Category Archives: Personal Values

Brené Brown: to stand in the middle of the arena

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It takes about 4:00 minutes before she gets into it, but here is once again a great TED talk by Brené Brown (@brenebrown)

Some highlights:

  • I engineered myself to staying small, staying under the radar screen
  • vulnerability is NOT weakness, it our most accurate measurement of courage
  • vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change are buzzwords
  • it’s about creating something that did not exist before, that takes courage
  • shame is the swamp lane of the soul
  • the myth that powerful folks don’t need checklists
  • TED is the failure conference
  • the credit goes to the man in the arena
  • shame is the gremlin that says “you’re not good enough”
  • shame is a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behavior
  • shame is “i AM bad”, guilt is “i DID something bad”
  • shame is “i AM a mistake”, guilt is “i DID a mistake”
  • people who don’t experience shame are people who have no capacity for connection or empathy
  • shame is different for men and women
  • empathy is the antidode to shame > the two most powerful words when we are in struggle are “me too”
  • secrecy, silence, and judgement make shame grow exponentially
  • don’t wait to stand in the arena, in the middle of the fire, until you are perfect
  • we want you to go in and to dare greatly
In the beginning it’s a bit irritating that she does so much chit-chatting, but after a while i am aware it is a presentation technique to balance more relaxed moments with very introspective moments. A little bit less strong than her first appearance at TED a year ago, bit hey, what do you want: that was a milestone, a top that is very difficult to reach over and over again.
Enjoy

 

The Myth of Innovation Incentives

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Every now and then people ask me what incentives we have in place for encouraging innovative behavior.

The short answer is: there are no incentives other than recognition and self-esteem when your idea happens for real. For people with a specific innovation role – such as our “Megaphones” – we do have their innovation objectives as 10-15% of their NORMAL objectives. But no special deals, bonuses, etc.

From the start of Innotribe, we had this discussion about getting 20% time like Google (Btw, that myth of the 20% has been challenged and discussed already many times on the internet. For example here and here. It even leads to big failures).

Many other ways exist in other environments than SWIFT to incentivize innovation like special bonuses, shares in projects that can be turned in real bucks once the project gets critical mass and generates revenues, and much more.

From very early on in our innovation endeavors, we got a clear “no” from our top management.

We do not want a culture

where working on innovation

lead to some sort of “entitlement”

for x% of time or any other resource

In the beginning, i found this a bit harsh, but with hindsight, i think they were right. Personally, I have done some introspection on all this and have come to the conclusion that:

  • I truly believe that the true innovators manifest themselves, and that any request for incentives to innovate just says a lot about the person requesting.
  • What we need is people daring to stick out there neck, and acting from their true selves.
  • As many of you know, I am deep believer of viral infection of the company. That will not happen through incentives.
  • It will happen when we unleash the deep energy of the many hidden change-makers in this company.

Let me develop that thought a little bit.

It all has to do with the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – where self-esteem and self-actualization are on the top of the pyramid.

In our luxury world, most of us already have reached at least some level of self-esteem or self-actualisation.

I believe there is a lot to say to go beyond self-esteem, where the personal transformation fundamentally changes the focus from the “self” to the “others”.

This is where Richard Barrett has evolved the thinking of Maslow. Or where Don Beck did brilliant work with Spiral Dynamics, whose initial thinking was inspired by Clare W Graves who already in sixties/seventies said:

“Briefly, what I am proposing is that the psychology of the mature human being is an unfolding, emergent, oscillating, spiraling process, marked by progressive subordination of older, lower-order behavior systems to newer, higher-order systems as man’s existential problems change.”

There are other thinkers in this space, as pointed out by JP Rangaswami in his comment on my comment on his post about Thinking about the Social Enterprise and Flow

My comment:

“… me too big fan John Hagel, Geoffrey West, Brian Arthur. I love how you squeeze in Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi at the end, as I agree that organization starts more and more looking like an organism in search for flow. If you push the idea, you could add Maslow, as the organization is probably also looking for self-esteem in all its nodes (its people). Even pushing it further and beyond self-esteem, a similar flow “dynamic” is also embedded in Don Becks “Spiral Dynamics”…. the next area of competitive differentiation is in the higher layers of Spiral Dynamics, more or less the space of relationships, the space the Jerry Michalski’s REXpedition is exploring.”

JP responded:

“I am more of a fan of Nohria and Lawrence than I am of Maslow. Parallel not serial, networked not hierarchical”

I wrote about JP and Nohria, when trying to do a transcript of in my post “JP on Gamification, Lipstick and Pigs”. So I won’t repeat myself on that topic, and summarize JP as: The 4 drivers of motivation: the drive to acquire, the drive to defend, the drive to bond, and the drive to learn

In my opinion, it is about discovering your true self in the full context of all its relationships (family, work, company, country, culture, world, cosmos). As Marti Spiegelman recently said during a REXpedition call:

Awareness of the context creates meaning

And meaning creates value

Do you really believe that people will start innovating more if they get an extra bonus of 2% ? Only when people act from the power of their true self and experience meaning in what they do, only then real motivation kicks in.

I am deeply convinced that innovation and culture change will NOT happen through rolling out huge top-down innovation programs. On the contrary, I am a strong believer in “viral” innovation, where you seed the people that act from their true self throughout the company.

They will act as they believe they should act, and because their environment will feel inspired by this real motivation, they will inspire and infect others, form natural tribes with their own team dynamics and influence, become self-organizing teams that create their own meaning and value, and change the company from within.

Forever. Unstoppable. That is how real change happens.

Discovering and nurturing the hidden pearls in your organization that have the mindset to do this is the real challenge. It’s about finding the people who want to move, to challenge the status quo, dare to stick out their neck, etc and do so not because the incentive program has framed them that way, but because their true self boosts them towards the others with unlimited and eternal energy.

In the end it is about creating meaning in YOUR life.

Am I dreaming? Maybe. Am I ambitious? Maybe. Will it work? Maybe. But at least this way you know that’s where I have put the bar. So next time you see me, don’t ask for incentives, but tell we about what you want to achieve, and let’s see how I can help you.

Fight or Dance

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This blog post is a variation on the theme “my boss asked me to dance” of some weeks ago.

It’s something that has been following me, harassing me like a very strong meme. It’s confrontational, as it lets me look in the mirror. It’s difficult as it requires me to let go the ego. The ego as in “the image that i think i am”, not that strange and blissful wholeness of the human duality, the yin/yan, the good/bad, the angel/shadow.

It’s difficult for me, because it requires me to come down from my ivory tower, from my comfortable cloud, from the comfort of likewise thinkers. It requires me to be genuinely interested in other people. From “networking” in the old style by exchanging business cards, and asking “what do you do?” to asking the question:

“what do you want to achieve, and how can i help you with that?”. 

Starting with that question, that openness, leads to a completely different conversation.

It’s weird that even in these reflection moments, i keep on falling in the trap of black/white, pro/con, before/after. But it is probably meant that way. I will write in another blog something about “what is driving you?” and “what you were meant to be”.

But anyway, falling in full consciousness in the trap of polarization, here are some examples of attitudes that illustrate “Fight or Dance”.

