Emotional Zombies

Posted on January 3, 2010 by petervan

Great post on “Who needs employees anyway ?”. Discovered via Fred Zimny’s Blog.

This is based on a recent “Global Workforce Survey” conducted by Towers Perrin, an HR consultancy. In an attempt to measure the extent of employee engagement around the world, the company polled more than 90,000 workers in 18 countries. The survey covered many of the key factors that determine workplace engagement, including: the ability to participate in decision-making, the encouragement given for innovative thinking, the availability of skill-enhancing job assignments and the interest shown by senior executives in employee well-being.

Barely 21%

of employees are truly engaged in their work, in the sense that they would “go the extra mile” for their employer.

Nearly 38%

are mostly or entirely disengaged, while the rest are in the tepid middle.

Surprisingly, 86%

of the employees in the Towers Perrin study said they loved or liked their job.

So, next time you evaluate your yearly employee satisfaction survey, beware of the numbers saying that the majority of employees is happy. Even if you sense in every office, corridor and corner that is not true.

Anyway, why these rather shocking results ? The article suggests a number of reasons:

Ignorance

It may be that managers don’t actually realize that most of their employees are emotional zombies

Indifference

Another explanation: managers know that a lot of employees are flatlining at work, but maybe they simply don’t care

Impotence

It could be that managers do care, but can’t imagine how they could change things for the better. After all, a lot of jobs are just plain boring.

Reputation

The company’s reputation and its commitment to making a difference in the world—is this a company that deserves the best efforts of its people;

Leaders’ Trust

Are the behaviors and values of the organization’s leaders—are they people employees respect and want to follow?

Anybody who has ever read a Dilbert strip knows that cynicism and passivity are endemic in large organizations.

However – in my opinion – we too easily get away with joking about cynicism. In my opinion, it is the cancer of today’s organizations that seem great at the outside, but grim at the inside. They look like golden cages. They offer all the perks possible, but they ignore 3 basic attitudes for any human being to function well.

#1: To have an open mind. Companies/People who do not have an open mind tend to retract into highly judgmental.

#2: To have an open heart. The next level is that of the heart. People who do not have an open heart have developed cynicism as a defense. They have learned NOT to show their heart.

#3: To have an open will. Last but not least, when there is no room for open will, we become control freaks.

In today’s society, driven more and more by openness and transparency, these “tricks” of judging, being cynical and control don’t work anymore.

It all boils down to 3 fundamental needs for every human being:

People who are not able to express themselves (anymore), position themselves as “invulnerable”. In stead of being able to receive love, they compromise on getting appreciation. And in stead of giving love, the defense mechanism becomes one of taking power. As long as we have power games between the silos, the CEO can shout “change” and “innovation” as long as he wants, at the bottom of the pyramid nothing will change.

Surprisingly, the origins of these needs – and their fulfillment or not – is formed during the first 1-3 years of your life. In other words beyond the control of the organization you work for today.

But organizations should be conscious about these facts, and offer their employees probably the most interesting perk they can give: to follow a personal development program that lets the employee explore it’s true self.

Who am I ?
Who am I in a group ?
Who am I in the world ?
Finding your true passion.
Finding your true purpose in life.

And hopefully finding (or founding) a company that welcomes you respectfully as an employee, and gives you the chances to develop your true potential in line with your purpose.

It reminds me of Jim Collins and a 2003 blog post found back earlier today.

The start of the New Year is a perfect time to start a stop doing list and to make this the cornerstone of your New Year resolutions, be it for your company, your family or yourself. It also is a perfect time to clarify your three circles, mirroring at a personal level the three questions asked by Smith:

1) What are you deeply passionate about?
2) What are you are genetically encoded for — what activities do you feel just "made to do"?
3) What makes economic sense — what can you make a living at?

Those fortunate enough to find or create a practical intersection of the three circles have the basis for a great work life.

An to come back to the Global Workforce Survey:

In every industry, there are huge swathes of critical knowledge that have been commoditized—and what hasn’t yet been commoditized soon will be.
Given that, we have to wave goodbye to the “knowledge economy” and say hello to the “creative economy.”
What matters today is how fast a company can generate new insights and build new knowledge—of the sort that enhances customer value.
To escape the curse of commoditization, a company has to be a game-changer, and that requires employees who are proactive, inventive and zealous.
Problem is, you can’t command people to be enthusiastic, creative and passionate.
These critical ingredients for success in the creative economy are gifts that people will bring to work each day only if they’re truly engaged. (Eric Raymond made this point way back in 2001 when he argued that in the new economy, “enjoyment predicts productivity.”)

For passionate readers, i can recommend in this context Eric Raymond’s book The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Or a bit an older – but still very relevant book – “The Cultural Creatives”

Must be that I am some sort of +

positive guy when i turn a title like Emotional Zombies” into something positive like “The cultural creatives”

As Seth Godin was saying in his today’s blog:

One of the most common things I hear is, "I’d like to do something remarkable like that, but my xyz won’t let me." Where xyz = my boss, my publisher, my partner, my licensor, my franchisor, etc.

