by Schristia (busy with my daughter’s exams)
The Most Compelling Leadership Vision:
[Via HarvardBusiness.org]

A distinguished woman rose to speak in the front of a room of 40 fellow employees during a Total Leadership workshop I was conducting earlier this week at a large pharmaceutical company’s headquarters.

“Joyous laughter — this is the sound I hear throughout the home I have built and now maintain for mentally ill women in Puerto Rico. They are surrounded by people who love and care for them. They are enjoying life.”

Juana, let’s call her, was telling the brief (one-minute) story of her personal leadership vision; a description of the impact you’re having on your world and the legacy you’re creating 15 years from now. When Juana sat down, one of her close colleagues said, “I’ve known you so long yet I never knew about this part of who you are. Wow!” I couldn’t help but ask Juana how I could support her pursuit of her vision. All of us were moved, and felt inclined to contribute.

People will not follow a leader if it is only to the leader’s benefit. We are social animals, using networks of interactions for live our lives. The most invigorating visions are those that lead people to a better place. Not to one that simply makes the leader wealthy.

After hearing a set of examples, I then ask the whole group to describe what was inspiring in what was just said and heard. Invariably, it is the people who speak not about their own achievement but, rather, about how they’re helping someone else who draw the most powerful emotional responses and pronounced support.

Having heard many personal vision statements in the last few days, in different groups (including, through an interpreter, securities industry executives visiting The Wharton School from China), I was struck, once again, by the power of this very this simple, yet critically important idea. Serve others and others will want to serve you. This paradox is often difficult to grasp, especially in your early years. Yet is seems to be a universal truth: People are more likely to pay attention to you — and they are more inclined to help you — when you declare yourself committed to serving others.

It is a paradox of a social animal – simply doing what is best for the individual is not as successful as doing what is best for the group. The chances for survival are much greater when the power of the group is brought into play. That is why we developed this way. Group dynamics determine what gets done.

So, an effective leader is one that can harness the group but the group evolved to really like what benefits the group, not just the leader. Thus, an effective leader is one who works for the group not just for themselves.

This is not to say that leaders can not utilize the group needs in order to create benefits for the leader. It does suggest, however, that the best leaders are those that at least appear to be serving the group. In most cases, the more the leader appears to just be gaining power purely for self-aggrandizement the less likely they are to maintain the interest of their followers.

Technorati Tags: General, Web 2.0

Frame It Bigger:
[Via chrisbrogan.com]

What would you say some of the biggest communication challenges your organization faces? How would solving or improving any of these better your business (or organization)? What does your customer (even if that’s a b2b customer or an internal customer) need the most from you, and what does your organization need from your customer? How can you improve your customer’s life (in any way)? What would simplify any of your customer’s challenges?

And from these bigger questions, can you find a smaller action? Can you find the miniaturized first step that would bring you in any of those directions?

Photo credit Jurvetson

So often, social media are portrayed as a bottom-up phenomenon. The individual take control of their own needs using these tools. This is certainly one approach that is hard to stop because the tools are so easily implemented and used.

But a larger, more strategic approach can also be extremely useful. This takes a longer, more top-down view to see where the holes exist. Bottom-up approaches can leave gaps between what the user wants and what is also useful for the organization.

Answering these ‘big’ questions can be as useful as answering ‘little’ ones. The organization just has to make it part of their process.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0

by jurvetson
Respecting Control:
[Via A Journey In Social Media]

Posting Of Sensitive Documents

Much angst and concern exists in corporate social media projects around this issue — everyone wants to encourage more sharing and collaboration, but not every internal document is meant for every employee’s eyes.

And there’s no easy answer.

Push the pendulum too far in one direction, you’ll end up with hundreds or thousands of gated discussions that just end up being a fancy dumping ground for documents that no one can read, and no one can discuss.

We’ve lived in this world, we don’t want to go back to it.