  • From Boxing ring (and invite a man from audience) to being in a dance hall (and inviting a woman from the audience).
  • From Masculine to Feminine energy (more on that in a later post)
  • From doing boxing fitness training, to following Salsa/Tango lessons
  • From shooting bullets and scaring the hell of your (counter)party, to embracing and be the level playing field
  • From Being Judgmental to having an Open Mind
  • From Being Cynical to having an Open Heart
  • From Trying to Control to having an Open Will and let emerge
  • From Being Convulsive and jerky to Being Fluid
  • From Dancing alone to Dancing your PHD with somebody
I like “being fluid” a lot. Standing in wholeness is a matter of self-respect.
Wholeness like in allowing and accepting all my aspects of being,
both the good and the shadows.
But even more than a matter of self-respect, it should be a matter of respect for my family, friends, colleagues. As the ambition should be to stand in full wholeness at the service of others.
It reminds me of an old slide of some years ago about your “style” of Innovation. As style matters.
It’s the difference between being in fight mode or co-creation mode.

2012: my boss wants me to dance!

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We are getting towards the end of the year, and time has come to nail down the Innotribe 2012 objectives of our team members.

Last Friday, I had my regular 1-1 with my boss Kosta Peric @copernicc – Head of Innovation at SWIFT. We had a really good discussion, challenging each other vigorously on what would be the best use of my time and talents in 2012.

Just the fact that we start from a strengths based paradigm is typical for how we get around these things in the Innotribe team. It remembers be the blog of Venessa Miemis on “Framework for a strengths-based society”.

And as digital identity and digital footprint are some of the topics that have deeply infected me virally, I was wondering why not apply the principles of sharing to my objectives 2012. So far, I don’t recall anybody doing this, and reflecting on it: why not?

It’s a good way to articulate your agreement with your manager, and then to share it in the open with your followers: one way or another, this adds to your personal transparency, and on the other hand I feel it makes me commit stronger to these objectives as it’s now in the open, and shared with your followers. And applying the principles of crowdsourcing and open innovation, the worst that can happen is that my followers come up with ideas to better implement my objectives.

My objectives are organized around following clusters:

  • Sensing and curating for Innotribe Events
  • Internal Evangelism
  • Digital Asset Grid
  • Innovation seeds for Lite Application Platform

Sensing and curating for Innotribe Events

Like in previous years, I will use my “antennas” to sense what’s happening at the edges of our ecosystem. Spotting the new themes and inspiring igniters that help shape our Innotribe events.

I will focus and be involved in the following main Innotribe events:

  • Innotribe stand-alone events: Bangkok in April 2012, and Belfast in June 2012
  • Innotribe @ Sibos Osaka, from 29 Oct – 2 Nov 2012

My role is that of “content curator”: these themes are the basis for my “painting” of events. It’s the architectural canvas. After conceptually agreeing on this main direction, the fantastic Innotribe facilitation team gets into action and shapes the events into immersive learning experiences. In many of our events in 2012, we will inject a “Start-Up Competition” under the leadership of Matteo.

  • The “technical” themes I have in mind today – this may still change in the coming weeks/months – are about: API’s, The Age of the Machine, Augmented Reality combined with big data.
  • The “non-technical” themes are about: Organizational Fitness, Hypereconomics, and new approaches to Innovation. And some of the 2011 themes will be re-enforced and go mainstream: Future of Money, Banks for a Better World, Digital Asset Grid.

We have some early wild ideas on how we can excel the 2011 experience of our Innotribe events: in 2012 we are going to play all senses, and looking into performance elements based on art, dance, and music. We also have some ambition to inject young people (20-25 years) into everything we do.

Internal Evangelism

In many of my previous blogs – especially the one on the digital asset grid – I have been using the metaphor of “the dance”.

So far, I “dance” quite well with the outside world of SWIFT, but I will now apply that skill more to the “internal dance”. Getting from just “shooting some bullets” and scaring the hell out of my colleagues, towards “dancing together” and making sure that we can make sense and meaning for SWIFT of everything we sense/spot outside. It’s what I would call: creating a knowledge flow out of our knowledge stock. I have some wild dream to one day have an “Innotribe University”, where we have internal and external 101 and 102 courses on for example big data, digital identity, etc. But I would like it to “emerge” from the brown bag sessions and other initiatives: again, seed a lot, see what works, be a gardener for the new promising species, incubate, grow, repeat.

Part of this cluster is a new initiative that I have under preparation: “corporate rebels united”. I am a big believer of viral infection of companies by planting seed “bombs” throughout the organization. People who act genuinely from their true self, from their true force, with no fear for sticking out their neck. Expect soon a website and on-line community where you can meet inspiring corporate rebels worldwide.

Digital Asset Grid

I have written a lot about digital identity last year, and especially about the Digital Asset Grid (DAG) incubation project at SWIFT. The last post was titled: “Digital Asset Grid: Let’s meet at the SWIFT Dance Hall”

The theme of dancing is back there as well: it will indeed be about dancing with constraints. From rather simple constraints like time and budget, to more complicated challenges like keeping the SWIFT “Castle” deeply involved, and balancing and mixing some other internal projects that have clear touch points with the DAG.

It’s a real challenge for me, as I have a tendency to “give-up” too soon when involving internal resources. But I like the challenge, as it is one of perseverance.

Innovation seeds for Lite Application Platform

Whereas the above is about a 30-30-30% of my time in 2012, I look forward to collaborating with my colleagues on phase-2 of “LAP-15”.

LAP stands for “Lite application platform” and “15” refers to the 2015 strategy of SWIFT, and is a continuation of the Alliance Lite project that I was part of and launched in 2008 at Sibos Vienna. As in our team, we have learned quite a lot in our pilots and prototypes about B2B marketplaces, that thinking can be re-injected in LAP. Also some of the ideas articulated in the Digital Asset Grid project with respect to API’s will most probably be of great interest to LAP15.

A dream mission:

I have said it many times, and repeat again: I have a dream job. After having prepared my brand new presentation “The Soul of Innovation: a story about DJ’s, Painters, Pirates and Corporate Rebels”, I probably have to re-word this.

What we do in the Innotribe team is not a “job”. We are on a mission. So, based on that, I can happily state:

“I don’t have a job, I have a dream mission”.

That combined with a boss and organization that wants me to dance internally and externally: what else do you need 😉

So, who wants to dance with me?

Happy @petervan from the Innotribe Team

Fear is not an option

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Previous posts were impressions of some great conferences I recently attended.

This blog post is different. It is more a personal reflection.

I invite you to join me on my journey.

In our company, failure is not an option (FNOA). That’s quite normal given the nature of our business: a worldwide business-to-business network for mainly international financial transactions. That’s not something you mess around with: rightfully so.

Recently, when attending the Compass Summit, there were a couple of sessions on risk management. Some examples were given how risk is assessed in other businesses such as investments in oil refineries, also an important and critical infrastructure. The similarities with our business were obvious.

There is always the tension between investing in proven technologies and taking some risk with less proven innovative technologies. Moreover, any investment in such space usually commits you for long periods:  10-40 years.  So, you better make the right choice.