Well, you can fail by going along with that and not doing it, or you can do it, cause a ruckus and work things out later.

In my experience, once it’s clear you’re willing (not just willing, but itching, moving, and yes, implementing) without them, things start to happen. People are rarely willing to step up and stop you, and often just waiting to follow someone crazy enough to actually do something.

I’m going

Come along if you like

HR and Innovation

Posted on December 28, 2009 by petervan

In my previous blog “Brand, Workforce and Innovation”, i started making a case for a leadership role for HR in Innovation.

I wrote:

I’d love to see more HR in a true leadership role. Leadership as opposite to management in its narrow definition of executing a course set out by somebody else. See also below the very important message about the role for HR in creating the eminence of our workforce.

Checkout my previous post on what is meant with “eminence of our workforce”.

I would like to mix this with some thoughts from Rowan Gibson recently on Blogging Innovation. His full posting can be found here but i will explore some key findings below. Rowan Gibson is the author of “Innovation to the Core”.

UPDATE: what a co-incidence. Just today, Rowan Gibson did a new post in essence giving a one-page summary of his book. Here is the link to “Do you have a Corporate Innovation System?”

Innovation to the core” is about putting

radical innovation in the core of

your organization

and is not to be confused with the discussing

Innovation in the core or beyond the core

of your product portfolio

UPDATE: “Beyond the Core” is a book by Chris Zook, and is based on the principle of adjacencies. It seems to be the bible for anybody not wanting to do anything beyond the core. It dates back from begin 2005, and is in my opinion completely outdated as a guide for innovation.

Rowan says in his blog:

In essence, that means developing a particular mix of resources, processes and values that makes it hard for rivals to match what the company does.

This has to do – amongst others – to create this eminence in the work-force.

But it is much more.

Lastly, i was attending one of our company meetings, and our CEO was doing a pitch on the focus of innovation in 2010. Great to have your CEO on board to get innovation rolling ! Really, it makes a big difference. But at the same time, the company runs a 2-year lean-program to build greater efficiencies in the company processes.

In French, we call this “Le grand écart”.

It’s difficult, but not impossible if you’re fit and trained.

People do not understand this, cannot digest, don’t see the big picture, as the efficiency programs are much closer to their daily lives and – most of all – their jobs.

You could see the glaze in the eyes of some folks when we were talking innovation after having explained the lean-part.

As long as we do not succeed as positioning innovation as “buying our future”, as essential to building the greatest workforce on earth and giving the people the possibility of being part of that – with reward mechanisms – we won’t succeed in those apparent conflicting objectives.

Rowan Gibson goes on:

Making innovation a systemic organizational capability is a complex and multifaceted challenge. It simply cannot be solved with some Band-Aid or silver bullet. Instead, it requires deep and enduring changes to leadership focus, performance metrics, organization charts, management processes, IT systems, training programs, incentive and reward structures, cultural environment and values.

It’s not “good enough” to have your CEO on board. You need the full buy-in of your full Executive Committee, and – in a more complex co-operative organization like SWIFT – the buy-in of your Members, represented by the Board. We still have a lot of work to do, but i believe we are getting there. Innovation is now getting at the agenda of those deciding constituencies.

What i have not yet seen is a focus on how HR can help and be instrumental for innovation.

What companies need is not merely a pro-innovation mindset, or better brainstorming techniques, or "hot teams". It’s about making innovation a new organizational way of life; something that permeates everything a company does, in every corner of its business, every single day. It’s about infusing the entire lifeblood of an organization with the tools, skills, methods and processes of radical innovation. That’s the true imperative for rethinking the role of Human Resources. As soon as we recognize the strategic value and the immense organizational transition that’s involved in building a corporate-wide innovation capability, HR automatically moves to center stage.

And what would be the role of HR in such an Innovation context ?

Who else but HR leaders would be capable of turning a company’s strategic intent with regard to innovation into tangible everyday action? Who else could make the necessary changes to executive roles and goals, political infrastructures, recruitment strategy, broad-based training, performance appraisals, awards and incentives, employee contribution and commitment, value systems, and so on? Who else could build and foster the cultural and constitutional conditions – such as a discretionary time allowance for innovation projects, maximum diversity in the composition of innovation teams, and rampant connection and conversation across the organization – that serve as catalysts for breakthrough innovation? Who else could ensure that each employee understands the link between his or her own performance (as well as compensation) and the attainment of the company’s innovation strategy?

In short, who else but HR

leaders could create a company

where everyone, everywhere,

is responsible for innovation

every day whether as an

innovator, mentor, manager, or

team member?

I have become a big believer that companies need an innovation system where

everybody in the company

becomes an innovator

It’s almost a human right of any employee in a company, i would even venture it is a moral obligation for any employee in a company to be an innovator himself. It is NOT the sole privilege of the innovation team to come up with ideas, on the contrary. See in this context my previous blog on The Holy Fire.

