Interactions - Creative Strategies for Business: Creative Strategies for Business

what does leadership look like?

The director of the conference I attended in France made a short presentation at the last session in which he encapsulated what he and the management had been doing for the 8 days of our experience.

“We have been managing boundaries, not policing rules”

That’s the most concise description of management and leadership I have ever come across. If we’re managing boundaries then we are on the edge of difference. If we’re policing rules then we are imposing conformity. All problems in systems are caused by an attempt to control someone else’s actions and behaviours. Attempting to police those situations more often than not results in the suppression of difference and generates the fantasy of collaboration. If we’re brave enough to accept that difference exists and is enriching and is part and parcel of all systems, then the task becomes one of managing and engaging with that difference. If there is room for difference then there can be a realistic and authentic agreement to move forward from that perspective. That, to me, sounds like a more authentic form of consensus than an imposed “rule” that we all have to be the same.

Strategy - Controlling The Future

“In terms of clarity, strategy has become an ever more obtuse art” (Micklethwait J and Wooldridge A, 1996, pp159).

We are regularly invited to assist organisations in the generation of strategic plans. The generation of a document or report is very often seen as the “end product” of a process and in some cases the plan itself then needs to be “sold” to the organisation. Increasingly we find management teams wanting to approach this task in a more creative way. The following are some thoughts, garnered from conversations with our clients about how it might be done differently.

Controlling the future

Why do organisations strategically plan? This question is rarely asked because of the dominant discourse in business that suggests that not to plan is somewhat reckless. Banks require plans in order to release funds. Marketing departments require plans in order to position the company or product. Most business engagement with state or central government requires a written plan that serves to reassure the parties that some kind of certainty exists as to who the primary actors are. Plans and strategic plans in particular are a primary map and compass of the business world. This raises one of the fundamental aspects of strategic planning – i.e. the hope that in producing a plan, uncertainty will be controlled and the future predicted.

Many strategic planning processes are predicated on the assumption that the “future” exists as a separate tangible place and the role of the strategic planner is to identify which aspects of the organisation’s mission and activities can be made to “fit” with that expected arrival. This can sometimes set up a defensive pattern within organisations that may turn a strategising process into one which seeks to prevent the organisation from experiencing any risk whatsoever, thereby protecting it from uncertainty and potentially from growthful risk and challenge.

The Paradox of Plans

The paradox can often look like this:

Increasingly I’m working with clients to create strategic planning processes whereby the strategising is fluid and evolving while at the same time visible and tangible. A plan is delivered but it is the result of and beginning of strategic thinking. If we are fixated on “one” future, then any unpredictability or deviation from that future can leave us feeling unprepared which is what we’re supposed to be addressing by doing a strategic plan in the first place!

Strategising vs Strategy

The contracting phase is now a time when I work with clients to re-frame the possibility of strategising and planning as one where the future is co-created in the present and is seen as a plurality rather than a single certainty. As a consultant I assist clients create safe enough spaces to imagine a different way of working, and more importantly, a jointly constructed future that embraces change, challenge and uncertainty.

Graetz draws a distinction between strategic thinking and strategic planning.

“..Planning concerns analysis – establishing and formalising systems and procedures; thinking involves synthesis - encouraging intuitive, innovative and creative thinking at all levels of the organisation”.

Hypothesising, de-constructing, re-framing etc are all tools for creative thinking and strategising which fit within my consultancy tool kit.

“So long as contrasting right versions not all reducible to one are countenanced, unity is to be sought not in an ambivalent or neutral something beneath these versions but in an overall organization embracing them” (Goodman, 1978, pp5).

In revisiting some of the work I have undertaken with clients strategising has been a way of asking creative questions with a view to generating new possibilities and new futures. The other insight of course is that we strategise all the time – whether how to sneak out of the house in our teens or securing additional finance for a business venture – strategic thinking comes naturally!

The Challenge for Consultants

The primary challenge to those of us involved in assisting organisations to strategise is the co-creation of a secure enough environment in which to envision a future that is insecure.

An un-attributed quote states – “Martin Luther King did not say, ‘I have a strategic plan,” he said “I have a dream’” – and has a lot to offer those of us in the midst of strategising. The dilemmas about outputs become secondary to the strategising itself and business plans, marketing material, bank proposals etc become obvious ways of developing contextually situated conversations that can only enhance understanding.

Goodman, Nelson, (1978), Ways of Worldmaking, Hackett Publishing Company

Graetz, Fiona (2002), Strategic Thinking Versus Strategic Planning: Towards Understanding the Complementarities, Management and Decision, Volume 40, Number 5, pp456 - 463

Micklethwait J and Wooldridge A, (1996), The Witch Doctors, Heinemann, London,

10 Rules for Dynamic Participation

As I mentioned in the previous post, I use a process called Dynamic Participation as a methodology for consulting and facilitating. Increasingly we live in an age where "participation" is thrown around like snuff at a wake - what exactly does it mean? and more to the point, what does it look like? Here are some of the principles that I work by:

1. Always work in the “here and now”. Who said what to whom a week ago; a month ago or a year ago is rarely useful in terms of moving a situation forward. Working with what is going on in the room right now is.
2. Always work on a live issue. Role plays and case studies can be really interesting ways of getting a group to work on a task, but they rarely result in that group applying the learning in their work environment after the workshop/session has finished. Working on something that is a live issue for everyone in the room is one sure fired way to ensuring that learning sticks.
3. Context is as important as content. How someone decides to "put something into the room" is always as important as what they say and is a huge source of information about how this group works together in helpful and unhelpful ways.
4. Making a difference starts with being in the room. If people can’t understand why you have invited them together then the process is pointless. If however, you can show people by the way in which you interact with them that their presence and view is essential then you create immediate buy in.
5. Keep the process public. Have the conversations about why you are there, what is expected and hoped for, boundaries around time etc out loud and with those you invite into your process. Take a risk and produce notes of the meeting that summarise what has been discussed and distribute these openly to all who attend.
6. Dialogue, not monologue. Are you sure you are consulting/facilitating? And not disseminating? A real dialogue involves myriad views…are you open to changing yours on the basis of what you hear? If so, then a real and genuine dialogue can yield exciting results. If not, then you are engaged in a monologue and people will rarely come back for a second lecture.
7. Roles come with responsibilities and that goes for everyone in the conversation. Dynamic Participation offers a space to ask each participant – what is my role? And what is my responsibility? Taking the blame culture out of organisational life can only be done if both of these questions are asked and answered by everyone in the room (including the consultant).
8. Attend to boundaries, not rules. By attending to the boundaries of the process you leave room for difference. By attending to rules you impose conformity.
9. Ask those who present with negative statements to offer positive alternatives, thereby focussing on what is possible as distinct from what is not.
10. Defensive people are usually trying to protect something important. Instead of getting frustrated with the defence try asking “what is so important here that it needs this kind of protection?”

The difference between coaching and therapy

I am very regularly asked about the differences between coaching and therapy. I frequently read marketing blurb that suggests that therapy focuses on the “past” and coaching on the “future”; that therapy is about “resolving issues” and coaching is about “improvement”. Therapy is also accused of not offering “tools” for action thereby distinguishing it from its coaching cousin.

The similarities between both are important to note:

• All individuals who work with a coach or a therapist are interested in a “better” future
• Therapy and Coaching offer skills and possibilities for that future – the methodologies employed are different
• The quality of the relationship is the essential mechanism by which change is effected
• Self awareness on the part of the coach and therapist is essential for successful work with clients
• Unconditional positive regard, empathy and a person-centred approach are key to both approaches

While I apply psychodynamic thinking to my coaching relationships the key difference is about the permission sought to inquire into a client’s personal story and how that information is worked with in the coaching relationship. There are times when it is helpful to know more about family of origin – it may help to understand a dynamic being played out in organisational contexts. But unless a coach is trained to work with this material they run the risk of opening up emotional responses that may be difficult to contain. It’s also essential to know when to refer a coaching client to a therapist. Very often this is when a repeating pattern of unhelpful behaviour, rooted in unresolved personal relationships in the past, is unhelpful in the present.

Clients are not referred (self or other) to a coach because of an academic difficulty – it’s generally a behavioural one and as such a coach needs to meet a client in all their humanity.

As a therapist and a coach I bring distinctive skills to the client relationship that are based on my psychodynamic training and which allow me to:

• Meet a client in an authentic person-to-person encounter.
• Process my own feelings in the coaching relationship and to use them as constructive interventions.
• Spot a client who may need a therapeutic relationship and to refer on appropriately.
• Translate psychodynamic insights into powerful work related interventions that impact on work performance and behaviour.

The facilitator's responsibility?

How much responsibility does a facilitator take on for what happens in a room with a group with whom he or she is working? This is something I think about quite a bit depending on the kind of relationship, the longevity of it and what the task in hand is.

I am a believer in keeping the planning conversations about the process in the room and out loud. Any other approach infantilises clients and results in the facilitator having more control than s/he needs to. If the ultimate aim of the process is to generate action then this set up can stifle that before you even begin.

The “difficult” or “angry” person in a group is the place where this approach is really tested and I’ve worked with this in myriad ways over the course of my consulting career. Now if I’m working over an extended period of time then I can process what that hostility may be communicating on behalf of the group. You need a good working alliance and time and space to do that kind of work. If I am in a situation where I have a short amount of time and a clear piece of work the group needs to engage with then my approach is more direct.
If someone is “interrupting” the task of the group by complaining (usually about a deficit of some kind) then instead of dealing with them directly about it I put the following into the room.

I appreciate the fact that people feel comfortable speaking freely about what they wish to talk about

However, the context for the meeting is that we are here to discuss the following items – and then I refer to the invitation or agenda.

There are resources available to the group including my facilitating skill, time, physical resources etc and they need, as a group, to make a choice about how they want to do that. We can talk about what’s “not” happening or we can talk about what is….They can choose to change the agenda and focus on other items and I will willingly go with them there and facilitate that discussion. What I am not willing to do is make a decision for them and then find out that many people in the room are disappointed that we didn’t talk about the agenda which was agreed.

I generally find that putting that out into a group does several things

1. It respects the diversion from the topic at hand, and the person who is brave enough to say out loud what some people may not be able to articulate.
2. It puts responsibility for the content of the conversation where it belongs – with the group
3. It puts responsibility for the context and boundary of the conversation where it belongs – with the facilitator
4. It engages with the participants as adults, with choices about how they use the resources available to them
5. It requires action on the part of the group, which if the outcomes of the meeting are to be successful will require the same kind of action.

The alternative is for the facilitator to take all the responsibility which in turn means that you prevent a group from learning how they choose to include and exclude.

So far I’ve never encountered a group that hasn’t been able to engage with that task and make a decision about how to continue to work together.

Competence

I’ve embarked on a PhD programme this year which is throwing up all kinds of challenges and delights (so far, in equal measure). I’m in that beginning phase where as each day goes by I realise what I don’t know. There are times when it’s incredibly dispiriting because I know it is going to be a long time before I can speak with any confidence about what it is I do know.

I’ve found this little tool useful in the past in helping me position myself in relation to learning and newness. It’s generally outlined in a matrix but I prefer a circular model because there’s never a point at which learning “ends”. We’re always at some point in this circle in relation to something.

Right now I’m in the unconscious incompetence phase of learning and it’s uncomfortable beyond belief. However, I‘m in the unconscious competence phase in relation to the process of learning – I have been here before and while I can experience the uncomfortableness of it, I know it will shift and abate somewhat when the time is right.

When I’m working with clients I refer to this model to help people position themselves in relation to what they “do” know. There’s so much of what we do in organisational life that we take for granted and by taking it for granted, we often dismiss it. When a learning opportunity arrives we then feel inadequate in some way instead of seeing learning as a cyclical process. Often, taking the time to sit with what we take for granted can lessen the anxiety about “starting over” with something new.

The Fetish of Change

Johnnie Moore has an interesting post on the Fetish of Change where he references a fascinating article by Christopher Grey

Grey’s article is a

critique of the current orthodoxy that the world is changing at an ever faster rate, that organizations must adapt to this change in order to survive, and that change management techniques enable organizations to do this. There is no basis to evaluate the proposition that thewe face unprecedented rates of change, and change is not something to which organizations must respond, but is instead an outcome of organizational actions. Change management initiatives are largely failures, and the usual explanations for these failures are inadequate.

He goes on to talk about change management in these terms:

change management rests upon the conceit that it is possible systematically to control social and organisational relations, a conceit shared by the social sciences in general

The article is a great read and Johnnie offers his own take on the change process at the end with which I completely agree.

too often, conversations about change treat it as something done to other people at another time; as something that people must be talked into.

I’d offer an additional perspective which is that (a) we are always resistant to change and (b) we are always changing. So many managers and leaders I work with are grappling with having to implement or deal with the fallout from change. They enter into the relationship feeling scared, utterly inadequate and hiding in their academic understanding of the “value” of change. I have moments when I genuinely think they’ve been brainwashed into believing that it should be simple and straightforward. Which of course it’s not. How could it be when we are grappling with that paradox?

Ask anyone about the value of an academic approach to fitness, weight loss, saving for a rainy day and see how effective it is to talk at people about something they are willingly losing or giving up by not doing things the “new” way. It simply doesn’t work. Most of the time people are scared about what they are losing – sense of self, dignity, finance, position etc…our identity is completely challenged by change processes and yet…

We all change

• we recover from relationships that don’t work
• We learn to move on from the death of significant others
• We adapt to being in relationships with others where our sense of self has to evolve and accommodate difference
• We deal with our children leaving home

And somehow, at the end of it all we survive. Change processes that tap into what we already know about change, our capacity for both hating and managing together with our ability to survive and move on are the most meaningful change interventions I have seen work. I’m privileged to have been part of designing some of those processes also and like Johnnie I believe in the power of open spaces (using that technology and others) for genuine and meaningful connections between people. Safe places that address and manage power relationships are they only ways to effective real change in my humble opinion.

Patronising Passion?