Push the pendulum too far in the other direction, and there will be a backlash against the corporate social media problem. It’s a reality of the corporate world that not everything can be shared with everyone.

We’d like to avoid onerous corporate policies, content review processes, etc. — all the 1.0 backlashes that can result when people think something has gotten a bit out of control.

A very senior individual in the organization expresses significant concern and anxiety for posting of sensitive document — and isn’t quite sure how to handle the situation.

Posting individual makes a strong case for increased information sharing across the organization as a part of better business practices and the general good. In theory, yes, but …

Very senior individual makes a strong case for more restrictive policies, review, enforcement, policing, etc. of the social platform. Wants to do the right thing, but damage exceeds benefit in their eyes now.

Put plainly, if you’re in charge of a business unit or function, you should have some say in what sort of things get broadly shared, and what sort of things have a more limited internal audience.

And having an internal social media platform with lots of proficient people who tend to share everything they come across shouldn’t take that measure of control from those senior individuals.

Social media is supposed to empower people, and not render them powerless. And that list of empowered people should include very senior managers and executives.

Mistakes Will Be Made

Many of us who are active on the social platform have made the same mistake — we’ve broadly shared something we thought was interesting, but we missed the fact that someone who has responsibility might not agree with us.

The recovery formula is pretty simple:

- immediately apologize and admit the mistake
- offer to take the document immediately down
- acknowledge their concerns and right to control certain kinds of information being widely shared
- express a sincere intent to do better in the future
- and apologize again

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Creation, Open Access, Web 2.0

by “T” altered art
Innovation, biotech, software, etc:
[Via business|bytes|genes|molecules]

There are a lot of synergistic effects of high tech on biotech. Much of the work done today requires high powered instruments running very complex algorithms.

But it still requires highly skilled people to do the work.

In a talk at E-Tech, Drew Endy apparently said that big money requirements of biotech are holding it back and one could make biotech innovation more like software and innovate much faster. Admittedly this is absent of context, but I responded to that tweet with one that said that while there is definitely a lot to learn, instruments and people cost money. My focus was actually on the latter. In the world of software, there is some specialization, but skills are more general, while in the life science world there is a lot of specialization of some very highly trained individuals (in fact one could argue that the amount these people get paid is a travesty compared to some other professions).

There are some things in biological research that can not be made easier by using computational approaches and processes. At least not yet. These systems are too complex and full of non-linear pathways.

There are a few things we can learn from the software world; DRY, iterative developments, organizational structure, etc, but biological systems are not perfect, they are not predictable, and most of all, our solutions have a lower margin of error. Whether it’s a drug, a diagnostic, or some kind of therapy, the process of development and associated regulations is always going to take time and it’s always going to throw nasty surprises at us. Biosimulation, protein structure prediction, robotics, improved collaborative tools, there are so many things to look into to make life science R&D faster and more efficient, and less prone to failure, but I find the idea that you can just use software development as a template a little insulting.

In fact, I think that in many ways biotech and high tech take very different approaches towards innovation. Computational techniques often take a procedural approach to solving a problem. Often, it is process driven and once the process has been found/optimized, you are pretty much done.

Process-driven sciences usually have well characterized components that act in defined manners. You start at point A and get to point C by going through point B.

Biological research at its base is not process driven. Not to say that there are not parts that can be encompassed in a process. But if a process is designed to provide a black and white answer (A to B to C), then the multitudes of gray that are biological results indicate its difference.

You start at point A and get to point C but you might go through points Q, R, and S before getting to point B. But only if the patient has a particular set of 20 different genes. For someone else, it could be a totally different game.

This is why it takes so long to develop any major drug. The model systems we use to develop them are not perfect. Then we have to hope that they will have greater beneficial effect in humans than deleterious.

We can, though, find ways to make some parts more efficient. Researchers are inundated with a surfeit of data these days. Disbursing these data throughout a social network helps alleviate this glut while making it more likely that the right data can get to the right person at the right time.

