CultureView more presentations from Reed Hastings. There was an interesting article over the weekend in the Telegraph from Dan Pink on Netflix's "no policy" approach to HR policies. It's an outgrowth of their corporate culture, captured beautifully in their "Reference Guide on our Freedom and Responsibility Culture" outlined in the Slideshare presentation above--well worth a read through. Pink's article notes that Netflix has learned something that Clay Shirky talks about in Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age:  . . . when we design systems that assume bad faith from the participants, and whose main purpose is to defend against that nasty behaviour, we often foster the very behaviour we're trying to deter. People will push and push the limits of the formal rules, search for every available loophole, and look for ways to game the system when the defenders aren't watching. By contrast, a structure of rules that assumes good faith can actually encourage that behaviour. So if you think people in your organisation are predisposed to rip you off, maybe the solution isn't to build a tighter, more punitive set of rules. Maybe the answer is to hire new people. It strikes me that it is this bad faith approach that underlies most social media policies in organizations. And for that matter, it's a mental model that drives organizational behavior around most things related to both employees and customers, including learning. What would be different about what we do if we started with different premises, assuming that most workers are honest, trustworthy, hard-working and focused on doing the right thing? What would services, policies and activities look like if we assumed the best of people, not the worst? How much more time could we spend on innovation and ideas, rather than on the sort of "whack-a-mole" management that leads us to continually chase after closing all of the loopholes in our punitive systems.?

I've written before about the importance of reflective practice in professional development--the process of reflecting on your development as a professional and recording those thoughts somehow. The problem for most people is that getting in a regular practice of reflecting and recording can be difficult. Developing new habits can be hard, so having a tool to help you along can be invaluable. So, via TechCrunch and Marianne Lenox, here's a new one to consider adding to your reflective practice arsenal-OhLife. The site pretty much says it all:  It's an email-based journaling option that will remind you daily about posting with the added bonus of including a random entry you've posted previously. Your nightly email looks like this: Some advantages for reflective practice: Even if we hate it, we all still check email. Having a daily reminder to think about what you've learned that lands in your inbox each night seems like a good way to start developing the daily practice of reflection.  The daily reminder comes at 8 p.m, so if you're a night person, it's a good time to do it immediately. If you're a morning person, it will be waiting for you when you get up. The random reminder of previous posts can be a great spark to additional learning and reflection--I could see getting a reminder of where I'd been at in a project previously and being able to post on how far I've come. Or if I'd posted on a particular tool or idea but hadn't done anything else with it, the reminder might be enough to get something going again. Posts are archived on the web for easy access from any computer and (presumably) your smart phone. They are also totally private, so you can keep this reflective practice journal just for yourself.  Seems like a nice option for a learning/reflective practice journal, no?

Glen Ross of the American Cancer Society recently shared this hilarious video of a typical conference call. I probably spend a good 10-15 hours a week on these things and I have to say that the video pretty much captures my experience. So in support of more effective conference calling, here are some resources that might help: Fast Company's 10 Rules for Effective Conference Calls--Great tips, but I particularly enjoy the dialogue for how violating the rules plays out in a call. Leading More Effective Conference Calls--This tip list starts with what I think is the most important question. Do you actually need to do a call? How to Participate in a Conference Call--A lot of times the onus for effective conference calls is put on the leader. Personally, I think participants need to take some responsibility too. Five Ways to Be a Better Conference Call Participant--Another list to share with participants. Use a "People" Clock to Maintain Visual Attention--Pair individual photos with a clockface and you get an ingeniously simple way to bring a little more life into a call. Particularly effective for team calls.