Rowan Gibson has a great closing in his blog post:

The sad reality is that too many CEOs overlook HR’s potential in this regard. They still think of HR solely in terms of regulatory compliance, hiring and firing, employee comfort, compensation and benefits. Notably, Jack Welch, illustrious ex-CEO of GE and arguably one of the greatest corporate leaders of our times, sees things differently. In a recent column in BusinessWeek, he writes that

"every CEO should elevate his

head of HR to the same stature

as the CFO."

Hope somebody reads this.

Need for a new currency based on abundancy

Posted on December 27, 2009 by petervan

Thanks to my subscription to Fredzimmy’s blog, I found this wonderful blog from Esko Kilpi.

I really recommend you to explore this site from A to Z.

Look at the wonderful slidedeck on Slideshare
Have a look at the Flickr photos
Have a look at the Bookmarks

MIT Media Lab Human Dynamics Group, Howard Rheingold (one of the first ever “internet”-books i ever bought,…, Barbarian Blog.

Yummy, Yummy. This is great stuff for a Sunday afternoon. So inspiring. Delicious 😉

This way, i discovered the FANTASTIC Web 2.0 Expo speech of Douglas Rushkoff about Radical Abundance.

It is a 15 min video, and worth every minute:

Not sure if the video embed worked, so in any case you can find it here by clicking the below image.

Some mind-blowing quotes (in 140 characters ;-):

The operating system for money is obsolete…
Abundance based currencies and monopoly based currencies…
Central Bank Monarch imprinted currencies are scarcity based currencies…
The money we use today was created so that rich people to stay rich by being rich (and lending) rather than doing anything…

Our economy is based on the growth of interest
The people lending money get richer, the people creating value are getting poorer
But, what happens if you get something that’s abundant ? That you can’t make scarce.
The computers and networks change the “centrality” of value creation
You are now able to exchange value directly between one another rather than through a centralized currency
Optimize human beings to technology
Technology is more compatible with the values of efficiency than with all the other human values
Now you’re open and free to Google-Ads
Web³ will be won by the power of those who can index and aggregate. Is that what we want ?
Open Source and Crowdsourcing are not the same things
This notion of “free” leads to a society of copying, to no creativity, to no originality, to DJ’ing of culture
The abundance of genuinely creative output is declining
What we need is the development of a digital culture that respects the labor of individuals
What we need is the creation of new modes of currency based on abundance rather than scarcity.
I am talking about the original PayPal dream before banks asked them to be regulated like… banks
The next BIG thing are from people who will create genuine alternative electronic currencies and P2P exchange that do not involve cash.
I am talking about primitive local currencies such as Timebanks, Itex, Superfluid’s Quids
Cash has already lost its utility value, as it has been sucked out into investment capital, in the speculative marketplace
The only real competition against a Google universe (and their ideas of openness – see last weeks Google Blog post about openness btw) would be peer to peer exchange
We are not suffering from an abundance of creativity, just from an abundance of productivity, efficiency and openness.
If Web² leads to aggregation and indexers, then genuine P2P will lead to bottom-up value creation.
The next era is not about scaling-up anymore, it’s about figuring out how to exchange value, in stead of extracting value.
We are at a crossroads: right now we have the opportunity to optimize our systems, technologies, currencies to humans in stead of optimizing humans to them.

Brand, Workforce and Innovation

Posted on December 26, 2009 by petervan

If you’re interested in Innovation, you have to subscribe to Blogging Innovation. All posts are just worthwhile reading.

They also have a group on LinkedIn.

Today’s article typically resonated with me. It’s titled: “Combining Brand Management with Workforce Enablement”.

It’s about the speech by Jon Iwata, SVP of communications and marketing at IBM on the future of the communications profession at the November 4th 2009 Institute for Public Relations Distinguished Lecture Series at the Yale Club in New York City. Full text of the speech is here.

Iwata says:

"One day soon, every employee, every retiree, every customer, every business partner, every investor and every neighbor associated with every company will be able to share an opinion about that company with everyone in the world, based on firsthand experience. The only way we can be comfortable in that world is if every employee of the company is truly grounded in what their company values and stands for."

IBM has developed an IBM Brand “System”:

Picture a framework with five columns. From left to right the columns are labeled what it means to look like IBM, to sound like IBM, to think like IBM, to perform like IBM and ultimately to be IBM. Simple enough. You could in 30 seconds create the same frame for J&J, Chevron or Ketchum. But of course it would — and should — take you much longer to fill in the details. Every word, every phrase and description in that framework would be painstakingly chosen. Because this is your corporate genome. It describes what makes your company unique. Developing the framework is hard work, but it’s only the foundation. Because, like a genome, the real work — and value — are in bringing it to life.

and also:

For example, we are now collaborating with our colleagues in HR to redesign IBM’s leadership competencies for the first time in many years. If this is ultimately approved by the CEO – and we’ll know in a few weeks – it will mark the first time in my 25-year career that the foundational elements of HR will not only be aligned with our brand and workforce strategies, they will be essentially the same.