The tricky part is that the criticisms aren't always wrong. It really might be all hype. It might be BS. It might be just a fad, or the same s*** with a new name. But things are rarely that black and white. Where there is passion (not just fad or fashion), there is something real there. Something that some people see and feel. But the key point to keep in mind--and the one that offers a simple solution--is this: People will sometimes diss things they know very little about

Sometimes the uninformed criticism is a reaction to being patronised and I think advocates and evangelists for various products/services need to be careful that they don’t cross the boundary between enthusiasm/passion and being patronising. Ultimately, we have to make it possible for people to say “I don’t like that” or “I don’t know” without imposing a value judgement. I’ll never get golf…I don’t think my life is in any way diminished as a result…the more I can admit that then the less I am likely to take a cudgel and bludgeon golf lovers to metaphorical death!

The myth of 24/7 availability

I contributed to a comment stream over at Management Craft where Lisa has a great rant about the intrusive nature of mobile phones (I am soo with her on this one). The post is about the message we give to the person we are with when we ask them to hold on a moment while we answer our phones. The overt and covert message is that the person on the other end of the phone is more important than the person we’re talking with.I’ve seen the increase in this type of behaviour rocket in the past 24 months here in Ireland. As Lisa says

Unless you are the President (of a country), an on call neurosurgeon, or the only person with nuclear launch codes, you do not need to answer the phone. If you are talking with someone in person, it is rude and inconsiderate to interrupt that conversation. In addition, doing both things is pretty close to multitasking which we know is not an effective way to use time.

If I can’t pay attention and be present when I’m with someone – be it a personal friend or a business colleague then I’m wasting their time, being disrespectful and ultimately pretending to be interested. How can authentic communication happen under those circumstances? Being present is the best way we have of making the people we know "matter" and in turn having the same experience ourselves. So switch off the phone/blackberry and pay attention to the moment...yes, this moment, right now...

Men, Women, Money & Boundaries

I spent a great day yesterday delivering a training seminar for a group of crafts people from north and south of the border. One of the interesting issues that emerged at one point in the proceedings was the difference in how men and women deal with money. Most of the people present were solopreneurs and working independently, the quality of their work from the brief tour of websites I undertook is superb. Yet many of the women in particular professed a degree of discomfort when negotiating face to face with clients about fees.

We talked about some practical strategies for dealing with the very real issue of getting paid for your work but there seemed to be something more profound going on that reminded me of my training as a therapist. There comes a point when you have to feel comfortable asking for a suitable fee for the work you have done – particularly when that work is personal – and can only be undertaken by you. It’s a paradox. You are charging for a service, but you are also valuing your particular view, craft, skill or way of doing business. That’s why someone is standing in front of you asking you to do something for them. In a large corporation there’s a department that deals with the mucky stuff of invoicing and credit control. Many creative types have agents and managers…then there are those who have to manage both the creative stuff and the mucky stuff together – it’s hard to separate out the personal from the professional. The men present yesterday seemed to have no problem whatsoever in charging for their work, placing a value on what they do and asking for money.

There is a cultural discourse about women asking for money for “personal” service that inevitably plays into this whole discussion. The fine line between prostitution and therapy has been written about extensively and when there is no external “object” around which a discussion takes place it can be deeply uncomfortable for some people. As I have mentioned before, I don’t have a bag of tricks or a “thing” I sell. What I bring to a client is myself, my experience, my wisdom and my skill. It is personal – it has to be. But it can only work if there are good boundaries and I am a fond fan of that cliché that good fences make very good neighbours.

Some of the strategies we discussed that might be useful for crafts people yesterday included:

Writing up a “terms and conditions” document, framed in positive language about what you can and will provide and how you expect payment – post it on your website so people can see this before they contact you. The chances are they won’t bat an eyelid about payment terms if you’ve outlined it in advance.

Follow up “informal” discussions about commissions or work with a friendly email – put your understanding of what the client is looking for in writing, this will serve to clarify your own thinking and prompt some similar thinking on the part of the client. It also serves as the starting point to the assignment.

Keep a log or a diary of a project from the outset and include in it the time you spend thinking about a client and designs as well as the time you spend making – you’ll be surprised at how much work you are actually doing and how little value you may be attributing to it.

Sometimes small interventions can be the most meaningful of all and I hope that some of the people who came to the workshop yesterday will find those three suggestions useful in creating a boundary around what needs to be protected – their personal skill and ability and what can sometimes be eroded – their sense of worth and value.

Asking for feedback

I generally work on my own with groups and while it’s always great to get feedback at the end of a session or in subsequent days it can be difficult to get critical feedback that can help next time out.

This week, for the first time, I invited a colleague to observe my training work and I was very interested in how I responded. I was nervous before the session (I’m generally a bit nervous but this was off the scale!), left my office without part of my equipment and had to improvise and it took me a good hour or so to forget he was in the room. As the day progressed I settled into myself a bit more.

When the session was over there was an opportunity for the participants to offer feedback and I also had some time with my colleague. Both sets of feedback focussed on different aspects of the day and I was curious to see what my colleague had made of the work I was doing. I won’t go into the detail of his comments - but what struck me as really interesting was his ability to see me working in a way that I take totally for granted. He observed me “remembering” what had happened earlier in the day and bringing it back at a relevant moment. He also watched me restructure a segment of the day when something more interesting came along and the energy of the group went there etc. These are all standard things I “do” with a group and it was so helpful for me to have them noticed.

Asking my colleague into the room is part of a series of interventions I am making around languaging and describing what I do. More recently I asked a group with whom I had worked to write up their experience of the “problem” and the “intervention” as feedback for me and again, it was huge learning and a reminder that when I move into a comfort zone I tend to “forget” what it is I’m doing – I’m in that unconscious competence place.

It takes a risk to ask for feedback because so much of what we do is personal…but so far I’ve learned a lot about how I work in ways that would have been inaccessible to me. How do you know what you do? And how well it’s working?

It's not helpful to be helpful

One of the lessons I learnt from working as a therapist (and something that this post from The Relaxed Therapist prompted me to think about again) is that it isn't always helpful to be helpful. It's a lesson I have taken into other areas of my work life also. And before you say "Huh?" let me explain.

When a client demands my attention - be that a reasonable or an unreasonable demand I have to ask myself the question - who's pressure is this? and "what is the request contained in the demand?" Sometimes a client can't tolerate an unbearable pressure emanating from without and will seek ways to alleviate that pressure by passing it on to me. I've seen this quite a bit in my coaching practice. The request contained within a demand for a shorter/longer/revised meeting is generally "make what is intolerable go away". Now there are times when it may be appropriate to step in and take action. But more often than not "helping" in this instance isn't helping my client address his or her need to acquiesce to their pressure. If I jump and say "yes of course" then the pressure is just passed down the line and learning leaves with it.

It's really important to hold a boundary when a client is pushing against it. This isn't the same as saying "no" but it's more to do with hovering on the edge of the boundary and trying to use it as a learning experience. Here's what I've learned about being helpful:

1. Any request for help from a client that comes with a hidden tinge of pressure should be questioned. The chances are they may be unable to tolerate their own pressure and want you to alleviate it for them.


2. Holding the boundary between an immediate "yes"and an immediate "no" is a very uncomfortable place to be. The chances are that uncomfortableness is the same feeling a client wants to get rid of.


3. Checking in with our own need to "help" from time to time is a useful way to stay on top of unconsciously colluding with clients.


4. When we feel the uncomfortable urge to "help" ask yourself - "what am I trying to get rid of here" the chances are - it's the same thing that the client wants to get rid of.


5. If you can tolerate the pressure a client brings to your relationship then you can teach a client how to make sense of their own pressure instead of removing what may be a powerful symptom of a more profound issue.

On the management of time

Maybe it's just me, but I find myself sighing when I read about "time management"...so much of what I read appears to be predicated on two things (a) there's limited amounts of it (yup, I get that bit) and (b) it's possible to operate in a linear way within a given time frame (here's where I have problems)...

My life simply doesn't work in straight lines. I can't start the day with at "to do" list, work my way systematically through it, while ignoring all other interruptions so that I can feel a self satisfied glow at the end of the day with that line of "ticks". i just can't do it!
I remember attending a talk by psychoanalyst Adam Phillips a couple of months ago. He was talking about how psychoanalysis 'works" and he described it as the theory and practice of side effects. He talked about how people come into therapy with a list of things they want to talk about and/or resolve and then something happens to derail the process and it's in attending to the derailment that the real work begins. I laughed heartily at that description because in some way it describes my approach to consulting and getting things done. I am not in the habit of missing client deadlines. My work is done on time and on budget. I get the stuff done. But I rarely get up and work though my list systematically. I wander around, I think out loud, I allow myself to be distracted, heck I even day dream. And sometimes when I'm pottering about the most interesting insights will land in my lap. I know they wouldn't arrive as fully formed if I was on a schedule and waiting patiently for them to materialise by 3.04pm.

I'm all for time management, but it needs to be congruent with the way in which we actually work and how we allow ourselves to be open to derailments that fuel our creativity and don't close it down.

The Key Concerns of Top Executives

In Manfred Kets de Vries' presentation at the recent ISPSO conference he highlighted the key concerns of top executives. I captured 9 of them and there may have been more – but here you go:

1 Interpersonal conflict
2 Management of disappointment
3 Nobel Prize complex – can I be number 1?
4 Feeling like an imposter/fake
5 Faust syndrome (boredom)
6 Life balance
7 Fuck you money – how much money is enough?
8 Relationships with others
9 Body stress

I found this list fascinating – because all of these issues are “personal” and “inter-personal” – I don’t see much here in the way of organisational or business angst – even the issue of “fuck you money” is one of value and how we know what we are worth. It appears that there comes a time when existential issues take over. There’s much to think about that relates to every level of organisational functioning in here – leadership, power, politics, management etc etc… I’m sure this list could be extended by miles. I also suspect this list could be re-drawn for different stages of career development (mmm I might think about that a bit more).

On a side issue, number 2 is the precise topic I’m researching for my PhD and to be honest, there is not much in the way of management literature about this subject (which presents a great challenge and opportunity for me naturally!).

Great Questions

I came across Come Gather Round (via Management Craft) where there's a great post about questions (and you know me and my questions by now!). In it Dirk Richards says

What is the most significant question that you have ever been asked, or have ever asked yourself? My quest for great questions continues. These are questions that may be life-changing because they somehow address the soul. I am unsure what the exact criteria are for inclusion on my list. For now I can only say, “I know it when I see it.”

Here are the questions that so far have met my fuzzy and entirely subjective criteria:

Is my genius on pupose?

What kind of me is my work creating?

For what has my life been preparing me?

Am I making good use of my life?

Who needs my gift now?

The 3 month review

It's just over three months since I started the interactions blog and last week I penned the last entry in a personal blog I've been writing for three years so it's about time for some review and reflection I think. I suspect that the things I've learned from blogging (reading, writing and commenting) are lessons that will continue to stand me well in all areas of life. But for now, here's what I think I've learned so far:

Find your voice - It takes time to find your voice. It took me the guts of a year to settle into the personal blog - I'd experimented with all kinds of ways of telling my stories and decided at the end of it all that I was writing for myself and if someone else found me interesting then they would listen in and chat back. I'm still struggling with this space in that regard. I guess it's a bit like starting a new job - you know where the desk and water cooler are but you have to sit it out a bit to find out when and where to make a contribution!

Stay connected - I realised that at the end of three years with the personal blog I had said what I wanted to say and I didn't want to continue filling in blanks on a web space just because that's what I'd always done. It was a tough decision to make but ultimately the right one. Likewise with this space - I'll write when the muse strikes and if I find that I've nothing more to say then I'll re-invent myself or move on.

Talking to yourself is a good thing - that's effectively what I did on the personal blog and I guess to a certain extent what I'm doing here. It'll take a while to build a readership (and I'm delighted to say that's growing so thank you to the faithful regulars who stop by). But if I'm not interested in what I'm writing about - how can I expect anyone else to be?

Be yourself - this is connected to all of the others but it's particularly relevant in the world of business blogging. I'm very conscious of audience in this space...much more than I was while writing a personal blog. What happens if I screw up royally in public here? How the heck can you hide? And of course this is precisely why I started a business blog - so I can actually be and show myself (Believe me I have the suit and formidable glasses for the other occasions as well!).

It's all about the space between - regardless of whether I'm consulting, training, coaching, having lunch or reading the newspaper - life happens in the spaces between people and blogging is my way of creating a mechanism for more in-between spaces. For now I'll stuggle on with the other stuff but every time someone comments or takes up something I've said in another forum or offers me the opportunity to do that here I count my blessings.

So that's the current list of learnings...continually being added to of course but not a bad way to start the second trimester of business blogging?

What kinds of business blogs do you read?

Lorianne posted a comment on my last entry and I think it deserves a bit more space on the main page:

Lots of folks here in the States at least see business blogs as being a silver bullet: start a blog, and instantaneously you’ll have a following, your website will get tons of traffic, and you’ll get loads of new clients. Of course, blogs don’t work that way. Although a “blog buzz” builds virally, it still takes a long time to build a faithful readership. In order for things to spread by word of mouth, you have to attract “mouths” one at a time, at least in the beginning.

That’s where the “betweeness” comes in, I think. I’m sure a lot of folks are reading this because, like me, they started reading your personal blog first: in one sense, this business blog is 3 years & 3 months old. Unless you’re in the business consulting/coaching biz (and those folks are your competitors, not your clients), you probably don’t want/need to read about business consulting/coaching every day. BUT, if a blog has enough “between bits”–if it includes interesting things about human nature, books, current events, etc. in between the strictly business stuff–people will keep reading.

It’s a lesson I learned while doing retail sales in a previous life. If *all* you talk about is the product you’re trying to sell, potential customers tune out. Sometimes you have to ease your way into their confidence by talking about other, seemingly unrelated things.

You know this, of course. I just wish the folks hyping business blogs as the Next Biggest Thing new this, too.

The Fantasy Board Development Game

I do a lot of work with boards of directors and management committees wanting to take time out to review where they are and where they are going. Sometimes this involves organising and facilitating "retreats" (I use that word advisedly because in Ireland 'retreat' has religious connotations!). But I digress.. A recurring theme is often that of board composition - Who do we need? What skill base are we looking for? Do we need to think of retiring and asking others to step in etc? When it gets down to thinking about real people groups can often get stuck. Loyalties, allegiances, politics and favouritism sometimes get in the way of the task at hand.