All the risk managers I have met are highly responsible people. I can imagine that people making such decisions do their homework and base their assessments on extensive risk analysis. There are for sure many techniques, processes and best practices for this.

But what about the more unconscious parts

of these and other decision processes?

Do emotional and less rational processes play a role? Such as doubt? Such as uncertainty? Such as fear?

  • Fear to make the wrong choice.
  • Fear of taking the leap of faith and switch to the next wave of technologies.
  • Fear of holding back.

I did some introspection in my own state of mind and what’s holding me back some days.

I realize that by sharing this, I do show some personal vulnerability (see video Brené Brown), but i take the risk. Because I am a strong believer of open mind, open heart, and open will. And would like to make more “human” connections with all those who I care about: my family, my friends, my colleagues, my followers, the followed. Because I believe openness leads to transparency, better connections, better choices, and more conscious corporations with a real soul. I would like more people showing some vulnerability.

It feels so much more human.

As some of you may have noticed, I am quite active on twitter. I read a lot. I follow more than 1,000 RSS feeds. I try to stay up to date. I believe my readers appreciate. I believe my employer appreciates the holistic view I bring to the table. I appreciate their feedback and it gives me energy.

Staying up-to-date is a matter of discipline.  In principle, I reserve time early in the morning, during lunch breaks, and late in the evening when the kid is to bed, and everything is silent. I estimate it’s about 3-4 hours per day before and after working hours: quite an investment and intensity.

And with this sort of intensity, I realize every day that there is so much good stuff out there on the edges of our ecosystem. There are so many inspiring people out there, so many inspiring ideas.

Is it just a dream that one could live

in such a permanent inspiring environment?

When I come back to the office, into the “real” world, I often wonder how I can make that knowledge stock more relevant for our company, for our community. How can I create a knowledge flow from my knowledge stock? What’s a better way of sharing? With some more rubber hitting the road. And to see more significant progress and results of our innovation activities.

It becomes almost

an existential question

“What am I doing here if nothing or very little of these spotted innovations, prototypes, and incubations ever hit our mainstream business?”

As Nick Carr wrote in The Shallows (Amazon Affiliate link), all this exposure to scattered new stuff does something with your brain. You start getting used to “scanning”.

It’s a different type of attention, a different type of presence or even “non-presence”. And it becomes difficult to focus for some longer time on something specific, even something as simple as reading a book.

Scanning leads to distraction. Overflow. Not seeing clear anymore. But on the other hand, you become much better in making connections between topics, memes and trends.

Just the other day, a friend called me, and she was in awe for the progress we had made with Innotribe. And also for the personal growth progress I had made myself.

I am not sure. I am in doubt. Maybe I don’t see it. Maybe I don’t see the progress anymore, to close to see clear.  Forgetting the take the time to take the helicopter view.

  • Maybe that’s why I feel more like stagnating.
  • Maybe I am too hungry.
  • Maybe I don’t walk the talk of letting emerge what needs to be.
  • Maybe I don’t celebrate enough progress.
  • Maybe I am too closed.

Even more closed with people I like a lot. Then I feel afraid.

  • Afraid of jumping and making bold moves
  • Afraid of sticking out my neck even more.
  • Afraid of showing some/all my vulnerabilities.
  • Afraid of being hurt.
  • Afraid of giving too much, and not getting back.
  • Afraid of opening up
  • Afraid of the unknown in opening up.
  • Afraid of discovering emptiness.
  • Afraid of loosing control.
  • Afraid of jumping in the empty hole.
  • Afraid of standing in the full fire.
  • Afraid of my true self.
  • Afraid of being free.

I am hungry to be free. 100% free. In the sense of being “alive”, being 100% in my true flow, free from internal blockages such as fear. Free like in letting myself go in dancing. Free like in my most creative moments.

And then, just the other night, coincidently – there are no co-incidences, I believe a lot in synchronicity and that the things that come to you had to come to you – I was picking up again that book of Christopher Alexander in “The Timeless Way of Building” (Amazon Affiliates link) about patterns in architecture.

Chapter 2 is about “The quality without a name”. It made me aware that what I am chasing is more than “free”. I recommend anybody to read this chapter, for me it’s like an ideal compass for life:

There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named

and

It is a subtle kind of freedom from inner contradictions

and

… the most primitive feeling which an animal or a man can have, as primitive as the intuition which tells us when something is false or true.

Attributes of this quality without a name are:

  • Alive
  • Whole
  • Comfortable
  • Free
  • Exact (like in “right”)
  • Egoless
  • Eternal

But maybe I should not try to chase “free” or to chase that unnamed quality.

Maybe that unnamed quality is an illusion.

I don’t think so. I would surely hope not so.

The day

I am not after

that unnamed quality,

I better stop

Going relentlessly

after that unnamed quality

IS my reason for being

But the hunt for better and more quality sucks ànd gives energy.

And sometimes I need a pause. Time to reboot. Step out of the treadmill. Take distance. Re-connect with my true self. Pure silence and no distraction. Presence. More conscious.

Sometimes, I imagine living in a convent or on a desolated island. Nothing fancy. Almost minimalistic: small Spartan room, clean, bare furniture, some simple fair food and some wine. And reading. Musing. Reflecting. Having a tribe following.

Maybe that’s enough.

  • But wouldn’t I feel bored pretty soon?
  • Wouldn’t I become a fugitive of myself?
  • Prisoner of my own fear?

So, I have come to the conclusion that

fear is not an option

I believe that one has to hit the bottom of fear, and stay there for some time. And be present in that bottom moment. And let emerge and let happens what comes.

You can’t “steer” everything in live. Probably nothing. I don’t believe anymore one can “steer” innovation, that one can steer change. That a subject for a subsequent post 😉

Some things cannot be planned. You have to let go, and take the leap of faith.

The only way to make personal and professional progress is to jump. Take the risk. Stick out your neck. And fail sometimes. Fail many times. Re-start. Retry. Fail. Retry. Success. Repeat.

Do you have fear? Do you have doubts? Do you need time to reboot? To re-connect with your true self?

What does this do with you? How does this resonate with you? Does this want you to respond and share your own perspective and experiences?

Or is it more, OMG…

Let me know.

@petervan

Compass Summit: can we win the race?

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Last week, I attended Compass Summit.  After Contact Summit in NYC the weekend before, the contrast could not be bigger. Whereas Contact Summit was held in a worn-out synagogue, Compass was held in a 5 star luxury resort close to LA.

Also the audience was fundamentally different: in NY we saw a group of activists and revolutionaries (a good representation of the 99%): and the theme was “the evolution will be social”. In LA, scientists and economist – probably a subset of the 1% – shared the space for a couple of days under the overall tag line “What’s possible, What matters, What’s ahead?”

Innotribe was sponsoring both events. In Compass Summit, we also acted as co-curator and facilitator for 1 plenary on Future of Money, and 4 breakouts (see later)

Agenda and program

The Compass agenda was packed.

For a minute-by-minute coverage of the conference, I suggest to check out the #compass11 Twitter stream or Kosta Peric’s coverage by live e-scribing here.

UPDATE: all videos of all talks are now available here.

