Aide-Memoire

I’m lucky enough to be attending the Women, Management and Work Conference in  Sydney today. There is a great turnout, with many familiar names and faces from around Australia.

So far there has been an impressive line-up of speakers.  Yet these impressive speakers each talked about the issues around gender pay equity (which does not exist here in Australia yet). They also touched on the changing nature of work and patterns of work – since many of us no longer work in the same field from beginning to end of our careers.

Paid parental leave was also touched upon – Heather Ridout noted how important she sees this issue for business.  I agree, this is one area that is critical to driving productivity growth for Australia.

Mark Lennon also made a plea for people to realise that trade unions are still relevant.  Not sure he made his case strongly enough to maintain relevance?

I look at the landscape for women in the workplace (especially in management) and remain disheartened that we have made so little progress during my working career.  We seem to be having many of the same conversations about equal pay, equal opportunity in the workplace, discrimination, sexual harassment and parental leave as happened twenty years ago.

The strident complaints (or the hidden seething resentment) of men when women are appointed to positions ahead of them remain.  Access to board roles remains distressingly low, although the Australian Institute of Company Directors is working hard on this at the moment.  You can check out Tony Abbott having a bit of a gripe about gender here.

Yet I look at the landscape in Australia and am encouraged to see women in power at various levels.  It is especially encouraging to see women as: Governor General, Prime Minister, Deputy Leader of the Opposition, State Governors, State Premiers, Mayors, local Councillors and other business leaders.  But this is a very rare alignment of the  constellations, rare enough that it is commented upon.

We have not yet reached a stage where having a woman in a position of power and authority is so completely normal that it is not even worth commenting upon.

see moar Lolcats

moar Lolcats

In the past we used to be able to separate the public from the private and business from the personal quite easily. But this was an aberration.

Privacy was a tiny blip in the long history of human existence. Going back only as far as our great grandparent’s generation privacy was relatively rare. And in the generations before that privacy was considered almost absurd, even for the very rich.

Most people lived in small cramped houses and shared their space with many others. In those days even conjugal relations were not private for most people.

Most people lived in villages too, where just about everyone knew each other’s business. But for a very short period, during the mid to late twentieth century, privacy was possible in the western world due to a new standard of housing.

It was the post World War 2 housing – where each nuclear family had its own house – that made privacy possible. Finally Mum and Dad had personal space and sometimes even the kids had their own rooms. For a brief period in the twentieth century privacy became the norm.

But with the Digital Revolution in the early twenty first century we have made a return to the village. And this time the village is virtual.

This digital village means that the boundaries between public and private, business and personal are becoming increasingly blurred. I’ve taken to drawing them as a venn diagram.

As we adopt the various social computing platforms in our personal lives – such as Facebook, Digg, Slideshare, YouTube, or Twitter – we blur the boundaries between public and private by our own making. Then, as companies and other organisations adopt the same technologies for business purposes and ask us to drive them, we begin the blur the boundaries between business and personal.

As a result we are turning into:

“ambient broadcasters who disclose a great deal of personal information in order to stay connected and take advantage of social, economic, and political opportunities.”

Source: Mike Sachoff webpronews.com

And, by means of this broadcasting of our information, we are paying the social media platform providers through our data. These providers are not making their platforms available to us for free. They are doing it because our data is the goldmine of the twenty first century. We are paying them by giving away data about our lives, which are increasingly exposed online in the virtual village.

This view of data as critical to the new internet (often called Web 2.0) was explained by Tim O’Reilly back in 2005 and is summarised nicely in this diagram by Ajit Jaokar.

And this new interactive and easier to use web is compelling to many of us. It enables us to do many things including:

• Build friendships
• Find and form communities
• Seek or share help and expertise
• Build reputations
• Find out who is trustworthy and reputable
• Do business and make money
• Find jobs
• Have fun

But let’s put all of this aside for a moment to consider human nature. And to start let’s consider an old saying:

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. ”
Source: Ecclesiastes 1:9-14

Thus one thing we need to keep in mind about this digital village we’re living in now is that no human behaviour happens online that does not already happen offline. What is different, however, is the the amplification effects of the web and the way that the medium facilitates amplified responses.

