There is a delightful irony that I found this little gem in a tweet.  I read it on a feed from Chris Zane who runs Zane’s Cycle.   I interviewed a few months back for “The Customer Experience Show” a podcast that I host.   I follow Chris on Twitter because he is truly one of the great experts in customer experience.  What he has to say is worth listening to.

If truth be told, I had an little extra incentive to review his twitter stream.  I got a notice that Chris had mentioned me in one of his tweets.  When you get someone who you respect like I do Chris and THEY think that you’ve said something intelligent, you want to know what it was you said.

I — like so many others — say and pass along a great deal of information.   If this study is correct, about a third of it is worth saying.  Despite the source, I don’t believe it for a second.

They are hopelessly over-estimating how much  twitter traffic is valuable.  I for one am doing my best to bring down the  average.  I don’t believe for a second that a third of what I say is truly valuable.   This isn’t false modesty — just ask my friends.  Modesty is not something I’ve been accused of  having too much of.

Frankly, if we were “batting 333″ in the content wars, life would be fabulous.

We wouldn’t have to start (and end) each day deleting emails.  I’m not talking about spam.  I’ve got a great spam filter.  Mine are  from subscriptions I thought were valuable, newsletters that have one good article buried in a pile of stuff that doesn’t interest me at all and a ton of other things I should get to but never seem to find the time for.  Like many of you, that’s how I start my day — looking at all the things I’ll never have time for or scanning and skipping quickly through mail, posts and  tweets. Sometimes something brilliant will catch my attention — or my ego (when I’m mentioned).  Otherwise, it’s all just a blur.

Like most of you, my day is a stream of electronic documents.  Do you find yourself skimming  through documents that you should probably spend more time reviewing?   Do you struggle to focus through all of the interruptions – the  calls, emails, notes, tweets, texts and people who try to get a few minutes of attention?  Does your day go by in a blur?

Moore’s Law rules – the power of technology is growing exponentially.   In a world of social media, there is another law that I’ve often quoted — Metcalfe’s Law.  Metcalfe came up with a way to explain the way networks grow in value exponentially as they get larger.

We’ve lived by these two laws for years.  More is better.  But is there a limit?  Could we get to too much of a good thing?

I love to read.  Here’s a paradox.  What’s my idea of a great vacation?  Answer –  sit at the cottage get a glass of great wine and read a good book.  My refuge from reading is to go off and read.  And it’s not just fiction.  I will read great business books.  My children think I’m insane.

The difference?  The wine and the scenery are certainly a factor.  But the real difference can be explained by another law — Sturgeon’s Law.   Theodore Sturgeon was a science fiction writer in the 1950′s who came up with the axiom, “90% of everything is crap.”

Sturgeon was bemoaning the state of science fiction, but what he said was not only prescient but more and more relevant each day.   Junk mail, Telemarketers. TV.  Even our daily conversations —   while we might not be as uncharitable as Sturgeon, we’d have to say that most of our day is spent in fairly mundane conversations.  Think back.  What did you talk about yesterday?  Same old, same old?  I rest my case.

Not only do we know Sturgeon was right, but at least in terms of work, many of us would love to change it.  That’s why when we see books like the “4 hour work week” it starts us dreaming of freedom from the barrage of urgent things that distract us from the truly important things that we yearn to do.

If Sturgeon was right, we are in deep trouble.  He was talking about a time when only a tiny percentage of the population were authors.  Everything that was written, certainly everything that was published — went through one or often several revisions.  This wasn’t just books and articles.   Even an office memo would have several drafts.

90% of everything might indeed have been “crap” – but it took a lot of effort and to produce that “crap”    Mercifully, there were limits to the volume if not the quality.

Fast forward to today. Everyone is an author.  Production is effortless.  It costs nothing to publish to the entire world.  As a result, most  of us are overwhelmed by the shear volume of content.   Yet Sturgeon’s law remains the constant.  Most of what we have to deal with is still — to use the uncharitable term, “crap”.

That’s why books like the “Four Hour Work Week” have such incredible appeal.   Imagine.  All you have to do is to filter and focus on what is important.   Sounds great.  But it’s a lie  It sounds so plausible but just try it.

Try going into your office every week, doing the four hours of high value work and then leave.  See how long your employment continues.

Unless you can unplug from the grid and be one of the lucky few who leverage a small amount of time into a large dollar value — largely by writing nonsense about things like a four hour work week — you are pretty much stuck doing the other 36 or more  hours of wading through the deep end of the Sturgeon pool.

If we could somehow magically filter out all of the mundane, the low value — the “crap” — it would be a wonderful world.   There’s an old saying in the world of marketing.  It says, “50% of your marketing budget is spent on things that are worthless.  The problem is that you’ll never know which 50%”.   That’s the problem.

But it’s not just marketing.  We have the same issue with the tsunami of content overwhelming us daily.  Even if you know that only 10% is of any value, you are never sure which 10%.

This is the trap of those who do “knowledge work”.   This is the daily reality.  Most of us learn how to cope.  We filter.  We delete.  We skip.  We skim.  But in our hearts we are know that we are all struggling to keep our head above water, living in the hope that we don’t miss something important.

That explains the growing interest in curation.  It’s a word we’ve been hearing a lot — and we’ll hear more about it as a new phenomenon in the world of software.

Curation is a a filter.  An intelligent agent goes through the volume and the clutter and brings us a distilled version, reduced to it’s essence.   Great curation does three things.  I call them the “3 Rs”  - short for reduced, relevant and reliable.

Curation reduces the volume information from a particular domain to make it more manageable. It distills things to their essence.

It ensures that the information is relevant.  Does it fit our interests and our needs?  This is more difficult than it seems.  Especially where the topic is new or unfamiliar we don’t always know what is valuable or how to describe it.   It can also be intensely personal.  We all have slightly different levels of need and the nuances of those needs are sometimes subtle.

Lastly, information must be reliable.  Accuracy is critical and in the current world, difficult to establish.  Is the story correct?  Is the source reliable?  Even if we could somehow establish these (and that’s by no means a certainty) there is still the real danger that when the information is reduced, filtering will introduce biases and inaccuracies.

Daniel Kahneman, the noble prize winning author puts it succinctly in his best seller, “Thinking Fast and Slow.” No matter how much we strive for objectivity, our brains are wired to introduce bias and inaccuracy – and to do so unconsciously.  No one, not even Kahneman himself can be a totally objective filter.

This is why the idea of curation software has such promise.  If search engines like Google’s can tame the web and help us search and find content in the vastness of the Internet — couldn’t we use that same type of filter in reverse?   Couldn’t we have information not just pushed to us, but filtered — reduced to manageable volumes?    In a world where Amazon can tell us what books we should read, why can’t we have software that can learn and even predict our needs — that will know what is relevant to us?   While we know that accuracy is difficult to automate, can we not find ways to increase the reliability of information — checking the sources and where there is ambiguity, allowing us to have several expert views.

That’s the promise of curation software. And it’s a big promise.  Like most technological developments, the promise is bigger than the delivery.  The challenge is that, despite Kahneman’s revelation that our minds are biased and often inaccurate, they are wonderful at understanding semantics — at dealing with the fuzzy and imprecise things — a task which software has only recently been able to approximate.

We are in the early stages, but there is some promise.  While we may never get a real semantic search, we are getting very sophisticated algorithms that can simulate how we analyze and how we learn.  Are they perfect?  No.  But frankly, if you read Kahneman, you’ll realize — neither are we.

Moreover, interfaces to these curation software engines are becoming more and more sophisticated.  Where once there was a tedious and lengthy question set, we now have software that “watches” your choices and adapts.  While it is still in the early stages, with IBM’s Watson and Apple’s Siri, we are growing ever closer to the ability to communicate our ideas in real language.

Still we are a long way from HAL 9000 or the USS Enterprise.  Until we reach those feats of technology, curation software remains an enabler of human expertise – a way to assist and to magnify our abilities.  It those terms, we have already come a long way indeed.

Even with it’s current limitations, in the hands of a skilled editor it’s an enormous boon.  One of my friends and colleagues, Shane Shick at  IT World Canada uses a Canadian developed package to monitor the daily output of thousands of writers and journals.  It allows him to monitor a wide range of writers and areas.  It functions as a research tool.  And increasingly, it allows him and his staff to republish the work of another writer, adding their own annotation and insight, while crediting the original author for their work.

