are ruled by fear, the fear of making mistakes, the fear of losing our job, the fear of immigrants, et cetera, et cetera. We pride ourselves in not making mistakes, we pity people who lose their job, we pamper immigrants (or used to) and deny them the opportunity to make something out of their own lives. Once you run a company that doesn’t make it, it’s the end of your career. You did not learn something, you failed! Once you take a risk in a big company and it doesn’t work out, it’s the end of your career, you failed. The only ones floating to the top of our society are the ones who do not make mistakes. Guess how many decisions they made involving any risk whatsoever. I’ll give you the answer, it is probably none!

Excuse me for ranting, but this is why I started this blog. Collaborate and innovate, look at new possibilities and at possibilities in a new way. Follow your passion and work together with people who share that passion and create. Learn from your mistakes and from each other. That is how the Dutch became the first Hegemony this world knew, before the English and before the US. We showed courage, worked together with people from all creeds and shared the risks amongst each other. Let's start exploring again!

Why go for collaborative networking in your organisation?

2005-08-02T11:54:00.000+02:00

If you ask a believer, the answer is not the same as that of the average CEO. A believer sees the common good of finding kindred spirits, sharing information and exploring new ventures. Innovation through friction within multidisciplinary teams is a given. Therefore, this is automatically going to conquer the world! Where have we heard that before? A CEO on the other hand needs to be convinced that what we do leads to more revenue, higher margins, or lower costs.

One can only achieve any of these targets by increasing efficiency and/or effectiveness. By not only doing things better, but also by doing better things. Deliver products at a better price/quality level, with better service, et cetera. So far, we have gone down the 'Economies of scale' road. Continuously lowering transaction and interaction costs relative to the number of products/services we produce. The problem is that the knife we're using to cut costs has become more expensive than the costs we are cutting. Especially large firms have compartmentalized their organizations and departments into small dependent units that are extremely efficient at what they do, but have no clue anymore about the outside world while still being dependent on that outside world. So when something happens outside their scope, they act within their limited set of rules. Result; service goes down, a whole batch of products contains mistakes, et cetera. Only the board still sees the big picture and so the board constantly has to step in to set details straight and change the rule set to accommodate incidents. See where this is going?

What we offer through collaborative networking is the ‘Economies of Scope’ way. Not a magic bullet, but a means for your employees to come together, learn from each other and by achieving new insights together, innovate. We let people from different disciplines meet around objects (products) or subjects (service level) and get to understand each other's differing view points on the same matter. This is the basis for creating new insights and in turn is the basis for innovation. Not only do they come up with innovations, but as a multi disciplinary team are also much better equipped to come up with the goods to prove it; a solid business case. Because we are going to support network activities through web based tools, we not only support the current team, but also the rapid inclusion of new members and a means to research the behaviour expressed and together with the University of Twente and the Institute for Network Cultures accommodate the tools to better meet those needs in the future.

Does this mean a CEO can sit back and relax? By no means! He or she has to show commitment to this way of working and reward co-operation and resulting success. Real leadership is needed to motivate the networks to produce and give direction to where they are going. In this sense, nothing has changed; we still need people to inspire us!

A safe place to explore and have fun

2005-07-20T10:31:00.000+02:00

When part of a network, it’s nice to know that members share a common purpose that you can identify with. It’s what binds you as a group and drives you to work together. It is fun to connect and collaborate with people, to create new insights and as a result be creative based on those insights and innovate.

Annoying are the people who seem to think that everything is there for them to break down and diss. There are simple ways to deal with this at least, the easiest being to block these negative elements (IP address, name, etc.). Fake identities, identity theft and the like are more difficult to combat.

We need selection criteria and membership thresholds for becoming part of a successful network. Invitation only! If it’s worth being a member, it is worth putting effort into becoming a member. For a network to be successful at innovation we need people from diverse disciplines to come together, so making a selection on profession or role will not do. We need to put in place criteria that help us select based on common purpose and shared value systems. We start with a small group that share this common purpose and value system and have them invite new members, these members than have to be evaluated by at least two other members (chosen at random?) before being allowed to join. After joining, members receive a certificate that is used to identify themselves to the network, but also includes characteristics which are used to authenticate them as being who the say they are.

I know some will not like this, for it puts limitations on spontaneous behaviour and collaboration. It will most certainly limit the exponential growth of many of the open networks created out there. Let’s face it, would you like to have your kids do their homework together with other kids who share their interests, or with unknowns who can potentially harm their mental or even physical well being? NO? Then why should it be any different for you?