Instead of doing a vertical or chronological report on this conference, I will try to give you a horizontal report-cut of the topics discussed, and add some personal opinions to the mix.

The conference was a very high quality event, with super speakers from science and economy.

I left the conference with a mixed feeling: who will win, the positive scientists or the dooming economists? My overall take-away was that we are in a very deep crisis of everything, much deeper than most newspapers let us believe. I am worried for our children and what will happen the next 2-5 years.

Format

Compass Summit is a traditional conference, in the sense of  the format: speakers on stage, 20 min talks, fireside chats, and panel debates. The general sessions felt like a TED, but then one with audience interactions. Which gave the organizers a timing-headache as all the Q&A’s ran out time and so the whole conference program. No problem for me: as long as the content is as interesting as at Compass, I could stay there the whole night ;-). Towards the end of the conference, there was some experimentation with a “sequential conversation”, but there was more potential in that: it just requires more scripting and preparation. The Innotribe breakouts and wrap-up were – how would I say? – very “Innotribe”J . We always try to do something special, and you expect no less from us (more about this at the end of this blog post)

Science

The overall message was positive, although many questions were raised on the impact of the increasing human-machine blurring, and whether real life implementations of great ideas in current R&D will reach us in time to save the planet.

Danny Hills from Applied Minds and one of the originators of the Long Now indicated that “we are already in The Matrix” right now. “Nobody really knows how the Internet works” and “we overestimate the human ability to control and underestimate its adaptability” were some reflections leading to his conclusion “Forget the Enlightenment, we now live in the era of “the Entanglement.”

We also saw some great progress on Solar Energy production and photosynthesis Fuel. To put things in perspective: the energy needs for 2050 are such that if we want to cover it with nuclear energy, we would need to install one nuclear plan per day. The conclusion of the energy debate was clearly solar is the way forward and that energy storage was the Holy Grail for the immediate future.

David Gelernter stood out with a milestone presentation.

His talk was completely scripted, no slides. But it sounded like a novel, a piece of science poetry. So many beautiful metaphors, play of words, and fine humor! The content was mind-blowing as well. His starting premise was that we are witnessing the transition from a space-based organization of information to a time-based organization of information. Search starts smelling like value-based search, with time as just one of the values. The concept of a stream-browser instead of a web-browser was no less than brilliant, and I loved his evolutionary insight from “cybersphere” to “cyberflow”.

This was quite consistent with the messages form Brian Arthur and E. Stevenson: everyone is connected and it’s getting deeper and deeper…the grid starts to look like an organism, neural network. The underlying grid of machines talking to each other was described by Brian Arthur as “the second economy” that will soon be bigger than the real economy. The question “Who will win?” in the session “Race against the machine” – and also title of a new book by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson – was therefore spot on.

Cities and their dynamics and their impact on growth and innovation were also a recurring theme: Geoffrey West – world famous since his memorable TED talk – did his fantastic thing on “Cities never die”. Saskia Sassen added a new dimension for me: “a city talks back”, suggesting that a city tells us in immediate feedback loops what works and what not

Economy

The overall message was extremely negative. I was shocked by some of the facts presented.

Although we still see a growth in wealth creation, the wealth is more and more concentrated with the happy few. The 1% starts looking more and more like the 0.01%. The world is also turning younger, more urban, and more impatient for accountability, in both democracies and authoritarian states. We need a different diplomacy where also NGO’s, Philanthropies like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and companies like Google and Wall-Mart are represented. I believe that is a good starting point, as the concept of “country” is really dead. But the real question is what are the criteria for who can sit at that table: will be allow organizations like Goldman Sachs, who claims to rule the world, but is creating fake value through speculation, value outside of the real wealth system in my opinion. And whereas countries and UN are as good as dead, there is no transition in governance model between now and then, and we risk falling into a governance no-mans land.

Corporations are piling up cash that is sitting idle. Someone summarized this signal as “between fear and opportunity is paralysis”. In the meantime, the center of power and control is further moving East-wards: 2009 was the first year in 200 years where emerging markets outgrew developed ones. We aren’t going back.

Bernard Lietaer (author of “The Future of Money” and more recently “Creating Wealth: Growing Local Economies with Local Currencies”) was no less than impressive.

He showed that he had empirical evidence that the financial system is systemically instable. He pointed to some solutions to the monoculture of fiat state currencies. The most frightening was probably his statement that “we have 5-10 years to fix this, if not the game is over”.  This was the first (and not the last) time that the idea of war (as in world war) was uttered as a very possible scenario, and although Lietaer did not mention this, I interpreted his message as a warning for fascist behavior and polarizations.

And one day later, Mark Anderson painted a super confrontational picture between the USA and China, and indicated that the IP war was already going on, stronger even, that phase-1 of the war was over and we are already doing corporate body counting.

Add to this the Saudi Arabian oil situation, where the monarchy is a) paying it’s citizen from the oil reserves to avoid a Saudi Arabian spring and where the oil reserves will more and more be used for internal needs. Pierre Larroque added that Saudi Arabia is now in essence a supplier of China, and asked the question “why should we defend them?” Quite a statement!

Add to this water scarcity. Add to these big dysfunctions in education systems. Add to this the fact that the current young generation is the first generation that will enjoy LESS wealth than their parents. Add to this the #occupy movement, Middle East spring, etc. and the picture is not very rosy, the least to say

Values

Following his discourse in currency value debate, Bernard Lietaer also mentioned the need for more “feminine energy, presence and softness”, echoing a message from John Hagel in his blog a week earlier.

“Quod Demonstrandum Est” must have thought Caroline Stephens.

She gave the audience a wake-up call when stating “I have stopped talking about poverty in a 5 star hotel”. Her testimonials of future-less generations in South-America moved everybody in the audience, except the moderator who showed a pedantic lack of empathy and moved to the next point on the agenda by stating “now that we have solved a couple of world-problems…”

A genuine tweet from Heather Vescent sparked the Innotribe team to rally for an ad-hoc session to give Caroline the space needed for her message. It was interesting to see how people quickly tried to recuperate strong personalities like Caroline for their own agenda. It’s a very fine balance to walk. In the end, we failed to get such an ad-hoc session squeezed into the already busy Compass agenda. But we won’t give up: Caroline, we will contact you directly for one of next year’s Innotribe events.

The rest of the conference value discussions debated the rhetorical question whether value-based thinking is eroded by output concentration.

As a lot of the identity discussions were related to privacy, I quickly cover this under this value-section. One participant reacted somewhat sarcastic by saying that during the panel debate she almost believed that Google and Facebook were philanthropic organizations. We were probably closer to the truth when the moderator said “facial recognition will dramatically change what it means to show your face in public”.

Organization

Mark Bonchek introduced the notion of “Social Architecture” and gave a great example how this relates to networks and nation building during warfare. And how the US military has realized that shared situational awareness enables self-synchronization. It appears that the army’s counter-insurgency Field Manual (PDF Link) is “the best single guide for driving large scale corporate change.” After the conference we had a really interesting chat with Mark on corporate change and whether you really can steer change or whether it is just as effective to drop a seed bomb of corporate activists, and just watch what happens and emerges. That will be the subject of another blog

An interesting Risk Management debate revealed that trade-offs have to and are being made whether one should implement latest technology or proven technology only, and that the relentless push for efficiency pushes towards latest technology. If one would take the brain scan of the most adventurous CEO, one would see “40% risk taking, 60% risk aversion”.