As costs come down, curation software is available to a wider range of writers.  For even an”occasional journalist” like me, curation is an opportunity to make the most of limited time.  I have several curation engines that I watch regularly.  The tweet that started this post came to my attention because of a filter that I had set.   I’m now experimenting with curation software to feed several of the blogs that I publish which are more technical and less — how shall we say it?  Verbose?  Parts of our websites are now driven by curated content.  More to come.

Hopefully, curation will free up more time for me to read as well as write.  My passion is for words.  That won’t change.  No matter how sophisticated the software, my love will always be for the art of creation — not the act of curation.  So don’t expect me to replace this blog with a curated feed.  Sorry, but you’ll have to tolerate the 90% to find the 10% of it that is valuable.

All the best.

Jim

The list of things that I haven’t done, that I have yet to do, is very long indeed.

But I refuse to be daunted by it all.

We are so over-revved, over-clocked, over-worked, over-extended….

If we aren’t careful, we could easily forget to have fun.   So in the midst of it all, I had the chance to get together with my dear friends Suzanne and Brent Ainsworth at the their fabulous Northgate Studio.  We drank wine, we chatted, we ate — we laughed.

And we recorded this song.   So here’s my Christmas gift to all of you who feel a little over-whelmed by it all.

It’s called the Social Media Blues  and if you click on the link you can play it on Radio 3 – CBC’s fabulous indy radio.   Yes, it is a little cranky, as one of my friends commented.  But it’s all in good fun.

Have yourself a “cranky little Christmas”.

What many haven’t yet realized is that within this same city is another equally creative centre — one that attracts some of the greatest minds in technology — the third largest technology centre in North America.

Most don’t realize that when they are riding the subway or walking down Yonge street,  they could be standing beside some of the giants of the tech industry.   To take only one example, how many average Torontonians know  their city  is home to Mark Surman.  Who is Mark Surman?  For those who don’t know him,  Mark is the Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation, which, among many, many things brings us Firefox.  You might not know Mark, but you would have to have been vacationing off the planet to not know what Firefox is.  But did you know how it’s linked to our city?  Probably not.

In fact, most Torontonians really do not know how much prosperity the tech sector brings to the city.  How much prosperity?My friend and Allan Wilson and I were trying to guess how much this was.  Over a glass of red, we did our “off the cuff” calculations.   There are literally thousands of technology start-ups in this city.   While some are tiny,  a portion  of these companies go on to be giants like RIM.  Those “Cinderella” stories get a lot of attention.  But for every RIM, there are many, many others  who achieve a more  modest footprint.  We decided to be very conservative and peg that at the bottom level of  5 to 10 million in sales. This is not a huge sales figure for a moderately successful early-stage tech company.   Here’s where it gets impressive.  If only 100 of these companies reached those numbers, then they alone would account for a billion dollars of sales in the Toronto economy.  A billion dollars.  Without all the other spin-offs, even that would be impressive.  As one politician once remarked, “a billion here, a billion there — soon you are talking real money!”

But the reason we don’t know about these companies is that for the most part they are heads down, hard at work, trying to survive and thrive in a hyper-competitive global economy.  There’s not a lot of time for flag waving or even socializing.

That’s why events like Technicity are so important.   For those who don’t know it, Technicity is a once a year event sponsored by a number of groups — including the City of Toronto and IT World Canada – publishers of CIO Canada and ITBusiness.ca  and a number of corporate sponsors who support this great endeavour.   The event brings together people from the technology community, business and government to step back for a moment and  focus on the bigger picture.  In the words of Mark Surman, we can look at how we can make the type of environment that will help Toronto’s technology community make “Toronto like Venice in the Renaissance”.

In all the recent doom and gloom of the past years.  With all lost jobs, economic downturns and billion dollar bailouts — when was the last time that you heard a story about growth and vibrancy in an industry sector?  When was the last time you heard of a home grown sector that was taking on the world?   That’s what we heard in the audience.  And it wasn’t just opinion.  A series of presenters brought us the facts and figures that showed us the facts.  They showed how important this industry was and what a promise it held for the future.

What a breath of fresh air. Not only that, but  the organizers did a brilliant job of keeping the facts and figures that we needed into short, focused packets of info.  That left time for a series of breakout sessions designed to facilitate dialogue and information exchange.

The energy, the interaction and the spirit literally poured out into the hallways.  It permeated the conversations.  It facilitated impromptu sessions that filled every nook and cranny as the participants talked, networked, debated and imagined new ideas and possibilities.

I watched as one of the organizers valiantly tried to get participants back into the main session so the next event could start somewhere within the scheduled time.  Her job was tough — almost impossible — although somehow we did keep on schedule.

Keeping us organized was harder than you would think.  One thing you have to know about the Toronto tech community is that it firmly resists structure.  It’s a gloriously eclectic, creative, chaotic and at times almost anarchistic group.  As a veteran facilitator of industry sessions, I can tell you that the tech sector in this city makes the Occupy movement look rigid by comparison.  Even the  fact that Technicity manages to bring this sector  together once a year is an accomplishment.  The fact that it also facilitates some discussion throughout the year is a triumph.  The fact that they kept us on schedule is a miracle.

The entire event is a tribute to the organizers’ ability to, as I once heard it described, “herd butterflies”.   This group – this industry — will not be contained.  They choose where they will be, where they will meet and where they will live.   When you realize this, you realize thatToronto’s  leap into the world stage in technical innovation was not planned or created. It grew organically.  Why? Well,  in large part the tech sector is here for the same reason that Margaret Atwood or a host of artistic giants choose to be here.  They come here by choice.  The come here  because this is a great city to live in.  Things like funding and infrastructure are necessary — but they are not sufficient. On panel after panel you would hear the same thing — the best talent in the world comes here because it’s a great place to live and work, because it is a hive of activity and creativity.

I was struck by the parallels with the creation of the arts community in this city.  There is a necessary amount of funding and infrastructure, much of it provided by governments of all levels.  And there is the usual wringing of hands by those who decry this as a waste of funds.  In the midst of all of what is great, they will find the tiniest extravagance, the silliest anomaly and tout it to the world as proof that government has wasted what it spends.   There are those, to quote Oscar Wilde, who “know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

Others realize the potential.  They see the  amount of economic activity it generated.  In that context, the amount of government investment is preposterously modest. In fact, in a world where governments are frantically trying to created 21st century jobs, where they will spend or risk millions and billions to save old world jobs — it’s hard to imagine anyone begrudging the modest support that this group has required.

In that context , supporting  this industry is not always easy for governments.  The  benefits are not easy to quantify.  Other sectors like the financial sector are huddle close to the city core in large towers.  It’s hard to miss their presence and their impact.

The tech sector, on the other hand, refuses to be bound by civic boundaries.  While there are areas of focus, it is spread out from Markham to Spadina.  In fact, if  truth be told — it extends all the way to Kitchener/Waterloo.  Civic pride might create the boundaries — but  the tech community moves easily and seamlessly across the gridlock of the 401 to work, collaborate and create.  They work in everything from lofts to warehouses.  For many, work and home life bleed together.  I heard one company talk about how the founder needed a bigger condo to house all their staff.

Some like it this way. For others, it is a necessity.  Many startups just don’t have the money.  Despite where they end up — almost all pass through very early stages where they are little more than great ideas, brilliant minds and energetic collaboration.  Those that grow  find that the journey from idea to revenue is a long one.  The successful learn to conserve cash.  Unless they need premises to make sales or to be near a customer — fancy offices are a luxury that few can afford.

It’s why many of us believe that Starbucks is the largest technology office space in Toronto.  The coffee is expensive, but it’s cheaper than rent.  There are tables to work on and the bandwidth is free.   It’s not a joke.  It’s also not always optimal.  It’s a meeting place, but it’s not an infrastructure that you can use to develop a company.  It doesn’t provide what so many of take for granted in other industries.  Even at the rents they pay, even with the gridlock there are reasons why so many companies stay in the downtown core.  One reason is the elaborate underground system that  means that even in winter you can wander around and meet people in your “neighbourhood”.   Chance meetings, networking and collaboration all happen in a “small town” within a huge city.

The tech industry, despite it’s anarchistic tendencies, craves something like this. Time after time I heard  people looking for ways to meet, to work, to network and to build collaboratively.  Let me be clear. Nobody that I talked to was looking for more structure.  While they spoke with respect and even gratitude for the many “incubators” in the city, nobody seemed to be looking for another of these.