Follow up on starting networks

2005-07-04T11:07:00.000+02:00

How do we provide purpose and direction to a network? How do we create a context where people want to work together and learn together? We need a shared vision, a shared identity and themes around which we build our community and act consistently to the outside world.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Then why are so many networks failing? I have stated before that most are chaotic and lack focus. It’s mostly about having the most contacts, a game that will be won and then it’s over. We need more. We need context to put our relations and purpose into perspective.

As stated, we need a shared vision, a vision that is not necessarily obvious at the start, but will gain transparency and momentum while building on ideas. This is also the basis for creating an identity as a group, we identify with the vision and involve people based on common purpose, common ground and experience. Within our network, we focus our efforts based on themes we identify with as sub groups. A theme provides the basis for subjects, objects, or a combination of both to keep our eyes on the ball and work as a team. Another advantage is that groups or individuals outside our first tier network identify with our network based on such a theme. This makes it interesting for companies to create communities of customers and interact with them to improve their offerings.

To summarize, we need to connect through common purpose, base our identity on common ground and act in a shared context based on common objects and or subjects.

Reflected reflection

2005-07-02T11:37:00.000+02:00

When we are part of a network and, as previously stated, see ourselves reflected in that network, what does that mean? Do we see our conceptions and misconceptions reflected and do we find common ground in the confirmation of our peers? Do we find reflection of who we are and do our peers challenge our conceptions and misconceptions? I am looking for confirmation on being a worthwhile individual and want to be challenged so I can learn and grow. I am under no illusion that I am unique in that respect and think all people are in their own way looking for respect and a group of people they can trust and learn with.

Everybody has his or her own balance of value drivers, and chooses his or her own networks based on this balance. I would like to make this reciprocal; being part of a group means to understand the nature of the group and strive to make it better, not just yourself. It’s about adding to the world; new ideas, concepts, etc.. This means that networks can not just absorb everyone, we have mechanisms to separate and exclude chaff, we have mechanisms to reward sharing and adding new ideas, we make people feel proud of what they are part of. It’s our job to make it worthwhile on a group level, without loosing identity or at the cost of a superiority complex. You are welcome to join, but be prepared to be challenged to stay part of us!

How are we to benefit from this financially? It is actually quite simple; we need money to live our lives as individuals, but the source of our money is the community we live in. So join the community and act with the community and create value for the community. Participate, it will most certainly reward you for it in the expression of our time’s value; money.

How are businesses going to benefit from this? An old greek saying is: “The gods listen to mortals who listen to gods”. I think it’s self evident.

How to get networking initiatives of the ground?

2005-06-27T10:26:00.000+02:00

The two biggest questions we encounter when talking to businesses on using networks to improve collaboration, innovation and effectiveness are; How to get it of the ground and the business case validation.

Let’s start with getting it off the ground. We only have to look at our own experience. Why did we start a new company on collaborative networking? Why did we start this blog? The answers lie in how we met and what each of us is good at. One of us is good at facilitating and accelerating trends, the other in mediating groups of people, keeping them together under a common purpose. Both of us where triggered by the same wave that is hitting the net and the world linked to it; social software and networking. We both believe this is going to happen, with or without us.

This teaches us that there has to be a seed, that people have to understand the benefits for growth and take an interest. It then becomes essential to facilitate growth and not control it, however good your intentions are, control is deadly to growth in this area. Some things take off and work well for three months and crash (the bandwagon effect dying out), other experiments need time to grow into their potential. There do not seem to be general rules for success.

What seems to be working is creating play grounds for people to start their own initiatives, for them to create common purpose amongst differing backgrounds and possibly cultures. Mediation of these groups is essential in creating identity, an identity that is grounded in the company’s vision, and faces outward based on themes of interest. Trial and error is an important part in this, since people get to the point of understanding what’s in it for them at different times! We need to put in place a timeline and reward structures that address the creation of human, creative, social and financial capital.

This brings us to the second question. The business case is not just about money, it’s just as much about personal development, improving and creating new relationships and gaining and sharing experience and knowledge. The business case should take into account what we are learning and sharing with each other and what that means for our collective effectiveness and added value as a group.