I'm back from a two-day conference and I think I've discovered one of the reasons conferences are becoming a big waste for me--the homophily problem, otherwise known as "birds of a feather, flock together." Most professional conferences are made up of people who are in a particular occupation or industry, which means people who tend to look at the world through the same lens. We tend to view problems and solutions within familiar, proscribed frameworks and to see the same enemies and heroes in any given situation. The problem is that this gets boring. It's also dangerous, because it impedes our ability to see and adopt new ideas. What if we did a different kind of conference though, one designed to specifically address the conference homophily problem? I'm thinking of a conference mash-up, where we combine different groups of professionals or industries into a single conference where the workshops and networking could let us build on each others different frames of reference. We could start small--maybe combining people in similar occupations who work in different industries. I'm thinking, for example, of a conference for classroom teachers and corporate trainers/educators. We have a lot in common but there are enough differences in what we do and how we do it that we could definitely learn from each other. A conference mashup could be really radical too--like accountants and graphic artists or the financial services industry and bio-tech. Surely we could learn from each others approaches. If nothing else, we'd probably have some really interesting conversations. What do you think? Could this work? Or is it a completely crazy idea?

Friday I wrote a post on conference homophily--conferences that bring together people who share the same worldview and conceptual frameworks--and proposed conference mash-ups as a solution. I got a lot of great comments that I think warranted another post. Conference Mashup Models and Options Tim Davies suggested framing a conference around some shared challenges or problems:I wonder how this would work framed around particular 'problems' and challenges: the literature on open innovation and wide-search innovation - taking problems from one field into completely different fields to find solutions - suggests there is great benefit to be found here. Two or more fields grappling with similar challenges might benefit from co-hosting a conference around that area. This seems to me to be one of the more fruitful areas for getting buy-in and participation, especially if you can make the case for how two different fields could benefit from collaborative problem-solving. You could also frame it in terms of collaborative opportunities, as Dianne Rees suggested in her comment: My perfect mashup right now would bring mhealth professionals together with mlearning professionals and health care social media mavens to innovate patient/physician-centered mobile apps. This is a great example of how three different groups could find opportunity in working together. Dianne's idea also lends itself to a 48 hours approach, where the groups could come together to actually develop their mobile apps over an intensive 2-day period. A few people suggested some potential structures for a conference mashup. Ronda Grizzle pointed me in the direction of THATCamp (The Humanities and Technology Camp), a "free, open 'unconference' where humanists and technologists meet to work together for the common good." As Ronda described it:It's an unconference--short, cheap, no papers, no invited speakers. It's about gathering together a small group of varied experience and skills to actually work on problems and issues. The agenda is set during the first hour of the conference, with people suggesting topics for sessions, and then voting on the topics. The ones with the most votes get put on the schedule. Nobody brings presentations or reads at you; it's about making connections and getting work done. Their website is a rich resource for planning and implementing an open space-type conference where there is a much greater focus on networking and collaborative discussions. They also have a Boot Camp option for helping people develop new skills. This is generally an "add-on" to the larger un-conference. Paul Angileri shared the idea of Gangplank, a group of small business owners from a variety of fields who meet and work together on a regular basis, in part to encourage cross-pollination and innovation. Their Manifesto would make some great conference organizing principles:We have the talent. We just need to work together. Different environments need to overlap, to connect and to interact in order to transform our culture. In order to create a sustainable community based on trust, we value: collaboration over competition community over agendas participation over observation doing over saying friendship over formality boldness