Not surprising for an industry that has grown up on the the web — what they wanted was not a fixed structure or organization.  They wanted something useful, ubiquitous and transitory.   They wanted something  with the freedom of   “open space”  with the permanence to support them as needed.  Fitting to an industry that is exists because they are imagining the future not predicting it  – they wanted something that might not have been invented yet.

As I set my mind to thinking about how you plan something like this, an idea came to me.  I thought about the idea of Grid computing.  Remember that?   To quote grid computing.com, “Grid aims at exploiting synergies that result from cooperation–ablity to share and agregrate distributed computational capabilities and deliver them as service”.  Grid is also  wonderfully anarchistic, collaborative.  It’s also an idea that simply won’t go away.  Whether the original concept was successful or not, I’m not sure.  I do know that the immense power of the huge cloud networks – Amazon, Google and others — would not have been possible without it.

I wondered if that was more the model of support that our tech sector needs.  Could we have a “support network” on that same model?   Could it not be  highly structured, but instead fit the needs of the players, regardless of size?  Could it be done not by adding new resources, but by using the the unused, the temporary surplus —  resources that had a negligible incremental cost but tremendous value.  If you think of the average corporation, most have to be structured handle peak volumes and demands.   From bandwidth to premises, like the computers on our desks, we often have excess capacity.  For most of the time that extra capacity is unused and wasted.  So in the same way that the Grid computing movement sought to use wasted computer capacity – could we find a way to use other capacity in the system?

What would that be?  One obvious would be space – companies often need that, at least temporarily.  Another might be bandwidth.  These are the obvious.  The potential is enormous and goes beyond space and bandwidth. Once our ears were attuned to a new concept, we will hear and see more and more needs that one could try to imagine in this new way.   One company talked about the need for graphic design.  Another talked about the need for management expertise.  Once you start having the conversation in these terms, our own innate desire to innovate takes over and the possibilities are endless.

Once my mind started to embrace the concept, my healthy skepticism raised its head.  Questions arose.  Okay, it’s fine to think about sharing, but how would you make that practical.  If you take the idea that corporate resources are like nodes on a network, each with some spare capacity — you have to figure out how to traverse the inevitable “firewalls”.  After all, these are businesses.  They don’t let just anyone in.

Another thought. Is this all about taking?  Do we have to totally depend on a sense of altruism or civic mindedness so that companies would offer these “surplus” resources?  Isn’t there the possibility that these new and budding companies could be more symbiotic?   Wouldn’t they have things to offer — even if that were only a fresh spirit of innovation and new ideas?

How would we manage this — both the security and the “value exchange”?  How would we implement this in an industry that resists the old “command and control” necessary to build a formal structure?

This will require some  real out of the box thinking.  But again, the paradigm of the network comes to mind.  We have structures in place that trade ideas and information for services.  Hundreds of free services require us to trade time, information and sometimes attention for infrastructure.  Our digital identification is enabled by a number of structures from tokens to cookies to “open id” structures that let others know we are safe to deal with and even to store value from the exchanges.  There are literally hundreds and maybe thousands of examples of this — one of the largest is Gmail.  We happily trade information and attention, we sign up for ids on the this system.  In return, we get not just free email, but a host of collaborative applications.  There’s enough to run a business and it’s there for the taking.

From Google’s point of view, it’s certainly profitable.  More than that, the bigger it gets, the cheaper it is to add one more person.  The marginal cost keeps going down and down in response to volume and Moore’s law.  The value keeps going up, responding to volume and Metcalfe’s law.

So I ask the question.  Could we create something that filled the needs of the tech community based on this idea of a network.  Could we create a token an identification  – a passport to innovation?  If we did, what would it look like?

I’d love to to have your comments and ideas on this.  Drop me a note on the blog or via linked in or twitter.  You can reach me at @therealjimlove

That’s what we imagine. Excitement builds. We’ll get the best people, from the best schools, people who are “up and comers”! Get me the “A” performers! No “dead wood” on this team!

What a load of crap.

First of all, it rarely happens. Most of the time, in projects or when you take over a department, division or even an company, you get what you get.  And while you can imagine in your dream world – or in some business book – that you can “clean house” and put in your own team of the very best, life doesn’t always work out that way.

You can’t just fire people at random and put in your own team.  You need to figure out who should go and who the “keepers” are.  You need to know the repercussions of any action you take.  It takes time to do an assessment.  It’s harder than it sounds. When the new guy or gal takes over, everyone has an interest in influencing your opinion of them and others.  Don’t expect to get objective facts from anyone.  Figuring it all out is tough.

Or if you have a project team that you are assembling from scratch, reality rears its ugly head again. Usually, the “very best and brightest” are also the busiest. Sometimes – as Mick Jagger said, “you can’t always get what you want.” So if Sarah, the high flyer is too busy, maybe you get Bob the, uh — “not so high flyer.”  Sometimes you get that person that the French so cutely call “un cadeaux” — a “gift”.   Most of the time you get lame excuses.  I can hear it in my mind. “Did I promise you Sarah?  I guess I did.  Sorry – that was before we got this new client.  But Bob is a real gift to any team…”

The only time you get the clean slate is in a work of fiction or a business book – which are often the same thing.

Unfortunately, I business happens in the real world. But if we didn’t – if just for that one wacky time, where we got chance to hand pick our team, and instead of Wally from Dilbert we got nothing but “A” performers – what a disaster that would be!

What? Did I just say disaster?

Yes.

Think about it. Or live it, if you ever get the chance. Because this may be something you can only learn from experience. Sometimes even the best schools graduate people who talk a great talk, have excellent grades, networked out the wazoo, maybe even head of their alumni association –  but are, to coin a phrase, “as thin as piss on a plate”.  Sometimes the “high flyers”, who’ve been promoted time and again aren’t everything they are cracked up to be. Yes, some do good things.  Few people walk on water.  And some are a flash in the pan.  It’s possible to have a string of apparent successes without any other clear talent than luck and the ability to escape before disaster hits.

So you might not get the god of commerce that you have dreamed of.   But even if you do, you may be in for a rough ride.  Have you ever tried to facilitate a group of “A” performers – it can be challenging to say the least.  I once ran a global consulting practice and I can tell you, some of my toughest times were when I pulled together the top consultants from around the world.  There was a reason we had a theme for one conference which was “check your ego at the door”. Unfortunately, just like in real air travel, not much of the baggage was checked – and a lot of people brought their egos as “carry on”.

I don’t expect you to believe me.  Maybe you’ve had different experiences.  But sometimes the “dream team” can be your worst nightmare.

So it may be fortunate that you don’t get a lot of opportunities to build these mythical “dream teams”.  Most of the time, business is like poker. You play the cards you are dealt.  Yes, there are rules that let you discard a few and pick up a few new ones. But over the course of the game the real winners make the best of the hands they are dealt.

That’s been my strategy. I work with what I have, even if it’s what everyone else calls the “B” team.  In fact, I prefer the “B” team even when I have my choice. Why? Because I get great results from them and over the years, it’s a strategy that’s worked for me.

Time and again, I’ve taken over departments where the team were regarded as under performers.  They (not me) turned things around in an incredibly short time. I’ve hired from the middle of the class in great and in simply good schools.  I’ve found people who were used to working hard to keep up, people with a real desire to learn and above all, I’ve found people who were coachable. Yes, coachable. They listen.

Funny, when my friend Doug Sparkes and I are asked to mentor entrepreneurs, we have two criteria to judge if we’ll take on a new entrepreneur.  It’s not the obvious.   It’s not their great idea — frankly, great ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s not their marks.  It’s not their connections or network. And it’s certainly not the fact that they present well – some days we’ve wanted to poke out our eyes with a fork rather than take one more powerpoint slide.  Nope. We look for two things – drive and coachability. Do they really want to succeed more than anything? And do they listen?  Everything else can be taught.

As a formula, it’s worked pretty well. Listeners succeed. Not just by listening to us. It’s listening to their other advisors, to their partners and colleagues and above all to their potential and current customers.

Listening doesn’t mean that you always agree.  It means you listen and think. In fact, a team that is always “on the same page” is a big danger, no matter how smart they are.  You need diversity, questioning and even challenging to make sure that good ideas are really good.  Some of the dumbest ideas in history have been floated by teams that had all “drunk the kool-aid”. Because it was “social media” or “mobility” or “Web 3.0” nobody questioned whether what was being presented was really a good idea.

