If you’re like me your first reaction is — NO WAY.  You’re skeptical, you may get this feeling in your gut that makes you cringe. You’re thinking — love does not belong in the workplace, it’s personal, it belongs at home. You have a vision of people in loose, flowing clothes running around hugging each other. With flowers. And other stuff. (Ok, maybe that’s just me.)

But something made my critical mind pause.

The Pygmalion Effect

The Pygmalion Effect describes how people act in accordance to the expectations you have of them — whether these expectations are conscious or unconscious. If you think people are stupid, guess what? — they can read your mind and act that way. This effect has been demonstrated in the classroom, at home, and at work. (Related effect — the Galatea effect > the expectations we have of ourselves.) Furthermore, a positive mindset from a leader can produce powerful behavioral effects, even in the absence of auditory or visual contact (references below). Whether you are leading employees or students — your mindset matters. Call it good will, call it focusing on the positive — or simply call it love.

Appreciative Processes

Ever heard of Appreciative Inquiry? It’s a type of inquiry that envisions a future that focuses positive relationships and collaboration, building organizations based on what works rather than trying to fix what doesn’t. Appreciative Processes improve systems by amplifying what’s working — identifying what people do best.

Think about how we approach most work — FIX THE PROBLEM. Do a gap analysis. Figure out what people need to learn, figure out what mindsets we need to change, usually ending up with the question — how do we fix our PEOPLE?

Appreciative Processes combine the Demming approach with Appreciative Inquiry — figure out what processes  make a difference and use an appreciative mindset to bring out the best in people. Use Appreciative Leadership to create a culture of systemic change and continuous improvement.

Back to LOVE

Ok, so here we are — back at the idea of love in organizations. When we think about creating an environment that:

• Focuses on what people and organizations do well
• Focuses on strengths,
• Allows people to do their best everyday
• A place where people enjoy being and where they enjoy each other

That’s a organization that uses love.

If it makes you feel better to call it something else, go ahead do so. But just remember, you’re losing the energy of a very powerful word.

Just try this — go about your work constantly thinking — “I love this place, my work, and the people I work with.” Try it for just ONE day. See what difference it makes.

Learn More…

• If you’re interested in learning more — come to a workshop on “Releasing the Power of Love in the Workplace”, by Roger Harrision sponsored by BAodn on June 9, 2010 in San Francisco. [Link to workshop]
• Accessing the Power of Love in the Workplace, by Roger Harrision, Ph.D. [Download PDF document here]
• The Appreciative Leader and Appreciative Change Processes by Gervase R. Bushe, Ph.D. [Download PDF document "aplc" here]. Or visit www.clearlearning.ca
• Pygmalion & Galatea effects

This one is created by Marcus Buckingham, the Gallup genius who helped create and market First, Break All the Rules, and Now, Discover Your Strengths. These books respectively say – each one of us is an individual and different, and managers should realize that and treat us differently; and people who do best focus on their strengths. The Strong Life Test for Women is a take-off on the latter.

First I took the online assessment, then I went to the bookstore and read the related book in about 2.5 hours (after reading academic papers, most business books are an easy read.)

Is is useful?

Well, it depends. If you’re looking for work, or a new life path, no one test is going to provide you the answer. What it may give you, is some insights into yourself, not because the test reveals your true self, but because you reveal your true self  when you react/interact with the test.

So I took this test. It told me the following:

• Strongest Role: Advisor. I like to ask the question – What’s the best thing to do?
• Supporting Role: Creator. I like to ask the question – What do I understand?

To be honest, I didn’t like that Creator was a supporting role. I’m an artist damn it! Ok, know that we’ve got that straight, we can move on, eh? I read my complete role descriptions and noted my reactions to the descriptions — yes, I like figuring out the answers and the best way to do things — I like being the expert (Advisor). Yes, I like starting with my own insights and finding the pattern underneath life’s craziness (Creator). Yes, I like tests that reconfirm how I think about myself, and make me remember what’s important to me.

The interesting difference

What’s different about this test, is not so much the test itself, but the accompanying literature that asks one important question:

• What are your strongest moments? In your working life, family, marriage, etc.?
• At what points do you feel you are at your best?
• What is is about those particular moments?
• How can you deliberately create those moments?
• Investigate those moments – what is it about them that you like?
• Celebrate and acknowledge those moments?