over assurance learning over expertise people over personalities Tim Davies offered another model, based on "The Interesting Conference":By simply paying the £20.00 ticket price and bringing our own mug and plate of goodies to share, access was granted to a quirky, lively, but refreshingly low-key event. Organiser Russell Davies filled Conway Hall in Bloomsbury with 200 guests and 30 interesting speakers, who were tasked with presenting for 10 minutes on a topic unrelated to their day jobs. The result was eclectic and delightful: a school teacher entreating us to reconsider our assumptions about nuclear power; a designer confessing her Indian superpowers; a typographer mapping out his 5000 mile cycling adventure; and a media consultant revealing psychological violence in 1970s girls’ comics. The latter taught the women in the audience to never mock a monkey, for fear of winding up like poor Kitty, whose demise is graphically documented in the Misty magazine circa 1979. A sense of democracy and community spirit pervaded the day, with speakers introduced on a first-name-only basis, everyone lunching together in the park, and, at one point, the entire hall standing to wave their arms in unison as they conducted an invisible orchestra (led ably by a man identified only as John, who won a competition to conduct a real orchestra a few years back and wished to pass on the skill). Tim also had some great suggestions for combating conference homopily on a smaller scale, without going the complete conference mashup route:Alternatively, just inviting someone from outside the field to keynote at an event, or people from different fields to take part in key panels, may be a way to at least shake up unquestioned assumptions that are often implicit in homiphilous gatherings... Conference ChallengesA few commenters had some concerns. Tracy felt that the conference mashup idea won't work in all sectors:Nonprofits are the best to setup since they're mission-driven. The public sector is another good one as well since it's under one roof. The private sector is tough because there's a lot of competition and talent could be taken away and rivalries can start (which is not a bad thing, but not good for your purpose on this post). And despite her personal enthusiasm for the idea, Ellen Behrens said that some past experiences with the concept had led her to believe it might be a hard sell. My association staffer experience tells me that it's one of those "nice in theory but tricky in practice" ideas. Mostly because of (guess!) money. When I've heard association execs talk about various conferences they've held in cooperation (and collaboration) with other associations, they've generally ended with a remark such as, "We'll never do that again." Why not? "We did most of the work, but they got half the revenue." Or: "Most of the attendees were our members, but they got half the revenue." Or: "The logistics of holding a conference are difficult enough without doubling -- or tripling -- or quadrupling -- the number of player groups involved." There's no doubt that both Tracy and Ellen raise some very legitimate concerns. The objection I suspect we'd hear most frequently is that other industries or sectors don't understand our issues and problems, so what would we have to learn from them? To Tracy's concern that there could be issues around talent stealing and competition, I actually think that a mashed up conference would cause LESS of a problem. I think there's probably more competition within an industry than between industries, so if companies can come together for industry-associated conferences, they would have less to fear from a mashed up version. One challenge I think would be in deciding how to mash it up--which industry or occupation would you connect with and how would you frame the conference to meet the needs of all the stakeholders? This would require considerably more planning and networking than probably goes into most conference organizing efforts, although I think it would be well worth the work. I also think there's a general entropy challenge that comes from having the same people organizing conferences year after year. I've been involved with several organizations where I've tried to introduce some new ideas and been met with a ton of resistance from the organizers who have been running their conferences for years. They feel like they have a model that works and no one wants to mess with it. Even adding some things around the edges--like incorporating technology--can be a real challenge. This whole conversation has me thinking more about conferences as professional development and what we could be doing to shake things up to make them more interesting and useful. I'd love to hear more from people on what conferences they've attended recently that were really interesting and what activities made them that way. . .