Human social networks are exquisitely formulated to tease out the underlying knowledge from a diverse set of information, and then pass this knowledge around quickly. Finding computational approaches to leverage these human social networks in order to solve these complex biological systems will have innovation as an emergent property.

It is a hardwired principle of humanity.

Technorati Tags: Open Access, Science, Social media, Web 2.0

by FaceMePLS
Nonprofit Presenters: What are your best tips for preparing presentations?:
[Via Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media]

Humans often deal with a complex world by using simple stories, simple rules of thumb (or heuristics for the technobabblers). We use stories to teach us how to behave, how to react, etc. Almost any ad tells some sort of story.

The presentations that stick with people long after the talk are almost always based on a storytelling tradition. The same tools and tricks used by the teller of the Iliad still work, even in front of a small audience using a digital projector.

Beth Kanter gives a lot of presentations every year. Here are some of her thoughts:

Earlier this week, I was inspired by my good colleague, Alan Levine (aka Cogdog), I visited Save the Words. It’s an interactive flash site that lets users find and adopt words that are in danger of being removed from the dictionary.

I adopted the word archiloquy. It’s the first part of a speech or presentation. That’s the most important part of your presentation because you need to grab the audiences’ attention. I use a variety of techniques to do this, but one of my favorites is to create a story. I learned this from Andy Goodman — I’ve taken his workshops and read his books.

Andy is a master at storytelling. In his workshops, he offers the following formula for a storytelling based on Hollywood script writing:

• Introduce the central character
• Inciting moment: something bad happens to the character that will prevent them from achieving a goal related to the goal of your presentation
• Barrier to resolution #1: Character tries to solve the problem, but can’t
• Barrier to resolution #2: Character tries to solve the problem, but can’t
• Resolution: What you’re going to share in your presentation
• Widen the Lens: The bigger picture

I’ll have to help revive archiloquy. There are only 41 hits or so for the word on Google but it is a really useful term. The beginning of a presentation is the most critical to get people on board for the story you are about to tell.

Putting real thought into the start of a presentation, and to what sort of story you want to tell, are very important items to check off when preparing a talk.

As with any story, if you can make it personal, and make the audience connect with the narrative, you have engaged their attention. But remember PASS – Present A Simple Story.

You do not need to make the presentation a Shavian critique or a Swiftian satire. There is a nice legend (another way of saying story) that suggests there are only two types of narratives: a hero goes on a journey and a stranger comes to town.

Andy uses the former mode – the hero goes on a journey to achieve a goal that has been stymied. The latter also works quite well because the stranger coming to town almost always brings change. Here is one mode of this story:

• Introduce the town (perhaps in Iowa), which does not realize it yet but it is about to change forever
• The stranger arrives, bearing the tools of change (say 76 trombones, or perhaps only a novel way for communicating with others)
• Describe how the town reacts to these tools (perhaps by thinking the stranger is a fraud or by not understanding why they have to change)
• Show how a member of the village, perhaps a previously neglected member of the town with a lisp, finds the new tools open up avenues of success unseen before
• The town is changed forever by these new tools and the stranger moves on (or he can stay and marry the town’s librarian/piano teacher)

Which of these two stories you use really depends on whether you want the audience to adopt the viewpoint of the hero or of the town. But using just one of only two archiloquies helps you Present A Simple Story.

Technorati Tags: Social media, Web 2.0

by woodleywonderworks
Science Without Boundaries:
[Via AAAS News - RSS Feed]

AAAS Southwestern Meeting in Tulsa Explores Science Without Boundaries

The 2009 AAAS Southwestern and Rocky Mountain Division Annual Meeting will convene in Tulsa, Oklahoma., on 28 March for four days of events including a two-part special topic symposium on the climate and ecology of the Cross Timbers and South Great Plains.

The meeting—to be held on the campus of the University of Tulsa—will feature symposia on rainforest natural history, motor speech disorders, and alternative energies; along with student poster sessions and science communication workshops.