It is this difference – focusing on strong moments in your life, and the specifics of those moments — that makes this interesting. The most important exercise you can do is find the words to describe those moments.

The test is just a starting point.

Just an FYI – a list of roles as outlined in the book:

1. Advisor
2. Caretaker
3. Creator
4. Equalizer
5. Influencer
6. Motivator
7. Pioneer
8. Teacher
9. Weaver

This is a good read. I loved learning about the inner workings of Wall Street from one person’s perspective — and it just that — a biased perspective. He does not hide this fact but that’s in part what makes the book so entertaining. I learned more about how high finance works from reading this book than I have from any financial textbook. McDonald describes from his perspective why Lehman failed, what was done to try save it, and fully lays the blame at the feet of two people: Dick Fuld, CEO and Joe Gregory, COO.

One begins to understand the complexity of the financial instruments involved, the delusional activities of large group of people, and the sheer calamity brought upon this country and the world as a result of these activities. The collapse of Lehman was at the crux of the financial meltdown. Reading this book you realize how much of our financial system runs on faith and trust, and how important it is to have checks and regulations in place that keep that trust and faith in place. Dismantling the Glass-Stegall act was at the root of the most recent chaos — and that blame lies with the Congress at that time. And there is the easy access to credit thanks to the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates low after the 2001 bubble. (Sorry, can’t mention the name of the demi-god Alan Greenspan.)

The book is well-named: A Colossal Failure of Common Sense. However it’s just not the top two Lehman that suffered from this failure, it’s most of the heavy hitters in the system that did. And they should be ashamed of the havoc they wrought.

But we all had a piece of it, however small. I hope our awareness these failures leads to change. We’ll see.

Good book, albeit biased — worth the read.

Full disclosure: Lehman Brothers was a client I worked with and I knew some of the people at the firm.

My mother’s kitchen

As an adult, I’d go back to visit my mother’s house, and one of our biggest arguments was over her kitchen — more specifically, the organization of her kitchen. I could never find anything — which is not unusual for a visitor, but more importantly I couldn’t learn how to find anything and had to ask her for help every single time. Drove me bananas.

The cooking oil would be under the sink. The spices would be with the pots. There was nothing useful in the pantry. The flour, sugar, eggs (she had 2 fridges) and baking trays would be in a different room. What kind of logic was this??? I would reorganize her kitchen. She would get furious. Arguments would ensue. After a few times, I gave up.

Only just recently, I realized her logic — the mental model of her kitchen.

You see, I organize according to category — like things with like things. Dry food items here, spices there, pots under there, vegetables here. She organized according to function.

What function would require cooking oil under the sink? Well, she had a huge burner ring outside for deep frying large batches of stuff. The burner was outside on the patio, the kitchen window served as a pass-through, the kitchen sink was under the window. It was easier to have the cooking oil there rather than walk across the kitchen to get it (she also had bad knees.)

Her spices were close to the stove, where she cooked, with the pots because she could reach them there. When my brother remodeled the kitchen, he made the upper cabinets too high. She’s 4’10″.

The sugar, flour, eggs, baking items — well, she didn’t use them that often. And when she did, she baked huge batches of stuff, which meant she needed more room than what was in her kitchen, so she had another room set up for that.

The organization of her kitchen increased her efficiency. That was her mental model.

It was not one I shared.

Learning mental models

When I first moved down to the United States of America, I had a job as a writer. I was to help people learn about information technology at a University. At that time, the SysAdmin folks dictated how we thought about things. I was new, I followed along. The documentation we wrote was organized according to categories: accounts, email software, SSH, FTP, and other stuff. It was mostly useless. Why?

People did not think in those SysAdmin categories. We let the inmates run the asylum. I realized how useless it was after I left that position, then tried to access my email and change my password. I looked in the book that I had written to remember how to do this. I couldn’t find the information under email. I searched and searched and finally called the Help Desk in frustration. The information was under the Accounts section — but who would have ever thought of that?

We never bothered to learn the mental models of our learners. Not even at the most basic level. How did they organize their thinking about “that stuff they do online”?

But wait…we can’t figure out what everyone is thinking!

