Month: November 2006

Getting to Maybe – Review

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I’ve just finished reading Getting to Maybe. This is a book about social innovation in complex environments (our world). It covers the stories of many social innovators and discusses the various parts of a common path that many take. This is a path with no map and no destination. Getting to maybe, or “if only …”, starts with the first step of realising that here and now is the best and only place to start. A chapter is dedicated to each identified step, but these are more like checkpoints than actual steps in a process.

Next is standing still, which is the requirement to reflect and listen, now that you’ve got the fire burning for some decisive action. The tension between reflection and action is a major theme of the book. Powerful strangers are those who can suddenly help you and your cause, now that you have started the journey and have opened your mind. Some time during the journey you get into the groove and “let it find you”, playing part of a cast, as in a jazz ensemble. The worst point is cold heaven, when you feel hopeless, as the authors say:

“Those who struggle to make a difference have to face two paradoxes. The first is that success is not a fixed address. The second is that failure can open the way to success.”

From cold heaven may come a chance to have hope as well as a pragmatic understanding of the realities of the world, or to “catch the moment when hope and history rhyme”. This is the time to ensure that whatever has been created does not stagnate and may even call for creative destruction as the environmental landscape changes. Finally, the door opens and the end of one social innovation can lead to the beginning of another.

There are no answers in this book but I think that it may be an inspiration for many who are on the journey of social innovation and need to know that they are not alone.

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Cappuccino U

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I love those serendipitous moments on the Web. I happened across Helge Scherlund’s blog via Technorati and noticed a post recommending the e-book, Cappuccino U, available from Spotted Cow Press. This short, CC-licensed book is by Jerome Martin, of Edmonton, Alberta and it is a pleasant flow of a read that discusses formal education, personal learning and the role of third-spaces. It’s a great introduction to learning for the 21st century:

This e-book is about a new style of learning in which innovative people have combined new information technology with traditional ways of learning to develop a new, personally-driven approach to learning. It happens predominantly in “the third place”, a location that is neither home nor office. The third place is usually a coffee house, one which is designed to serve this particular audience.

People gather in their favourite third places to work, relax, visit and learn. They work independently and in groups. Some of them use computers which may or may not be linked to the web. Some are taking courses online; others are writing books like this one.

This is Cappuccino U.

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Canadian Attitudes on Post-Secondary Education

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The CCL has just released survey results stating: “Public to Canada’s leaders: pay attention to post-secondary education“. There’s lots to review in the 80 questions that were asked of Canadians from across the country, summed up by the CCL President:

“What this poll tells us is that Canadians recognize that education and training are necessary to support economic growth and strong communities. They understand what a knowledge society means, and they want Canada to become a knowledge society,” said Dr. Paul Cappon, CCL’s president and CEO. “This is a message to our country’s leaders that higher education and skills training must be a national priority.”

Because I’m the type of person who reads the fine print, I found the responses to Question 54, available in the complete report, much more interesting:

Do you think that a college or university education is necessary for a person to be successful in today’s work world, or do you think that there are many ways to succeed in today’s work world without a college or university education?

  • Yes, necessary – 9%
  • No, many ways to succeed – 47%
  • DK / NA – 11%

Therefore, almost half of Canadians do not believe that post-secondary education is necessary to be successful in today’s work world.

Perhaps they had already read Will Richardson’s post, Dear Kids, You don’t have to go to College.

Update:

Here is another survey that I reported on last year in Work, Education & Taxes, where the results show that Canadians may be getting too much formal education, without any economic benefits. One comprehensive survey showed that Canadians have the highest rates of formal learning in the world, while another report indicated that there is a productivity gap in this country. If education can be directly correlated to economic productivity (as the CCL’s public statement infers) then we have a problem with the effectiveness of our post-secondary institutions. I’m not quite so sure about the correlation, and would not lay the blame on academia, but neither do I think that formal education is the key to economic productivity.

The Police and the Blogger

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We have an interesting story unfolding here in New Brunswick about a blogger, Charles LeBlanc, who attended a conference, observed a protest and wound up being attacked and charged by the police. First of all, I’m not a political blogger or even attempt to be a journalist. As any online writer knows, there’s more than one kind of blogger in the world.

This story is interesting for a number of reasons:

  1. The police used Mr. Leblanc’s blog to do research prior to the conference, so they knew who he was, but the arresting officer said in court that he had no idea what a blog is.
  2. The police say that they didn’t recognize Mr. LeBlanc as a media person and that he was too scruffy.
  3. The police deleted evidence from Mr. Leblanc’s camera.
  4. The judge is not amused with the police actions.

Personally, I don’t know if Mr. LeBlanc is a good journalist or not, as I don’t read his blog. However, the mainstream media seem to be using the term blogger in a pejorative sense, though it is not for them to decide what constitutes a journalist. Neither is it up to the police to decide what constitutes journalism in our society. As the Internet blurs traditional lines of work and authority, I’m sure that we’ll see more confusion when hierarchy meets wirearchy, and media clash. I also wonder how this will affect our educational institutions, especially the schools of journalism.

Michael Geist has more on the legal aspects of this case.

Let’s get to maybe

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Rob Paterson has been reflecting on his reading of Getting to Maybe, and I was so taken by these ideas that I walked down to our local independent bookstore and bought a copy. I’m only a few pages into the book and I come across this paragraph:

Similarly, we organize our schools to be efficient in supplying education to large numbers and largely unresponsive to the wide range of learning styles and capacities that we know exists. Then we diagnose those who cannot learn efficiently as suffering from learning disorders and attempt to treat them, not the system.