Much of my work over the past few months has been focused on helping several organizations get up and running with social media. Last week I was doing a debrief with one of my clients on how we'd used Facebook and Twitter to support an event and how the results weren't as successful as they'd hoped. There were multiple reasons for this, unconnected to the the technology, but one issue really stood out. Their engagement with social media continues to emphasize the "media" aspect, with much less attention paid to the "social." And that's where they're missing the boat. Focusing on the "Media" in Social Media I think many organizations are understanding that they need to start being active in places like Facebook and Twitter and have begun to give up their iron grip on using only their websites to communicate online. But they are still focused on the one-way "media" aspect of social media, concerned with what they will communicate, not what other people might be discussing and how they can participate in those conversations. Some characteristics I see in those organizations focused on the "media" aspect of social media include: Desire to have only one or two people participating in social media so that messages can be "controlled." This is an extension of the tendency for organizations to refer people to Marketing/PR people when they want to communicate with the outside world. More of a focus on establishing their presence and on what they're going to say, rather than on finding out where conversations may already be happening and adding value to those discussions. Related to this, a greater tendency to post about their own activities and information and less interest in sharing what others may have to say. Social media policies that restrict employee access to social media sites, thus restricting the ability of the organization to even engage their own staff in helping them promote activities. Lack of involvement in using the tools from top managers. If you haven't used Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc., it's difficult to understand their particular strengths and challenges. You aren't able to understand their potential power and make good decisions about how to utilize it.  These behaviors are relics of the pre-social media world. Various social media platforms are treated simply as alternative channels for delivering "the message," rather than as two-way forms of communication and engagement.They are another version of TV or newspapers or annual reports and brochures. From "Media" to "Social Media" With most organizations I've found that the only way to get them to try social media is to first engage them with the "media" aspect. It's what they understand. It also seems to be the best way to help them get comfortable with the technology. They don't have to focus on new ways of behaving, just on the mechanics of tweeting or posting on a blog. The challenge is getting them to then embrace the "social" functions, helping them to understand that they will never get what they want from social media if they simply treat it as a broadcast mechanism or a content delivery system. They don't use the tools properly and then are disappointed with the results, making it more difficult to get them to continue to invest the time and energy it takes to listen and nurture communities. When they use social media in the old ways, it doesn't work. What I'm realizing is that in meeting clients where they're at, I may be doing them a disservice. I've thought it made sense to let them get their toes wet in the technology by helping them get comfortable with the tech before we dive into too many new behaviors. But I'm beginning to wonder if it doesn't make more sense to work with them first on embracing the culture and principles of social media before even getting into the technology piece. I try to reinforce and point out the need for social engagement, but the broadcast mindset is a strong, sucking whirlpool that can draw you in before you know it, I'm finding. I'd hoped that by living with social media for a time, these organizations would see it's possibilities. I've thought that the best way to see social media's power is by jumping into it. But for some people this may not be the case. It's possible to use all these tools as one-way broadcast media, missing the social aspects entirely. The results are disappointing, though, and will leave people wondering why they bothered. Without the "social," social media doesn't work. My challenge is to find a way for people to see and embrace the social aspect more quickly. Without that, their efforts will be wasted.

Harold Jarche, like me, is reflecting on his recent attendance at conferences: I’ve been thinking about knowledge sharing, after attending a couple of conferences in a row and heading off to another. One thing missing in these discrete time-based events is that there is litle time for reflection. Most presenters hold back their knowledge in order to "deliver" it just before the big official presentation. This presentation is followed by some immediate questions & discussions and a coffee break. Then it’s off to see the next presentation. Reflection, if it occurs, comes much later, and usually after the participants have gone home. I've encountered this issue, too, so I'm thinking that one way we could improve conferences would be to provide a "Reflection Session." It would be near the end of the conference and scheduled like any other breakout session. Instead of stuffing new information into people's brains, though, it would be a workshop for consolidating what they've already experienced. I'm picturing: A quiet room with more of a coffee shop set-up--some tables with chairs, but also a few lounge chairs. Possibly some music, although that's such an individual thing it might be better for people to be invited to listen to their ipods.  