Increasingly I'm using other methodologies for getting at what's needed and a favourite technique I use is the fantasy board game. In this, each person in the room gets to pick a person - real or imagined, alive or dead to place on the board. It's a fun brainstorming session and the more it is played the wilder the suggestions get (and you can tell a lot about someone by who they suggest!). It's easier to pick a fantasy person than name someone you might know in a personal capacity. I then do an exercise with people about why they picked the person they did - and the list of attributes and qualities simply flows! We then have a list of all of the skills and qualities needed to populate the board that will look to the future and it's not a difficult task at this point to compare that list with the skill base of people currently sitting on the board. Augmenting, changing or moving around tends to be a much more logical task once the illogical one of picking fantasy people has been completed.

There's a lot to be said for playfullness in consulting - I really enjoy these sessions, and for what it's worth Katharine Hepburn is always on my list (for everything now that I think of it). Why? She's independent, sassy, not afraid to call it as she sees it and can stand up to Humphrey Bogart in a boat while at the time being a four time academy award winner and remaining fabulously feminine. Now I wonder what that says about me eh?
Photo courtesy of rest-in-peace.info

Is the ability to dream a pre-requisite for coaching?

The disclaimer at the beginning of this piece is that I coach – I work primarily with people in business contexts, I have also worked with people in a personal capacity and as a psychotherapist, I’ve seen another side of what I’m about to write about.

So many coaching services are predicated on helping people achieve their dreams – be they wild, moderate or down right sensible. There are lots of approaches, tricks, methodologies etc – but at the end of the day it’s largely about one thing – achieving the dream. I’m sceptical…and the reason I’m sceptical is that many, many people don’t know how to dream. And if you don’t know how to dream – how can a coach or a strategist be of use to you? How can you progress your life if all around you you are getting two messages (1) You are responsible for the choices you make (2) You can make a dream come true –if you have one, that is.

I grew up not knowing how to dream. In my case it was the result of living in a household where one parent suffered from depression. My survival mechanism and what I learned early on was that to dream meant disappointment so it was better to modify that disappointment by not dreaming – therefore I could be in control of what was going on around me. And it worked very well for me. Until I realised that all around me people were achieving, and targeting, and dreaming and promoting and getting help with progressing themselves – I simply didn’t know how to step into that world. I hired a coach at one point who simply tried to bully me through what he thought was my resistance – but I simply didn’t understand how to take that next step and he didn’t have the skills to help me. So I get it when people say they don’t know how to dream.

The desire and expectation cycle looks something like this. When there’s a depressed atmosphere (and this doesn’t have to relate to clinical depression it can be related to a “glass half full” kind of position) there’s a modification of expectation (like I outlined above). It’s simply pointless to want so you have to make alternative arrangements. Then there’s a reluctance to dream anything at all because…well, you never really know if this is going to fall through again. This leads to an ongoing absence of desire – people become self contained and can sometimes end up with a depressed or glass half empty sensibility themselves (thankfully, in my case I avoided this!). Possibilities become limited – have you met those people who no matter how often you make a suggestion can come back with a “that’s not good enough” answer? And as a result you learn that there is no point in dreaming and to live without desire. Now that’s a pretty bleak picture and a cycle like this can be broken but it means a going back to basics approach and not a “here’s an action plan” approach. In many cases people feel guilty for desiring – because they feel they “shouldn’t”.

Helping people dream means giving people permission to “live”; to “succeed”; to “stand out” and ultimately to rediscover who they were before they started to put someone else’s emotional welfare before their own. In business contexts it’s working with underachievers; the anxious and neurotic; the worriers; the perfectionists - holding a space for them while they work out how to connect with their inner sense of “good enough”. It’s poignant and very meaningful work and each time I meet someone who’s confounded by trying to dream someone else’s dream I smile because I know what that feels like and I know how much work it takes to connect. So I don’t offer magical solutions to achieving goals in the absence of inquiring into how it might be that my clients don’t know to dream. It’s only starting from that point that we can move forward together.

Creative isolation or loneliness?

Mark Hollander writes something that resonates with me:

It is interesting that for a field as collaborative as ours just how much time we spend in complete isolation. I look at my weekly time sheets and am amazed at just how much time I am alone, staring at a computer screen. Writers are confronted by a taunting empty document waiting to be filled. The editors I work with can spend as much as 60 hours a week alone in a dark room working on their AVIDs. Directors break out scripts in isolation. And even Producers with the million phone calls that must be made to get one simple shoot set up are still isolated. Long term happiness (not to mention mental health) requires a steady diet of human interaction. We are by nature social creatures... and when denied interaction by the demands of work or the allure of email, it takes it's toll.

I don't experience solitary times as lonely but they can sometimes be isolating so my rules (for myself) around this when I know I am going into one of these phases are:

1. Make plans to meet friends or colleagues for lunch on a regular basis


2. Pick up the phone and chat with a friend or colleague either about the work or about a social matter at least once a day


3. Make sure to get out of the office for a walk, coffee or some other "outside" activity during the working day


4. Recognise the difference between needing to talk to think and needing to talk to forget!


5. Mind the boundary around time because it often blurrs when there's nobody to remind me the working day is over

How long before a blogger sues a company for not being hired?

I was a guest on Saturday with Susan McReynolds on RTE 1 this morning in the good company of Damien and Claire. The piece was a general introduction to blogging and why people blog etc but we also touched on issues of privacy and work related matters such as the recent La Petite Anglaise situation (ie workers being suspended and/or fired for blogging). I think this latter one is going to grow and grow. The point I made in the interview is that it's not only how much (if any - and not much in the above example) of a company's information a blogger might reveal it's also about how much of our personal selves we bring into the office even via virtual methods. We have highly codified rules about how we behave in work settings. One of those rules is that emotional or intimate behaviour belongs at the front door. When a "boss" discovers a personal blog they are faced with the reality that the blogger is a whole human being - they can read about who this person is outside of that door and they are then faced with the dilemma of what to do with that information back at base. We can't not know what we know. If I have a personal blog and write salacious details of my comings and goings that has nothing to do with work - is it becoming behaviour? Likewise if I write an innocuous post about various other interests. Am I the kind of person my company want's to hire? What happens when the personalised water cooler conversations are broadcast loud and proud? And what business is it of my employer who or what I am outside of the front door if I am not breaching any confidentialities? What kind of image building do bloggers contribute to by how they blog outside of company hours? How much control can and should employers have over the people who work for them? How much responsibility do bloggers have for what they say and write inside or outside of company time?

Here's my prediction: Employers that don't get blogging will increasingly use information garnered online to make decisions on hiring and one of these days a blogger is going to slap a pre-emptive strike on a company because they failed to hire them due to irrelevant information garnered online. A new type of prejudice will come into the daily parlance and while companies think they have the upper hand right now because most of the focus is on bloggers who reveal company business, I think business in general needs to take a long hard look at the kind of information it is ethically disposed to gathering and using and under what circumstances. Having a policy on blogging is a start (preferably one that is negotiated) but there are much wider ethical issues here which we're only beginning to touch on and it's incumbent on bloggers to be part of that conversation, not merely reacting and responding to it.

You can access the programme by clicking on this link, scoot forward to 41.08 minutes in where our interview begins. Cian from Irish Election did a phone interview towards the end of the programme (scoot forward to 1.25.36 for the beginning of his segment).

Who believes in "not knowing"?

Referencing Fast Company, Shawn over at Anecdote comments:

Andrew says we should be more comfortable with not knowing and I have to admit I don’t entirely know what he means.

Practice admitting when you're stuck or don't know what you're doing (perhaps in safer environments at first)
Open up to others to help you begin to find answers to your challenges.
Begin to notice the sense of freedom that can come from not having to "know" all the time.

For me, the issue is less about being comfortable "not knowing" but more - can I manage the anxiety of not having the answer? It's a bit like our relationship with silence. Most of us find certain kinds of silence uncomfortable - there's an expectation of dread; something awful might happen; I am expected to come up with an answer and if I don't then I'll get into trouble etc. Most people will rush to fill that silence because it can be an awkward place to be. So adopting a position of "not knowing" is, in fact a sophisticated response to managing my own and others' anxiety. My own suggestions for managing those moments are:



1. Talk about the pressure to know - if you are experiencing this the chances are others are too. Naming the pressure to "know" can relieve the tension of "not knowing"


2. Adopt a position of curiosity about the stuckness - what's the useful information contained in the dilemma that is related to the question we can't answer? Very often they are related


3. Stand back from the dilemma and wonder what a stranger looking in at this conversation might see


4. Pay attention to the emotional temperature of the discussion - if necessary, use imagery to describe what's being felt but not being said in the moment


5. Ask yourself - if I don't know the answer - what is the question that is causing us to feel stuck? What is it about the way in which we're asking the question that's evoking "not knowing"?



So far from "not knowing" - those moments offer a creative way of engaging with what we do know - we just need to pay attention to different kinds of communication.

Roping clients in

Thankfully we have a great working relationship so I moved into coach mode (with her permission) and we looked at what the gaps and the attention to outcomes was about. A complex political environment, uncertainty about her own position, a distrust of how well the consultation process we had designed was going etc all conspired to make her cautious about trusting her own and my instincts and processes for getting the outcome in the end. The process we designed was based on my rules for dynamic participation and was effectively about listening to the conversations with participants and modifying our consulting approach in response – allowing the process to unfold organically if you will. Cathy talks about this and quotes a section from Getting Real which really speaks to me about the value of holding back:

It's a Problem When It's a Problem
"Don't waste time on problems you don't have yet. Do you really need to worry about scaling to 100,000 users today...?"

Just Wing It
"Bottom Line: Make decisions just in time, when you have access to the real information you need."
"Real things lead to real reactions. And that's how you get to the truth."

Work in iterations
"Let the app grow and speak to you. Let it morph and evolve. Instead of banking on getting everything right upfront, the iterative process lets you continue to make informed decisions as you go along. The result is real feedback and real guidance..."

Photo credit

We're on earth - there's no cure for that

When Adam Phillips' American publishers were planning a US edition of his book Going Sane, they insisted on giving it an upbeat subtitle. The idea drove him, if not insane, then to distraction. "The woman at the publishers said to me: 'How about Maps of Happiness.' I thought she was joking, so I said: 'How about Maps Against Happiness?' And she said: "I don't think so. Against is such a negative word.'

The proposed subtitle rankled because Phillips is against guidebooks to happiness. "A culture that is obsessed with happiness must really be in despair, mustn't it? Otherwise why would anybody be bothered about it at all?" asks the psychoanalyst, closing his eyes as he does repeatedly during the interview when he wants to clinch a thought, and then leaning forward to put his head in his hands. "It's become a preoccupation because there's so much unhappiness. The idea that if you just reiterate the word enough and we'll all cheer up is preposterous.

Is he saying suffering is necessary to the examined life? No: suffering is not essential. It's just unavoidable. All forms of sufferings are bad but some are unavoidable. We need to come to terms with them or be able to bear them.

I've looked at them. They seem to me to be the problem rather than the solution.

It's like [Beckett's play] Endgame: 'We're on Earth. There's no cure for that.

Where's the humanity in organisations?

There's a great thought provoking post at Anecdote that asks the question - are organisations losing their humanity? I'm going to re-post Andrew's piece here with my own thoughts to follow:

For some time now we have wondered whether organisations may be starting to lose their humanity. Maybe its a good question whether they ever had it, but the “Time is money” metaphor predominant in business today seems to have a lot to answer for. Tick Tock. To busy to spend time in dialogue. To busy to explore, we need to know the outcome. “How are you today” – “Busy”. To busy. Time is money.

And then, what about the “no asshole” rule suggested recently by Harvard professor, Bob Sutton.

Don’t hire assholes regardless of their earning potential and if someone has developed into one, help them see the light or get rid of them.

Its interesting and ironic that things have gotten so bad that we need to become more mindful of assholes and asshole behaviour in organisations.

And all this is not without cost. Organisations should care. As Leon Gettler a senior business journalist and blogger at The Age has found:

Workplace bullying is estimated to cost Australian business in excess of $3 billion a year and employers could be liable under a stack of laws, including Occupational Health and Safety, discrimination and workers' compensation.

So, I wonder, are organisations losing their humanity? What do you think?

Not withstanding serious infringements (which should be dealt with under existing laws anyway) a lot of what ends up in formal processes is ordinary behaviour which generally has at its root one of three issues (each one leads to the other if they are not attended to)
I am hurt
I am disappointed
I am angry

Let's start listening to those conversations first and putting in place mechanisms for attending to them before any formal processes get underway. We need a “before” process which looks at the systemic issues behind behaviour that is deemed to be “inhumane” – I don’t believe that people come to work having made a firm decision that this is how they will be at work today – there is always a more sophisticated picture and legal processes, while important sometimes, rarely deliver a win-win for anyone. They really are the end game. The processes I’ve designed (with brave and risk taking clients!) have done that – allowed room for the feelings to be vented, looked at individual and systemic responsibility and allowed everyone to contribute to a better solution. But I also know that those clients were unusual - it's not everyone who is able to unpack the emotional environment in which they are working and then wonder what their contribution to that is. But I'm hopeful...so longs as organisations are networks of people - they will always be humane!

Is a coach coachable?

Over at the Fast Company Michael Docherty is looking for a coach and he's facing some challenges that are ringing bells for me because I've been thinking in the last few months that perhaps I need to work with a coach myself but I keep procrastinating - Is a coach coachable?

So it was with great apprehension that I've just undertaken my personal search for a 'business coach' to help me regain focus and take my own business to a higher level....Yet while I've faced a lot of challenges in my career (including some corporate business turnaround experience), this time has been different. I've personalized it, become so obsessed with it that I've become fearful of the inevitable failures along the way. I've let my perfectionism get the better of me and it's slowed me down even more. So, that's why I'm willing to give this business coaching thing a try. And besides, I'm the CEO, so if I'm not coachable, I still don't have to fire myself (but maybe the coach will have a different opinion).