I would like to see some examples on how this works in an environment where efficiency programs are run in parallel with innovation programs and (re)branding programs. What is the ideal role of HR in all of this ? Will HR be degraded to a “management” machine to deal with lay-offs only ?

I’d love to see more HR in a true leadership role. Leadership as opposite to management in its narrow definition of executing a course set out by somebody else. See also below the very important message about the role for HR in creating the eminence of our workforce.

About this, Iwata says:

But the building of constituency goes beyond the reaching of audiences. It gets to how a company establishes shared attraction and shared values: how it shapes not just common ground, but a deeper, enduring, shared idea.

They weren’t simply sending messages to audiences. They were creating audiences.

They weren’t shaping relationships with existing constituents. They were creating constituencies.

This is the basis of our Smarter Planet strategy. We are specifically and deliberately working to validate and stoke the optimism of forward-thinkers. We are saying to them – because we really believe it ourselves: “Your hopes for your industry, your city, your environment, your community are now within your grasp. This isn’t a metaphor. We can actually build a smarter planet.”

Our work of late tries to get at the real substance of change, the real issues on the table. The work is long-form. It’s argued, not pitched. It doesn’t focus on our products and services.

It purposefully invites people to

think

Wow !

And lastly about Building the eminence of our workforce.

I believe that 2010 will be the year that corporations grapple with and ultimately accept that their employees are engaging with – and must engage with – social media. We’ll certainly go through a necessary period when people raise all sorts of objections.

The CFO worries about financial disclosure. The General Counsel fears intellectual property leakage. HR will say we’re helping competitors recruit our people. And everyone will be nervous about criticism of management. These are all legitimate.

So the answer to all this may be another set of policies and guidelines for using social media. My employer has indeed such a set of policies. They are difficult to find, but they exist. But are another set of policies and guidelines a solution. Will the fact that each employee has to sign-off the blogging policy or any other code of conduct really change our actual behavior ?

I doubt it.

Let’s say we actually do that. Then what? Policies and guidelines may keep individuals and their companies out of trouble but, by themselves, they won’t create business value.

The key is to build the eminence of our workforce.

What do I mean by “eminence”? No matter what their industry, their profession, their discipline or their job, people with eminence are acknowledged by others as expert. It’s not simply to know a lot about Tuscan villas, digital cameras or banking. You need to be recognized as an expert. And when you show up – in person, or online; in writing, or in conversation – you are both knowledgeable and persuasive. Because being an expert and being good at communications aren’t the same thing, as we all know.

Which is why

we need to make the creation

of this kind of workforce

an intentional act,

a new discipline in our function

Yes, we need guidelines and policy – but also training, resources and support for broad networks of experts.

Related to this, i found just a couple of days ago a great post from Hugh McLeod’s site titled: If your boss tells you, “our brand must speak with one voice”, quit.

I once had a boss who didn’t like the fact that I had a blog. Especially when I blogged about stuff that was relative to our industry. Yeah, “Our brand must speak with one voice” was his idea. Yes. I know.

Actually, the reality was, HE wanted to be “The One Voice”. He wanted all the credit, and all the rewards. He didn’t mind me put ting words into his mouth– stuff I had written– so long as the outside world gave him all the credit. But he didn’t want me in any other role, other than subservient, nowheresville wage slave. He fought tooth and nail to keep me from ever becoming a rainmaker inside the company, something he wanted all for himself.

And back to the end of the speech by Iwata:

To me, this is what “values” are about… and what “authenticity” means. This is about consciously choosing a unique identity. And it’s about actually being that unique thing you have chosen to be.

In other words:

Leading by Being

Every morning I wake up angry

Posted on December 24, 2009 by petervan

It was triggered in me for the first time when I was watching the movie “Crash” featuring Sandra Bullock. She plays a rich wealthy healthy good looking woman that has everything. Has a great job, good family, fancies the better restaurants and clubs.

But she is spoiled and disconnected with the real world. She lives in an ivory tower.

It gets as bad as her saying during a morning breakfast discussion:

“Every morning I wake up angry”.

Angry

That emotion that was so present during (and after) the 18 month personal development program Leading by Being that a ended about a year ago now. The 23 Feb 2009 coming-out of that program also resulted in this blog.

My angriness this morning is basically triggered by an argument I has last night with my lovely wife about something really stupid. Nothing spectacular, but the feeling remained during the night. So, i had a bad night.

The trigger is pulled when i recognize that feeling of not living my full potential. When i feel swimming in syrup. What i feel i don’t progress anymore. Status-quo. It’s protest. It’s rebellion. It’s Anger.

In one of my previous posts i was writing about the holy fire. This time it’s maybe the devil’s fire.

This fire is also burning like hell, but the burning is one like

acid

It’s a lot of negative energy. It’s the devil inside me. The Hannibal Lector with his own (melo)-drama, showing himself as the complex persons as that suits him well, and does not force him to show his true (empty) self.