Brian Arthur spoke about the “second economy” (see earlier). With some hindsight, I would like to suggest even a third economy underneath (or overlaying) that: “the values/spiritual economy”. What are the real values and intentions we have when completing a transaction? Values like transparency and fairness. Like belonging. Like intrinsic drivers of motivation such as the drive to acquire, to defend, to bond and to learn. Which brings us to education.

Education

It looks to me that the USA has a bigger problem with education than other continents. Or they focus more on it. I don’t think it is the latter. Michael Crow from Arizona State University was inspiring when stating “in stead of exclusion (to the education system), our metrics should be based on the output of our education system”. Other speakers insisted that the education system should celebrate from failure instead of exclusively focusing on and measuring success. Jack Hidary was passionate in his plea to “educate to innovate”.

But by the end of the conference, I got a bit tired of the so generic term “innovation”, used as the deus-ex-machina for world hunger problems, without specifying what the solution exactly is.

Innotribe sessions

In addition of the (rather traditional) plenary session on Future of Money with Bernard Lietaer, Innotribe was also responsible for 4 breakout sessions. Our team really went the extra mile in decorating the rooms, and using sound and visual landscaping to further add to the immersive learning experiences that have become the trademark of Innotribe sessions.

For the identity breakout we repeated our Sibos trick with the music from Tron. For the future of value, our ladies Mela and Martine almost created a zen-like experience with candles, rose leafs, and spiritual music.

From a content point of view, I would like to summarize each of them with a couple of tweet-like statements

–       The Future of Banking

  • “Money is the memory of value”
  • “Trust will define the future of banking”
  • “There are huge opportunities for banks in the unregulated space”

–       The Future of Transactions

  • “From the gift economy to the re-gifting economy”
  • “Transactions are the fuel to the relationship economy”

–       The Future of Identity and Trust

  • “Digitization of identity good or bad?”
  • “Identity should be part of digital inclusion”

–       The Future of Value

  • “The poverty of financial metrics prevents full wealth recognition”
  • “Right conduct + truth + peace +non-violence + love = living system of wealth”

Conclusion

Our economic, financial, energy, and wealth distribution problems are huge. The problems seem bigger and more insurmountable than the general press makes us believe. Scientists try to picture of optimism, but I could not resist the discomfort that the implementation of their inventions will come too late. Fear for war can turn any moment into a real possibility. And still our politicians don’t get it. We witness an aversion against the establishment in general. The cry to do without them gets louder.

But current problems and solutions are still presented as a game of winner and losers, with polarization leading to simplification, populism, and possibly fascism. I would prefer a model based on infinite game thinking. The world is the opposite of flat, and the role of black swans is not included in any of the models discussed today. It’s all about redefining a new value context, new value movement, less re-active, less “protest” than OWS, more pro-active.

It is about a collective awakening, where flow reveals structure. You can’t just start with structure and force everything to fit into it. It would be far better to create a parallel positive: a much safer way that just saying “nuke the system”.

Maybe I should close this blog post with the quote by Leonardo da Vinci that was printed on the back of the Compass Summit conference program:

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

That’ s probably why the title of this blog post is “Can we win the race?” and why the Innotribe wrap-up ended with “It is only up to us to act”.

@petervan from the Innotribe team

Cross-posted on Innotribe blog here.

New Value Movement

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At Innotribe in Toronto, we had a fantastic group of speakers. We call them “igniters”.

It was energizing and inspiring to see how some of them were each other’s fans on-line, some just met for the first time face-to-face at Sibos. Many of the discussions between speakers were definitely as interesting as the public appearances they made during the Tribe. We have to do something with these deep conversations…

During one of the few break moments, i got myself in a quite engaging discussion with Dan Robles from The Ingenesist Project and Social Flights. We shared our passions and our scarves, and i told Dan about my dream. I like to connect with people at their scarves- and passion-level… Finding the real soul, the real person and what is driving his/her dreams.

The dream of evolving this whole Innotribe event thing in something almost architectural.

Something artistic. Something that combines in a deep way high quality content, super facilitation, and performance. Emotional engagement. Deep conversations. Making an impact. Way beyond our little Inno-“tribe”. Societal impact. Awesomeness. With a richness of values of what it means to be human.

It all boils down to this old idea of mine of setting up a think tank on long term future, to prepare the next Values kit for our children.

I am worried and concerned. For our children. For my girl of six years old.

And apparently, i am not alone. Had a wonderful chat this week with Sam. Went all directions… until we talked about my princess.

In my Prezi “How to Make Babies” (based on my blog post with the same title), i show what happens when she grabs an iPAD and starts drawing.

And the most intriguing is what she said:

“My fingers don’t get dirty”

It was immediately clear to me she was born in digital. And I was thinking that in a couple of years from now, our children will say “my fingers do get dirty” when they make a real painting, on a canvas with wet paint…

It did not take years. Here we are, one year later, and here is a viral video of a two year old baby, who expects a paper magazine to behave like an iPAD.

I am worried and concerned. For our children. For my girl of six years old.

I am reading the posts “hypereconomics” by Mark Pesce. Already seven years ago, he asked that question:

“What happens after we’re all connected?”

Just one quote, as i know Mark hates to be overquoted and expects people to add their own content:

As we move further into a hypereconomy, we need to assemble value chains from the resources available to us.  We need to be able to bring this material together with that design expertise, married to a fabrication capability, delivered via the appropriate transportation logistics.  When we can do that, every individual will have the same capabilities to fashion an assembly line that Henry Ford once commanded

Read the post. It’s scary and challenging at the same time.

We need to prepare our children and our pre GEN-Y’s for taking up leadership during the next 10-20 years. When the blurring between man-machine will have materialized. Maybe not the singularity, at least Paul Allen does not think so. But for sure when the frictionless economy will be there. And when it will be important to know what makes us more human humans.

A good book in this context is “The Most Human Human” by Brian Christian. (Amazon Affiliate link)

Brian says:

The story of the Turing test, of the speculation and enthusiasm and unease over artificial intelligence in general, is, then, the story of our speculation and enthusiasm and unease over ourselves. What are our abilities? What are we good at? What makes us special?

“Think Tank” is probably the wrong word. Too much talk-club. I was more thinking along the lines of a “movement”. A New Value Movement?

This desire to be part of such movement, that realization was indeed the main trigger to start this blog in the first place. Check out for example some older posts about “Singing my own song” and here about the Think Tank idea and here about “Great to Good: a new value kit”

The concept for a New Value Movement must have sticked on Dan’s ribs, and i was pleasantly surprised to receive a quite extensive thank-you letter from Dan referring to our conversation. I reproduce the letter below in its entirety (my highlights):

Hello Peter;

I don’t believe that I properly thanked you for your confidence in me to present to your truly important attendees at Innotribe. 