Some guidelines on reflective practice. Note, we would NOT discuss these. They would simply be available for those who were interested. Some tools for reflection--some small blank journals, some prompts for thinking. These Debriefing Questions could be good. Also the One-Sentence Journal--could be applied to each session the individual attended.  Art supplies--some people are visual thinkers and it could be very cool to encourage them to use art to express what they've learned. Of course, this is something of an introvert's dream of a reflective session, so I'm thinking it could be followed by an extrovert's debrief where we had people share one or two ideas they got or questions they have as a result of their participation in the conference. If we wanted to get really creative, it could be a sort of Ignite format--3-5 minute presentations on the most compelling question or idea you experienced. What do you think? Would you attend a "Reflection Session" at a conference? How would you structure it and what would you include? Flickr photo via Laurel Center for Social Entrepreneurship

I'm sorry to say that I've been spending a lot of time lately with staff working in organizations that aren't that into professional development. Because of time and financial constraints, training is not a priority and there is little attention paid to ensuring that staff have the skills and knowledge to perform their jobs. The best these people can hope for from their employers is that they will be allowed to sit in on a webinar or attend a 1-day training session once a year. I know from experience that while there are many companies and organzations (usually the larger ones) that take learning pretty seriously, reality is that most workers cannot count on their employer as the primary avenue for improving their skills. They may get some training to learn how to use proprietary systems or processes, but the kinds of skill-building that make people effective and marketable are just not going to happen. So how do you engage in professional development when you can't count on your organization to provide it? A few thoughts. . . 1. Recognize that YOU will have to be the primary source of professional development. They say that the first step to addressing a problem is recognizing that you have it. I think a lot of people are still stuck in a world where they believe that their organization OWES them professional development. If they aren't going to get it at work, then it's the employer's problem. I would argue, however, that this is cutting off your nose to spite your face. A few years ago I wrote a post, "Who's in Charge of Learning?" in which I made the case that we, as individuals, have to take responsibility for our own learning as it's our primary means for remaining competitive in the marketplace. Given the current state of the economy and the huge numbers of layoffs we've experienced, I think there's an even stronger reason to believe that it's up to individuals to pay attention to keeping their skills updated if they want to not only be effective now, but be ready to go to another job if and when the situation arises. 2. Know what skills and competencies are in demand for your particular occupation--or for occupations you'd eventually like to get into. Once you recognize the need to take charge of your own professional development, the next thing you need to do is get a grip on the skills, knowledge, tools, etc. that are cutting edge in your profession. This is going to mean getting outside your organization, because if they aren't into training, then they probably aren't into being on top of competencies either. I actually think that engaging with other professionals through social media can be one of your most powerful opportunities for learning about the most "in-demand" skills because the professionals I know who are on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, etc. take their learning very seriously. Connecting with professional and industry organizations is another good strategy. 3. Seek out learning opportunities. This could be an entire post of its own, but here are a few ideas:  Find smart people online, on Twitter, on LinkedIn and who blog. Pay attention to what they talk about. Check out their links, participate in their conversations.  Volunteer for "stretch assignments."  Design Personal Learning Experiments. Beth Kanter is really good at them. Engage in reflective practice. Run a web search for skills you want to learn. You'd be amazed at the number of free videos, tutorials, slideshows, and "how-to" posts  that will turn up! Connect to professional organizations. They can point you to the people, classes, certifications and skills that will help you continue to develop as a professional. Consider joining or starting your own community of practice. Do Lunch & Learns with colleagues. Form a Facebook Group. Participate in a Twitter chat. Find other professionals and engage with them in the learning process. 4. Rinse and Repeat Learning is an ongoing thing. Skill needs change and if the recession has proven anything, it's that we need to keep our skills fresh. I know that for myself, if I slack off for even a few months, I start to feel stale and behind the times. It's one of the many reasons to be as active as possible in social media, I think, because there's always learning going on there, even if you can't take advantage of each opportunity. Learning can also help combat the dreaded burnout. It gives you a sense that you're accomplishing things and keeps your mind active. What are your thoughts? Have you worked for a company or organization where you had to take professional development into your own hands? What did you do to keep on learning?  