My “B” teams are full of questioners. They ask questions — not so they can show what they know – but because they don’t have to hide the fact that they don’t know some acronym or buzzword.  They don’t have to believe everything because it’s a new hot trend.  That’s how they fought their way to the middle of the class. These people ask good questions and they listened to the answers. When you have one of these guys or gals on your team, he or she will ask — “why is that so good? What can it be used for? Why would someone buy that?”  Great questions.  And if you experience a wisp of annoyance, maybe it’s time to check your own ego and realize that they may have done you a hell of a favour.  Maybe you haven’t communicated it well.  Or maybe (actually all too many times) the emperor really does have no clothes.

Another wonderful thing about “B” teams.  They are full of real people.  Some have quirks, many aren’t the fastest talkers, they often haven’t read “Dress for Success”, or maybe they aren’t from the top business schools. Some have come up through practical programs.  Some of come up through the school of hard knocks. They are real, authentic people – some of whom only need to be given a chance.  Some need coaching and mentoring if they are going to advance.  Some are comfortable being just a team member, and have no ambition to lead (in the classic sense). Some wouldn’t be caught dead making a speach or presentation. Some have been told they shouldn’t.  But for all of these supposed “disadvantages” when you look beneath the surface, there is a lot of talent there.

But lets also be real.  Not all business is rocket science.  B teams can deliver. In the drudgery of day to day discipline and the mundane part that is every job, they do it and get it right. It’s wonderful to have great idea about how you can improve things. It’s better to do the real spadework to prove and implement an idea.

I remember back when I was starting out and got my first national role for product development and financial control. I had not studied business at that point.  I felt very insecure about it. It was only later that I went back at night to get my degree.  I was smart enough to get a book and read up on financial analysis. I could make sense of it, in fact it didn’t look all that hard, but people train in this stuff for years.  They get very expensive MBAs.   So I thought I was missing something. So I hired an MBA from a great school (that shall remain nameless) and set him to work.

What a disaster that was!  He nearly caused a mass uprising. In those days, the heart of our business was data entry.  As was common at that time, it was mostly women who had high school and not much more.  They worked all day doing the same thing over and over – accurately and quickly. That’s how we made money. Because I’d never studied at a good management school, I thought the way to train our new recruit was the way I was trained.  I put him to work doing data entry.   I had often gone down to work with them when we were short staffed or just to help out with high volumes. Sometimes I just got them coffee.  I could almost keep up on key punch although I never matched the top performers.  But I’d try my best to compete.  I didn’t think that this was doing very much.   But I did get the feeling that they while they might not walk over hot coals for me, they would stay late and put in that extra effort when needed.   For someone from the executive floor, I was almost human.  In turn, I appreciated and respected them.

The first day my new recruit was down in that area, the supervisor came to me to tell me to “get that brat out of her area”. His moaning about what a “dead end job” this was had gotten on their nerves.

To make matters worse, the new recruit wasn’t doing a particularly stellar job on the financial reporting and analysis I’d hired him to do. It turned out that although he’d passed his course on stats he hadn’t really paid much attention. Imagine my surprise to find that I had to coach him with what I’d learned from a book and some common sense. I showed him to the spreadsheets that I’d devised with great pain and with lots of weekend work.
I don’t think he ever really got it.  Fortunately, I didn’t have to fire him. Amazingly, some other department really wanted a “A” performer like him. Great school. Nice clothes. Knew how to talk. Had the right attitude. He went off to join someone’s “dream team”. I was left with my “B” team. We made money for the company and got the job done.  My rudimentary financial analysis showed that

That was a learning experience.  The first of many.

Later, as I went back to school at night to study the business and technology that I was living, I would learn that a lot of what I had picked up by observation and by simply trying to be a real human being was the best way to manage.  I learned  about things such as the Hawthorne Effect – where simply paying attention to people could generate improvements in performance.  I learned that you needed to appreciate people, to learn to inspire but more often to be inspired by real people.  I learned that by looking for the best in people, I would find it.

Time and again this proved out and my career took off — thanks to all of those “B Teams”.

But I never stopped learning – so as I struck out on my own to head up a boutique consulting company, I used the same learning and the same wisdom in my consulting.   For example – I was in a call centre a while ago. Everyone had told me that this was a dead end place, nobody cared, they should just outsource it and be done with it. It was true that they had their challenges – there were a lot of complaints.  But instead of reading reports I went to see them work. While I was there, something happened.  In a very short period, the calls spiked and the queue grew incredibly. I would later find out that there were some problems in the operation that drove huge spikes of calls into the call centre with little preparation and no training at all.

I watched them valiantly handle each and every call. Intent. Hard working. Frustrated at times, but persevering. And then I watched as the last call in the spike was handled and they crossed back to regular volume. When that call had been handled, they all stood and applauded the person who took the last call.    It was an amazing experience and one that I’ll never forget.  So much for “not caring”.  These folks were fabulous.  And watching them pointed out where the real problems might lie.

And I was confident that I’d find those problems.  I knew that this “B Team” would help me succeed — if I let them.

So keep your “dream teams”.   Give me real people who care and listen.  We’ll do great things together and I’ll be proud to be on the “B Team”.

The challenge?  I was undertaking at 10 day retreat.   Totally unplugged.  No phones.  No internet.  Not even books.  And – here’s a kicker.  10 days in total silence.  I would talk to no-one.  Totally unplugged.

There is a reason why none of my friends believed I would last.  Heck, I wasn’t sure myself.  I have been plugged in since I can remember.  I have had a smart phone since they had them.  I had one of the earliest Blackberries.   I’ve been connected for years.  And it goes beyond that.  How many of you have looked at USENET on a 14.4 baud modem and thought, “Wow!”    And if you have, have you stayed up all night reading threads?   I have.

When I started out, search engines were named after Archie comics characters.  That’s how far back I go.

I worked on email before people had email.  We had text messages on our old VAX systems in the late 80′s.

I’ve been connected as long as you could be connected.

So when I announced that I was unplugging for 10 days, everyone was shocked.  They wondered if I could do it.  When I added the idea that I would be silent — no talking — everyone was certain I couldn’t.

But I did.

I spend 10 days without so much as glancing at an email.   This is the guy who would sneak a peak at his smart phone while watching TV at night.  My wife used to complain – so I got her an iPhone too and she complained less.  But even as we drove into the retreat centre, I was checking email for the last time and she said to me, “We’re going to be apart for 10 days, without any communication, and you want to spend the last 10 minutes looking at email?”

I agreed, but my addiction was there.  I lived with that smart phone.  Have you ever gone through three hours of no email and wondered what was happening?   I have.  Those of you who have pushed the “refresh” button and felt uncomfortable know what I am talking about.

This was cold turkey.

This was absolutely incredible.  After a few days.

The first days were stressful.  I was vaguely aware of something missing.  The first night, I awoke, dreaming of a panic situation.  I had forgotten something crucial.  A panic attack.  What would we do?  There was nothing I could do.  I’d have to walk out of here and give it all up to deal with this.  Was I willing to do this?

I lived through those.  Then came the dreams.  for the first few nights I would dream about issues and sending emails.  Just when I would press “send” I would wake up in my lucid dream state.  I realized that this was a dream.  I had no computer.  No email.  I was unplugged.

Yes, I got the sweats.  Yes, I had panic attacks.  But I endured.

By day four I was starting to unwind.  Bear in mind, I was living the life of a monk. I awoke at 4 am and by 4:30 I was expected to be in meditation.  I meditated for 10 hours a day, with small breaks.  I lived for the walks between the meditation hall and my barracks where I stayed unable to converse with the others.

On day four I had a unique experience.  I spent a minute or two, for the first time in my life, living in the moment.  I wasn’t thinking of the past or the future.  I was just in the present moment.

Over the next few days, I experienced many more moments like this.  I’ll remember to my dying day walking along the cedar chip path in the trees, watching the shadows of the trees on the path in front of me.  The dance of light and shadow was a total delight.

I watched a porcupine make his way slowly through the forest.  I watched a chipmunk forage for food.  I hear the silence in the forest with nothing happening.

I smelled the scent of hot pine needles as a slow, hot breeze moved through the forest.

It may sound trite and I vowed not to be “born again” after this encounter, but I found stillness.   An incredible stillness.