First interview: a sympathetic ear, a clinical background and philosophy of purpose-driven life (vs. goal-driven life). All in all sounds like a good fit, reasonably coherent and practical. But $3600 for 3 months of weekly 45 minute phone calls?? Ouch.

Second interview: Here's a walking example of 'if you can't do, coach'. Proud of the fact he's getting coached right now, and he's just back from a coaching conference. Ready to spew out all of the buzzwords and quick-fixes he just learned. Only $500/month, but no thanks.

Third interview: Scheduled a time, then moved it. Twice. Scolded me for by email for not confirming the final time (which I had). I re-sent my response. Sent me another note claiming to have found my original, but not acknowledging my re-sent note. Now hasn't responded with the time. I haven't heard the fees yet, but perhaps I can bartar for the help she needs in client management and time management. No thanks.

Staying Sane When You Work From Home

Some time ago Mark Hollander from Coaching Creative Minds, in a comment on this post, asked me

What advice would you offer to those individuals who work at home? They have to *force* themselves out of the house. And they sometimes report it to me as thought it were a personal short-coming. Might they consider this it a "good mental health habit" like "brushing your teeth". There's no judgment there. You have to do it or you get cavities. You have to go out regularly if you work at home to keep things in balance?

I discovered this for myself when writing up my Masters’ dissertation and now that I’m writing up a paper to send to my PhD supervisor – I get very creative about distraction and procrastination strategies. Because I don’t have a group of peers or colleagues around me to chat with the day sometimes disappears and before I know it I have written 4 blog posts, done the laundry and have no word count worth talking about when it comes to my main task. So far so normal eh?

The real issue comes when it’s past 6 O’Clock and technically personal time. The guilt kicks in “I should have more done”; “I can’t go out and meet friends because I’ve wasted the day” and the inner dialogue proceeds. (I'm not assuming that everyone's boundary is 6pm, but I do think there needs to be a defined time between work and play!)
This entire conversation in my head can turn quite pathological – and I have also seen it with clients. The inability to manage the boundary between work and personal time means they blend together with neither being productive. We need the water cooler conversations, the trips for a coffee in our work lives as social encounters that get us out of our own self referring worlds. Sometimes our pathological chat can lead to a self perpetuating perfectionism that never gets addressed – comparing what we’re doing to what someone else is struggling with builds camaraderie and can be sustaining in the tough times – those who work from home need to develop a system for sustenece in the absence of those casual work rituals.

So in answer to Mark’s question I would say:

• Strategically Socialise: Working from home, particularly if you work alone can drive you crazy – we all need social interation so you are going to have to deliberately and strategically manufacture that for yourself if you are a home worker. Pick up the phone, make an arrangement to meet a friend for coffee or lunch.


• Prioritise the Personal: It’s never “if” you go out of the house if you are working from home it’s always “when” – you’d never stay tied to your chair in the office at work? Why would you do that if your office happens to be in your home? Schedule a workout at the gym or the pool into your diary directly before or after your work day and don’t negotiate on that unless it’s a world war 3 emergency.


• Creatively Rejuvenate: If the work is not flowing give yourself permission to take a guilt free hour/day off. Unproductive time off is simply guilt time and leads to more pathologising and no creative rejuvenation.


• Ritualise: Create rituals around the beginning and ending of your work day – this is particularly pertinent if you don’t have an official work space in your home. I sometimes burn different aromatherapy oils to transition from one space to another. Clients of mine dress in a particular way if they are in work mode and another when they are not – simply to create a boundary.

Tips for Better Tenders

If you are in the consulting business you are going to do a lot of tendering for work. A good quality Terms of Reference (TOR) from a potential client is a joy to behold. It gives me the opportunity to ask two critical questions (a) Am I the right consultant for the job? and (b) Can I, on the basis of the information provided, compete creatively?

Why, oh why are so many of the TOR documents I see so badly constructed? Isn’t it in the best interests of all parties that the client gets good quality, creative, impressive and comparable tenders so that the right decision can be made? I’ve seen TORs with no information on the scope of the assignment, the duration of the assignment, the context out of which the project is being conceived, little or no information on the desired outcome and the most frequent one – a request for a feasibility study and a development plan for the outcome? So here are my top tips for clients wishing to generate the best quality tendering information on which to base their decision.

• Disclose the budget. Yes, you heard me correctly. If not the full amount then a bandwidth. The reason? If you give all tenderers the budget then you immediately have a benchmark with which to compare like with like. How I spend that budget will give you a clear indication of whether I’ve thought through the assignment thoroughly or not. Competition on price is a very limited way of selecting the best person to work with you.

• If you can’t disclose the budget, disclose the total number of consulting days you reckon this assignment will take – again, you’ll get a better idea of how individual tenderers will address your dilemma and utilise your resources.

• Don’t ask for a feasibility study and a development or action plan. A feasibility study means I can take your money and tell you that this project isn’t feasible. If you want an action plan as well then you’ve already made your mind up that the project is feasible.

• Be clear about the questions you want to ask and allow the tenderer to demonstrate their creativity in coming up with a methodology for tackling them. Too often TORs focus on methodology as distinct from purpose.

• Tell me why you are commissioning this piece of work – what’s the history? What’s the context? Why is this assignment of importance to you?

• Tell me what deliverables you expect.

• What is your desired outcome? Fixed? Flexible? A process? Tell me what you want to be different as a result of undertaking this assignment.

• If you are going to call me for interview give me some idea of when that might be – that way I can mark it in my diary.

Tony & Gordon - The Ideal Family Business?

The Tony Blair-Gordon Brown drama is such a fine example of the dilemmas facing family businesses – albeit on a much larger canvas. By family business I not only mean a business that is started and operated by a family but also those that are run by close colleagues. In both – the boundaries between what’s personal and what’s professional are very closely aligned. Think for a moment about your own family. Think about the innate ability of your (insert appropriate person here) to push precisely that button that makes you revert to being 10….now think about that person being a work colleague, boss or staff member and you are only scratching the surface of what working in a family business can be like.

The biggest challenge facing family businesses is that of succession. At what point does “Parent” move over and let “Child” take over the operation? Is it when s/he dies? Does s/he have to commit suicide? Can s/he plan that at some point in the future he will step aside and oversee an orderly transition. Unfortunately the latter happens less often than you would think.

In the first instance there’s never a right time – the second generation has to wait until their Parent is dead in order to step into running the operation. It’s a constant waiting role for the “top job”…(another prominent family in the UK springs to mind..)…and the reality is it may never arrive if the second generation departs (either through death, resignation or other). It may also generate fantasies of “murder” – hoping that someone or something else takes out the leader so that the second generation may step in.

In the second scenario the Parent must commit “suicide” – i.e. killing themselves off as head of the family in order that the next generation may live.

Children can find it difficult to leave the family home and build lives of their own - add to this the guilt of any “Child” wanting to avoid it all by not participating in the business (i.e. abandoning the family); how that gets talked (or not talked about) and suddenly there are Shakesperian dramas that sound very pertinent.

Why does this sound so dramatic? Suicide/murder/succession/power/politics/guilt – they all weave a very dramatic context in which identity and role are negotiated and acted out. Parent isn’t only the head of the family – s/he is head of the business. If s/he steps down as the business leader – what does this mean for their role as the leader of the family – will s/he still be respected? Will s/he still maintain a powerful position in the family – will anyone listen to him or her?

How then can a second generation evolve into being who they are if they are waiting to literally and metaphorically step into their parent's shoes? Is it possible to be your “own person” if the role has been already defined? If your Parent always knows better? It’s one thing thinking about the Super-Ego as a psychological concept and another if the Super-Ego is staring at you across the board room table!

Now back to Tony and Gordon for a moment. Tony has said he will leave (some day) he won’t say exactly when so the family is getting anxious. Meanwhile the second generation (Gordon) is waiting, and waiting and waiting. Recent news reports talk of the mounting frustration in the family that Tony won’t roll over. There is talk of “murder” and of wishing Tony would do the “decent thing” and commit “suicide” by stepping down. On the surface there is a desire for an orderly transition, beneath the surface there are dramatic tensions worthy of a Greek tragedy.

I’ve always enjoyed working with family businesses because it is the closest we get to seeing where the personal and professional overlap. It’s not enough to know how business works – you also have to know how families work. Boundary building; core issues of life and death; identity; ownership and leadership are critical issues to be worked with. At the end of the day – it’s about working out what works for the business and what works for the family – sometimes, but not always they are the same thing. But in a family business it’s not possible to say “it’s business, not personal” because it’s always “personal” and sometimes “business.”

Another life lesson on family business from politics

A propos of a previous post - Tony and Gordon as Family Business - on the day in which Tony Blair, father of the Labour Party in the UK and current Prime Minister announces he will go (just not yet though so hang on again for a date...), Mary Harney, Mother of the Irish Progressive Democrats, Coalition partner and Minister for Health takes the country by surprise by announcing her resignation as leader of the party. Nominations for a replacement are due next Monday - no waiting, no agonising about naming the date - no scandal, no gossip, she gets to control her departure, the "children" get to plan her replacement, clean, clean, clean...Who says there aren't any life lessons from politics?

Living between the black and white edges

Are creatives really all that special? Mark seems to think so and has a post outlining the top 10 characteristics of creative personalities. Looking through the list each of the ten have one thing in common – an ability to manage ambivalence. Now before I go any further, I am one of those people who believes that everyone is creative – it’s a matter of finding out how your creativity manifests itself that’s the tricky bit (and that’s also very doable). So many people spend their lives working at creatively draining pursuits which reinforces the stereotype that there are certain professions where creativity lies and others where it doesn’t.

Put it like this – a successful bank robber is a pretty creative individual in my humble opinion, as are obsessive and neurotic people who have to choose an outlet to express themselves in that way. But I digress.

The point I was attempting to make before I got side tracked is that the ability to manage ambivalence i.e. recognise that perfection doesn’t exist – is a central characteristic of maturity. Think about it for a minute – perfectionists are only perfect at one thing – being imperfect…the rest of us muddle along making decisions; weighing up options; managing the fantasies and realities – all of that is a creative edeavour and I would venture so far as to say that maturity is an expression of that creative ability to be in the multi-coloured pieces between the black and white edges. The real trick is finding an outlet for that ability and that’s where coaching can be really helpful. Mark coaches creative types and I wonder if he’d ever admit to meeting non creative types in the creative industries? I know I have, and I’ve also met amazingly creative and resourceful people in the “non” creative industries. Our creativity doesn’t have anything to do with what we “do” – it can do, but aligning personal and occupational creativity is the real challenge and one that I love when working with clients. How many people do you know that live between the black and white edges?

PS: Speaking of creativity I've added a link to my Flickr photos in the side bar!

A Slice of the Pie?

Later this evening I'm participating in Enterprise Offaly Week. I'll be in the Tullamore Court Hotel, Co Offaly running a workshop entitled "A Slice of the Pie?" aimed at helping people in the creative industries identify and maximise opportunities for commissioning. Increasingly Enterprise Boards in Ireland are looking outside of mainstream business for ways of helping their clients achieve success and with the range and amount of commissioning opportunities now available in the public sector it's a timely seminar.

Stop by and say hello if you're about.

A 3 Point Plan for getting to the top floor

Do you have an elevator pitch about your business? I have tried and failed (repeatedly) to invent one. I sometimes think I need to be in a very tall building where the lift occasionally goes to the top floor.

I’ve written here previously about Dynamic Participation – the principles that inform how I facilitate and consult and I’ve refined those 10 points into a 3 point plan for working with groups

1 Keep the process in the room
2 Consult with curiosity
3 Respect the resistence

Will that get me to the top floor?

On Learning from Challenging Assignments

Sometimes the worst situations offer the best learning. In a gathering of colleagues recently we shared stories of some challenging consulting assignments. Yes, there were difficult clients and some harrowing stories, but each of my colleagues had reflected on their experiences, learned some lessons and allowed the learning to inform how they are in relationship with clients subsequently.

I extrapolated some of my learning from reflecting on my own practice and from participating in the above discussion and here are some of the questions I ask myself when the going seems tough.

• How am I being “used” here?
• In the service of who’s truth and reality?
• How is what’s happening to me relevant to my client’s dilemma?
• In what way is this situation my client’s experience?
• What have I contributed to the situation?
• What problem did my contribution solve for me?
• What’s useful about my dilemma?

What kinds of questions would help you reflect on your practice?

The art of reframing

According to the tenets of DIY psychotherapy, the idea is to re-record the past by repeating "I am a beautiful, creative, successful person" 50 times a day. And no one, except the congenitally malign, would think it remotely appropriate to pipe up: "Actually, you're rather plain and I can absolutely see why you would have been impossible as a child."

Apparently people lie on their cvs because we live in a culture populated by diy psychotherapists and

psychoanalytically derived psychotherapy, when patients are coaxed to produce a more helpful account of how they got to be the person they are. Damaging beliefs that have become internalised ("I was a bad child who made my mother unhappy") are reframed so they become less toxic ("My mother was often depressed, which meant she found it difficult to say she loved me").

So goes the argument from Kathryn Hughes in last Saturday’s Guardian. The piece really irritated me because of the sloppy transitions and casual way in which the genuine art of reframing is now a co-conspiritor with reality tv, makeover programmes and virtually any other media fabrication that makes it possible to avoid work in the hope of an instant makeover.

Interestingly Ms Hughes seems to think that there is only one version of the truth and re-framing is a way of avoiding it. The whole point of reframing is to see a situation from disparate perspectives. When we’re locked into seeing the world in one way our choices disappear and we are immediately disempowered. Most good psychotherapists will encourage clients to not only see their own “stuckness” from a different perspective, but also their own less than useful behaviour. It’s not about avoiding “reality” it’s an acknowledgement that reality looks different depending on who’s shoes your standing in.

Re-framing is one of the most useful interventions I can make as a consultant and if a client is willing to look at their situation differently – well, that means change is already a reality and the work has already begun.

Life lessons from Tony Soprano & David Chase

David Chase made a rare public appearance last night at a public interview at the Centre for Communication in New York. Before a packed house (at which yours truly had a front row seat) he talked about the evolution of The Sopranos, how similar Olivia is to his own mother and how that relationship sent him into psychotherapy. I was able to share with him my view that the therapy scenes in The Sopranos are the most accurate description of "real" therapy I've seen on the screen to date.