David Nash, executive director of the division, said this year’s meeting will emphasize the importance for science to transcend traditional boundaries.

“The largest problems facing society are so large and burdensome that no one scientific discipline, institution, or research method can find solutions,” said Nash. “This year’s meeting is going to show why scientific collaboration is vital to the scientific process.”

[More]

More meetings should be on exactly this same topic. Well, maybe not the same topic but the same underlying premise. Innovative research, and the underlying solutions that drive technology, can not be done anymore in silos of scientific disciplines.

It will require systems thinking and synthesis of information. Not reductionist approaches and analytical deconstruction.

Baby Steps.
[Crossposted at Path to Sustainable and Path to Sustainable]

Technorati Tags: Science, Social media, Sustainability, Technology

Genentech open sources Unison: [Via business|bytes|genes|molecules]

Image by Getty Images via Daylife While on the subject of open and pharma, a bioinform article (sub reqd) tells us about Unison, a protein sequence analysis platform from Genentech that has been released under the Academic Free License (why not the Apache License since they are very similar). What is Unison? Unison is a compendium of protein sequences and extensive precomputed predictions. Integration of these and other data within Unison enables holistic mining of sequences based on protein features, analysis of individual and sets of sequences, and refinement of hypotheses regarding the composition of protein families

Essentially Unison is a data warehouse, which includes a number of protein sequences, and a bunch of pre-computed data. They have also released the complete schema, API, and some of the predictions. The backend is PostgreSQL and the platform leverages the BioPerl API. So the web service serves as a reference implementation of the Unison platform. People can essentially replicate the system and contribute code within their own servers using.

I think that biotech/pharma companies may do this more and more. The advantages for a company do not really come from these particular tools but how they are used and interpreted. Making this available to a much larger group means it is more likely to yield useful results. Genentech can only do so much with these tools. If someone else uses them to find something novel, some thing that Genentech did not recognize at all, Genentech might be able to reap some rewards that they would not have if they had kept things to themselves. Even if they do not get rewards directly, the publicity is worth something. They see this as a way to extend their influence rather than something for competitors to use against them. By furthering collaboration and increasing the number of eyeballs using their tools, Genentech can accomplish some things that would be difficult to do with their cards held close.

Technorati Tags: Bioinformatics, Health, Science, Web 2.0

Collaborative Paper: What to do in the nonprofit sector to offset the economic crash.:
[Via Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media]

Source: Foundation Center Focus on the Financial Crisis

The map image above is an interactive map that displays the distribution of the most recent support by U.S. foundations to aid those affected by the downturn. Drill down to see the details. It’s part of the Foundation Center’s aggregated page of articles, podcasts, data, and resources that Focus on the Financial Crisis. You can updates through RSS. Excellent example of aggregation strategy and really clear and good information design.

This is a nice example of an organization using Web 2.0 tools to help the community in ways that would have been difficult before. And not only can you access the data to study it, but you can get updates via a newsfeed so new information is brought to you.

Marty Kearns has set up a collaborative paper and discussion on a wiki. The paper is called Cascading Failure. Marty is convinced that the answer on how the nonprofit can understand and survive this meltdown is out there in network and has set up a space for us to kick it around.

At this stage, it is clear that nonprofit and advocacy groups are headed for extraordinarily difficult financial times. The cash crunch for the advocacy movement will be as bad as we can imagine and far worse than we can easily manage. We need a plan for how to remain effective. We should all begin to operate with new assumptions.

You can find the paper along with some draft prescriptions for organizations. One the recommendations is:

Invest in Social Capital. It will be the only growing market in 2009. Look at it as part of your organization: There have always been good reasons to build your social network, but now it is a matter of strategy and applying the techniques of network weaving. You need social capital to help in difficult times. I set up a page to brainstorm some practical tips, strategies, and resources.