I tried to go a bit further over the edge of provocation and I hope that I did not go too far.  No sooner had we finished those amazing Innotribe sessions did the Occupy Wall Street movement largely validate much of your theme about a New Value movement.  It is almost scary to see our prediction that people will re-organize around new value and directly challenge financial currency with social current (currency). 

In addition, I learned tremendously at innotribe and my eyes were opened to many new ways of interpreting our goals. I have since updated much of my ongoing positions to reflect what I learned at Innotribe.  The Big Data sessions, DAG, and Craig Burton’s API work were especially moving for me. 

I believe that the time and technology are right for shifting factors of production away from Land, Labor, and Capital and toward Social, Creative, and Intellectual Assets.  We are developing a simple web app which I believe can catalyze this shift at a remarkable rate.  Please let me know if you would be willing to offer some comments or suggestions to this project. 

Thanks again and please extend my gratitude to Kostas for his wonderful hospitality.

Dan Robles

I am humbled and energized by encouragements like this and it goes without saying that i enthusiastically accept Dan’s invitation to comment on his project.

I also got several calls and reach-outs post-Sibos. From people who i spoke to some months ago about this Think Tank idea. And suddenly, all at the same time they want to talk about it again. It must have to so something with synchronicity. With emergence.

Somehow i feel like i have to take a big jump. Beyond the “classic” Innotribe events. Something bigger, with more impact on society. More depth and meaning.

Is it fear to jump ? Is it not being able to articulate it? And then – recently – somebody close to my heart wrote me:

i caught on to that from you, but you haven’t shared too much with me. it’s paradoxical that you talk about wanting depth and meaning, because you have come across as very closed to me when i see you in person… but maybe you are just distracted and focused? or maybe you are afraid to act as your true self in the swift/innotribe setting?

Am i just distracted and focused? I feel i am both.

  • Very focused – like i wrote about my intensity in “Silence, I am painting”.
  • Very distracted, as trying to keep-up with this information stream in my RSS feeds, the twitter stream, etc.
  • Very distracted, as i have probably 20 drafts of blog posts sitting ready to publish.
  • Very distracted, as i feel my creative energy becoming un-stoppable and ready to burst out something new, big, exciting, energizing, inspiring.

A colleague recently told me:

Peter, i think you need to re-connect with yourself.

Same thing. Fear to act as my true self in the swift/innotribe setting? Or in any setting ?

From time to time i use this blog to re-connect with myself. And to share some of these musings with you all out there.

In the hope that somebody reaches out. Shows me an open door.

Or like last week, reminds me that i am the “heavy artillery” when i think i have become persona-non-grata, because too deep, because too demanding and probably even more so because i don’t always live the values that i preach. Even rarely live them. And it is probably that what undermines trust. I expect trust and am surprised i don’t get it when i don’t live the values that i preach.

What suddenly stopped me in staying alive? Where have you see me changing?

My starting point for this blog in April 2009 was the realization that my mission was to “inspire others to dream”. Now i want to add emotion. In Dutch there is a word for this: “ontroering”. I tried to translate, and the closest i got was “thrill”.

Who wants to help me seeing clearly? Who wants to engage with me in this adventure? Who wants to help articulating what this New Values Movement is?

I am hungry for your feedback. Send me something in the comments of this blog post. Send me an email or DM me. And i need time to think.

JP on Gamification, Lipstick and Pigs

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And here is another fantastic talk by JP Rangaswami, Chief Scientist Salesforce.com (twitter @jobsworth) on the gamification of companies and why this can’t be something superficial like putting lipstick on a pig.

Was looking for a transcript, did not find it, so decided to do it myself. Below a summary of JP’s talk. Hope I captured the essential, and you appreciate my style of curating/highlighting.

Have asked JP to deliver something similar at Innotribe at Sibos 2011 in Toronto when we will discuss Corporate Cultures. Hope he will accept the invitation.

 

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http://cdn.livestream.com/embed/readwriteweb?layout=4&clip=pla_07224833-fd06-42c0-b38f-fc03955fb5a9&autoplay=false

Watch live streaming video from readwriteweb at livestream.com

 

Some highlights:

  • We have always tried to take a material shift of paradigm by attaching some labels of the past
  • The inflection point is about significant changes in work, rather than significant changes in technology
  • This is not about putting something superficial on tasks that your really don’t want to do
  • Extrinsic rewards have significant risks,
  • Referring to the works of Kathy Sierra.

 

Have a look at Kathy Sierra’s latest guest-post on Hugh McLeod’s blog about “Pixie Dust & The Mountain of Mediocrity”

  • Find rewards inside yourselves
  • “badges” of excellence should be about reaching levels of mastery

 

I have no intent or wish

to put

the lipstick of gamification

on the pig of work

 

  • The control paradigms of the past are being challenged
  • Some assumptions on why the firm exists: Firms exist primarily in order to reduce transaction costs
  • As a result of vertical integration, a number of things used to be possible: easier access to capital,
    • Today, most people in this room have a better credit rating that the bank they use
  • Global reach and scope
    • That with the digital world is again available to everybody in this room
  • The firm was designed against the background of the industrial revolution
  • Knowledge work is in essence “lumpy”

We have such fear

if at work it is not possible to doing nothing,

we take the gaps at work,

and we fill this

with this 20st century mechanism,

called “meetings”

  • If you could fill your days with meetings, then you look busy
  • For real work, you have to stay late, as you filled your white-space
  • You have used up your time for cognitive surplus that Clay Shirky talks about
  • The kind of choices we have today are fundamentally different from the past
  • Everything on the assembly line was predicated by the division of labour

Having 1 person doing

the same thing 16,000 times a day

was felt to be acceptable in those days,

to me it feels inhuman

  • The most expensive thing was the equipment, the switching cost of equipment was very high and the collateral damage done to workers was trivial
  • Now the most expensive asset are the people in this room
  • Because we are able to switch, we are capable of doing non-linear work

 

It not about an inability to concentrate,

its about the inability

to hold a tension

on the garbage

that is being spewed at them

  • You never have a steady stream of work as a knowledge worker
  • The principles of the assembly line are deeply in our ethos, our very being, we get conditioned to that from our schooling system onwards
  • An ability to switch away from that is not trivial
  • The first thing that you notice about Heroku offices is that there are no desks

–> now think about

what it means

to have

a “desktop” computer

 

  • That’s change is possible because choice of the edge devices is with the individuals
  • Processes are king only where there are repeatable tasks and the repetition is of value
  • Part of the big shift from the static to the flow is we start spending more time dealing with the exceptions rather than with the core flow
  • The choices today are far to vast to believe in a linear progression
  • Much richer knowledge worker environment in which we must be able to recognize patterns
  • Given enough eye-balls, all bugs are shallow
  • The value of inspection when something is shared in a large group comes to the foreground
  • Wikipedia exists because of cognitive surplus: people are prepared to donate or contribute their time, and their brain, and their knowledge and their effort in order to collaborate for some common good