I went back to my notes of Leading by Being, “refreshing” what caused my angriness. This is what i found back:

It’s this feeling that i can do so much more but am standing in my own status-quo. Since the coming-out on 23 Feb 2009, there is not much i have done with all the nice resolutions i wrote down at that time.

It’s the feeling that you know very well what to do/change in your life to be your true self and not the self that you imagined for yourself. And being angry for not applying in any way all the great lessons you have learned in this program or in all the great books you have been reading in your life-time.

And feeling deep inside that something “big” is on your life-path, and that you seem to have missed it consistently or avoided it on purpose. The thing that Huge McLeod calls “You have to find your own shtick”

It was the fact that somehow playing around with something new, suddenly they found they were able to put their entire selves into it. Only the did it become their “shtick”, their true voice, etc. That’s what people responded to. The humanity, not the form. The voice, not the form". Put your whole self into it, and you will find your true voice. Hold back and you won’t. It’s that simple.

I have also been reflecting on this blog. I read quite a lot. Books. And I spent quite some time reading postings via my Google Reader. 2 hours per day is not uncommon (my wife loves me for this).

It really would not be difficult to post 3-4 new posts per day linking to other stuff i found interesting. And i discovered the trick that if my blog post title contains “Google”, or “Android” or… I get a lot more hits. But do those hits also mean impact ?

If so, it’s mere quantitative, not qualitative. And even when that happens, what does that do ? Make myself interesting and exposing how smart i think i am ? It is not satisfying. Anymore. Like others, I am in search for more

depth

I enjoyed much more the postings like holy fire. They’re more “authentic”. I know it is a big word. Maybe i should now share what stuff i am reading at this moment. Puts it all more in context.

I am in 4-5 books at the same time: re-read Seth Godin’s “Tribes”, devastated by Hugh McLeod’s “Ignore Everybody”, the disappointing Nick Carr’s “The Big Switch”, Howard Gardner’s “Five Minds for the Future”, Joel Garreau’s “Radical Evolution” and – in Dutch – Rik Torfs “Wie gaat er dan de wereld redden ?” (translated: “And who is then going to save the world "?).

Those guys really inspire me.

I am inspired by what Howard Man, entrepreneur and the author of Your
Business Brickyard, has to say:

I’m continually amazed by the number of people on Twitter and on blogs, and the growth of people (and brands) on Facebook. But I’m also amazed by how so many of us are spending our time. The echo chamber we’re building is getting larger and louder.

More megaphones don’t equal a better dialogue. We’ve become slaves to our mobile devices and the glow of our screens. It used to be much more simple and, somewhere, simple turned into slow.

We walk the streets with our heads down staring into 3-inch screens while the world whisks by doing the same. And yet we’re convinced we are more connected to each other than ever before.

Multi-tasking has become a badge of honor. I want to know why.

I don’t have all the answers to these questions but I find myself thinking about them more and more.

In between tweets, blog posts and Facebook updates.

That’s why I’d like to write more about the real life. My life. Yours. My colleagues.

And not to show fear but

vulnerability

And to inspire others to dream.

What matters now

Posted on December 24, 2009 by petervan

This is the time of New Year resolutions.

If you need some inspiration for your resolutions, I can recommend Seth Godin’s latest free e-book ‘”What Matters Now”

You can download it here.

It’s a collection of wonderful one-pagers written by smart friends of Seth Godin about noble themes such as Generosity, Fear, Passion, Compassion, etc

It also has a couple of advertisements for a fund-raising campaign for “Room to Read”, a program for providing books and education to children in developing countries.

In the collection of one-pages, the one that attracted immediately my attention and that really resonated with me was …

Have you ever wondered who’s behind that little voice in your head that tells you, “you’re in this by yourself, one person doesn’t make a difference, so why even try?” His name is Fear. Fear plays the role of antagonist in the story of your life. You must rid yourself of him using all necessary means.

We’re often impressed by those who appear to be fearless. The people who fly to the moon. Chase tornadoes. Enter dangerous war zones. Skydive. Speak in front of thousands of people. Stand up to cancer. Raise money and adopt a child that isn’t their flesh and blood.

So, why are we so inspired by them? Because deep down, we are them. We all share the same characteristics. We’re all divinely human. Until Fear is gone, (and realize he may never completely leave) make the decision to be courageous.

The world needs your story in order to be complete

Or about Productivity:

Or about Gumption:

I want to be fear-less

I want to be productive

I want to make things happen

I am hungry

Want to flap my wings

I want it now

The holy fire

Posted on December 1, 2009 by petervan

If you are in one of those dips – and who doesn’t from time to time – I’d like to recommend you some “power-reading”. It’s better than zapping in front of your television, or better than (re)tweeting 140 characters. It’s definitely better than booze or drugs. And it has some element of “depth” that you don’t get from those other media/substances.

I could have titled this blog post “Ignore Everybody”, the title of a fantastic book by Hugh MacLeod of gapingvoid.com. The subtitle is ‘And 39 Other Keys to Creativity”.