Last night I had dinner with my husband, my two daughters, my ex-husband, his wife and their 5 month old baby girl. We ate Chinese  in the house my ex and I bought together 10 years ago, gathered around the dining table his new wife brought to the house when they married. My daughters sat at one end passing their baby sister back and forth between them, while the four parents sat at the other, watching what we've created together in the past 7 years. It wasn't always this way. While our divorce was far more amicable than most, my ex and I had our share of rancor and bitterness, punctuated by pain. The falling away of your old way of life never comes without a price. But the four of us--and I include our spouses in this because my ex and I could not be where we are without the willingess of our partners to come on this journey--we have worked hard to create from the destruction of one family a new one. My ex and I  were not able to save what we had, but from the ashes of our 15 year marriage, we were able to salvage the friendship that brought us together in the first place. And with our new spouses, we have created a new, and I would say stronger family for all three of our daughters. I want to acknowledge this now because I'm grateful for our ability to have created something good from something so painful, especially on this Thanksgiving Eve. But I also think it's an important lesson in the power of creative destruction. We could have limped along in our broken way, trying to hold things together for the sake of the children. This is something that people do in marriages all the time. This is also something that organizations and companies do, clinging to the old way of life long after all signs indicate that the old ways are gone. But we chose a different path, to go through the pain and upheaval of acknowledging that we had to find a new way of being a family. We chose to end what we had in order to give ourselves a path to a new beginning. In that process, we had to put ego aside and focus instead on creating a common good together. We had to be honest and transparent in our communications with one another and we had to keep revisiting the point of what it is we were doing--returning to our mission, if you will. We had to be willing to have difficult conversations and to give up some things we thought were important in favor of other things we found to be more important. And we had to trust that if we kept focused on our goal and believed in our collective desire to do the right thing, everything would work out. All of these, I think, are things we have to do whenever we're faced with an old way of life being replaced by something new. Failure to do them just leaves you bitter, anger and unable to move on. All of this was hard, but it was worth it. And as I think about how good it felt to sit around that table last night, I'm grateful for the lessons of creative destruction these past few years have taught me.

Peter Bromberg over at ALA Learning is asking about how you create a culture of curiosity, something that's been on my mind of late. He points out that curiosity is the only known antidote to the single biggest block to learning: the idea that we already have the answer (and it’s 1st cousin, "I don’t care about the answer".)  Being in a state of curiosity means looking out at the world, collecting data, observing human behaviors and interactions, and asking "why?" and what if? I've observed that curiosity seems to be dead or dying for many of us on the job at a time when questioning minds need to be hard at work finding new solutions to intractable problems. Curiosity is necessary to learning, true. It's also necessary to innovation and effective problem-solving, two skills we need desperately in this economy. So some thoughts on nurturing curiosity: Cultivate beginner's mind--Curiosity is all about realizing that you don't have all the answers and getting rid of your "Been There, Done That, Bought the T-shirt" mentality. Easier said than done, but necessary to develop if you truly want to re-discover curiosity. Incorporate "Who, What, What If, Why, When, Where, How" into your daily vocabulary--Curiosity is also about asking questions. So it makes sense to start adding some key questioning vocabulary to your daily conversations. See if you can force yourself to to start using these simple words more frequently. Encourage reflection. As individuals and organizations, we need to be encouraging professional reflection, not just action. We need to think about our experiences and ask questions about what has worked and why, what hasn't worked and why and what we can do differently. Developing the reflection habit can help us create a natural place for using our curiosity. Talk less, listen more. Curiosity grows from the space of paying attention to what is happening around you. Listening and observing give you the fodder for curiosity. When you are talking, you are too absorbed in what you are saying to leave room for questions. Spend time with a pre-schooler. Three and 4-year olds are probably the most curious human beings on the planet. They want to know EVERYTHING about how the world works and aren't afraid to ask "Why?" several hundred times a day. If you want to get your curiosity mojo back, spend a day with 4-year old. Share more. I've found that the more I share, the more questions I get in return. These questions that come from people who may be less knowledgeable or experienced than I am in a particular topic can be an external source of beginner's mind. They remind me of questions I've long ago thought I answered. But if others are still asking them, then they can point me in some different directions. Think about important questions--Curiosity, I think, partly comes from thinking about important problems and questions. When we feel like we're dealing with larger issues, rather than minutiae, we may be more likely to have an open mind. Think about the mundane--While the "big" questions are a good place for curiosity, I also think that the smaller things in life can be just as fruitful. The discovery of pennicillin, for example, came from curiosity about mold on a piece of bread. It doesn't get more mundane than that. So what are your thoughts? Do these ideas make sense to you? What else would you add to the list? How do you think we could do a better job of cultivating curiosity, both individually and in organizations?