Not that it was all pleasant.  If you have 10 days with no distractions – no email, no reading, no conversation — nothing to do but meditate and think — then you will go where I went. I examined my life.  In daytime thoughts.  In nighttime dreams.  I revisited events and memories.  The surprise?  I have very few regrets.  That was a surprise.  But at this age, I’ve managed to forgive myself for much of the damage I have done.  My bad actions have lost their power.

But I still had to face me.  I had to deal with me.  And I was able to look into the mirror and see – me.

But I lived.  Unplugged. For 10 days.

When I came back to confront my life – my emails, I was a little overwhelmed.  One thing I discovered?  I could live without a lot of it.  I have spend the past week stripping out things I didn’t need.  Hey – to everyone who has an email list, I suggest that you build a vacation freeze.  When I came back and saw huge amounts of email I was merciless. I read and if there was no value, I unsubscribed. Don’t be a pile of meaningless emails that someone confronts when they get home.  That’s an “unsubscribe” moment waiting to happen.

Anyway, I’m back.  With a new sense of purpose.  And its not just the email subscriptions that are going.  It’s everything that has no value.   And according to Sturgeon’s law – “90 percent of everything is crap.”  Only now – I can spot the crap.

10 days unplugged.  Could you do it?  I’m not suggesting you do.  I am questioning.  Do you know what the 90 percent of crap is?  That’s the only way you know what the 10 % is.   And I do.  When I went out today I walked in the warm breeze to the subway.  I smiled at the people on the way.  It was a great day.

And I didn’t check my email till I got to work.

Can you do that?

Funny how that works, Phil.  You see, I’m not a Dean.  I’m just a part time instructor at a couple of universities.  And cheating is a real problem for me, anyway.   This year I made a speech to my class – I wrote it myself.  But I fully confess to stealing the ideas from a number of my professors years and years ago — probably about the time you took your undergrad, Phil.   My profs said what I said at that class.

They said – if you cheat and I catch you, the consequences will be severe.  Fair warning.  I will move heaven and earth to help each and every one of you pass.  But if you cheat to do it – and I find out, I will make it a personal calling to make sure that you get the full consequences.

Bold talk.  I’d heard from other profs – privately – that sometimes they didn’t pursue cheating, especially if the case was “on the margins” because it was so complex and time consuming.  I’d heard stories of kids whose parents had gotten them lawyers to defend in cases of plagiarism.  If you are a prof, you have to invest the time and energy to defend yourself – when it’s the cheater who should be on trial.

Such is the modern world.  Parents intervene so that their kids don’t have to take the consequences of their actions.

Frankly?  I understand it.  I’m a parent and I can’t tell you what I’d do if one of them were thrown out.  I understand the profs as well.  The hours that you would have to invest to go through all of the process and appeals if you come down on a student for cheating.

But – as I assured my class, it’s more than bold talk.  I’m a part timer and I teach for love — it sure as hell isn’t for the money.  I teach when I get the opportunity and can spare the time, to be able to give back just a little of what my profs gave me.  My profs gave me the ability to think critically, to love learning and to understand that learning was enjoyable — but it was hard work and discipline.

My education was eclectic – I experimented with more majors than might seem possible or at least wise.  Literature , IT, Admin Studies, Psychology, Economics , Performing Arts and even a brief flirtation with Philosophy.  I took it all in.  I learned a lot from my professors.  Truth be told, I really lucked out and got a great group of profs.

I graduated on the Dean’s Honour List

.  At least I did my second time.  Again, in the spirit of truthfullness, I sort of majored in partying my first time out — and I really just worked on the stuff that I liked.  Some of my first marks were —  shall I say, “leaving a little to be desired?”

Then I went back.  At night.  Working during the day.   This time I could usually find an employer who would pay my tuition, but I had to part with almost all of my free time.  I was serious about this.

So when I hit a course that was particularly brutal, I hit the books.

I did discover one trick that I used.  When you go to all the classes and do all the readings, you get good marks.

And I never cheated. Not once.

So as I stood in front of my first year class giving my first lecture, I was clear.   “Cheat and I will catch you.  And I will devote myself to making sure you get the full consequences.”

Why?  Again, partly the respect I have for learning.  But we don’t just teach learning – we model the behaviours that go with learning.  Curiousity.  Hard work.  Integrity.

What I did want to ensure these young minds understood was that they could appeal, they could bring their parents lawyers – heck, they could even try to get me fired.  I would never back down in the fact of cheating.

And I’ll be damned, but I did catch a couple of kids cheating.  I saw the phrases and they just rang a bell or looked a little too good to be in a first year essay.  It actually wasn’t hard to track them down either.  Google is a marvelous tool.

For all my bravado, I took no joy in pursuing this one.  Wouldn’t you know it?  My two “cheaters” were sweet kids who came to every class.  They seemed to study hard and were earnestly trying to get good marks.

So why cheat?  Who know?   Maybe they were overworked or got behind in their assignments.  Maybe it was just a “lapse in judgement.”   Unfortunately — there is no excuse.  So once I thought they were cheating, I spent hours pouring over every word of their work and assembling my case.  They paid the price.  And I was not going to back down.

Students have to take accountability.  They are young adults, but adults nonetheless.

But when I caught these students cheating I took no joy in it at all.  I pursued it.

I believe by taking this tough stand that I am defending what I hold so dear and work hard to defend.

Well, thanks Phil – because that job just got a lot harder.  Now, how do I justify dropping the hammer on some kid who cheats when a Dean of an institution feels that he can get away with cribbing someone else’s work without attribution?

There’s an awful thing in business these days.  Someone will repeatedly screw up or not make deadlines or let their team down and even repeat offenders seem to have the same tired old line.  ”I take accountability” they say.  Which is crap.  They don’t want accountability — they want (as an old boss of mine once said) to go to confession.  By appearing to have the courage to acknowledge their screw ups, they expect a get out of jail card.

That’s not accountability.  When you are accountable, you take the consequences as well.   This new “confession tactic” is nothing more than an attempt to avoid the consequences.  It’s as sincere as a politician’s apology.  You’ve all seen the carefully scripted BS where the politician (why is always a guy?) has his poor wife standing dutifully by him.  He has tears in his eyes as he asks forgiveness for his “lapse in judgement”.   All of it scripted by some PR wonk to defuse the crisis.

Guess what?  That’s not accountability.  Accountability without consequences is not accountability.  At best its confession and at worst is PR BS.  I’m not into revenge.  I don’t take joy in anyone’s pain.  It’s not for me to decide whether sending naughty pictures of yourself on the internet is worthy of losing your job.  If it’s not – then boldly stand up and say that and let the voters decide.  But don’t pull this “lapse in judgement” deal and expect no consequences.  We elect politicians to have good judgement – even when times are tough.

Which brings us back to Philip Baker.  For those who believe that education is teaching kids that the only thing that counts is the end mark and they can lie, steal, cheat and buy their answers — this “cribbed speech” is no big deal.  For those who think that education involves trust, character and discipline – that scholarship and integrity are linked – we can’t have our leaders plagiarizing.

Phil – you have to resign.  That’s it.  No questions.  That’s the cost of your “lapse in judgement”.   If you don’t then every one of us who teaches or is simply just proud of our academic work or our alma matter — every one of us has to rise up and drum you out.  Sorry.

That’s accountability.

But don’t make us do it.  Next year, when I stand in front of the class, let me be able to say that even the Dean is not above it.  When Philip Baker realized what he’d done, he resigned.  That’s the best example to set.

If not, then my plan B speech would be — “I was only one of many who wrote, complained, hounded and worked tirelessly to get Philip fired.   And if YOU cheat, I’ll put the same amount of vigour into ensuring that you are also held accountable.”

It’s your choice, Philip.  Without taking real accountability, you’ve simply made it the “Dean’s Dishonour List.”  What kind of example do you want to be?   Because we are holding you accountable.

The phrase hit me like a brick.

I’ve been a consultant for over 15 years – half of my career.  It’s funny, you don’t get into this game unless you have some desire for feedback. Given how competitive consulting is, you also have to be a bit of an over-achiever.

I confess.  Yes.  I was that kid in school who had all the answers — the one the teacher eventually stopped asking, or looked vainly to each side of hoping for someone else to raise their hand, eventually returning defeated to reluctantly accept the offering of the impatient know-it-all in the front row.  For anyone who worries about my social status, you can rest easy — I got over that part. In university I became the guy sitting at the backs.  Still an over-achiever, but now a rebellious one — I learned to be cool and disdainful.   But I still knew the answer.  At least that’s my perception.

