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January 21, 2004 By Uncategorized

Heath Row at the Fast Company blog points to this article on good vs. bad gossip in organizations.

Basically it says that bad gossip is bad for the organization, but when people say nice things about each other, that’s good for the organization.

That might bit of a bit simplistic synopsis, but I feel like these researchers have missed a big opportunity.

When I am working with organizations who complain that they have communication problems, I always ask about gossip. I ask how long it takes for a juicy rumour to propagate through the organization. People usually respond with some lightning fast time.

I always point out that this means that there is no communication problem, the problem is that people are just not passionate enough about issues that are “communication problems.” This always leads into nice discussions about working with more passion, rather than devising some useless set of easily broken communication commitments.

I am interested in understadning HOW gossip works, and harnessing that dynamic to deal with “communication problems” in organizations.

In my experience, communication problems generally fall into three types:

1. I can’t get the information I need. This is a dynamic in larger organizations where individuals feel like they don’t have access to information they need to work better, stay on top of the organization or be prepared for events. This complaint usually precedes an unworkable solution, whereby everyone guesses what everyone else needs and provides the information BEFORE the demand for it arises. I suspect that aggregated weblogs and RSS feeds might be a more realistic way of doing this, but the solution usually requires that the complainer actually learn where the information lives and go get it. Regularly scheduled Open Space meetings would be a good idea too, to connect those people who have the information to those who need it.

2. There are too many rumours/lies/trust issues here.. This one can result in pure poison. The fact is that you cannot stop people from telling lies, spreading rumours or abusing trust. You can create a work environment where these situations are minimized through management practices that are based on respect and trust. But the bottom line is that gossip will always be a part of groups. Dealing with this requires well grounded management combined with healthy individuals that have a capacity for absorbing negativity and letting it go. This is a life practice, and organizations are the perfect places to refine that practice. The bottom line is that wishing gossip away is just plain unrealistic, so individuals need to change their attitudes towards gossip. Trust me, it’s the easier of the two solutions.

3. Hoarding information. Knowledge is power. Hoarding knowledge means acquiring power, right? Some folks believe this and so they are reluctant to share information for fear that it will give their rivals at work a leg up. The fact is that knowledge is power in a competetive environment, but within an organization, not sharing knowledge is a huge competetive disadvantage. And, as Cluetrain points out, even withholding knowledge from your market may sink you in the long run. The world is opening up and success lies that way.

I’m still interested in harnessing the power of gossip to act as a lubricated information channel for useful stuff. Information spreads quickly because people care about it. If people find a way to care about work in the same way, work information will spread quickly and fairly accurately too. So what are the other characteristics of gossip that turn it from an obstacle to a tool?

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January 20, 2004 By Uncategorized

My fellow Bowen Islander John Dumbrille is getting his new blog into second gear:

“Tom Peters’ and other’s vision of globalization, a vision which is coming true at a breakneck pace, will only be a fascinating, and rich future for those who are free enough to change. I don’t believe that it is inevitable that the income gap will continue to grow, and that the extremely poor will grow in numbers, covering the world more evenly. But to escape this we have to change – I do not think that books are enough or 3 hours of homework in grade 10 are enough, cramming for college entrance is enough, college specializaiton is enough. We cant outrun a train. We have to adapt.

Children have to be raised to be independent enough psychologically to be entrepreneurial. And for that to happen, education has to change – to move from mass systems of control and compliance, to systems that bring out the humanity and skills of a child, encouraging children to be themselves, stand in their own wisdom, and find their own way. I think this will require smaller classes and self-paced learning.

I see good examples of new successful models, e.g home schooling success stories, but I see few on a larger scale. The schools are underfunded, mothers and fathers are busy in jobs that they respond to with fear and compliance, qualities that are inevitably brought home with the bacon. Maybe new initiatives are coming. I hope so, as without this revolution, we’ll bring up another wave of highly educated workers and middle managers who are trained to serve in a system that disappears and takes the ladder with it.”

It bears mentioning that we are both involved in a wonderful community of homelearning families here on Bowen Island, working with our kids and each other to provide a creative learning environment outside of the school system. John and his family are helping to create that new world and those new initiatives.