Chase seemed genuinely surprised at how popular the series is outside of America after people from (Ireland), Italy, Israel, Cuba and further afield shared their enthusiasm for the show. After much discussion about it being quintessentially an "American" tale it struck me that it's a very small family story and ultimately it doesn't matter what kind of control we have in our external lives - it's generally the internal stories that perplex us. Tony is a smart guy and applies the learning he gains in therapy about his family of origin to his business family.

Not all of us have a sabotaging mother like Olivia, but we've all got a family story that we bring with us into the work place. Some of us join the dots and make the connections between our family of origin and how our experience therein influences how we are at work - others don't and relive many of the episodes from the past in the present. We mightn't like Tony's lifestyle but in my mind there's no doubt that the success of the show internationally (apart from the stupenduous writing) is that he's everyman - neither all good nor all bad; generally in control in his external working life and somewhat at sea in his internal and emotional life. I, for one, am eagerly anticipating the final 9 episodes due to broadcast in March.

Photo credit: Centre for Communication

The loneliness of the long term therapist

There's a paradox in clinical practice. I get to know people very well, but they can never be my friends. This bothered me at first, but it doesn't so much any more. If there were any way of being friends, then the work we do together would become unbearable, and therefore impossible. It's a sacrifice we mutually make to make it possible to do something useful. It's a loss I've accepted.

That's a quote from a new psychoanalytically informed blog Working Through (the author of which I met while in New York recently). I recognise the dilemma he's talking about - less that clients can never be "friends" but more how difficult it can be to have a normal social life if you are a therapist. You can't drop into the local pub on a Friday night and have a casual chat about your week's work...Confidentiality is primary and those conversations are kept for Supervision. As a result most therapists I know only talk about the work with other therapists and this can make for a self referential system that is on one hand supportive and on the other unhealthy at the same time.

Having said that it was a real treat for me to attend the regional meeting of ISPSO in New York and to join psychodynamically orientated colleagues for a day and a half while we talked about the work in our own shorthand and in a way that allowed me to "breathe". I find these oportunities essential punctuations in my working year that remind me about my motivation, orientation and interests. They allow me to go back into other systems and not feel as isolated. The loneliness of the long distance consultant is eased for another 12 months at least!

Barbara Ehrenreich and the cult of coaching

One of my holiday reads was Barbara Ehrenreich's Bait and Switch in which she spends a year researching America's working poor. She goes undercover as a white collar worker looking for a job and one of the first chapters in her book is about her search for a career coach - it makes for shocking reading.

Fortunately there are about 10,000 people eager to assist me - "career coaches" - who, according to the coaching websites, can help you discover your true occupational "passion" retool your resumé, and hold your hand at every step along the way.

She meets with a variety of coaches offering watered down counselling and new age religion. Others are in need of severe coaching themselves; one in particular invites her to "design me as your best coach". They are a sorry bunch and most of them seem to have stepped into coaching as a way of avoiding the very thing that Ehrenreich is looking for - a job.

Not all of us who coach are as disconnected from the real world as the people Ehrenreich met but I've met a few dodgy practitioners in my day (both as client and peer). No amount of trickery, circle of life drawings or re-engineered Ennegram frameworks can compensate for expertise about human systems and a real idea of how the world of work is constituted. Most of the people Ehrenreich met seemed to be afraid of developing a working alliance with their clients, more interested in peddling their own view of how the world should be rather than listening to what their clients needed. A working alliance is an absolute necessity for any kind of successful coaching - if it doesn't exist then how can a coach or therapist or consultant say the challenging things at the right time in order to help a client?

I wonder about the amount of "coach training" out there - it seems to me that the people making money out of coaching are the ones running training courses. I'm unsure as to whether the coaching "industry" has a long term future - populated as it is by so many people who turn to the profession as a way of reinventing themselves and in the absence of any real kind of regulation. (There's a touch of locking the door after the horse has bolted about most accreditation schemes I've examined and I'm sceptical of any accreditation scheme that can accredit people who have "trained" over and above people who have practised) - but that's a rant for another day.

Why are so few Irish arts organisations blogging?

Why are so few Irish arts organisations blogging? Apart from Film Base and some individual artists I can't think of another Irish arts organisation that's talking to its audience base via a blog. What better way to generate interest and an audience in a company's work than to blog? Here are ten things I would like to see Irish arts organisations doing in the service of audience building and artist development

1. Release podcasts interviews with the cast or author of new plays

2. Release the soundtrack for a show as a download (the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in NYC did exactly this recently

3. Start a discussion about contemporary art in advance of exhibitions as a gateway for newcomers to the artform

4. Invite audience members to guest blog and review your work

5. Invite readers to create their own work – poetry, prose, photography in response to a new production or presentation

6. Allow audiences into the art making process with regular posts about the rehearsal process from the perspective of various members of the company e.g. designer and choreographer etc

7. Use blogs as archives so that audiences can check out the history of the company and its relationship with people who see the work

8. Create word of mouth on a performance by asking readers the only marketing question that matters “would you recommend this to a friend?”

9. Use the virtual space as a gallery or curatorial space for artists – giving readers a front row seat for the show

10. Ask readers how they want to engage with your work – online discussions with artists? Advance notice of booking options? Use the medium as an idea generation space

More coaching kicking from the Washington Times

More depressing coverage on coaching from the Washington Times. The piece offers some tips for the newly elected Democrats.

Whoever wins, they're all going to need to find some way to work together, because nobody's going anywhere soon. They will need some kind of referee -- the sort of pragmatic, dark- suited creature you find gliding through the halls of massive American corporations. They'll need a workplace coach.

"I'd get them in the room and say, 'Okay, people, we've got a bad situation,' " says one of these workplace coaches, Douglas LaBier. " 'Let's take a step back.' "Imagine it: Nancy, Steny and Jack in what LaBier calls a "safe environment." We see a room with lots of couches. There might be some talk about common goals and "trust," LaBier says. There might be a little yelling. We imagine one of them might, in a fit of frustration, bite a corduroy pillow. This may sound fanciful, but consider that Fortune 500 types are sometimes reduced to this sort of thing. Just because one has a brisk, professional appearance does not mean one is immune from the uglier human emotions. Heather Bradley, who co-founded something called the Flourishing Company, said she once had a "four-hour discovery session" with two feuding top-level executives. (Workplace coaches are fond of a particular sort of lingo; they talk about "discovery sessions" and about "sub-optimizing" and being "change-agnostic.")

Ouch!

Cultural problems are rarely "out there"

I picked up this piece from Johnnie's blog and I think it's brilliant. The original quote is from the Southwest Airlines blog.

Cultural problems are almost never “out there;” they are almost always “in here.” If we all focus on the part of the Culture over which we have control – our own behaviors – the rest will tend to take care of itself.

Imagine what the world of work would be like if instead of looking externally, we focussed on our own contribution to the successes and challenges in the workplace?

Over-indulging with Ted and Gregory Colbert

“In exploring the shared language and poetic sensibilities of all animals, I am working towards rediscovering the common ground that once existed when people lived in harmony with animals. The images depict a world that is without beginning or end, here or there, past or present.”

Christmas is a season of over indulgence and to mark the occasion, I've been over-indulging in the feast of video podcasts from the TED Conference - a once a year gathering of some of the brightest and creative people on the planet. The podacasts are an extraordinary collection of ideas, sensibilities, creativity and down right good viewing. But one of the most amazing is that of artist Gregory Colbert whose Ashes and Snow Project

is an ongoing project that weaves together photographic works, 35mm films, art installations and a novel in letters. With profound patience and an unswerving commitment to the expressive and artistic nature of animals, he has captured extraordinary interactions between humans and animals. His 21st-century bestiary includes more than 40 totemic species from around the world. Since he began creating his singular work of Ashes and Snow, Colbert has mounted more than 30 expeditions to locations such as India, Egypt, Burma, Tonga, Sri Lanka, Namibia, Kenya, Antarctica, the Azores and Borneo.

I wasn't aware of his work prior to coming across him at TED and the images in this film are some of the most beautiful I've ever encountered. So if over-indulgence at this time of the year can yield this kind of quality then I'm all for the festive season. See what you think (and while you're at it, check out the TED blog for more goodies.

Amazon's Best Business Books of 2006

Check out Amazon's Best Business Books of 2006.

1. The Long Tail by Chris Anderson

2. Making Globalization Work by Joesph Stiglitz

3. Success Built To Last by Porras, Emery and Thompson

4. The Starfish and The Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom

5. Knowledge and The Wealth of Nations by David Warsh

6. Origin of Wealth by Eric Beinhocker

7. Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

8. Mavericks at Work by Bill Taylor and Polly LaBarre

9. Changing Minds by Howard Gardner

10. Setting The Table by Danny Meyer

If I'm not mistaken there isn't a single female author in the lot (ok one is jointly authored by a woman but you know what I mean)...What on earth is this saying about the state of business, authorship, publishing, online buying, Amazon's book pickers, customers, management etc in the 21st century?

Hat Tip Leading Questions

Stuart by Saatchi

Stuart is the latest innovation from the art collecter Charles Saatchi in the UK. It's a virtual gallery open to Student Artists wishing to upload images of their work for viewing and sales. While nothing can compare with the experience of seeing art in it's natural (?) environment (for digital artists the cyber space may in fact be the natural environment) - there is much to be said for a virtual space that allows one to wander through the imagery in the comfort of one's own home - hopefully leading to enough curiosity to explore the work in real time and in real life.

The site has a blog, gallery, social networking gizmos (i.e. a MySpace feel in terms of adding "friends" and a chat area etc), listings and a vast array of visual artists from around the globe sharing images, engaging in discussions and (hopefully) selling their work. It seems straightforward enough in terms of signing up. It looks like a fairly substantial site and I'm curious to know how it's serviced, used and the costs involved in running it. I frequently hear artists asking for this kind of environment as a showcase/networking tool but I've rarely seen costings or useage data to see whether it works in practice so I'll be watching developments there closely to see if it turns out to be the marketplace that artists are expecting.

Santa's Performance Appraisal

The Cranky Middle Manager has posted a performace appraisal of Santa (hat tip to Lisa for this one). There are some great observations including:

Employee continues to excel at interpreting vague orders and communicating changing needs to his direct reports.

and

360 degree feedback continues to be solid, although there were complaints on the confidential employee hotline of reprisals (lumps of coal rather than bonuses) to complainers or those considered “naughty”. No credible witnesses have come forth.

Merry Christmas everyone - see you the other side of Christmas.

No more persecutory New Year Resolutions

If we’re not making New Year resolutions today then we’re actively “not” making resolutions – there’s no escaping the pressure to think about doing things differently in 2007. But so often, New Year resolutions turn into a persecutory list of “shoulds” as distinct from a list of “coulds” and some time around mid January we give up and say “what’s the point?” I don’t want to live my life as a “to do” list so this year I’m trying to think about it differently.

Most resolutions or plans are really a way of us articulating how we want to “feel” when we’ve achieved the task in hand. Yes – we’ll have tangible outcomes etc but more often or not we’re trying to achieve a gut reaction, a new sensibility that tells us that things are “right”; on the “right track”; we feel confident or secure that there’s a shape to what is about to unfold….Lists are a way of managing our anxiety about the unknown that is the future.

So for 2007 I’m not making any lists of things I should do. Instead I’m making a list of how I want to feel as the year unfolds and so far it looks like this.

1 I want to feel confident that the work I’m doing matters to my clients and to me

2 I want to feel excited by the relationships I create with clients, co-workers and those I bump into along the way in 2007

3 I want to feel intellectually stimulated by the projects I embark on

4 I want to feel “full” intellectually, emotionally and creatively by the conversations I participate in in 2007

5 I want to feel satisfied that the choices I make in all areas of my work life are nurturing, healthy and contribute to my growth and deveolopment as a consultant

6 I want to reach December 2007 happy that I was present – really present to my self, clients and colleagues throughout the year.

How do you want to feel about your professional self as 2007 unfolds?

What are you optimistic about?

The 2007 Edge Question is

What Are You Optimistic About? Why?

160 people answered that question and their answers can be found here. I was particularly taken with Paul Saffo's (Technology Forecaster; Consulting Associate Professor, Stanford University) response in which he says that Humankind Is Particularly Good At Muddling:

I am a short-term pessimist because the Millennium is still clouding our collective thinking and may yet inspire the addled few to try something truly stupid, like an act of mega-terror or a nuclear exchange between nations. But I am a long-term optimist because the influence of the Millennium is already beginning to fade. We will return to our moderate senses as the current uncertainties settle into a comprehensible new order. I am an unshakable optimist because in its broadest strokes, the future will be what the future has always been, a mix of challenges, marvels and endless surprise. We will do what we have always done and muddle our collective way through. Humankind is particularly good at muddling, and that is what makes me most optimistic of all.

Other contributors include:

BRIAN ENO
Artist; Composer; Recording Producer: U2, Talking Heads, Paul Simon; Recording Artist
And Now The Good News

Which brings me to my main reason for optimism: the ever-accelerating empowerment of people. The world is on the move, communicating and connecting and coalescing into influential blocks which will move power away from national governments with their short time horizons and out into vaguer, more global consensual groups. Something like real democracy (and a fair amount of interim chaos) could be on the horizon.

The Internet is catalyzing knowledge, innovation and social change, and, in manifestations such as Wikipedia, proving that there are other models of social and cultural evolution: that you don't need centralised top-down control to produce intelligent results.

CHRIS ANDERSON
Curator, TED Conference
Systemic Flaws in the Reported World View

Paradoxically, one of the biggest reasons for being optimistic is that there are systemic flaws in the reported world view. Certain types of news — for example dramatic disasters and terrorist actions — are massively over-reported, others — such as scientific progress and meaningful statistical surveys of the state of the world — massively under-reported.