We’ve all seen the poor secretary somewhere who writes an email only have it go global almost overnight and then lose their job. That’s the amplification effect of the web. In the past that conversation might have got out to a small group of people via word of mouth. But now it truly can go global in a matter of hours.

And, while this digital village gives rise to an enormous number of benefits and opportunities, it also gives rise to some risks.

The three key risks I see are:

• Reputation. The amplification effects of the web mean that news moves fast and bad news moves faster.  Thus while it has become easier and faster to build a reputation online, it is also easier for unflattering images and commentary to proliferate.After all how many times have you gone out with friends only to find the pictures are already up on Facebook or Flickr by the time you arrive home? Here is a great example of this phenomenon (no it’s not me in that picture ).
• Job. The blurring between business and personal currently gives rise to a number of conflicts in the workplace.  Some employers frown upon online participation by their staff, others demand it of unwilling staff.In any case, we are still working out the boundaries for social media and social networking in business and the workplace. And, until we settle on the new norms, there are going to be some casualties.  I know several people who have lost jobs due to their online activity.
• Personal safety. This risk is especially linked to the ease with which disputes can be amplified in the absence of physical interaction.There is much more effort involved to escalate a dispute if you have to walk over to someone’s house, knock on their door, ask their parents or partner if they are home, and then have a fight. But if there has been insults flung back and forth in the equivalent of a digital village square then physical action can seem to be a logical next step.An example of this is the tragic case of teens who escalated an argument online (effectively in public in the digital village). The result was one was killed due to a perceived loss of face.

This leads into the question of how we can mitigate these risks.

• Use commonsense – if you wouldn’t disclose offline why do it online?
• Trust your gut – if you are not comfortable doing something why do it?
• Ask your friends
• It’s just like the ‘real world’ so look for patterns
• Be conscious of the power of amplification online and use that power wisely

The main thing is to:

Accept the changed landscape and plan accordingly

The human race has survived the advent of many revolutionary technologies – including the printing press, the telegraph, telephone, radio and television. Each was predicted to cause disaster to our kind and, miraculously, we appear to have survived. But, rather than the doom predicted, each of these technologies has opened up remarkable vistas of opportunity, wealth and social good for humankind.

I predict that we will adapt to the digital revolution and be as unable to imagine life without it as we can imagine life without the telephone.

---

Note: This post is based on a presentation at Social Media Women on 13 July 2010. The slides are up on Slideshare.

The common thread between these items is the importance of communication. And it is the communication by leaders and managers within organisations that signifies to people what standards of thinking and behaviour are acceptable.

This communication takes the form of spoken words, behaviours, gestures and also of absence, silence and looking away. Thus leaders communicate the way that it is acceptable to be within that organisation.

Ethics are hard to define – often they are easier to detect by their absence rather than by their manifestation in the daily life of an organisation.

When I used to work in government we talked about ethical behaviour as doing the right thing even when nobody was watching.

Interestingly, in that government context we discussed (and sometimes vigorously debated) things like probity quite a lot. Perhaps one of the features of an ethical organisation is that an ongoing discourse exists about what ethics means at a practical level for people within that organisation?

Another thing that supports an ethical organisation is a refutation of incompetence. Where incompetence is tolerated, accepted or covered up within an organisation it can override ethical considerations and breed bad outcomes.

At best, toleration of incompetence can lead to dispirited staff and unhappy customers. At worst incompetence can segue into breaches of statutory and regulatory requirements unless leaders and managers take vigorous steps to prevent it.

Incompetence tolerated also breeds passivity. If incompetence is accepted, and people are unable to stop it, then they cease to care. That giving up caring about quality means that the organisation is starting down a slippery slope that can lead to poor delivery initially and, ultimately, to ethical issues.

It is a pretty safe bet that an organisation that tolerates incompetence is not simultaneously facilitating discussions about ethical behaviour or probity. It is not likely to be focused on high quality outcomes for stakeholders such as shareholders, customers or staff.