This is one of those rare books that hits you in the face. Subscribe to his blog. A drawing on a business card will wake/shake you up every day when you open your Google Reader.

Guy Kawasaki said: “Hugh’s book will kick your ass and push you out of your zone of mediocrity and stagnation”.

On one of the other cards in the book it reads:

The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care.

Hugh refers to the “Pissed Off Gene”. That burning fire inside that make you want to challenge the status quo.

It has something primal.

So there i am with my wildfire, and now i come across a bunch of folks who feel down and ask me why we need an innovation team. They feel down because they have just gone through one of those mandatory efficiency or six sigma programs to cut fat out of the processes. Nothing wrong with that, some organizations can use a diet, and it’s in essence about being fit and going to the gym (looking at my belly it’s time for me to do so ;-). But what i think is really going on is that they feel the “Pissed Off Gene” coming alive again. It’s protest. It’s challenging where we are. It is challenging the status quo. This gene is a great source of energy. If only we could turn that negative energy in a positive one. Wouldn’t we loose less time and move forward faster ?

Sometimes however it’s getting worse. These days i believe we not only need a physical-gym, but also a mental-gym, because these days, some people already feel down in advance of the program: they start to hide, don’t dare to stick out their neck, afraid that if they become too visible or are not in line with the blueprint, they will be the first to be cut. That’s a ream shame. Come on, guys ! Don’t ignore yourselves in such a big way. Because your are worth it.

So back to the question “Why we need an innovation team ?”. Why we need innovation ? Really, reading the above i wished you did not ask. Because a company that does not have a focus on innovation does not believe in the future. Does not believe in growth. Does not believe in creating wealth. Is a dead company.

Dead wood.

So, what should we do ? Get rid of the innovation team ? Have no focus on innovation ? Come on !

We should probably quadruple our efforts.

But i know there is also the reality of budgets, certainly in these days. But I will keep pushing for it. So please, for once be proud that your company überhaupt has an innovation program in place (and a quite good one compared to other companies), and embrace it and help it and the company succeed, instead of complaining about it.

Our innovation team gives help. To the people who have that “Pissed Off Gene”, who have that holy fire. To help them to stand up and keep on fighting the status quo. To help them and the company make the difference. We are not measured on the ideas generated by the innovation team. We are measured on the ideas and success stories in the rest of the company and the eco-system at large. We can help those “passionate creatives” with resources (people and money).

And i hope that we also kick some ass

,and send out some wake-up calls, when we see things at the edge of our jungle that could be beneficial for our community. It is our duty to report those things, to orient/position them, to evangelize those new ideas and to help people moving from prototype into incubation.

And yes, that can be fun

Seems to be a bad thing these days to have fun. Really don’t get it. Also, they don’t see the hard work that goes on behind the scenes. They only see the fun part. Innovation is about change. People resist change.

Some days i feel like swimming in syrup

And some days it really feels good when we achieve something. But complaining seems to be the fashion of the day. And being in a good mood is these days like almost like an offense. In any case, the complainers never come to see us to see how they can be part of the fun. They complain. By preference in the gossip aisles of “radio-corridor”, hiding in the safety of anonymity.

It was probably a bad idea to call our team “the innovation team”, as we are measured on how many ideas we make the others generate and realize. But heck ! What should we have called it ? The A-Team ? The Tiger team ? The incentivators ? Cut the crap !

In the end the name “InnoTribe” is right on. A tribe of innovators. Tribe as in Seth Godin’s book “Tribes”. One of those other great books if you have one of those dips.

You know what all this is about ? I am going to use a big word: “leadership”. Not the leadership that you read about in McKinsey’s Newsletters. No, personal leadership. The leadership from within. From your true self. When you know damn well when something is right or wrong. Leading by Being. It is daring to follow your internal compass. It’s the difference between putting the fault on others and taking initiative yourself to fix the problem, or to come-up with something bright new. It’s daring to choose between old-game and new-game.

Old Game is being judgmental. New Game is Open Mind.

Old Game is being cynical. New Game is Open Heart

Old Game is being in control. New Game is Open Mind

In the end it’s people with passion that drive the innovation.

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink
You can’t push a string uphill
Time waits for no man

Jeffrey Philips adds one about innovation. While we like to say that everyone can innovate, its probably also safe to say that

You can’t force a disinterested person to innovate

So, what is it ? Are you the interested or the disinterested person ? If you are of the first category, join the journey. If you are the latter, come and see me. I’ll try to give you a pep-talk and try to shake/wake up that fire in you that is burning for sure in every human being. We just learned through the accidents of life/work to ignore and hide those fires. They’re too close to emotions. And emotions do not belong at work. What a crap !

Express yourself and come alive !

Do YOU have the hole fire ?

I do. And I am not ashamed to say so. And I am 52. And there is no age for it. And i am burning like hell. It’s primal. I am on a mission. “Ignore Everybody”. Don’t wait for the others to support you. GO !