True, you cannot figure out the mental models of every single individual. No one is asking that. But we can figure out patterns. First question — is about functionality or categories? Do they really need to know how a domain is organized in order to do their work? Yes, it might help them in the long run, but realistically, that’s not the goal of most people. They just want to get their work done. Help them do that. Where are your learners currently at and where do they or you want them to go?

Shared understandings

Sometimes we have to create common or shared understandings. And individual mental models may get in the way. So what do we do — assuming we are talking about adults?

• Treat people as adults
  • They have survived in the world so far using the mental models they have been using, don’t demean their understanding of the world. Work to understand it. Break it down.
• Set a common, agreed upon goal — a destination.
  • Unless you can agree upon why things need to change (the marketplace has changed, more than one person needs to use this kitchen, there’s been a merger) you will not get people on your side.
• Propose a new mental model
  • How will this effect people in their work?
  • What specific behaviors will have to change? Why?
• Talk about people’s fears and uncertainties
  • Create a safe environment to discuss fear and uncertainty
  • Allow people to vent
• Experiment and play with new behaviors
  • Make the learning playful but serious (experiential learning)
  • Engage people in finding resolutions to the change
  • Disrupt existing behaviors – have learners reflect on why they did what they did
• Make a plan to make it happen (action plan)
• Follow-up (metrics)

I realize these are large bullet points and the struggle is still “how”. It’s hard work to figure out where your learners are currently at and how to change. The specific context matters. Doing the research and analysis matters. Figuring out how to measure the impact of changing mental models matters — what’s the business outcome and how do you measure it?

If I were to ever spend a significant amount of time in my mother’s kitchen, I would start with a conversation that would go something like this: “if we’re going to work together in this space, mom, it would help to make some changes on where you keep things.” I would not, ever again, stomp in there and simply start changing things. She would rightly be furious and resistant.

Imagine the emotional impact on the learners.

Then take it one step at a time.

If you’re all alone in this it helps to brainstorm with friends and colleagues. FYI – I’m always willing to play.

Upon reading the first chapter of this book I wanted to jump with joy — here was someone articulating my ideas about the kind of skills, mindsets and thinking that is needed in a newly competitive, flat world — where anything that can be digitized will be outsourced.

This new kind of thinking – what he calls “right-brain” thinking has six key aptitudes as described in the Introduction:

1. Design – “to create artistic and emotional beauty”
2. Story – “to craft a satisfying narrative”
3. Symphony – “to combine unrelated ideas into a novel invention” & “to detect patterns and opportunities”
4. Empathy – “ability to understand the subtleties of human interaction”
5. Play – “find joy in one’s self and elicit joy in others”
6. Meaning – “to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning”

Part of this book is focused on describing, defining and supporting each of these definitions. Half of each chapter on aptitudes is devoted to describing the skills to practice in order to become this kind of person – how to create a Portfolio to become more of a right-brain thinker.

What’s important to understand is that Pink does not advocate that we lose our analytical, left-brain thinking in order to become completely creative, right-brain thinkers — but rather we must be both and find an equilibrium between the two.

In the argument for right-brain thinking, there were a couple of  research/studies that I found of interest:

• (25) UCSF Professor Paul Ekman, famous for creating the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) – tested facial expressions all over the world, and these expressions were interpreted similarly by a majority of the people in a group, whether that was in New Guinea or amongst Bay Area college students.
• (52) students who study painting excel at noticing subtle details about a patients condition (from the Yale School of Medicine). So yes, a student has to know their medical stuff, but studying painting makes them better doctors.

What was also insightful was his description of design – that good design is a combination of utility and significance (76). The iPhone designers, of course, got this right. They realized that the cellphone had changed from being a logical device about speed and specialized functions, to being an emotional device — about being able to be expressive and customize, fanciful (81).

Stories help us make sense of the world — and in a world full of facts, what matters is putting these facts in context with emotional impact (101). A wonderful quote from this section is from Alan Kay (famous interface designer) – “scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we’re all just caveman with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories” (107).

Being able to blend concepts to put together two existing ideas non one else thought to create, being a systems thinker, a pattern recognizer is the essence of the symphony aptitude. Techniques to enhance this skill include keeping a metaphor log (what metaphors do you hear daily) or trying to create a 5-line self-portrait.

On the importance of Empathy I’ve written about before in this blog. Research of interest – one study of aphasics (those with damage to the left-side or analytical side of the brain) are exceptionally good lie-detectors, getting about 70% of the lies. In the Porfolio section, he directs us to a website to practice our EQ = empathy quotient.