The next step beyond this is conspiracy. This situation is neatly outlined by Michael Krigsman in his recent article, Dell lawsuit: Pattern of deceit.

As Michael summarised it:

Dell shipped approximately 12 million computers containing faulty components and then tried to hide the problems from buyers.

For Dell this appears to have played out, with staff members actively conspiring to do the wrong thing by customers, as a failure of ethics.

This kind of situation makes me wonder just what communication (taking the form of spoken words, behaviours, gestures and also of absence, silence and looking away) that the Dell leaders and managers were demonstrating to their people?

I wonder too, how many other organisations suffer in similar ways? And, if you are a leader or manager, what signals are you sending to your people about acceptable ways of being in your organisation?

see moar Lolcats

One of the things that I’m fascinated by is how narrow our definition of success is sometimes. This is one of the reasons for this post. Michelle Williams is a woman who has taken a step back from the traditional definition of success and who seeks to broaden it.

There is a new breed of innovator roaming the streets – and Michelle is one of them – called Social Entrepreneurs. These people seek to change the focus of innovation from making money to making people and societies truly rich. It is often called Social Innovation.

Michelle has inspired me with her passion for social innovation. Her focus is in the areas of environment, sustainability and social justice (in particular the rights and empowerment of Indigenous people).

After a long career in enterprise she now runs her own marketing consultancy and regularly blogs about connecting the world through social innovation.

Michelle is also developing her own startup in the social/technology space; she also runs other entrepreneurial events in the tech and social innovation space.

Here in her own words:

How/Why I’m doing what I’m doing now?
I grew up in a beautiful area of Sydney a shy girl, a wallflower of sorts. I have always appreciated technology and the way it can enhance our lives. I enjoy connecting with people, and solving the world’s problems, one step at a time of course. I love to contemplate, explore and learn about the world and how we all behave in it.

Since my late teens I have felt an intense drive and spirit inside that has taken me exploring the other side of the world, has seen me train intensely in martial arts, and pushed me to develop myself personally, constantly acquiring new knowledge and understanding.

Just over year ago I was made redundant from my role as the marketing manager for an IT solution provider. I had the opportunity to take similar roles but felt it was time to forge my own path, shed the skin of where life had led me to, and make a concerted effort to carve my niche.

My vision has always been to make a massive positive difference in this world. Social innovation using technology and the web is not as developed as it could be in Sydney yet, but I will ensure, as I develop myself and create my own, that I do all I can to see it grow to the levels it deserves. I would love to see the entrepreneurial tech and social innovation communities that are emerging achieve all they possibly can and, for greater society to embrace this whole heartedly.

What is the best piece of advice you have ignored to get where you are?
To work a 9-5 job, get married, have a kid and buy a house. All around me I saw people settling for the first thing that came along but not really being happy. Yes, I missed out on short term gratification and yes it’s hurt and sometimes been lonely but it never felt real to just do what’s comfortable. I know those things will come but at a deeper, more meaningful level.

Are you actually happy?
It is so easy to get out of bed at the crack of dawn when I have a purpose. Thankfully I have the drive and energy to keep going and to pursue my dreams. Is life perfect? No. But I’m not sure it’s meant to be and strangely, when I achieve great feats along the way it doesn’t feel different, the journey just becomes more enjoyable. I do know that I live for the experience of life, live it to the fullest I possibly can and that the best is still to come.

How many times they nearly gave up when things went wrong and what kept them going at those times?
It’s funny that I now have a very positive, optimistic view on life it takes a lot for me to reach the point of giving up. But, on those rare occasions I’ve felt like it, moments later it all falls into alignment.

It has helped to talk to as many people as I can who share the journey or have some insight into what I am experiencing. Special people of note have been John Wells, Raul Caceras, Mick Liubinskas and Kim Chen.

However, I have walked away though, like from my first professional Muay Thai fight after months of intense physical and mental training in preparation. I knew in my heart that the lesson was not the fight but the journey to it, and now all I’ve experienced since in the tech, social innovation and music communities.