I was so full of myself, I’m not sure how the profs would bear it.  I remember one prof – Barry Callaghan — a man with an ego bigger than mine at the time (a considerable feat in those days).  Barry proudly proclaimed that, “nobody in his class got a A”.   I stuck up my hand.

“Are you telling me,” I said, “that although I’ve got an IQ that’s north of 140, I am stupid enough to have signed up with a prof who is so terrible that he can’t teach me enough to get an A?”

Barry let me live.  Just.  And, yes…I got the A.  He made me sweat blood to do it, and I worked my butt off.

Affirmation was important.

Many times in my life, I’ve seen or heard people welcome critical feedback.  Only if we know what we do wrong could we improve.  I would, on command, mouth those words, and even appear sincere.  I didn’t have the nerve to question this.  It sounds so — stoic.  So right.  But inside,  I never believed it.  It shames me to admit that I always struggled with negative feedback.  I’d sit, trying to appear interested, all the while churning inside, hearing little of what was said until one nugget, one positive — I’d hear that, I’d relish it.  I’d cling to it like Gollum with the ring.

It’s not that I shut out all criticism.  I’m my own worst critic.  Nobody is more devastating or hard hitting than me.  Even while I’m listening to praise, feeding my addiction to affirmation, my own internal critic is at work.

I once described this to others using a picture out of a comic book.  It was like I had a little angel on one shoulder listening hard fo every nugget of what I was doing right.  On the other, was a little devil telling me what I was doing wrong. For years I would try to focus on the one and ignore the other.

It wasn’t until many years later that I learned that the trick, at least in consulting, is to balance the two.  You need the self confidence to tackle tough problems.  You have to work your butt off like I did in that university class, to defy the odds and to come up with a great solution.   For the first part of my career I got that perfectly.   It was only in later years that I realized that I needed to listen equally to both the applause and the critic.  I needed  humility to take advice, especially when I was absolutely certain I was right.

That lesson was painful.  But I learned it.

It doesn’t mean that I enjoyed criticism.  I just learned — painfully and by brutal experience that I needed that feedback — as painful as it was.  I never learned to like it.  I did learn to  “suck it up” .

But eventually a light went on.   One learning for me was watching others, often consultants who had not learned this lesson.  I’d watch people so certain they were right, with clear and easy answers taken from books, making pronouncements and waiting for applause.  The best were devastating in managing any critique of their great solution.   It took years, but eventually this behaviour was a mirror — one in which I began to see my worst failings.

When I moved from industry to consulting,  I knew that the mirror sat on the other side of me.  The client was my mirror.  I had to speak the truth.  I had to give credible advice.  Yes, I needed he ego to do that.  But I had to have humility.   I promised myself that if I ever lost the feeling of what it felt like to sit on the opposite side of the desk — in the client’s shoes — I’d give it up.

Truth be told, I’ve probably broken this vow at times.  But if I did, something would give me a wake up call.  Today’s comment from this marvelous lady — who spoke of the “strangers” — spoke to me.

The strangers?   They were consultants.  This lady worked for a company where consultants were brought in.  Strangers.  And she didn’t trust these strangers.  They were giving all kinds of advice, maybe even some of it good.  From the sound of it I presume that in their meetings with senior managers, these consultants were getting applause for their work.  As there were more and more of them appearing, they must be finding some favour.

I knew what that felt like.

But I wondered — did they know how little they were trusted by this lady?  Did they care?

I’ve always known the names we’ve been called over the years.  In my early days with a CA firm, some clients called us the “suits” – in reference to our uniform of blue suits and white shirts.  I enjoyed the joke, quipping back that that we got to wear grey suits on casual day.  The clients laughed.

Over the years, I’ve heard a million jokes.  When told in good humour, I could usually laugh along.   Sometimes I would exploit this humour to bridge a gulf.   I remember in Indonesia when I invited a group of the staff to my house (unheard of, I’m told).   That night, I made a joke about the name that they called us expatriate consultants.  It’s a little difficult to translate, but let’s just say it wasn’t flattering.  When I mentioned it, they looked shocked.  I laughed.  Then they did too.  It broke the ice.

In the days when everyone was on planes and you couldn’t work in your own home town, we were nicknamed the  “seagulls”.  We flew in, did what seagulls do and flew out.  I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.  Funny?  Yes.

I laughed when I heard that as well.

But I’ve told you that criticism still stings and as much as I laughed,  I also heard what was behind the humour.  It reached me in a way that direct criticism sometimes didn’t.   It mad me think.  And I think that that saved my consulting career.   Arrogance is the death of good consulting.

I remember one day when we were discussing an outsourcing project and I questioned how we had got to our cost savings over the current costs that the client has.

“Easy” said one of the young turks at the table. At the time, he wore red suspenders under the blue suit.  The mark of a true rebel.   “You just cut 25% of the staff.  You get rid of the dead wood.”

I resented  the glibness.  These were people’s lives.

So I asked my young turk colleague, “Have you ever done a mass firing before? (I purposely didn’t use the word lay-off.  I wanted this to have punch. ” Have you ever looked someone in the eyes and told them that they were fired?”

“No.” he said, “but I’ve been involved in it.”

I didn’t even ask what that meant.  Instead I muttered some glib line about the difference between the chicken and the pig.  The answer is, of course, when it comes to breakfast, the chicken is involved.  The pig is committed.

But after my anger faded I was left with a realization.   I could be as smug as I wanted.  But if I was honest, I’d been in industry a long time.  I’d done layoffs.  I knew that lay-offs may very well get rid of some “dead wood” but more often – you slash cut a lot of live trees.

So while I could try to find the moral high ground here, it’s a lot like the old joke?

“Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?”

“Yes.”

“Would you sleep with me for ten dollars?”

“What l do you think I am?”

“I think we’ve established what you are.  Right now, we are only negotiating price.“

I could be as indignant as I liked.  But I had done what he was only talking about.   The fact that I felt bad didn’t give those people their jobs back.

I could judge his arrogance.  Or I could use it as a mirror.

Those are some of the memories that came back when this marvellous lady talked about the strangers. It still wasn’t comfortable.  After all these years, I’m at best a “recovering praise-a-holic”.   I take it one day at a time.  And I don’t like negative feedback — but I do love good advice.

And I was getting some good advice.

I could resist it, or I could use it.  I could look in this mirror and ask myself,  “have I been a stranger?”  Not for regret.  Not for self-flagellation, but as a learning experience.  Maybe I’m maturing?  Who knows?

Here’s the learning that I got.

As consultants, we may have the ear of the most senior executives — but that’s not where recommendations are going to get implemented.   Peter Drucker – the great management consulting thinker of our time said it clearly.   “The best and the brightest are volunteers.”

So as I started the session, I thanked the lady who made the remark about the “strangers”.  If there was any danger of me having anything glib in the session that I led with this group, it went out the window.  As I had in my university days, I worked my butt off – only now, not for the marks or the praise, but because I was reminded that I had a choice.  I was the “expert” – but I needed their trust.

We were in this together.  I couldn’t succeed being a “stranger”.

I dug deep.  I did my best to listen.  I offered honest advice.

As it turns out, it was a great two days, at least in part because of that great comment.  As I said good-bye to them all, I couldn’t help thinking of that old parting line — “don’t be a stranger”.

Good advice.

“Attention must be paid.”

Why these words as I think about David?  I’ve struggled with that.  David was certainly no Willy Loman.  Certainly not a salesman. But he could have been, I suppose.  David had qualities that any salesman would love to have.  He had that affability, that charm — a warmth.  When you met him, he was impossible to dislike.  And easy to like.

I remember the first time we met at his cubicle in the IT department at Inco — back in the days when it was a Canadian company.  That was back before someone decided that you could make a few more bucks on the stock if this icon of Canada was sold to the highest bidder — a Brazilian firm who have gradually phased out the Inco name.  Does it matter?  Who knows.  But companies, like people are mortal — they too fade from view.  One day, they are prominent in your life.  The next, they are a faded memory.  Some remnant mining operations.   A shell of the former company.   A big nickel and a huge smokestack on the Sudbury skyline.

But I digress.  I was talking about David.

That first day we met, he welcomed me into his cubicle with a warmth and openness that I will always remember.  I wasn’t expecting that kind of welcome.  I had come to start on the replacement of a system that David had built and implemented — a system that he had put together with an amazing ingenuity, no budget to speak of — but one that was surprisingly ingenious and functional.