And if you still feel in a dip after this, turn on Madonna’s “Jump”, volume knob on 10, and dance and listen to the following words:

The more that I wait, the more time that I waste
I haven’t got much time to waste
It’s time to make my way
I’m not afraid of what I’ll face
But I’m afraid to stay
I’m going down my road and I can make it alone
I’ll work and I’ll fight till I find a place of my own
[Chorus]
Are you ready to jump
Get ready to jump
Don’t ever look back oh baby
Yes, I’m ready to jump
Just take my hand
get ready to jump

Web Wide World

Posted on November 14, 2009 by petervan

“The web is transforming society”

“Web Squared: how the web transforms the world”

“Web Wide World” transforming “World Wide Web”

Several very interesting publications and postings over the last couple of weeks, all confirming that something very profound is happening with our core systems, our core values, and how the collective intelligence of the web is gradually but surely transforming our value kit for the nearby and long term future.

First, i would like to point to 2 very rich and profound postings by Nova Spivack.

On Nov 4, Nova posted The Web Wide World — The Web Spreads Into the Physical World.

A world in which every physical object, everything we do, and eventually perhaps our every thought and action is recorded, augmented, and possibly shared. What will the world be like when it’s all connected? When all our bodies and brains are connected together — when even our physical spaces, furniture, products, tools, and even our natural environments, are all online? Beyond just a Global Brain,

we are really building a Global Body

Even more profound and more elaborated is his posting What after the Real Time Web ? This supposes that you already have an idea what Real Time Web is all about. It’s a very long posting, but worth every minute/word of it. Some highlights/bullets with some personal comments:

About Web Attention Deficit Disorder: You can experience this every day if you are a Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader user. It’s about having tools to filter out the noice and focus on the essence

About Web Intention Deficit Disorder. Great “bridge” from attention to intention. I was thinking in terms of moving from “Crowd-Sourcing” towards “Crowd-Targeting”

About Messaging. Messaging as we know it for 20 years is going to change 180°. In these days it is somewhat insane that we still send messages from A to B, whereas with today’s technology it’s more about having something stored centrally and collaboratively participate to this "information object in the cloud”. Google Wave is a powerful trendsetter.

About Semantics. What can i say. It should be clear by now for any semantic standards setting organization like SWIFT, like GS1, like… that their knowledge to deal with semantics in “messages” can now have a ten-fold impact in a “semantic web” world, where we now can automatically semantically tag any form of information, whether that information is already structured, or not (like in Word, PDF, images, digital information footprints, etc)

About Attenuation. About helping someone focus their finite attention more efficiently on the things they care about most. This makes me think of Generation-M (see elsewhere on this blog). The generation that cares about things that Matter.

About The WebOS. I like Nova’s statement that “the winning WebOS is probably not going to come from Google, Microsoft or Amazon — rather it will probably come from someone neutral, with the best interests of developers as the primary goal.”

About Decentralization. “By this time the Web will be far too vast and complex and rapidly changing for any centralized system to index and search it”. It becomes increasingly clear that “central control” or “central policing” does not work in this Web Wide World. Definitely not if you don’t add value in the middle.

The intelligence is moving

to the edges

About Socialization. There is no escape. No hiding possible anymore. The future is for those who can share. That will be rewarded in new “currencies”. See elsewhere on this blog about the Whuffie Bank.

About Augmentation. Just today i was reading another post about augmented reality eye-lenses. And about Google Latitude now offering historical tracking on your whereabouts. Nova is mainly talking about real-time augmentation. Adding the historical tracker to all of this is pretty exciting.

About Collective Intelligence. Just quoting here: “This collective mind is not just comprised of humans, but also of software and computers and information, all interlinked into one unimaginably complex system: A system that senses the universe and itself, that thinks, feels, and does things, on a planetary scale.”

About Social Evolution. “Existing and established social, political and economic structures are going to either evolve or be overturned and replaced.” This has been my thesis since the beginning of my blogging. Stronger, it’s the raison d’être for my blog. If all this happens, what is the 2020-2030 impact on our core systems, on our core corporate and personal values. How will our companies, countries, world systems going to be organized and how can we prepare for the day when “Top-down beaurocratic control systems are simply not going to be able to keep up or function effectively in this new world of distributed, omnidirectional collective intelligence.”

About Physical Evolution. In essence, Nova describes the age of the Singularity, when our human brains will be complemented by the collective and give leeway to a different type of human being.

The environment we will live in will be a constantly changing sea of collective thought in which nothing and nobody will be isolated. We will be more interdependent than ever before. Interdependence leads to symbiosis, and eventually to the loss of generality and increasing specialization.

This must sound as music in the ears to my friend and coach André Pelgrims, who is fighting the sort of societal and corporate change management that is often not more than a big illusion, because the company has been focusing on aligning (not event fusing) of departmental silos, and was not able to descend to the level of person-to-person connection and enlightenment.

These are just some of the changes that are likely to occur as a result of the things we’re working on today. The Web and the emerging Real-Time Web are just a prelude of things to come.