When writing about Play and Meaning, Pink’s writing seems to become shallower as nothing he writes really grabbed me in these two sections other than we should play and have meaning in our lives. Perhaps I became tired of the writing, or perhaps I’d read too many book on play and meaningful work that nothing seemed new here.

My main criticism of the book is that it peters out toward the end. And the organization of the book breaks the narrative of the reading (he really is a good writer). The Portfolio or skill-building reference sections are disruptive to the reading. Overall though, I find this a good book, quick read and useful. The Portfolio sections contain many good techniques to jump start your creativity. For this alone, I think the book is worth reading. And without a doubt, what Pink gets right is that anything that can be outsourced cheaper and more efficiently will — what stays will be those who can be imaginative and unique  in the world.

Whether the world will reward the skill sets of creative wonks remains to be seen. I think we are still very much in transition from the Information Age of knowledge workers, to what he calls the Conceptual Age of creators and empathizers. All I can do is keep true to my path of trying to create works of beauty, empathy, utility and significance and hope that others are also moving in the same direction.

Second definitions of aptitudes (65-66):

1. Not just function but also DESIGN
2. Not just argument but also a STORY
3. Not just focus but also SYMPHONY
4. Not just logic but also EMPATHY
5. Not just seriousness but also PLAY
6. Not just accumulation but also MEANING

Three things on shifting your audience & leadership:

• Create the time to play with the media
  • I left my job. I had time to play. I really didn’t want to get engaged in social media but felt like I should. At my previous job, we had tried to play with social media within the organization but it was a limited closed circuit. What we should have done, is played with social media in the world wide web — where it’s more dynamic, where you can participate in existing communities.
  • Informal company communications - I wish Twitter was more popular before I had left my job. It’s the one way I can imagine people on different floors keeping up with each other (cross-floor communication became an issue). It would have closed the physical space that opened up after we moved to new offices and the informal chatter lessened. It would have decreased the space between offices in NY, Durham, London. Or people offsite communicating how a client program is going (For example, I could have really used Twitter the time when our a video got held at Canadian Customs and my boss got held at Immigration — I felt very alone.) Twitter would have improved informal communications within our organization. These are spaces where  Twitter can play and help people do their jobs.
  • It depends in part on the type of work and group dynamics of your organization.
• Provide constraints – let them ease into it
  • There is one thing that got my into social media through blogging: it was Karl Kapp’s line “every learning professional should blog, if only for a month”. Blogging for a month — that I could do. I was participating in Work Literacy in Fall of 2008. I started to blog and it changed my connection to my work and opened up a community of support. Every learning professional should blog — about something they care about — if only for a month.
  • Others should be asked to comment on your blog — only for a month.
  • Rotate the blog contributors — so they each do it for a month.
  • Maybe  monthly/weekly team reports should be done on a blog.
  • Tweet once a day to a community of practice such as #lrnchat, #astd, #dl09, #learntrends – and follow the conversations/hashtags for that community to see if one learns anything new.
• Get influencers within the resistant cohort and/or leadership
  • I remember trying to teach Second Life (SL)to senior executives. The one question I always got was “Why should we bother, it’s not real.” So I positioned the economy of SL and other virtual worlds as emerging economies. How large (in USD) are these economies? Is this a place where you want to have a presence? How do you regulate in this emerging economy? What are the opportunities? Risks? Are you clients here? (That one always got them.) Are your staff here?
  • Teaching social media to leadership or anyone in the company I would ask similar questions. Social media is in part a reputation/branding engine. What are people saying about your company? Your brand? Are your staff here? Are your clients or customers here? Don’t tell them all, let them discover most of the answers for themselves. Call it research, call it discovery learning.
  • Examine those places that we don’t usually think of as social media — Amazon, photo sharing sites, Yelp, Ning, Delicious. I thought because I didn’t participate in Blogs, Facebook, Twtitter, LinkedIn that I wasn’t on social media. Not true
  • The harder thing to do is find measurements of social media learning that matter to your organization. Is there a pain point you can link social media to (customer complaints, etc.)? Is there a way you can measure the impact of social media?

Social media is a way for the learning department to have an impact beyond just learning and link it to the organization as a whole. It’s informal.

Just some thoughts.