STEVEN PINKER
Psychologist, Harvard University; Author, The Blank Slate
The Decline of Violence

Cruelty as popular entertainment, human sacrifice to indulge superstition, slavery as a labor-saving device, genocide for convenience, torture and mutilation as routine forms of punishment, execution for trivial crimes and misdemeanors, assassination as a means of political succession, pogroms as an outlet for frustration, and homicide as the major means of conflict resolution—all were unexceptionable features of life for most of human history. Yet today they are statistically rare in the West, less common elsewhere than they used to be, and widely condemned when they do occur.

MIHALYI CSIKSZENTMIHALYI
Psychologist; Director, Quality of Life Research Center, Claremont Graduate University; Author, Flow
We Are Asking And Answering

I am optimistic for the simple reason that given the incredible odds against the existence of brains that can ask such questions, of laptops on which to answer them, and so on — here we are, asking and answering!

It's a treasure trove of wonderful stuff (hat tip TED Blog) and got me wondering just what I'm optimistic about in 2007. How about you?

Sabotaging Success

New Year is an interesting time if you are a researcher with an interest in disappointment. All around me, I see people creating New Year’s resolution lists – many of those people know in their hearts that it is an academic exercise. Others are determined to stick to their guns and make real and lasting changes.

The academic and scholarly world is full of research on “change” – how to do it, how to manage it, how to avoid it, how to surrender to it. New Year is the time when we’re all confronted (in a cultural sense) with the opportunity to opt in or opt out. Like many people, I have a never-changing list of things I want to do differently each year. The ritual of (again) putting down familiar projects (must get fit … must….) is good for a laugh if nothing else – but what happens that those lists get recycled? Why is it in our personal or work lives so difficult to be different?

We don’t like change…unconsciously we do our best to avoid it. Change means difference, difference means unfamiliarity and unfamiliarity means anxiety, therefore staying the same is the safest bet. We’re sophisticated animals when it comes to sabotaging change. Ultimately we’re afraid … and taking any kind of leap in the dark with that kind of anxiety is sometimes too much to ask.

One of the ways in which we sabotage change is to create an image so idealised that it’s impossible to reach. Those New Year lists with a new you – fit, healthy and all in under six months may look fantastic – but they probably aren’t achievable in that time frame, so before we start we’ve undermined our chances of success. But keeping that perfect picture perfect is also important. If we keep the image perfect then we always have it…we can protect it by never trying to reach it – if we did try and subsequently failed then the image would be lost – we’d be confronted with reality. We can’t bear to disappoint ourselves so we create sophisticated ruses to maintain the idealisation and avoid the disappointment.

Many change agents create the picture perfect ideal of what the organisation will look like in its new form. Their task is to substitute what is known (and may or may not be working) with an idealised image of how it could be. Like New Year resolutions – the intention is worthy but the attempts to get there may be rocky because results don’t come as quickly or as packaged as we imagine them. Being idealistic as distinct from realistic only increases the gap between both and raises the level of disappointment. Idealisation is a way of avoiding consequences. Those consequences are relational – it may be easier to have a fictionalised idea of ourselves and others rather than enter into reality checked relationships with real people, in real situations with real flaws.

So my New Year resolutions have an “ideal” column and a “real” column – there’s a gap between them and I’ll navigate and negotiate my way between both. I’m not willing to let go of the ideal but neither am I willing to sabotage my chances of getting it by not trying – it’s going to be an interesting 12 months!

Unmentionables

Every single person has at least one secret that would break your heart. If we could just remember this, I think there would be a lot more compassion and tolerance in the world

I've become such a lurker over at Post Secret. It's a community arts project where people mail in a secret on a home made postcard to the author. Some of the images and sentiments are extraordinary. Coming, as I do, from a predominantly Catholic country, and as a therapist, the confessional nature of both is familiar to me but there’s something so powerful in the visual representation of unmentionables...more powerful than words alone, more creative than confession and absolution.

Hat tip Psychoa

Drama in Organisations

Over at Anecdote there's an interesting post about Organisational Stories and how organisational myths are a great way of understanding the culture of the system.

Finding an organisation’s myths helps you understand the boundaries and constraints for any new interventions you might have planned. I’ve discovered that myth discovery is simply a matter of asking for stories that lots of people know.

I've shaped many of my interventions and consulting assignments on the basis of unheard organisational stories which have been generated in informal contexts. Sometimes it's important to find a way of telling those stories more publicly but in a way that's respectful of the content and context. I've found that working with professional actors - particularly those who are skilled at devising - is a fantastic way to present those stories back to groups in a way that generates very significant conversation.

In presenting a theatre piece, devised by actors, I'm hoping that the group I'm working with will know that their concerns have been heard and as a result we don't have to open up a difficult conversation that may close down the work rather than open it up.

To date the feedback I'm getting is really positive and clients have spoken about how significant it is to have their "reality" reflected back to them in a dramatic way. I'm looking forward to developing this methodology further and creating more bespoke interventions in organisational contexts.

Managing the relationship between a CEO and a Board of Directors

Managing the relationship between a board of directors and CEO of a charitable organisation can be challenging at the best of times. In my experience difficulties arise when both parties are clear about their individual roles are but are unclear about the overlap and relationship between their role and that of the other. Common questions I hear are:

How does an agenda get constructed for a board meeting? and who has responsibility for this?

Who is responsible for making sure that the relevant compliance material is lodged with the authorities?

How much say does the board have in the day to day work of the organisation?

I generally try to work with CEOs and board members separately and then together to firstly clarify their role and secondly draw out their understandings and expectations of the other's. Taking real life examples of dilemmas and challenges is a great way of testing the theory in advance of having to manage a crisis when there's little time for thinking.

Here's a brief outline of the primary roles and responsibilities of the Board and CEO which can be used to start those conversations about role, responsibilities and the relationship between.

(You can download a PDF copy Here.)

Just showing up isn't enough - are you present?

I spent a couple of days last week with a group of highly creative and artistic people assisting them think at a strategic level about their sector. Like many people in the arts they are passionate, committed, enthusiastic and are not afraid of moving between their personal and professional selves in the service of the task. One of the things I noticed from the outset was how long it took some people to “arrive” both physically and psychologically. Some were late for our sessions and others were on time but not on message. I guessed that many mobile phones were on vibrate or silent and not many had been switched off entirely. (As it turned out, I was right).

This was a really experienced group of practitioners who were interested in the dilemma I reflected back to them about being in the room. I wondered what was going on that made it challenging for people to be really connected in the task. We worked through those challenges and emerged at the end of our work with a manifesto of responsibilities each was willing to sign up to in order to work productively in the future. They recognised that there was important information in not turning the phones off and being psychologically “outside the room”.

Physically “showing up” isn’t enough. The key question is – are you present? Being present requires a psychological and spiritual connection to the work that is happening in the moment and to the people with whom you are working. It requires intimacy and connection and it also means dealing with the fear of being connected. Being connected brings responsibilities and commitments and if we’ve left the phone on or are making ourselves available somewhere else it means our sense of commitment is also somewhere else. Agreements about tasks and decisions will then fail to deliver because that bullet pointed list may be a way of avoiding something deeper.

There was a time at the early stages in my consulting career when this kind of dilemma would have bothered me and I would have tried to “fix it”. These days I see it as a rich opportunity to introduce more of the shadow into the room – if people are willing to have their “resistance” seen then it’s a clue that the time may be right to have a look at what’s important about that resistance.. So it’s not only the participants who need to show up, it’s also the consultant or facilitator who needs to pay attention to what’s actually going on in front of them rather than what they think should be going on. In my own case, the less attention I pay to the detail of the discussion and the more I pay to the context and tone of the discussion the better I am able to work between the levels to create a space where everyone can be present. I can’t make them show up but I can wonder out loud about the quality of presence.

Reflections on therapy from Woody Allen & Dr Niles Crane

Woody Allen and Dick Cabot discuss psychoanalysis...

You know, I never know with Allen as to whether he's found psychoanalysis helpful or not. His creative output has certainly been going around in circles telling the same story for years - maybe he really should ask for a refund?

Meanwhile, what about some insights from Dr Niles Crane? (His song, Hit the Couch, kicks in after 4 minutes of great comedy!).

Love is..

Hat tip to Johnnie for finding the following in Phil Dourado’s free book chapter for February:

Tim Collins, a career soldier, rose to prominence when an impromptu speech he gave to the Irish regiment he commanded in Iraq ended up in newspapers all over the world. Collins says…that “to lead effectively, you have to love people”. Collins goes on to explain ‘love’ as knowing and caring about what motivates people and what is important to them, and helping them fulfil those aspirations at work. This, he says, is a foundation of leadership.

Sharing knowledge, looking after employees’ wellbeing, giving people your time and attention, respecting and acknowledging the contribution of others, all are incontrovertible aspects of good leadership. It only becomes controversial when the ‘L’ word is applied.

"Leadership is emotional. Leadership deals with feelings. Leadership is made up of dreams, inspiration, excitement, desire, pride, care, passion, and love. The areas of our lives where we show the strongest leadership – including our communities, families, organizations, products, services, hobbies, and customers - are where we're most in love." (Jim Clemmer)

Happy Valentine's Day

The Art of Possibility

I've been enjoying Creativity at Work and found this story there about the authors of The Art of Possibility. It's a nice variation on Appreciative Inquiry.

Ben Zander, conductor for the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, and professor at the New England Conservatory of Music, was faced with the same problem every year for 25 years: Teaching students who were in such a chronic state of anxiety over the measurement of their performance, they were reluctant to take creative risks. One night, he sat down with his partner Roz Stone Zander, a therapist, to try to find a solution. They decided the best approach would be to give everyone an A, at the beginning of the course. The A was not intended as a way to measure someone's performance against standards, but as an instrument to open them up to new possibilities.

This didn’t mean students could slack off for the rest of the semester. Students were required to write a letter that began with “Dear Mr. Zander, I got my A because…” and they had to describe in as much detail as possible, how they came to achieve this “extraordinary grade.”

In writing their letters, Zander said students must “place themselves in the future, looking back, and report on all the insights they acquired and the milestones they attained during the year, as if those accomplishments were already in the past. Everything must be written in the past tense. Phrases such as ‘I hope,’ ‘I intend,’ or ‘I will’ must not appear.”

Zander asserts “the A is an invention that creates possibilities for both mentor and student, manager and employee, or for any human interaction.” The A allows teams to accomplish what is possible, and reduces “the disparity in power between them can become a distraction and an inhibitor, drawing energy away from productivity and development.”

Zander doesn’t say what happens to the A when his students don’t pull their weight. His point here is to help people we work with to remove the barriers that block achievement--and to embrace the mindset of giving an A, by letting go of rigid mindsets that keep people pegged.

Zander applied this kind of thinking to his conducting and it transformed him from being a dictator, to an orchestrator of collaboration. This approach opened the door for musicians to speak more freely with him about their concerns -- about the way a piece of music ought to be played, for example, and he discovered that "the player who looks the least engaged may be the most committed member of the group." This new openness in communication had a huge effect on the morale of the orchestra, improving the performance of both conductor and players.

Edit: Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander will be at the Burren Leadership Forum on 21 and 22 July 2007.

A novel solution to family business succession

Saturday’s New York Times (subscription required) carries a story about the 102 year-old Louis Padnos Iron and Metal Company a family owned business who have come up with their own unique solution to the sucession challenge.

The problem for the Padnoses is an age gap. Third-generation members who run the scrap metal company, which employs about 400 people and has annual sales of about $300 million, are in their 50s. They want to work less. But the fourth-generation Padnoses who might someday want to run the place are still only in their teens.

The company hired a philosophy professor to help them

groom six hired managers to become, well, more Padnos-like.

The article goes on to outline the differences between the founding family (politically liberal, middle class and Jewish) and the managers (conservative, working class and from Protestant backgrounds) and the policy adopted by the Padnoses to encourage the new managers to be “part of the family”

The managers were assigned readings of Thoreau, Sophocles and a recent essay on Freud. They spent a long weekend in Chicago seeing plays, touring exhibitions of art and architecture and eating at fancy restaurants. And in recent weeks they have debated how to give away $40,000 of the Padnoses’ money, an exercise in becoming philanthropists.

The article also goes on to say that although the managers are encouraged to think more like the family they are also denied some of the financial information that would give them more of the family’s power and this is where it becomes really interesting from my perspective.

Family businesses are complex places – you can’t avoid the personal because, well family is personal. On one level this looks like a sensible and somewhat philanthropic gesture on the part of the Padnoses on another it could be a way of them never letting go of the family’s way of doing business. How can you act like an owner if you are not an owner? How can you take the responsibility if you’re not given the authority? Family businesses are fascinating places because the sometimes underlying personal relationships that inform all businesses are much more visible - particularly those that affect competition and leadership. It will be interesting to see what happens in this company when the elder generation have truly moved on and that teenage generation are ready to take over..

Death and Divorce in a Digital Age

Online life these days seems predicated on the advantages of the knowledge economy, the value of knowledge management and the assumption that social networking and sharing is a great idea. Ellybabes has a very interesting post (and accompanying PowerPoint presentation) on Death and Divorce in the Digital World. In which she says:

In this new technological age, we are only beginning to notice some recently emerging issues caused by deaths and divorces amongst both geek and non-geek couples and singles.

Nearly everyone these days has large amounts of personal information stored online, whether this is their own websites and complex businesses down to simply e-mail and internet banking at the lower end of the spectrum.

In previous days, when a loved one died it was simply a case of notifying the relevant businesses (banking, service companies, etc) and details of savings and other important possessions were most often held with a solicitor or detailed in the person’s will.

She's asking some interesting questions about the difficulties presented by having so much of our lives online. In the case of death accessing password protected files and accounts can be hugely problematic. Adversarial separations can sometimes result in compromising material being published in cyberspace as an act of revenge.

Ellybabes gives a snapshot of the kinds of digital information that may need to be managed in the event of a separation (of either kind) and they include:

Shared e-mail accounts

Online calendars

Online subscriptions

Expensive PC’s and Display Screens

VOIP numbers

HTPC recordings / VOD accounts

Online DVD rental accounts

Blogs – Advertising revenue

Digital Photographs

Gaming Console profiles (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii)

Intellectual Property

I'm quaintly old fashioned in that I keep passwords for online accounts etc in hard copy format (remember those quaint things called notebooks!). But I haven't seen too many articles and blog posts on the difficulties presented by so much private activity now taking place in encrypted environments. I'm wondering what provisions you have made in the event of an untimely ending?