Let us be honest here, in our combined 35 years of business experience, we have yet to see the first business case that actually works out as initially intended. They are an invaluable means to create commitment with all stakeholders to start an initiative; they provide the means to prepare the mind for what is to come and are a benchmark for progress. What they are not is an accurate prediction of the future.

We use a methodology that takes stakeholders through a process of identifying the value of an initiative, its value drivers and the attributes of those value drivers. The latter ones are essential for steering the end result, for this is where people’s motivation derives from. The results are used to check for the necessary capabilities within a company and set up the overall timeline. Once that is done we use various financial models to set up a validated business case. Because all steps are documented, we can easily recalibrate when circumstances change or an assumption is proven wrong. This way of setting up a ‘living’ business case is ideal for networking initiatives and the steering of these complex opportunities.

A network for starters

2005-06-16T15:14:00.000+02:00

Yesterday went to an exiting initiative by the Rabobank (the largest bank in the Netherlands). Together with local authorities and the University of Twente they facilitate a reintegration project for the unemployed. The central idea is to provide an entrepreneurial space for the jobless, they have the time to work on their ideas for half a year, work out a business plan and start a business of their own, without loosing their unemployment benefits. Yesterday these new entrepreneurs showed of their products and services. Ranging from wedding planners to exiting ideas on packaging.

Together with the University of Twente we will look into how entrepreneurs use their network to support and enhance their business. Two conclusions can be drawn already, the first is they use them extensively; the second is that the web plays no role what so ever at this moment in time. Interesting to see why and how we can start a process of acceptance of the web as a useful extra tool for finding partners, suppliers and customers and collaborating with them.

We had some interesting discussions with two students and one of the speakers for the day. One of the students was there as part of an assignment to see what the economic consequences are for the local community of the Rabobank initiative, the other as a case for how entrepreneurs learn. Will be interesting to see what they have to tell. Our discussion with one of the speakers (Roel Pieper, Lectorate E-Business at the University of Twente) on how to use the web for collaboration and learning will get a follow up in August.

Social Software; nothing without context

2005-06-14T13:35:00.000+02:00

Having had a little experience with the social software community, what strikes me is its lack of focus on a business level. In the Netherlands we have a saying: “It is like a bucket full of frogs, they jump in all directions if disturbed”. I am not saying it’s an exact analogy, because on some level there always is a focus, but there seldom is one on a business level.

People in the social software community talk about weak links being the best catalyst for the value of a network, most of my weak links are outside of this community. The Netherlands being the country with the highest broad band connections in the world doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its fair share of digibetism. Most of the people I talk to use a PC and can answer their e-mail, use a browser and possibly a word processor, but that’s about it. Whenever I talk about using the web as a tool to find, connect and explore with other people their eyes glaze over.

I think there are two major reasons for this. The first is the fear of using technology; the second is the lack of context in most networks. Regarding the use of technology we apparently have some ways to go to make things intuitive and easy to use for those who have not grown up with a computer in the house. Spamming and identity theft do not help in pulling people over the threshold. Blogging on this site is a nice example of improvement in the usability area. It used to take just as long if not longer to post pieces on a site as it took to write them. Now it is write it and publish! Then again, I already know how to use a word processor which gives me the edge over those who may have far more interesting things to say, but do not know how to use one. The good news is, because of the apparent success of Wiki’s and blogs the industry is finally looking at ease of use from a user’s perspective instead of adapting the best technology solution to how it must be used.

Context is something almost as illusive. Can it be created, or do the members of a community have to create it themselves? Chicken and egg problem, or do we meet in the middle? A good example is wikipedia, the context is a library/encyclopedia and an index is used as reference model. People just hopped on, because they recognized the context and know how to use the reference model. Why is LinkedIn still successful and is friendster struggling? Probably because one is grounded in the context of finding a job and offers a meeting place for employer and employee to find each other, the other is just about meeting each other. To me the latter is not good enough, why would I go there? It is just too spontaneous; I get too many irrelevant requests; I loose interest too quickly, it burns hot and fizzles out. My 'free' cooperation depends on whether I see myself reflected in the network (identify with the context) and what I get out of the network compared to what I put in.

The message is that ease of use is needed to make web based social solutions available to all, better protection against spam and identity theft is needed to convince them to use it and context is needed to create communities around and go the distance. To keep your eye on the ball you need to do all. They are best done by a group that includes people to create the right interface, know how to secure it and people who know the context the network is created for. So watch your weak links, there may be people out there who can help you set up social software solutions within the context they identify with!