It strikes me

when I am typing this,

that this is exactly

what I am doing right now:

investing my cognitive surplus

for the common good

  • This truth is a valid in enterprises as it is at home
  • The use of gamification is to help generation that are already at work, because the generations coming in know this already
  • This is the generation born since 1982
  • But we live in a hybrid world
  • Genres are values
  • Hearts, Spades, Clubs and Diamonds
  • Hearts are people that like bonding and teamwork
  • Spades are people who really like to go to the bottom of things and complete their analysis
  • Diamonds are people who after surprises, wealth, aggregation and collection
  • Clubs are people who like beating up on others
  • It is a metaphor for serious thinking on what motivates people in the book “Driven” by Nitin Nohria (Amazon Affiliates link)

 

The 4 drivers of motivation:

the drive to acquire,

the drive to defend,

the drive to bond,

and the drive to learn

 

  • When you are looking for a company to work for, then you have to do this sort of “genre matching”
  • The genre of games is in fact the values and ethics of companies
  • When you join, they put you through some form of induction, and the induction is what in a gaming context you would call a sandbox, because you want to minimize damage to the person and environment, while you teach people and allow people to learn more effectively on how the firm operates
  • The discovery process of “how to”, the discovery of how the game works, in a safe sandbox environment
  • We have to think about induction in a deeper way and say “it is a sandbox”

Work has morphed

over the last hundred years,

from hierarchies of products and customers,

to

businesses becoming

networks of capabilities and relationships

 

  • There is a lot of work to be done on how to value this, how do you value relationships
  • Things like Klout,, influence, reputation, capability to create and maintain a group of followers, a weighted understanding of the value of your network
  • A whole new science of beginning to genuinely measuring relationships
  • Let’s put all this now in context of team selection, and missions and quests
  • Hierarchies existed because the cost of coordination was very high

In today’s world

those coordination costs are trivial,

we are moving from a world

where everybody has to go

through an MBTI or similar

and then somebody

decides about team composition,

to

a world

where the team selection

is carried out

by the individual

 

  • The tools have to be in place to discover who you would like to work with and what you would like to work on
  • A certificate or badge indicating that that person has the skills and the mastery to perform that task
  • Mastery at work gets meaningful
  • Most video games don’t allow you to go to level-X unless you have acquires the skills for level X-1
  • The reason to keep you at that lower level is to get you to that master level
  • Next: a reasonable understanding of where you are at
  • The idea of “save and replay” when at work

I always wanted to live

in a zero-blame culture

 

  • And work never has been such a zero-blame culture because of these structural weaknesses
  • Now I can get to the point where I can say “I have not failed, I have found 10,000 ways that do not work”
  • You save that which has not worked, together with the conditions within it did not work, and you can analyze and replay and deeper understand
  • Because – when the conditions change – what did not work may work this time
  • So never say “we won’t do that, we tried it before and it did not work”
  • The value of being able to aggregate any life-stream partially lies in the ability to inspect and make analysis of it
  • Conserving seeds so that they do NOT get naturally selected out
  • What did not work today may work in different conditions tomorrow
  • Somebody smart did not throw away that code of that stupid idea
  • Gamification of the enterprise is not a fad
  • It is not about providing extrinsic rewards for crap work
  • If work is crap, let’s fix that problem

 

From hierarchical,

linear,

top-down work

to

non-linear,

networked,

personally selected teams,

tasks

and outcomes

 

  • We are nearly there, but this change is going to require use to learn a lot of new things,
  • And what games can teach us is a smarter way of being able to extract those learning and bring them into the enterprise
  • Thank you

Organizations Fit for the Future

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Awesome “Must-see” video by Gary Hamel. Contains a lot of the wisdom of Vineet Nayar of HCL, who wrote the book “Employees First, Customers Second”.

Btw: have invited Vaneet to Innotribe at Sibos Toronto on Corporate Culture. Hope he accepts.

I’d love to get to a stage where

Innotribe is the place

where you discover

what futures emerge

on the fringe

 

 

"Modern” management is one of humanity’s most important inventions, Gary Hamel argues. But it was developed more than a century ago to maximize standardization, specialization, hierarchy, control, and shareholder interests.

While that model delivered an immense contribution to global prosperity, the values driving our most powerful institutions are fundamentally at odds with those of this age—zero-sum thinking, profit-obsession, power, conformance, control, hierarchy, and obedience

don’t stand a chance against community, interdependence, freedom, flexibility, transparency, meritocracy, and self-determination.

It’s time

to radically rethink

how we mobilize people

and organize resources

to productive ends

It’s one one-line after the other, this talk is so inspirational. Check-out:

  • Fit for future, but also fit for human beings
  • We have to re-invent management
  • Management legacies
  • Change has changed
  • Hyper-competition
  • You have to earn your place in the market every single day
  • Knowledge itself is becoming a commodity
  • How fast am I creating new knowledge
  • An organization where people are willing to bring the gifts of their creativity and passion
  • Real reverse accountability
  • Holding your managers accountable for you succeeding in your job
  • Challenge management dogma
  • What problem is management trying to solve?
  • How do you turn human beings into semi-programmable robots?
  • You have to have aspiration, you have to be contrarian, you have to be willing learning from the fringe
  • The future happens on the fringe
  • Management is a feudalistic system
  • The web is sort of the global operating system of innovation

 

We have to bake

into our management values

the deep web values of

Openness,

Meritocracy,

Flexibility,

and Collaboration

  • We have been told that we can’t change our organization: that’s nonsense
  • Being resilient as human beings

We hope

that you become

a champion

for the future

Silence, I am painting

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I have a week off, so it gives me some time to reflect and muse about things that are close to my heart.

This is a post about my intensity in creating and curating Innotribe events.

 

It is about creating

memorable events

that are memorable

because they deliver

an authentic experience

 

I got inspired when discussing the drive behind my work with a good old friend. At a certain moment, i described event production as some form of composition, like a piece of music, like a painting. It’s where this story starts…

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Jan Van Eyck – Arnolfini portret

Flemish painting flourished from the early 15th century until the 17th century. Flanders delivered the leading painters in Northern Europe and attracted many promising young painters from neighboring countries. These painters were invited to work at foreign courts and had a Europe-wide influence. The so-called Flemish "Primitives" were the first to popularize the use of oil paint. Their art has its origins in the miniature painting of the late Gothic period. Chief among them were Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling, Hugo van der Goes, Robert Campin and Rogier van der Weyden.

From the early 16th century, the Italian Renaissance started to influence the Flemish painters. The result was very different from the typical Italian Renaissance painting. The leading artist was Pieter Brueghel the Elder, who avoided direct Italian influence, unlike the Northern Mannerists.

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The painting above is by Pieter Breugel the Elder: “The Blind lead the Blind.”

What is interesting in this painting is that the little church actually exists. It is located in a small village “Sint-Anna-Pede”, in the heart of the “Pajottenland”, West South-West of Brussels, and where famous beers like Geuze and Lambic have their origins.

It is also the place where I spent most of my youth till +/- 21 years old.

 

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A later generation of Flemish painters were the Flemish Expressionist, with Permeke  from ‘Group of Latem’,  as generally the best known:

 

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Permeke – Laying Farmer

I love the “primitiveness” of Permeke. The primitiveness makes me think about some deep and profound thoughts from Jerry Michalski himself, who planted the seed to go back to the primitive level of our understanding of a bank.