The last element i’d like to ask your attention for is the existence and activities of the Web Science Trust.

The Web is the largest human information construct in history. The Web is transforming society. In order to understand what the Web is, engineer its future and ensure its social benefit we need a new interdisciplinary field that we call Web Science.

Have a look at some of the big names behind the Web Science Trust: Tim Berners-Lee, etc. Also very good to see that some European (UK) universities are starting to take the lead.

Most interesting is to look at the Research Roadmap. Just look at the research perspectives, and it gives you an idea of the deep profound impact of the Web Wide World:

Computational perspective
Mathematical perspective
Social Science perspective
Economic perspective
Legal perspective

And the integrative research themes:

Collective Intelligence
Openness of the Web
Dynamics of the Web
Security, Privacy and Trust
Inference

I took the effort to download one of the students research reports. Oh boy, how interesting how these young people study, research, reflect, analyze. I’d love to be back at university 🙂

Here is one sentence about the WebSci’09: Society On-Line Conference:

Thanks to the support of the Web Science exchange bursary, I had also the opportunity to participate in the WebSci’09: Society On-Line Conference, which was held in Athens, Greece from 18th to 20th March 2009. The conference was actually a very special one, as it was the first conference I have ever been to where I had the chance to exchange ideas with not only computer scientists but and legal studies.

I believe it is key that

we start building companies

made of the “hybrids”

Not only computer-scientists, but people with cross-fertilizing expertise. Like “experts of other areas including social science, humanities and legal studies” and bio-engineering and nanotechnology.

All the above is very close to the suggested scope of our Think Tank on Long Term Future.

Traveling on Light

Posted on November 14, 2009 by petervan

Great article in NYT. You can find full article here.

The article is so inspiring. Anything is possible when you let yourself inspire by your dreams.

The next break came when Dr. Friedman was talking about the LightSail to a group of potential donors. A man — “a very modest dear person,” in Ms. Druyan’s words — asked about the cost of the missions and then committed to paying for two of them, and perhaps a third, if all went well.

After the talk, the man, who does not wish his identity to be known, according to the society, came up and asked for the society’s bank routing number. Within days the money was in its bank account.

My dream is to get our Think Tank on Long Term Future kicked-off in 2010. In the next 2 weeks, i will be speaking on this Think Tank to a group of potential interested captains of industry.

My purpose is “To Inspire Others to Dream”.

No Belgian University in WW Top-100

Posted on November 8, 2009 by petervan

The Academic Ranking of World Universities just got published.

Not a single Belgian University in the Top-100. Leuven comes in at 102 and Ghent at 106.

I found this resource via Eric Drexler’s blog, which was focusing on Asian Universities.

The “Academic Ranking of World Universities” (ARWU) is widely regarded as the best objective, international measure of university quality, and the ARWU says that excellent universities in Asia are scarce.

This seemed to me to be out of line with reality, and on further investigation, I concluded that the ARWU has a strong negative bias as a measure of the current quality of rapidly advancing universities.

In examining a paper on the ARWU methodology [pdf], I found that its scores place great weight on numbers of Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals won, to publications in Science and Nature , and to publications listed in the Science Citation Index. The problem is that, as a consequence, the scores are weighted toward cumulative numbers, which are poor measures of rapidly rising institutions, such as the leading universities in China and India. For example, if an identical twin of Harvard materialized in Somerville or Beijing today, its rank would be abysmal for years to come.

In summary, the much-cited Academic Ranking of World Universities is very much a lagging indicator of quality.

Although that nuance may be good for the Asian universities, this is bad news for the Belgian universities.

The university of Leuven was founded in 1425 ! That’s almost 600 years ago. So if the ARWU is measuring (lagging) current quality of universities, that’s really bad news for Leuven.

Also, the omni-presence of US-universities should be of some concern to our society – the European in particular. This is also reflected in the number of innovation think tanks that exist in the world. Most are from US origin. Most of their analysis have a very US domestic focus.

That’s why our upcoming European based Think Tank for Long Term Future will try to change that, and start from the rich and diverse European culture and history. We’ll have our kick-off meeting with a number of passionate creatives and local captains of industry on 24 Nov 2009.

However, regional or anti-regional focus should not be the focus. And we do not want to start from a laggard’s position, as a catching-up strategy is always a loosing strategy.

In our inter-connected world, we are moving towards a new world order, based on collective intelligence and collective intention, inspired by transhumanism. I am preparing a separate post on that.

The focus will be on ensuring that our next generation is well prepared for a new world order. Preparing those who will be our leaders in 2030 is the focus.

Stay tuned.

Petervan Studios

Artistic Interventions – Interruptions – Provocations

Category Archives: Personal Values

Emotional Zombies

HR and Innovation

Need for a new currency based on abundancy

Brand, Workforce and Innovation

Every morning I wake up angry

What matters now

The holy fire

Web Wide World

Traveling on Light

No Belgian University in WW Top-100

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