What do you wish you hadn’t sacrificed to be such a success?
Sleep ins but it’s interesting that the more I kick this up a gear the more disciplined and organised I am becoming. I try to encourage a no TV household so we ensure we’re always active or doing something productive. My housemates think it’s funny when I hide the TV, only bringing it out for special events.

What mistakes did you make and what did you learn from them?
A wise mentor repeated many times that ‘it’s only a mistake if you make it twice’. As a human being we make them and we learn from them. I do feel though that my biggest mistake I have made was not being at peace with that, not forgiving myself for being me. As soon as I did find that peace the cloud lifted and it all started to become clear.

see moar Lolcats

This amusing cat picture was suggested by my buddy @KerrieAnne as a Caturday candidate – it’s from a post by Nick Milton titled You wont use it if you can’t find it – findability in KM.

This struck me as:

(a) one very cute cat;
(b) one very important issue; and
(c) one of the age old problems of business.

On all counts, there is good reason for making this more than a cute picture to share on Caturday.

Findability is one of the biggest problems we suffer from regarding information, in particular digital information.

How often have we tried to find that thing we saw yesterday on the intranet but now cannot locate it for love nor money? How often have we tried to find that report on the shared drive that we know we wrote last year? How much enterprise disk space is wasted on storing data nobody ever uses because nobody knows what’s there?

None of these issues is new. To my knowledge we have been discussing them since the arrival of word processing and server based storage. Yet we seem no closer to an effective solution than ever. There are entire departments now devoted to knowledge management, yet our knowledge (let alone information) is still (for the most part) a semi-chaotic mess.

As Nick noted:

Your knowledge assets MUST be findable. They must be ambiently findable (which means that by their very nature, they pop up when you start looking). As knowledge managers, sometimes we spend far too much time creating usable knowledge assets, without thinking about creating findable knowledge assets (actually, we often spend too much time on capture, and ignore both usability and findability).

The interesting question is how can we make this happen? From past experience we know that asking people to add metadata to content is a hit and miss approach.

From my perspective, the most interesting candidate to help solve this problem at the moment is enterprise search technology. Sure this technology works on the findability issue and does not take care of the usability factor.

But I reckon findability is more useful at a business level. Realistically, if we could find stuff, we could improve its usability later. However, at the moment we can’t find stuff at all.

In the meantime, that’s one cute cat

Here is another post in my series on inspiring women.

This time it is my friend Annalie Killian, who is also known as Catalyst for Magic (yes that is really the job title on her business card) or as @MaverickWoman on Twitter.

I’ve known Annalie for many years and have always been inspired and energised by her. Over the years she has evolved as an organisational change agent (catalyst) and intrapreneur. Yet several constants have remained with Annalie over the years, for example, her:

• passion for change,
• generosity of spirit,
• extreme curiosity, and
• deep joie de vivre.

Here is a bit of insight into the life journey of this woman who has challenged stereotypes and travelled far. In her own words:

How/Why I’m doing what I’m doing now?

Let me start with what I am doing now, then I’ll try and cover the how and why.

Since 2000, when I moved to Australia from South Africa, I have worked as “Catalyst for Magic” at AMP, a large iconic Australian Financial Services brand. My role is Director of Innovation, Collaboration and Communication, and I see it as championing the spirit of “ubuntu” – a Zulu word referring to our inter-connected Humanness” – in all its rich and imaginative and complex essence- and directing that magic towards meaningful and purposeful work and business outcomes. Call it culture, call it engagement, call it creative collaboration, collective intelligence– it’s all of that, and it’s what sets one company apart from the next.

Why I am doing what I’m doing now?

My best friend, who unfortunately died of cancer at age 33, sent me a card after a particularly trying incident working for an extreme bully, GM of Human Resources at the time at the Bayside Aluminium Smelter in South Africa. She said: “You will outlive him…you are a survivor- it’s inevitable”. At the time, I didn’t appreciate it as much as I do now….and I think the essence of what she was referring to is my resilience, resourcefulness and extreme adaptability.