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The word “Bank” comes from “Banca” which means “Bench”.

People used to sit on a bench, and had a conversation. It was relationship building avant-la-letter, it as about wealth creation for everybody, it was a community play. The metaphor also applies to “stocks” which originally was a “stick” with carves indicating what values where loaned between parties. See also my blog post “Banks for a Better World”

The Flemish Primitives originated in Flanders. As you all know, Brussels is the capital of Flanders (this statement in itself – albeit factual true – may cause a whole political debate in Belgium, a debate i definitely do not want to get in now ;-).

All the above just to say I was born in Brussels, raised in Flanders, where the Flemish Primitives originated.

 

It’s sort of back to my roots

It’s somewhere deep in my DNA

 

And it is the sort of DNA that i want to build into our Innotribe events. This is the sort of deep “primitiveness” i want to be the understream of Innotribe events.

Building on this DNA, I was trained as an architect at the Sint-Lucas School of Architecture in Ghent and Brussels.

Sint-Lucas School of Architecture educates designers in a spirit of critical reflection and personal responsibility. Students question their limits and the limits of the discipline. They gain insight into both material and immaterial, physical and social structures. Teaching and research are organized in a spirit of artistic and intellectual openness, of tolerance and inclusion. 

This is more the artistic direction rather than the engineering section of architecture. It’s about designing space, experiences, total experiences. It’s probably why I often “clash” with engineers. We have a different mind-set, training, framework.

It is probably why i like so much the job that i am doing today. Because in my mind, creating a quality event is about creating a total experience.

 

Yep,

that’s where I am setting the bar

 

The end result must be an experience like a very good concert. Or a painting with many layers. Although concerts and paintings are one-directional. To be consumed only. It’s push-only. Modern life has evolved to more pull. Paintings and concerts in general miss the participatory element that we try to build in all our Innotribe events.

Building an event is like doing a production. I’d like to see my role as “written by”. With a team/crew of highly sensitive, critical, creative people, who do not accept compromise. Who do not need always the team to be aligned on everything up-front.

Who can express

their very personal emotions in an emerging landscape

of diversity

 

When the team is blended, we don’t need alignment up-front. The forces of the understream propel us forward in the right direction. Always. Unless some team members or the enabling organization do not have this deep force, energy. Or when the team you are asking to innovate has to waste its creative energy scrambling to find resources.

Harvard Business Review wrote about this basic idea of building in constraints to instigate innovation (credits to Mela of our team for finding this quote):

Scarcity seems to have replaced necessity as the mother of invention in today’s organizations. Far too many managers believe that depriving projects of resources [such as time – Mela’s comment] will inspire innovation. While that’s true sometimes, you’re better off using constraints rather than starvation. The human brain reacts to stimuli, so while a blank sheet can terrify, one or two constraints can stimulate. Experiment with introducing a clearly defined problem and an urgent need. But, don’t create false urgency by refusing to fund a project [or not giving time to work on it – again Mela’s comment].

Can we push the limit of events further ? Yes, of course. We are just getting started.

In my wildest dreams, an Innotribe event is multi-sensory. Appealing not only to visual and audio senses, but also to smell, touch, and taste. We can have total experiences, with music as a background/foreground canvas,

 

building and architecting

the rhythm of the event

like a rave

 

With moveable and touchable walls that give way and light-up when you touch them, with people dancing and raving, sharing a Californian style new-age, un-conference open-space tribe.  OMG, I hear you thinking, what good stuff did he smoke today?

 

It is about the power of the tribe

The deep power of the tribe

The Innotribe

 

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So it happens that some of the finest Flemish chefs put together this fantastic site and tribe of The Flemish Primitives, which is all about the very-very best of Flemish gastronomic cuisine and experiment. World-class. If you have ever seen the drive, intensity, uncompromising drive of a chef like Peter Goossens of 3-star Michelin Restaurant Hof Van Cleve then you know what i mean.

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“It was a great experience to participate in The Flemish Primitives 2010. It’s a high-energy, high-spirited meeting, and a unique mixture of people and points of view. A very stimulating day!”

Having that drive and that result is my inspiration. That’s how we want our audience to come out of an Innotribe event.

We don’t want to go for less!

 

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The atelier – be it an art atelier or a gastronomic kitchen – is a nice metaphor for our group: a couple of artists cooking and painting together. Really together-together, but in the end the composition, the final plate, goes through the hands of the master curator, the “written by” guy, the one who composes.

 

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I do this with

an extreme deep intensity

 

I have all my antennas “on” for 24 hours a day, 365 hours a year. When i read, tweet, blog, view, listen, taste, etc it looks like i have always that lens of “how can i use this or that for the next innotribe event?”.

For me, writing a new Innotribe composition is like being in a creative flow, my most individualistic expression of my emotions.

 

When I am in that flow,

I do not want to be distracted

by personal drama

 

People exposing personal drama usually don’t have anything else better to do.

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Hugh McLeod posted a couple of days ago:

Why are some people such drama queens? Why do some people get so obsessed with the little stuff, the gossip, who said what to who, who’s sleeping with who, who’s no longer sleeping with who…? The short answer: Because it gives them something to do. Life is short. You’d think we would have learned by now, how to make better use of our VERY limited time here on Earth.

That’s where i am setting the bar. Workaholic ? Maybe. Arrogant ? Maybe.

“I don’t expect everybody using the same standards” is often a standard phrase used in corporate landscape. But is that really so ? Maybe i DO expect everybody using the same high standards.

Or at least, I expect respect from others when I am trying and getting into this high state of flow and expression.

 

Respect for my time and space

Respect for my high standards

 

That’s probably why I hate “enterprise tourists”. The ones that make a lot of noise, but have no content. When they deliver something – if they deliver something – set the bar at creating a ripple where I want a wave.

Why I hate “seagull managers”, who pop-in, drop some comments like seagulls drop shit, and leave you behind alone with the clean-up until they show-up next year for another annual review of KPI’s or whatever artificial measurement criteria.

Why I hate an even worse category of “enterprise rats”. The ones that don’t add any value but only bring process and problems and challenges. The ones that are the messengers, the go-betweens. The ones that forward you mails where they clearly contain actionable items that could have been resolved by the rat herself in the first place. The energy suckers.

So, for you enterprise rats and tourists out there: next time you come into my space and interrupt me in my painting, be aware you are interrupting me in my creative process. Next time you create havoc in my atelier, beware you are messing up the medici effect. I don’t want energy suckers in our atelier

Team is not about celebrating individualism. Team is not the sum of the individuals. Team is about a safe harbor where every individual keeps its own identity. Team is not about dependence. Or about using the team consensus or lack thereof as an excuse.

 

Team is about “inter-dependence”

 

The team and each member of the team is one of the conditions for me – and each of us – to develop my/our full potential and make a great painting.

The team is more than the sum of the parts, the individuals. The team should not be a bowling team: where every player is after her personal best score. They miss positive feedback loops. That flows and fuels back the team.

Don’t mess around with/in team.

Messing around with/in the team is messing around with our full potential.