Achieving your potential

Mayo County Enterprise Board are holding an event on Achieving Your Potential to mark International Womens' Day on 8 March. The location for the event is Pontoon Bridge Hotel. I'll be one of three keynote speakers and the focus of my presentation will be on the emotional factors that help (and sometimes hinder) our ability to achieve our potential. The other two speakers are

Darina Loakman, who runs I am a WHAM who will talk about: Achieving Your Potential: Working From Home

and

Aideen Kane, Television Producer, of GMTV, who will talk about: Achieving Your Potential: The Working Woman

There's a nice video piece here promoting the event created by Darina and the Western People picked up the event this week also.

If you are interested in coming along to the workshop you can contact Nicola Fitzpatrick on 094 9047597 or at nfitzpat@mayococo.ie. Don't forget to say hello if you are there on the night!

Blog Carnival of Management Tips

The latest edition of the Blog Carnival of Management tips (to which I've contributed this post) is over at Mabel and Harry - there are some great posts and I'm realising what a great idea carnivals are for gathering like minded bloggers around communities of interest. Carnivals are where

someone takes the time to find really good blog posts on a given topic, and then puts all those posts together in a blog post called a "carnival".

There are Carnivals for every conceivable topic and the site is a great place to meet new bloggers, gather creative ideas around a specific topic and hopefully have some good conversations along the way.

Blog Carnival on Emotion and Business

I'd like to host Blog Carnival on Emotion at work. If you'd like to contribute an article then click on the

Carnival Submission Form before Friday 16th March 2007 - publication will take place on Monday 19 March 2007.

Emotion at Work Carnival

Welcome to the March 19, 2007 edition of emotion at work. (The first edition in fact) and thanks to everyone who submitted a post. I'm fascinated to see what a topic like "emotion at work" has evoked - there are really interesting and different approaches to the topic here that echo much of the management discourse around emotion as something that needs to be valued in its own right (my own view) or controlled in the service of organisational harmony. I'm also curious about the fact that no women submitted posts around this topic and wonder what might be going on there that's interesting.

Mark McGuinness presents 7 Ways to Tap into Enthusiasm posted at Wishful Thinking. Mark talks about tapping into your natural enthusiasm and how reconnecting with your curiosity is a critical first step in banishing procrastination and keeping the creative juices flowing.

Erik Mazzone presents Deciding to Quit your Job posted at Erik Mazzone's Blog. Erik advocates tapping into your feelings as distinct from your rationale when you have to make a decision to stay in or quit a job.

Alan presents There is always a way posted at Made to Be Great. Alan advocates stillness as a way of connecting with the sense of what’s possible and he also talks about reframing problems as potential solutions (something I’m a huge advocate for).

Charles H Green presents Trust Tip 35: Reciprocity, Sales and Suicide Hot Lines posted at Trusted Advisor Associates. Charles talks about the centrality of trust and how active listening is a key part of developing it. Something I've written about before.

The Positivity Blog presents 5 life-changing keys to overcoming your fear posted at Henrik Edberg. Henrik offers some strategies for overcoming fear which are useful for work and personal life beginning with a non-judgemental approach.

Noel Kuhlman presents How To Destroy The Lazy Drones In Your Team posted at Self Help Can Be Fun. Noel offers some no nonsense approaches to co-dependency in the workplace. The title is challenging but I think he’s addressing the way in which we enable people to adopt less than helpful roles in the workplace and he asks us what our part in that is.

Craig Harper presents A Letter to all Blokes.... posted at Renovate your life with Craig. Craig invites blokes to reconnect with their emotions in a witty and “bloke-friendly way”. I'd like to hear Craig's view on the relationship between blokes, their emotion and the world of work as I imagine he'd have an interesting take on that subject.

The Silicone Valley Blogger presents Work Place Drama Ends In More Money at The Digerati Life which is an interesting piece on how the organisation in the mind (or the boss in our mind) is very often out of kilter with the external experience and how our emotions are central to that experience.

Scott Young presents Introduction - Emotional Mastery (Series) posted at Scott H Young. Scott offers an introductory blog post on the "secrets to emotional mastery". The rest of his series focusses on the issue of control and emotion.

That concludes this edition. Thanks to everyone who submitted an article for this first carnival. Submit your blog article to the next edition of emotion at work using the carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Organisational Interventionists

Over at Disorganizational Behaviour Travis has an interesting post about interventions:

One of my favorite shows on TV is called "Intervention" on A&E, which is about the struggles of people dealing with addiction. On the show, families stage interventions with the addicted member of the family in order to get them to seek help and change their ways. One of the principles that is encouraged is not only that the person is willing to change and get help, the family needs to come together in order for the change to work.

I haven't seen this particular programme on this side of the pond but am familiar with the concept - Travis applies the thinking to organisational change processes and suggests that there needs to be a healthy "family" and a desire for change if this process is to work effectively in organisations. He goes on to say:

The dynamic of the workplace, whether it be a team, group, division, or whole organization, has to be in a healthy state for the organization to undergo serious and permanent organization change. It is almost a paradox that in order for change to be successful, there must be some level of stability in terms of relationships, communication and culture before the instability of change takes place.

This got me thinking about the way in which interventionists are used - the 3Cs Counsellors, Consultants and Coaches. Very often (not always) the 3Cs are called in when an individual is perceived to be "unhealthy"...the 3Cs are marshalled in the service of keeping the organisation healthy by splitting off the unhealthy individual to be made more healthy externally and reimported once s/he is sorted out. To take Travis's example above (and addiction is a great example of a systemic approach) there are other questions to be asked about what work the individual does on behalf of the system and how the system itself contributes to and informs how the individual behaves within it. Increasingly I am working with client organisations to feed back into the system the dynamics that emerge within the coaching relationship and this is having significant impacts. The contract with the individual respects the content of the discussion but also makes space for the overall themes to be explored in the context of the whole system and as such is fed back as organisational intelligence.

Carnival of Emotion at Work

Welcome to the April 2, 2007 edition of emotion at work. I am publishing the submissions that directly relate to emotion at work - many more were received but had very little to do with the topic in question - so check out these posts and enjoy the contribution these bloggers are making to the issue of emotion at work.

Neal presents Brain Fitness: Shift Happens posted at SharpBrains, saying, "How a Head Coach can help us navigate through difficult emotions"

Alexander Kjerulf presents The Feel Factor - Why no workplace can afford to ignore what people feel posted at The Chief Happiness Officer.

Chris presents Conflict Resolution: A Casualty of Non-Violent Martial Arts posted at Martial Development.

Karen Lynch presents Butterfly posted at LivethePower, saying, "Negative emotions are the gift of directions. We need to pay attention."

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of emotion at work using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page

emotion at work, blog carnival..

How to be smart without thinking

I am reading Creative Management and Development (edited by Jane Henry) right now and loved this quote from Guy Claxton's paper Beyond Cleverness: How to be smart without thinking (p. 47):

There is a stupid rumour going around that intelligence is essentially rational, and that hard problems are invariably best tackled as explicitly, clearly, logically and articulately as possible. It's not true...logical clarity is one form of intelligence, but to assume that it is always the best, and the more of it the better, is as daft as to say that running is always the best way of getting aound, or a screwdriver is always the best tool. The rumour is stupid because it makes you less intelligent, mistaking one useful faculty of mind for the whole repertoire of useful mind states and modes. People who are good at being articulate and analytical, but who confuse this with being all-round intelligent are, we might say, 'clever' - but clever is not the same as smart.

No comment - this is a blog

Yesterday I attended a workshop on blogging and podcasting organised by Theatre Forum and presented by Susan Hallam. I was there with a couple of hats on – for a start I was the only blogger in the room and as you know, I’m an advocate of blogging for the arts sector. I have written before about the minimal activity in this area for this sector in Ireland but I was really there for selfish reasons to learn a bit about podcasting. The podcasting section was brief and to the point and I got some useful starter material to think about.

The workshop was aimed at Ireland’s performing arts companies and was a basic introduction to the nuts and bolts of getting up and running with blogs and podcasting. Hallam is an advocate of Blogger as a publishing platform because of its integration with Google (makes a lot of sense in terms of SEO) but less sense when one of our main broadband providers can simply drop the connection (as Twenty Major discovered recently). Many of the people in attendance were very new to the whole area of blogging and seemed to get great stuff out of it.

However – I was surprised at Hallam’s stance on commenting.

Hallam doesn’t believe in allowing comments on her own blog (apparently the comments were from competitors critical of her work) – and she disagreed with me that commenting on other people’s blogs should be a part of your blogging strategy. I was genuinely surprised by that stance. Blogs are conversational media and conversations involve at least two people. If you don’t allow comments on your own blog and you don’t deem it to be important to comment on someone else's then the conversation on your own space is a monologue, not a dialogue - and if you're not reading other blogs you won't even know if the conversation has moved. Far too many businesses in my view simply use the blogging platform to update static websites with press release material under the guise of blogging. Hallam’s view of conversation seemed to fall into two categories – the “talk amongst yourselves” forum type of conversation where audience/customers/users discuss their views on a forum of their own - separate and distinct from the originator of the work - or the monologue variation described above.

I’m all for a third way

• One which leaves room for blogs to be informed and influenced by what readers think.

• One that is open to the possibility that our readers and users have an intelligence that’s useful for us in conceiving work.

• One that suggests that the audience is a critical part of the creative process and that conversation is a key way of opening up that creativity in the service of great art.

• One that sugests that our readers are peers, not only purchasers of a product

• One that decides to take on and engage with critical responses to art in a way that can lead to richer conversations about this sector.

or to quote Tom Raftery

Businesses are made smarter by receiving the kind of direct, candid feedback that focus groups and market research surveys rarely succeed in providing

or Bill Gates (courtesy of Tom Raftery)

Another big phenomenon is building communities around Web sites, around products. And virtually every company ought to have on their Web site the ability for their customers, their suppliers, various people, to interact and their employees to see the dialogue taking place there and jump in and talk to them and help them.

Art and culture are never created in a vacuum. The social architecture of the sector is key to its success – not only the “bums on seats” argument (which is such a reductive way of quantifying this community) but the qualitative experience of having access to creators and consumers in equal measure.

Capitalising on the various communities of interest would seem to me to be an enormously important part of that discussion – but then again, maybe some organisations aren’t interested in the immediacy of that conversation?

Of the 20 odd people who were in the room yesterday I think many will go away and assume that setting up a blog is a smart marketing strategy (and they would be right), but I think they may miss the other ways in which blogging makes sense for arts and cultural organisations – as genuine tools for connecting with audiences as active contributors to a community of interest, as peers and as co-collaborators. In an age when most arts organisations are being asked to invest time and resources in “audience development” (oh how I hate that term) blogging is one of the most useful (and one of the the cheapest) mechanisms for addressing that issue. The only real marketing question that matters is - "would you recommend this to a friend?" Arts organisations don't need to sell tickets they need to convert evangelists who will gladly spread word of mouth about their work. Waiting for "them" to come to "us" has proved to be a limited strategy in the world of arts presentation - more and more organisations have outreach and education programmes to connect with new communities of artists and audiences - commenting fulfills the same function in the blog world. You can't passively wait for someone to discover what you're about - you have to engage in a bit of your own outreach by entering into other people's communities and making your presence felt.

I’m all for marketing but if you don't want to be part of a conversation – why use conversational media?

Disclaimer: I have written an article for Poetry Ireland on blogging for the arts community which will be published in their upcoming newsletter.

The power of interpretation

I'm taking the opportunity here in New York to catch up with some colleagues who practice in a similar way to myself (not a lot of us back in Ireland!). Over lunch this week I had a fascinating conversation with one colleague about how consultants (particularly those of us who are psychodynamically inclined) participate in listserves. The impulse if you're a psychodynamic consultant is to wonder about the question or dilemma rather than answer a question. Very often in business settings it's that ability to step back that generates interesting material - don't take the obvious for granted etc. But when a group of consultants gather on a listserve there is often more energy devoted to exploring the question rather than offering an answer.

This got me thinking about the power of interpretation. A consultant is given, and accepts tremendous power in organisational systems to interpret what others can't make sense of. How that interpretation is done can be a very creative endeavour - but ultimately it's the interpretation that a consultant is being hired to offer. The permission that is sought and received to interpret is a delicate negotiation. When a group of consultants gather in virtual space to converse it can be a different matter - the jump to interpret is somehow assumed rather than negotiated and this makes me rather uncomfortable because I think this needs to be made explicit. I may ask a question of you as a colleague but that's not the same as inviting you to interpret as a consultant.

Ultimately this is a boundary issue which arises all the time in work settings - am I interpreting from a coaching? counselling? consulting? perspective? Am I throwing my weight around to show how smart I am? Am I endeavouring to close down any difference in the discussion by using my interpretative authority to say it "as it is"?

The lunch time discussion offered so many interesting perspectives that I'll be ruminating over them for quite some time to come - but it has made me consider the explicit and not so explicit ways I negotiate with clients and colleagues and the assumption of authority which each brings.

Cinema 2.0: Me, Myself and iPod - what now for the arts?

I attended a Tribeca Talks panel discussion this week on Cinema 2.0: Me, Myself and iPod – essentially a discussion on the impact of social media on the production of art (notably cinema and literature). The line up of panellists included

Jonathan Lethem (Author)
Brent Weinstein (Head of the Digital Media Dept. at United Talent Agency)
Jerry Paffendorf (Futurist with The Electric Sheep Company and his blog is here)
Charles Leadbeater (a leading authority on innovation and creativity, ex Financial Times and Independent. The wiki for his current project We Think - The Rise of Mass Creativity is here ) - great TED talk here.
Kathleen Grace (Director and Producer of The Burg a web based drama set in Williamsburg, Brooklyn)

and moderator Georg Szalai (NY bureau chief and business editor at The Hollywood Reporter)

There were a lot of pertinent points raised about the relationship between the old, the new and the vast space in between.