Cooperation Crossing Signals with the University of Twente

2005-06-07T02:24:00.000+02:00

Today we had discussions with representatives of NIKOS, the knowledge institute of the University of Twente. The topic was how we could get a formal relationship with the University whereby both parties could benefit from each other. Our focus was on the scientific backing of our social networking endeavors, specifically in the area of human behaviour supported by technology. The focus of NIKOS was to find out whether our ideas where viable, we where the right people for the job and whether our concept would add to the areas where the University and the scientific community it is part of would benefit from research.

We are glad to announce that starting July 1st of 2005 we will be working together with the University of Twente to provide solutions to improve communication, the sharing of information, learning and collaboration within organizations by providing their employees with the ability to create their own personal information and communication space and their own path to personal leadership.

Collaborative networking and learning

2005-06-05T03:19:00.000+02:00

As stated before, we had a very interesting time at the newly restored Castle Vanenburg in Putten, NL. Here, we will go into some of what was said and concluded on the topic of Social networking & Collaboration and its application in the field of learning.

All of us agreed on the fact that Social Software solutions being offered - from e-mail, forums and web meetings to blogs and wikis - and the communities that arise from its use, are growing rapidly. We discussed the fact that corporations today cease to function if basic e-mail services cease and that organisational borders (internal and external) are more and more difficult to define and uphold in the face of spontaneous web based communication and collaboration.

Factors slowing down the growth of social software solutions are security, privacy, cultural differences and especially in larger organizations ICT policies that restrict or prohibit the use of most web based communication solutions, e.g. instant messaging, blogging, etc. The primary reason behind restrictive ICT policies is the spontaneous nature of many networks and their communication. We still cling to the old command & control adagio and favour virtual project rooms that can be closed of to the outside world and can be monitored. Whether this is sustainable or not, opinions diverged.

It was clear to all that we need to find a balance between control of the situation and room enough to manoeuvre and innovate. In other words how much free cooperation is needed to provide outside knowledge as a basis for innovation while still using structured processes to provide direction and purpose? Clear to all was the fact that cultural differences must be taken into account when designing solutions that span multiple cultures in the use of social software. For instance, Northern Europe primarily uses e-mail in its communication, while southern Europe tends to use instant messaging.

We moved on to learning at this point since we will need training and education on how to deal with the emergence of social networks. You cannot just shout anything you want on the network(s) you are part of. Many networks are self correcting, but wouldn’t it be nice if we did not have to invest a lot of energy in getting rid of back ground noise. Also, if we want to apply social software solutions in our daily business it had better be a little more structured and focused than the average social network our kids are members of. Combine the fun with the useful.

When it comes to e-learning, many programs shattered on copying existing content one on one to interactive media. Without the interaction! Folkert Castelein from the Global Learning Group proposes to re-design existing content & know-how with a Socratic & tasks based approach (coaching by asking the right questions) and design learning processes like a project scenario based on questions and choices. Provide people with a clear path to what they need at the time they need it. For this to happen we need to be able to offer little snippets of learning and access to their peers and coaches, coaches who have been there and are willing to share their experience. There was little discussion at this point, because we all agreed on the basic premise Folkert put forward.

Before running out of our allotted time, we agreed that social software solutions and learning meet at the point where experiences are shared and people start to use what they have learned in their daily routine. To be able to provide context and experience next to theory, we need to know whom to contact on what topic and we need to be able to set up a means of communication and start working together to learn together. It works both ways! How to best develop solutions to achieve this and ground the behaviour of people in these solutions is a most likely candidate for our next meeting. One we are looking forward to!

2005-06-02T23:24:00.000+02:00

Round table on Social Networking & Collaboration June 1 2005

Yesterday (June 1st 2005), we got together with a very interesting and diverse group of people to discuss H2 enable people to find, connect and explore together. For us it was our first formal meeting as a new company, for most of our invitees it was their first in depth experience of what social software could enable in our daily lives.

We discussed how social software solutions provide real empowerment to people. It is the basis for an institutional capacity to work closely with other highly specialized people to get better faster. It provides a personal information space where Personal Leadership can be achieved, and people can Find, Connect and Explore together. It is a place where YOU decide from whom, how and what to learn to improve.

We all shared our enthusiasm, fears and ideas on where to go next. Next will at the very least include another Round Table as successful as yesterday’s one.