My job was to introduce the replacement to this system — before David’s system really had time to achieve what it might have.  The reasons don’t matter at this point.  What matters is how open to change he was.  How “non-territorial” he was.  How welcoming to this person he didn’t know, who had come to take down what he had built.

Although I run a technology company and we help build, find and implement solutions, these days it seems I deal more with resistance to change than technology issues.  This project would be no exception.  We would encounter all kinds of resistance to this new web based application, this Software as a Service app.  Looking back, from our Web 2.0, SaaS based world a scant few years later, that resistance might seem laughable.  At the time, we were on the leading edge.  Resistance was to be expected.

But not from David.  He became my biggest ally, a real champion of the new.  I still marvel at that.  A lot of people might have let their egos get in the way.  They might have seen the new system as a personal slight.  Not David.  He wasn’t a guy whose ego got in the way.

As we went through the project, I constantly marvelled at how well liked he was.  How credible he was. What an asset he was.

If that was all there was to it, David would still be a remarkable memory for me.  But as I got to know him better, I was constantly amazed by him.  That unassuming, friendly, down to earth and “low ego” guy would always surprise you.

His intelligence was awesome.  David was a repository of information.  Mention a topic and he knew something about, could quote you something — an article, a source — something. That intelligence was mixed with a genuine curiosity — he was constantly digging, learning and diving into subjects with enthusiasm, relish and what must have been a dogged determination.   Every time we would talk, he would have some new thing, new idea, new application — and not just a passing knowledge.  I’ve met people with what I call the “bright shiny syndrome”.  Those are the folks that flit from topic to topic, never fully absorbing it, skimming the surface.  They are, as my mother once so eloquently put it, “as thin as piss on a plate.”   David was disciplined and the depth of his knowledge was incredible given how he made it seem effortless.  If you sat down for one of David’s impromptu demos or lectures, you had to be prepared to experience the topic in depth.

Funny, though.  It never once felt like he was showing off.  One reason that I’m sure of is that David was usually riffing on a topic that was of interest to the person he was talking with at the time.  This was a true benefit of his encyclopedic knowledge and the eclecticism of his intellectual pursuits.  Interested in software?  David had a story.  Interested in politics?  David had just read something about that.

And unlike those who show what they know rather than share what they know, David never made you feel like you were less intelligent.  In fact, quite the opposite — David would listen attentively and give you that feeling of truly being heard.   He might gently nudge you in a new direction, but you never felt that he said you were wrong — only that you might consider, or you probably knew….

Whatever you were interested in, David knew something fascinating, something that he shared with you like a gift from a friend.  A gift he would delight in sharing with you.  He’d grin that grin — and engage you, so you’d both feel like kids sneaking in to the Christmas presents in your parent’s closet.  Prepare to be surprised!

It wasn’t only his knowledge that surprised you.

It was also his courage.

I remember when he told me about the return of his cancer.  It was crushing.  I had just gotten to know him once again.  He came to work with us in our company.  He was instantly liked by employees and clients.  He was an instant asset to all of us.  And he was a great friend.

I’ll never forget the day he started with us.  I met him for breakfast in my favourite diner.  It’s a bit of a dive called the “Bus Depot” with an all day breakfast and waitresses straight out of the 1950′s.  David handed me his card for his consulting business.  Vandelay Consulting.  Now some of you might get the reference immediately.  Some may not. For those of you, I’ll remind you as gently and as kindly as David did for me.  Remember when Seinfeld’s friend, George had to explain his unemployment?  He said he worked for a firm — Vandelay Consulting.  As a gentle tweak, David had adopted that corporate name.  An inside joke.  One he loved to share. I loved to see that smile.

He segued into the story of his health with the same humour, declaring that he was now a “semi-colon”.

We’re a virtual company –  in person meetings are rare.  For a company of our size we have systems that rival anything that large companies have.  So of that is what David was helping us build. We have chat open and all talk on Skype constantly. Funny, although I work in my own office, I sometimes feel like I’m interrupted more frequently than when I worked in an office full of people.   I’ve turned into a cranky old bugger.  I’m often annoyed when I get interrupted.  Never by David.  I enjoyed talking to him every time.

He told me about the re-occurrence of his cancer at the end of one of these chats.  I knew he’d been ill.   He had been hospitalized with a problem that kept him from eating for an incredible amount of time.  He had also had a minor re-occurrence and needed to do some chemo.  Sadly, I have had a number of friends who’ve needed treatment.  But this was different.  The way he said “palliative” made it sound so matter of fact.

It was only then that I realized the depth of David’s courage.  He was telling me he was going to die — but he sounded more like he was trying to make it easy for me to get the news. I didn’t know what to say.

I saw David before he died.  On one of what Nicky his wife described as “a good day”.  And in case anyone needs a lesson in courage – you don’t have to look any further than David’s wife Nicky.  The way she cared for him was nothing short of heroic.  Her ability to be his nurse as well as his wife meant that David could have relative comfort on some days.  This was one.

We sat in his living room, facing onto what would soon be another season of Nicky’s award winning garden that would transform their back yard into garden paradise in the middle of the city.  We talked about the squirrels in the back yard.  We talked about politics.  And we talked about life.

It wasn’t the first serious talk we’d had.  We’d spend time together before and I’d seen the “personal side of David”.  We’d talked about our struggles to be parents, but he was clearly and wonderfully content with his life.  We talked about how much he loved his wife and family.  We talked about how lucky we were.

On that last day, we talked seriously — but in that same matter of fact way.  As always, he had some surprises.  As he walked me through the family art collection, he once again amazed me with his in depth knowledge, his attention to small details, and his passion for the beauty of the art and the creativity of the maker.  We talked of politics – in Canada and in the world.  We talked of the plans for his daughter’s wedding and joked about how the father of the bride doesn’t have to be articulate when he makes his toast.

And we talked about the spiritual side of our lives.  Perhaps a little more deeply.   Perhaps a little more poignantly.  But once again, David was a thoughtful teacher – someone who shared his knowledge.  I’m thankful for that day.  I wish there could have been more.  But life is transitory.  We can’t change that.  We can’t make time stand still.  If I could, on that few hours we had, I would make time stand still.  I’d freeze it so I could go back to it, time and time again.  But we can’t.  All we can do is — pay attention when it’s happening.

As this is my blog about change, I do want to tie this back to why it’s so important that “attention be paid”.   It occured to me that one thing I could be doing with this blog is celebrating remarkable people.

But I also wanted to make a point.  Working in companies does something to us.   We go through the days, wishing that it were Friday.  Looking forward to that vacation.  Wanting that promotion.  Wishing for that raise.

Companies go on.  Looking for that higher stock price.  Those increased profits.  We talk about quarter ends.

Where do we celebrate the qualities of a David?   Openness? Intelligence? Desire to make things better? Warmth?  Humour?  Courage?

My suspicion?  In many companies, the “Davids”  go unnoticed.   We miss their potential.  We never maximize their contribution.

But the lesson in this is not only for companies.  There is business and there is busy-ness.  If in our business, we miss the “Davids” of this world the company loses.  In our busy-ness  if we miss the “Davids” of this world we lose as people.   We are all so busy.  But if we miss that afternoon sitting in his living room – with the promise of a summer garden so imminent.  If we fail to live life in that moment — then we miss moments that will never be here again.

I heard the title of a book recently — “The Last Year of Your Life”.  And I thought – what if we did live like that.  What if we paid attention.  What if we lived each moment fully, at home and at work.  What would lives be like?  What would companies be like?  Could you imagine going to work at a company where you felt that what you were doing had purpose?  Where people like David were celebrated?

They say “nice guys finish last”.   If that were true, David would be living on now.  The reality is – once again, he’s out there ahead of me.  But he’s still teaching me.  At work and after — stay open to new things.  Don’t let your ego get in the way.  Be fascinated.  Have the courage to welcome others — even when you aren’t sure.  Smile and laugh.  Above all – pay attention.

My hope is that when my days or years come to a close that I will learn one more lesson from David.  I hope I’ll learn some small portion of his courage. I hope that I was paying attention.

But let’s say you do everything right and manage the resistance and you even get some initial results. Are you destined for success? Rarely. If you come back to that same organization weeks or months later you may see some of the trappings of the change – but it’s real effect will more often than not be undetectable.

But it’s better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all, right?