So why do I do what I do? Maybe it was inevitable…I thrive in it! As a corporate maverick, I dodge, weave, swim upstream and take a lot of set-backs but keep on purpose when it comes to innovation and bringing others along. And yes, it is unsettling for some who want to cling to the status quo or the past.

How do I do it?

If “life is what happens when you are making other plans”, then I guess I don’t make too many plans but rather find ways to apply my strengths to opportunities I spot and shape my work that way. I have an insatiable curiosity and am highly attuned to faint signals that others often don’t notice. Believe it or not, these skills were forged in childhood by personal circumstances and it taught me to pick up on almost imperceptible signals and anticipate scenarios- giving me the best ability to cope and navigate through challenges. And I am

Who would have thought that this was preparing me to become a change agent, working in innovation in a large corporation, nurturing the adoption of ideas and collaboration among many to anticipate disruption, embrace change and overcome threats?

My proudest breakthroughs include facilitating the first democratic elections in South Africa in the Zululand region to a peaceful outcome in 1994, establishing the first Community Foundation in Africa and building that into a powerful transformational agency, and establishing + producing the AMPLIFY Innovation & Thought Leadership Festival since 2005. The latter two were the result of spotting signals early and converging many ideas into a powerful vision.

What is the best piece of advice you have ignored to get where you are?

Sticking to the straight and narrow road! I have always meandered down ally-ways and side-streets, and these have yielded the richest discoveries and sometimes set me on a totally different trajectory.

How many times did you nearly give up when things went wrong & what kept you going at those times?

Know that cartoon about the frog trying to strangle the Pelican that’s eating him? That’s me. I can be almost compulsive-obsessive when I want something. I NEVER give up. I just find a different way. And, I have learnt patience…I can bide my time. This is the hardest of course, but I have been rewarded more times than not by letting go of something and then revisiting it at a later time when circumstances caught up. Ideas can be way ahead of their time and one must be willing to cultivate the eco-system to prepare it for an idea. (This feels counter-intuitive because we know how slow organisations can be to change- but there’s no point forcing something so hard that it forces YOU out!)

Are you actually happy?

Yes! Unequivocally yes! I don’t have a perfect life, or actually perfect anything…but it’s sort of all working and there is harmony most of the time. I still have lots of ambition that I hope to realize and it would be great to really push my talents to see where the limits are. There are a few big dreams still looking for a physical manifestation- I’d like to play in a larger international arena and I would also like to help my 2 daughters achieve their dreams. One wants to be a musician and learn Mandarin so she can sing in China, and the other one wants to be a fashion stylist/ editor. I’d like to study Alternate Health like massage therapies as a hobby. (I love spoiling people!)

What do you wish you hadn’t sacrificed to be such a success?

It’s a flattering question, though I don’t think of success as a destination, more as a work-in-progress.

I have not been balanced at all times…favouring the mind and not honouring the body equally. I don’t sleep much…there’s so much living to be done! But no, I have never regretted not sleeping more!

I think my daughters have missed not coming home to cookies and milk served by me, but I don’t do guilt. I know they have gained in many other ways through the way I parent them, like a belief that being deeply immersed in doing something you love and becoming good at it is one of the most pleasurable things in life, and that all mastery requires effort. It’s very funny when I hear them sharing these thoughts with their teenage friends!

What mistakes did you make and what did you learn from them?

I make mistakes all the time…it comes with taking risk and learning. But it’s crucial to be very observant and spot a mistake quickly, then fix it immediately. It helps to have low ego and attachment to a process so you can amend it without feeling like it’s a loss of face!

Outside of a criminal offence, there are few mistakes one cannot overcome professionally or personally. But some mistakes can shadow you throughout your life. One of those is choosing a partner that is not right for you- and being tied to a bad scenario for a lifetime until your children are adults. That’s about the only warning I can give! And…mistakes should not be wasted, they are vessels of personal growth.

What would be the point of a mistake-free life? Can’t think of anything more boring!