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January 19, 2004 By Uncategorized

From time to time as I travel around the country working on First Nations issues, I sometimes hear from non-Aboriginal people how First Nations were immigrants too, as if this somehow undermines the notion of Aboriginal title. While no one population group ever seems to stay put for very long, First Nations have had a very long history of occupation of the coast. Here in the Vancouver area settlements dating back 9000 have been discovered in a number of places along the Fraser River and in parts of Burrard inlet. These settlements would have been established not long after the ice melted 10,000 years ago.

But today comes news that even older settlements have been discovered on the coast. According to this story (read quickly; the link will rot), there has been occupation of Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) for up to 12,000 years:

“Pieces of two spear points discovered in a remote limestone cave on B.C.’s Queen Charlotte Islands represent the oldest evidence of human occupation on the Pacific coast of North America north of California.

Animal bones found in sediment layers next to the spear points on the west side of Moresby Island outside Gwaii Haanas National Park are confirmed to date back 11,800-12,100 years (a figure calculated from 10,500-10,800 radiocarbon years).”

If you compare that against what was happening in the rest of the world at that time you can see just how old First Nations occupation in British Columbia really is. For example, 8,000 years ago, most of these non-Aboriginal folks ancestors were just discovering how to grow cereals and domesticate sheep in Mesopotamia and Persia. It was only 5,000 years ago that Egyptian civilization got going. First Nations folks have been in this province for more than twice that amount of time.

Kind of funny to be involved in “land claims” with that kind of pedigree eh?

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January 17, 2004 By Uncategorized

Starting a list of weekly linkage to interesting places I have seen but not dwelled much in this week:

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January 14, 2004 By Uncategorized

I’ve been looking at flow states and transformative moments lately especially with relation to how these states lead to various forms of freedom. Today I find on Bernie DeKoven’s DeepFUN some words about what he calls “Coliberation.” It’s long but worh quoting in full:

CoLiberation: what happens when we work extraordinarily well together. Like on a basketball team or in an orchestra, when we actually experience ourselves sharing in something bigger than any one present. This is what I call the experience of the Big WE. It’s a corollary to the Big ME experience of self-transcendence. If the Big ME is the ‘peak experience,’ CoLiberation, the Big WE, is like becoming a whole mountain range.

I know I’ve experienced it in games and sports and the performing arts. And, what makes me especially hopeful, I’ve also experienced it in business meetings.

The central experience that led me to write my book The Well-Played Game was, in fact, a game of ping pong between my friend Bill and myself. Let me describe it to you, thereby exemplifying the selfsame example of the kind of experience I hope you will share with us:

‘My good friend Bill was and is so much better of a player than I that there was actually no reason for us to try to play a ‘real’ game. Playing for points was clearly pointless. So, we decided to just see how long we could keep a volley going. It was a perfect challenge for each of us. For Bill, just getting the ball to hit my paddle was an exercise worthy of his years of pongish mastery. After half the night of this, we managed to sustain an almost infinite volley. We actually lost count.’

That’s all that I ask. Some description of a shared transcendence that made you feel just about as big, ME-wise and WE-wise, as you can get. Larger than life. Enlarged by each other’s largesse. Beyond time.

And, corollarily speaking, those exceptional experiences of working together, when we’re really working and really together. As deliciously distracting as the technologies of collaboration may be, when collaboration is it’s at its best, so are we.

I’ve been calling these kinds of meetings ‘coliberating.’ It’s cute, because it almost sounds like something beyond ‘collaborating.’ But ‘liberating’ is only part of the truth. Yes, in deed, those moments in which we have actually managed to free each other from whatever constraints we usually impose on each other, these are truly and actually what you would call coliberating. But there is something beyond CoLiberation, beyond the meeting itself. Some coincidence of selves that undefines the limits of our capabilities. A coincidence having almost nothing to do with the meeting, and everything to do with the human spirit. Shared moments of unusual clarity, vivid communication. Spontaneous combustions of understanding.

I certainly see that in meetings I run, especially Open Space Technology meetings. And so, not coincidentally, it is interesting to note that Open Space folks like Jack Ricchuto and Ashley Cooper have been asking questions about this state recently too.