Actually, not really. Organizations are a lot more like people than we think. Organizations can learn. And when they learn to fail, it’s a hard lesson to overcome. We’ve all heard that change killing phrase — “we tried that before and it didn’t work.”

Also, all change comes at a cost. The obvious costs are the money spent on extra resources, expertise and all of that. There are people who do change without bringing in some real expertise. There are also people who cut their own hair. But most organizations, if they are serious, do invest in outside resources.

But that’s only a fraction of the cost. All change drains resources from the day to day operations. All change makes the organization less productive before it becomes more productive. If you tabulate the sum of internal and external spend for change, you know that it’s not something that you do on a whim. You don’t want to pay that price if you don’t get a payback.

So when you do change in an organization, you want ensure that if you really are going to make lasting change and hold onto those hard earned results.

How do you do that? You do it like you learn to ride a bicycle.

Remember I said that organizations are a lot more like people than we think. Organizations can learn — just like people. They can learn something using something that very much resembles our short term memory. Short term memory is what allows us to remember something for a brief period of time – a phone number, a grocery list, maybe even the words to a song. A few hours later, when the knowledge is no longer relevant or useful, it’s discarded. A lot of what we encounter or experience falls into that category.

We don’t retain every piece of information that we take in. That’s probably a good thing. There are lots of things that I really don’t want to remember. But even if you did, that’s not the way the mind works. And the more we get bombarded with information, the harder it is for it to stick.

Ever got partway through a movie or TV show and realize that you’d seen it before? A lot of what we experience is simply flushed away.

Yet some things are retained in exquisite detail. It gets transferred from short term to long term memory with incredible clarity. We’ve all had the experience of hearing the first few notes to a favourite song and not only knowing the song, but experiencing a flood of memories — where we were when we first heard it, what the weather was like, who we were with, what we were feeling — the sights, the sounds even the smells.

Even if we think they are long forgotten, to our surprise, a simple stimulus can bring them rushing back. Artists know this and use it frequently to inspire us and help us reconnect to things that we have forgotten. The connection is more simply memory, it’s often very powerful. But even these memories get chipped away and fade. Or they get rewritten. If you have spent any amount of time with an old friend or significant other, you know what I mean. Speaking of old movies that we’ve all seen, my wife seems to have lived a major part of her life in a parallel universe. We have been to the same places at roughly the same time, but she remembers a totally different set of facts and experiences. Go figure.

So even our long term memory gets compromised.

But there is a form of memory that never seems to fade and comes back with unerring accuracy. If you’ve ever learned to ride a bicycle and haven’t done it in a while, try it. You’ll wobble at first, but the whole thing will come back to you. An incredibly complex set of activities requiring coordination, balance and skill. Never forgotten.

It’s called “muscle memory”. It’s learned through repetition. It’s also learned at a level below our consciousness. We don’t actively recall it. It’s just there when we need it. It’s the way things are. Yes, we are a little rusty, but fundamentally it’s accurate. You don’t stop to question it, you just do it. Moreover, you can adapt these skills quite easily to a new reality. The type of bike I learned to ride ages ago is significantly different than today’s technical marvels, but I managed to generalize what I knew quite easily.

That ability to generalize these skills can give us the confidence to do new things. I think its why some people (my kids) are “good” at using computers. When you watch my son operate a new device, he’s not even really thinking about it. He just dives in and explores using what he’s learned before from countless hours of playing with all kinds of devices. Few new devices can stump him. Moreover, if the usage requires some form of skill, he masters it quickly.

What has this got to do with organizational change? Just this.

Most of what you see as organizational change uses a form of “short term” memory. For those who are students of theory, check out the Hawthorne Effect. This famous experiment showed that if you just pay attention to people, you can get temporary boosts in their performance. It’s the model that a lot of change is based on. Managers pay attention to a problem and they see a result. Job done. We start a program and there’s a flurry of activity. Job done.

But it doesn’t last. Shortly after you stop paying attention, things go back to the way they were.

In response, some practitioners and organizations attempt a transfer to long term organizational memory. This can be a little more successful. We persist. We put out more communications. We publish documents and processes. We put out manuals. We expect people to read them and learn them. Some even do. Managers are trained to reinforce them message over a longer period of time until they hear it coming back to them. Job done.

But an interesting phenomenon happens when we intellectualize change. Try this if you don’t believe me. If you ask someone what the procedure is for doing a task in a department, if they have had good training, significant repetition or been diligent in reading the material, they will describe a process to you in a way that is eerily close to what manual says. But then take it a step further. Watch them perform the task and you will find some real surprises. What they say they do and what they actually do are often as different as what my wife remembers versus what I remember. BTW – unless you draw this to their attention, most of the time they will be blissfully unaware of this difference.

When skills are learned at this level they can be fairly rigid. As every system analyst worth their salt will tell you, even a process which is not really followed can be vigorously defended as the way that it’s “supposed to be done.” You can point out the fact that things don’t really happen that way all you want. People have learned that they might be able to make some compromises in reality, but you can’t change the process. And if you pay attention to it, it will snap back like magic. The old process will be back temporarily in its full glory and often in its full inefficiency.

Then there are cyclists…

Some organizations don’t write their processes into manuals. Some write them into their culture. This came home to me when I heard Isadore “Issy” Sharp, founder of the Four Seasons Hotel speak at a dinner recently. When asked about his secret, Issy gave some principles. One of his principles – “the golden rule.” Treat customers like you’d want to be treated. Another — “every employee has their own ‘credit balance’ that they can and should use to do the right thing when a guest is unhappy.”

Note the distinct lack of specific details. He’s not telling people how they should do it. He’s also not allowing anyone to fall back on a procedure as an excuse for not making a guest happy.

How do people learn these precepts? They learn them from seeing them in action. T They learn them because their management treat them with that same respect.

Issy doesn’t teach his people to read a manual. He teaches them to ride a bicycle.

Sounds so simple. Why don’t more organizations do this? Two reasons. One — it takes time. hey learn them from the care that people take in hiring — Issy’s people spend way more time hiring for even what some hotels would class as menial jobs. If you want to work at this level, to quote the legendary Larry Bossidy from his book “Execution”. “You have to sweat the small stuff.”

The task of living the principles never stops. And it takes an enormous amount of effort and time.
When I work with organizations to do change, I’ve taken the model of the bicycle. Using techniques from Lean and other disciplines, we get people to make things visible. We challenge them to go out and look at how it is really done. And as consultants, we let them do the work. Because it is work.

It’s scary for some folks. They come prepared to sit at tables and talk. Or they bring in binders that show us that they have these things documented. Then we insist that they get up, they move around. We construct their processes on walls with post it notes and show them how easily something can be moved, changed or even taken out entirely.

We focus on outcomes and not on change for change’s sake

David Maister, the guru of Management Consulting said in his book “True Professionalism” that the old testament prophets didn’t go to pray for more commandments. They prayed for the strength to do the ones that they already had. The organizational equivalent of that is a focus on outcomes.

Amazingly, once you focus on these realistically, a lot comes into clear focus. Issy Sharp asks – “is the customer happy?” Not – “did you follow procedure?” Results are what count.

The customer is the focus, but the discipline extends to every aspect of the business. Issy tells a story of a group of employees who were setting up a room for an event and had one of the team who was doing the bare minimum. The team sent him packing saying that “if he didn’t want to work, he should get lost.”

Organizations that ride bicycles are incredibly disciplined at all levels. I wouldn’t want to face Issy if customers were unhappy. But I also wouldn’t want to bring him excuses if a hotel was not profitable. Yet I would expect him to give me time to execute a reasonable plan.

Which I fully expect he does. You need a level of patience and dedication that goes far beyond what most management teams are prepared to defend. So many opt for short term memory. Some try the process route.

A few ride bicycles.

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,300 times in 2010. That’s about 3 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 9 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 35 posts. There was 1 picture uploaded, taking a total of 629kb.

The busiest day of the year was January 20th with 54 views. The most popular post that day was Social Media for Consultants.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were chelseaconsulting.ca, rightsleeve.com, new.chelseaconsulting.ca, lmodules.com, and linkedin.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for jim love, eugene fuoco, change the game, getunvarnished.com invite code, and game change.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Social Media for Consultants January 2010

That will go on your permanent record, young man! April 2009

About January 2009

A pen is just a pen…or is it? March 2009

Practical examples of social media and technology leading to business success January 2010