There are also some draft recommendations for individuals working within advocacy movements.

So. not only is a draft paper available to all, but individuals and organizations can add their own value to these ideas with online discussions. Thus, novel ideas and innovations are able to rapidly traverse the networks that are created. The increase in the rate of diffusion of creative solutions may just be critical in finding a way out of this mess.

by Savannah Grandfather
A Really Open Conversation:
[Via A Journey In Social Media]
This is the first recession where many employees have actually had an open forum to discuss decisions. Some companies are finding out the benefits of just such a conversation, although it goes against some standard viewpoints.

I discussed transactional versus transformational leadership a few days ago. Transactional works fine when things are static. But in the rapidlychanging world we inhabit now, transformational leadership is called for. Here is how an organization can move to transformational leadership

As The Economy Slows

Like any other company, we’re tightening up the belt a bit as we head into a most decidedly unpredictable economic environment.

But, this time around, we’ve got our internal platform EMC|ONE. And we’re using it in some pretty interesting ways to share the news, discuss it, and — hopefully — get back to business sooner than later.

Spontaneous Vs. Planned

The first memo came out in a traditional way — there was a minor change to our vacation policy to keep the amount of carryover vacation down to a manageable number. Not a big deal in the broader scheme of things, at least the way I think about these things.

But a couple of spontaneous discussions emerged on the internal platform, right out there for everyone to see. A few people were (ahem) rather pointed in their thoughts about this particular change in vacation policy.

Some people were quite upset regarding the inconvenience involved — they had made plans far in advance, which were now impacted. Others had particular work-related situations that didn’t make it easy to burn off enough vacation in time — they were concerned about losing a valuable benefit. Still others felt free to spout off a bit — ill-advised in any public setting, but there you had it.

All very valid concerns.

Before too long, we had over 10,000 views on the threads, and hundreds of comments. Over time, though, more moderate voices joined the discussion, and softly rebuked some of the more vocal participants.

These more moderate people said that the economy was getting tough, and the company needed to look at every reasonable avenue for lowering expenses. If this meant a small change in the vacation policy, fine — better than some of the alternatives.

Fine, came back the collective response — then the communication should have been worded with this in mind. Be open and transparent, they said — don’t try to whitewash the situation. The executives in charge of the policy (formation and communciation) got to see this all unfold in realtime before their eyes — warts and all.

Very useful feedback, I might offer …

Employees know what is going on so trying to hide or sugarcoat it can be counterproductive to the intent of a decision. But more importantly, they are enmeshed in a social milieu that is going to discuss almost any change. By making these discussions open, not only does the bitching become apparent but the ability to use social mores to constrain behavior can come into being.

So an open conversation has not only resulted in all sides learning something new that will now color many of the subsequent conversations. Maybe by giving people more control and information, the organization can exert transformational leadership in ways helpful to all during times of excessive change.

This can be disruptive to everyone, especially managers who are used to living in static times and using transactional leadership.

You know, this sort of experience can be thought of as a “moment of truth” in any social media journey.

You wanted an open discussion — well, you’ve got one! Now, what are you going to do about it?

Seriously, though, the company’s management would have been well within their rights to yank the whole discussion right then and there. But — no — we all found this extremely fascinating.

And the discussion turned to “how do we use this platform to help communicate going forward?”

So the decision is made to be expand the use, not contract it, of this new method of conversing within the organization. The speed by which all this happens can be very troubling to an organization used to old style communication.

Look, any time you have to share disruptive news with your workforce, there’s an inherent disruption.

People want to ask questions, discuss among themselves, share perspectives. It’s a natural human reaction — you have to process things a bit before you can get back to work.

Well, using the online platform, we seem to be getting through that introspection phase far faster than before. Anyone can see the memo, and what everyone else has already said about it. Anyone can leave their thoughts and concerns as well — all in about 3 minutes flat.