I can’t do justice to the 90 minute discussion (and subsequent questions and answers) but I did capture a few points which I think it’s worth mentioning here – particularly in the context of Irish arts and cultural organisations – some of whom are out there using social media, many others of whom are ambivalent about the impact on the production of their artistic artefact.

The panellists addressed the issue of giving work away for free, particularly if you’re struggling to make a living in the first place. Kathleen Grace and her crew have created a soap opera about Williamsburg which is viewable free and online. They decided to forget about pitching to the studios at the outset and are hoping that it will be picked up (before they drown in credit card debt I imagine). It’s given them a direct outlet for the creation of their art and an instant audience for the work.

Novelist Jonathan Lentham created The Promiscious Materials Project which was specifically designed to distribute his work (at the cost of $1).

I like art that comes from other art, and I like seeing my stories adapted into other forms. My writing has always been strongly sourced in other voices, and I'm a fan of adaptations, apropriations, collage, and sampling.

Lentham described his online activity as an “analogue gesture in a digital cloak” because he is very clear that he creates the artefact and then allows it to be discussed, modified, mashed-up etc once that creative act has taken place.

Leadbetter posted 11 chapters of his book online and sought feedback and comments – he is incorporating some of those into the final draft and will credit those whose work he includes.

The panellists were in general agreement that creativity is a collaboration, and while the origination of the artefact (book, sculpture, video etc) may be the work of one person – the conversation that surrounds it (both before and after) is the way of entwining both spaces and expanding on the relationship between artist and community.

There was a lot of discussion about the future of the business of social media, particularly from Futurist Jerry Paffendorf (whom I could have listened to all evening and who focusses on ROA Return on Awesome rather than ROI..) on how online worlds are evolving and changing (virtual worlds are increasingly “opt in” and the mantra is “Don’t have sex with Google”) and and notably Brent Weinstein who heads up a division at United Talent Agency that specifically handles artists working in/with new media. There is money to be made and business models are evolving but Paffendorf described it well when he said

The currency we are using doesn’t know how to quantify what we are making

I really enjoyed the discussion, it got my own creative juices flowing and I came away with the following which I think are going to be pertinent issues for Irish arts and cultural organisations.

1 There’s no going back. An active, updated, interactive online presence is a must if you are a creative and it’s about driving traffic to where you will get paid even if in the short term it’s unlikely that you are making money.

2 Circling the wagons and adopting a defensive approach to creativity is self defeating. In the old days (6 months ago as Weinstein suggested) retaining and restraining may have worked – in this new era of social media community is where it’s at.

3 As one producer (in the Q & A) described it - people are in control of their ipod screens, their computer screens, their TV screens and ultimately their cinema screens. This model of drag and drop cultural consumption is only going to increase and impact on all other areas of media/cultural production. If creatives aren’t driving that traffic then they’re going to get stuck in a traffic jam that’s going nowhere fast.

4 There are no residuals on the internet so new ways of creating work and more importantly commissioning opportunities for this medium are going to have to evolve, particularly in countries like Ireland where we have a grant-aid culture.

5 Commerce, community and creativity co-exist in an internet age – the challenge for many creatives is how to make that relationship work for them.

The Tribeca Film Festival broadcasts a daily webcast on Youtube

In the Sunday Business Post

Interactions was featured in the Sunday Business Post's "So you want to be a blogger" on 6th May. It was good to contribute to a piece about the value of blogging for business in Ireland and to be in the company of my blogging colleagues Sinéad Gleeson, Ice Cream Ireland and Beaut.ie.

Side Effects

Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips was interviewed by Paul Holdengräber at the New York Public Library last week. I am an admirer of Phillips' work and he has just published a new book entitled Side Effects. (Also a title of a book written by Psychoanalysis’ greatest patient, Woody Allen). Phillips’ contention (and one I agree with) is that therapy works by attending to side effects – the stuff we are not paying attention to while we’re trying to attend to the problem at hand.

Both the patient and the analyst are the recipients of these side effects, of all the things said and implied and unintended and alluded to as the patient speaks as freely as he is able, and begins to understand the ingenuities of the censorship he imposes on himself…Psychoanalysis, essentially, is an attempt to redescribe the whole notion of concentration (Side Effects, p.xi).

Phillips’ suggests that you can only be distracted if you have a plan and in attending to the distractions our plans (ones we may not even be aware of) are revealed. So when people ask me “how I work” and “what I do” I refer them to Phillips because his accessible interpretation of psychoanalysis (and indeed, pscychodynamic approaches to working in general) make sense of the ways in which my interest is captured by “oddness” and incidents and issues that somehow “don’t fit in”. Working below the surface of organisations and with people, means drawing clients attention to their plans – the ones that are unspoken and unconscious. Very often those unconscious plans derail the conscious ones and getting to the heart of that difference (very often exposing it for the first time) is the key to unlocking blockages in the system.

If I am working with a group then there’s the “group” plan; the conscious plans of the individual members of the group and the myriad unconscious plans of the group that nobody may be aware of. Add to this the consultant or coach’s plans – conscious and otherwise and there’s a lot going on. All of these agendas are organised in different ways depending on the life stories of participants and the organisational system in which they work. It’s complex work and finding the right time for a client to hear an interpretation of what’s going on is also an important factor in the mix.

So distractions and interruptions are very welcome intrusions into my work space because they help reveal the agendas and plans of a group and as such are such fantastic resources to work with. Phillips also talked about anxiety – and how anxiety leads people to try and engineer pleasure – distractions may be part of that coping mechanism…so attending to distractions generally means we are getting closer to the issue at hand. But pleasure is such an ephemeral thing – can we engineer pleasure? Phillips doesn’t think so – at one point he talked about dinner parties and how we can’t engineer the perfect dinner party – we can only create the context in which it might happen - therefore anxiety – the calcuation of pleasure is the bridge and negotiation between pain and pleasure and as such a wonderfully rich place to begin to understand our fears and desires in a business context.

I’ll leave the final word on this one to Phillips:

If someone were to invent a drug – say, in this context, a psychotropic drug, one that is designed to improve people’s mental health - and to say that the point of this drug, the whole value of it was its unpredictable side effects, there would be a public outcry. (Side Effectrs p. xii)

The full interview with Adam Phillips (in which yours truly is heard asking about collusion among psychoanalysts and about Woody Allen) is available as an audio download at the NYPL website. Pic of Phillips and Holdengräber from NYPL.

What's a Blog got to do with it?

I was invited to contribute some thoughts on the value of social media to Poetry Ireland's bi-monthly newsletter Poetry Ireland News. The paper is also available here as a pdf download. I will be running a workshop on this area for arts/cultural organisations in June - stay posted for details.

There are 71 million blogs and a new Blog is created every half second. 499, 760 of those blogs (at the time of writing) mention or refer to poetry. All over cyberspace poets and poetry lovers are engaged in passionate conversations about the work. Why is it that so few Irish arts organisations and artists currently recognise the centrality of an online presence as part of their development strategy?

If you are an artist, then you want an audience. If you are an artist working in a niche art form area then that audience may be small and diminishing. No amount of investment in marketing strategies, audience development, outreach and education initiatives will impact on the size of that audience in the short term. How do you start conversations about your art form? How do you get critical feedback about what works and what doesn’t? How do you talk to your peers? Meet new ones? Make a living?

You give your work away. Yes…..you heard me correctly…Blogs and other social media platforms such as Wikis and Podcasting are essential tools for artists wishing to connect with an audience. Blogs are curated and conversational spaces designed to share ideas, expertise, creativity and opinion with a community of interest. Blogs are based on giving stuff away. If you can’t bear the idea of sharing your ideas then blogging isn’t for you. However if you imagine for a moment that the audience and community for poetry is global and not geographically bound by the rim of this island then blogging starts to make complete sense as a way of developing the conversation. Online life is full of great writers, fabulous opinions and now, a mechanism for publishing. Blogging puts you in a conversation with people who (a) have something to say and (b) care about what you have to say. It’s a totally different relationship with peers and audience than can be created in any other static medium.

Blogging, like all conversations, requires commitment. You need to show up, you need to participate and critically you need to have something to say. Publishing your thoughts and ideas is one side of the conversation – making space (through a comments thread and commenting on other people’s blogs) is the other. The technology provides simple ways (through RSS, Tagging and Aggregators) for you to be found and to find others with whom you want to converse. Of course there are questions and issues – copyright, freedom of speech; time spent reading and commenting; technical stuff about how to get online/maintain a Blog and not to mention the dreaded “Blogger’s block”.

In a media savvy society – shouldn’t you be aware of what people are saying about you? Shouldn’t you contribute to or start that discussion? Here are 10 ideas to get you started.

1. Release podcasts presentations of poets reading and presenting their work

2. Release the soundtrack for a show as a download (as the Merce Cunningham Dance Company did in 2006)

3. Start a discussion about contemporary art in advance of exhibitions as a gateway for newcomers to the art form

4. Create podcasts by experts to assist audiences engage with your work

5. Let a picture do the talking

6. Allow audiences into the art making process with regular posts about the rehearsal process from the perspective of various members of the company e.g. designer and choreographer etc. Record conversations, make transcripts available—trust that this will increase curiosity about your work.

7. Publish your work online and get feedback as the process progresses

8. Create word of mouth on a performance by asking readers the only marketing question that matters “would you recommend this to a friend?”

9. Use the virtual space as a gallery or curatorial space and commissioning/presentation arena for artists of all disciplines and practice areas

10. Ask readers how they want to engage with your work – online discussions with artists? Advance notice of booking options? Use the medium as an idea generation space.

A version of this paper was published in the May/June 2007 Poetry Ireland News by Poetry Ireland.

New Library added to the site

I've just created a Library page on the site that includes PDF copies of papers that I hope will be useful to clients and readers. You can reach the library via the link in the sidebar or from the main page of the website. Enjoy!

Improvising Business

Over on Presentation Zen there’s a fantastic piece entitled “Jazz and the art of connecting”. If ever there was (another) argument for the value of an arts education, this is it.

“Jazz is inspiring to me; it's lessons can be applied to other aspects of life”

There are quotes from 11 great Jazz musicians that can be applied, in a heartbeat, to any area of life, even (and most particularly) business. Can you apply any of these to your business? I know I certainly can.

“The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.” (Duke-Ellington)

“Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can’t be taught.” (Paul-Desmond)

“Don’t bullshit… just play.” (Wynton-Marsalis)

“If they act too hip, you know they can’t play shit!” (Louis-Armstrong)

“Master your instrument. Master the music. And then forget all that bullshit and just play.” (Charlie-Parker)

“It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.” (Dizzy-Gillespie)

“You can play a shoestring if you’re sincere.” (John-Coltrane)

"When people believe in boundaries, they become part of them." (Don Cherry)

“Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.” (Charles Mingus)

“I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession. If you can, then it ain’t music..." (Billie-Holiday)

“A great teacher is one who realizes that he himself is also a student and whose goal is not to dictate the answers, but to stimulate his students creativity enough so that they go out and find the answers themselves.”
(Herbie-Hancock)

The difference between listening and hearing

I don’t believe in tricks when it comes to facilitating and consulting. At the end of the day it’s me and my client(s) in a room trying to figure something out together. Yes, I have a toolkit, but it’s pretty bare in terms of stuff I can take out and wave around…I don’t do “off the shelf” solutions and I’m rarely in a position to talk with any degree of freedom about previous work, primarily because so much of it comes to me as “confidential”. It’s a dilemma…

One of the things I do bring to the table is my ability to listen and more importantly, my ability to hear. Why differentiate I hear you ask? Well there’s a critical difference from a client’s perspective in being listened to and being heard and the ability to move between one and the other is what makes good consulting and facilitation work.

I recently worked with a client who ranted and raved for a full 45 minutes “at” me about the “uselessness” of a manager in the system. He listed out the deficiencies in this manager, quantified the losses accruing as a result of his inadequacies and was blistering in his personal attack on his peer. He wanted me to “sort this person out” so the company could get back to doing what it needed to do. His preference was for me to take this manager out of the system and give him a “bloody good talking to”.

I didn’t do as he asked…and about a week later both the manager (above) and the vilified manager were back at work, getting along better than they ever had been and productivity was on the rise again.

Listening can be a tough station. For a full 45 minutes I listened to this manager’s anger. It was clear, unambiguous and in the service of some kind of action – any kind of action….

I heard a number of unspoken things while listening to his anger. I heard the anxiety in his voice, his escalating tension as he spoke, the lack of resolution as he “dumped” on me…his insistence that I “get rid” of the problem and also his isolation in dealing with it. If only I could make this problem go away then everything would be back to normal. I was being warned not to let him down. I heard his fear that the department would be vilified by head office if he couldn’t make this department perform its task and get the staff to work better together.

So I had a choice about what to respond to, knowing that how I would respond would dictate how we might progress together. If he didn’t feel “heard” then I was going to be as vilified as the manager I was expected to “fix”.

In this instance I took a risk and responded out of an empathy with his fear and anxiety. The look on his face was one of – “how did you know that?” but he couldn’t deny that I had heard him. He felt met, seen, listened to and heard - out of that meeting we managed to do some productive work together looking at his isolation in the system and also the expectation being piled on the new manager – most of which this new manager wasn’t aware of and couldn’t possibly respond to. Our work developed into a coaching relationship which was significant for this manager as it was the first time he had availed of any kind of professional support. I also coached the new manager helping to negotiate deliverables and ongoing professional support for him in the system. Each manager had felt unheard and was feeling pressure to respond to "unreasonable" demands from a "senior" in the organisation. Attending to what I was "hearing" allowed us to use the emotional content of the meeting to look at what was going on in that wider context. Once we'd established a relationship of trust it was possible for the situation to be resolved in a way that allowed each to hold on to their truth and their integrity. The tension in the relationship diminished, a better working environment was created and targets were met. The fact that I had heard as well as listened was a key factor in building a working alliance.

There’s a delicate dance between listening, hearing and the point at which you make an intervention to feed back what you think will make a difference. I see this as an intricate balance and this diagram goes some way to outlining the process from my perspective where the outside circle represents what I listened to and the inside what I heard.

Note: some details have been changed to protect the identity of the client and this piece has been published with the client's permission.