No need to wander around the building, finding people to talk to. Or getting on the phone to discuss this with your friends. Or to immediately schedule a meeting with your manager to discuss pronto.

Sure, there are people who are going to want to do some of this traditional processing, but — as of today — the online platform is where people appear to be doing the majority of this “processing” — and it’s all there for everyone to see — including our executive management.

Finally, executive communications is not a precise art. Getting realtime feedback on how you did in crafting the message is valuable feedback for any executive. And you can find out pretty quickly just how well you did, and how to do better next time.

If you want to, that is :-)

Transactional leader would not want to use this technology because there is no inherent carrot/stick way to control the employees. But transformational leadership trusts the community to control itself, to provide its own motivations. With a solid example of the community doing just that, the leaders of the organization decide this is a good thing and will expand its use. Transformational leadership by its definition.

Being Thoughtful

So, based on that spontaneous experience, we’re going to be trying a few new things in the future. We’d like to integrate the use of the platform into the broader communication experience.

First, we’re going to proactively “start the discussion”. When a potentially controversial memo comes out, we’re going to post in on the platform, and explicitly invite people to discuss.

Second, we’re going to be as tolerant as we can be when people feel like venting a bit — and then gently reminding them privately if they’re being a bit too, well, passionate :-)

Third, we’re going to spend a little time and summarize the more interesting themes back to exec management — here’s what people are saying that we think is valid, go to this link if you want to see it all unfiltered.

They are creating an avenue for a lot of tacit information that remains hidden not only from many other employees but also from management to become explicit and to inform the community.

As transformational leaders, they realize they might not have the best answers but will trust the organization to help create the best answers. They will permit social mores that we have evolved to control the conversation rather than an authoritarian perspective that could be counter-productive.

The Bottom Line

It’s funny — having a social platform ingrained in your company culture is changing how we do things. I can remember a time not too long ago where this sort of thing would be entirely out of the question.

But now it seems like the most natural thing to do — invite people into the discussion.

This stuff isn’t about technology, it’s about changing the way you do business.

And this seems like a perfect example to me.

This company is developing transformational leadership which will be able to help it deal with the chaotic times we are living in. It has the tools to help it survive with fewer disruptive upheavals than if it stuck with transactional leadership.

A great example of how a large company can begin to alter its leadership style, its very way of doing business. This is really its best hope. Organizations that still use a management style based on stasis, that use transactional leadership, will have a very hard time surviving the hurricane of change we find ourselves.

Technorati Tags: Social media, Web 2.0

by · YeahjaleaH ·
Gifted few make order out of chaos – 06 March 2002 – New Scientist:
[Via New Scientist]

Some people have a special gift for predicting the twists and turns of chaotic systems like the weather and perhaps even financial markets, according to an Australian psychologist.

Richard Heath, who has now moved to the UK’s University of Sunderland tried to identify people who can do this by showing volunteers a list of eight numbers and asking them to predict the next four. The volunteers were told that the numbers were maximum temperatures for the previous eight days. In fact the numbers were computer-generated: some sets were part of a chaotic series while the rest were random.

Random sequences are by their nature unpredictable, whereas chaotic sequences follow specific rules. Despite this, chaotic sequences are very hard to predict in practice because of the “butterfly effect” – even an unmeasurably small change in initial conditions can have a dramatic impact on their future state.

Nonetheless, Heath found that a quarter of the people he tested could predict the temperature for at least the next two days if the sequence was chaotic, rather than random, even though there is no obvious pattern to the figures.
[More]

The above link is a 6 year old article from New Scientist. It is about one of my favorite papers: Can People Predict Chaotic Sequences?

My post on Friday about entrepreneurs and their ability to make decisions under stress reminded me of it. Heath’s paper was a small study but I was intrigued by the possibility that a fraction of the population, about 25%, might be capable of seeing a pattern in information that the rest of the population sees only as random noise.

I wonder how a group of entrepreneurs would do with his tests?

Technorati Tags: Science, Social media