Digression: As I write this, our son comes home from school, grabs a quick snack and goes upstairs to do his homework – a number of math exercises; the obligatory, nightly English assignment but no additional work tonight. As he leaves, I wonder how many adults appreciate bringing work home. Do schools assign homework because it will toughen students for the real world, or just to make them miserable?

On the bright side, I’m looking forward to delving into Getting to Maybe as it seems to be upbeat and positive, as described on the jacket:

Getting to Maybe applies the insights of complexity theory and harvests the experiences of a wide range of people and organizations … to lay out a brand new way of thinking about making change in communities, in business, and in the world.

Training – the 8% Solution

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Does your organisation live in complicated or a complex world?

When you are developing training, are you addressing complicated or complex issues?

Via Rob Paterson, and the book More Space, are two important differentiations between complicated & complex systems given by Johnnie Moore, in Simple Ideas, Lightly Held:

complicated = not simple, but ultimately knowable (e.g. the wiring on an aircraft)
complex = not simple and never fully knowable. Just too many variables interact.

If you are working with a complicated system, such as an aircraft, then the entire system is knowable, even though it would take much time and practice. Training would be the right tool to develop your skills to fly or fix the aircraft. I know, because I’ve designed aircraft training. There’s a lot of stuff to know and do, but training works and people can eventually master the system.

Complicated systems and the training for them can be controlled. Complex systems and learning how to work with them cannot.

If you are working with a complex system, you will never be able to know everything. For instance, the environment and communities are complex systems that cannot be controlled, only influenced. There are no right answers, there are many ways of trying to achieve your goals and there are too many variables to control.

The other day I was asked about the essence of implementing informal learning, and I believe that it is the act of giving up control. This is scary for many inside the organisation, but it’s the only way to manage in a complex environment. As the world becomes more networked, interdependent and environmentally challenged, all organisations are moving into complex environments.

Here is an indicator of how complex our work is becoming. It used to be that you could master the majority of what you needed for your work. This is no longer the case, as shown by Robert Kelley of Carnegie-Mellon University, when he asked this research question (via Jay):

What percentage of the knowledge you need to do your job is stored in your own mind?

  • 1986: 75%
  • 1997: 15-20%
  • 2006: estimated 8 -10%

This is one more reason why informal learning structures (not procedures) are necessary to support individual learning in a complex environment, where it is impossible to control the process as we could with training. Informal learning is the way in which your employees, bosses and colleagues will have to learn that significant other 92% of knowledge necessary for their jobs – today. It’s not that we don’t need training; we just need a lot more informal learning.

Red Ball Internet

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I went to what my wife calls my downtown office for a coffee this afternoon and read the latest copy of Here magazine. It featured an article on Moncton’s Red Ball Internet. Based on iBurst technology, Red Ball offers wide area wireless Internet access. Subscription fees range from $12.95 to $54.95 per month.

There is a definite appeal to having no cables and an always-on, dedicated wireless connection. Advertised download speed is 1 mbps which is not anywhere near as fast as ADSL (~ 3 mbps), Aliant’s Ultra service (~ 5 mbps) or cable (~ 8 mbps). If you are constantly traveling around the city and need internet access, then Red Ball would be a good service. This iBurst technology also has potential as a service offering for conferences and conventions. I could see bloggers wanting continuous access during conferences.

What really caught my eye is that this service is available only in Atlantic Canada:

“This is definitely a wonderful story; it is a North American first,” gushes C. Sean Adams, leader of business development for Red Ball. “This service is not yet available in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, only in Greater Moncton. We see this service doing for the Internet what the mobile phone did for telecommunications. It is a cost effective, mobile option for Internet users who want the high speed without the high prices.”

The Modern Chautauqua

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Of Conferences, Chatauquas and Boundary Objects, at Green Chameleon, discusses the relationships between small independent conferences; large-scale commercial events; academic sessions and then muses:

If the KM conference scene really is a complex ecosystem, then the failure of any element of it can have unpredictable, perhaps negative consequences. If the role of the conference really is to perform a boundary object role between different communities (vendors, experienced practitioners, corporate sponsors of KM, novice practitioners, thought leaders), then anything that fractures the communities and sends them into self-serving spheres, will surely drive the profession into stagnation and decline.

At the moment, it seems to me, out at the periphery, the cracks are already showing on the walls. Unless the stable centre recognises this, and unless we find new models for the economics and formats of conferences, and new models for collaboration and interaction between communities, my fear is that these cracks will spread. I hope I’m wrong.

The article also refers to those American traveling cultural shows called chautauqua.

 

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I had read about chautauqua in Nine Shift (recommended reading):

In 1920, chautauqua, those great cultural and educational programs that traveled from rural small town to small town, bringing history, music, and entertainment to an agrarian society, had its largest attendance. Some 25 million people were said to have attended a chautauqua that year. The following year they folded, never to put up a chautauqua tent again.

It’s fascinating to look back and see what is taken for granted at a certain point in time. In 1920, with millions of people going to chautauqua, you probably would have the majority of Americans not predicting their demise. Yet, one year later, chautauqua are finished.

Perhaps the commercial conference will follow the same path. Who knows? Looking into the past can show us that we too should not take current conditions for granted. Personally, I’m drawn more to the unconference.

Commons Lens

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I’ve just created a Squidoo lens on the subject of the Commons. My aim is to provide a single point of access for anything related to the Commons movement in order to help out communities that may be interested in starting one or linking to others. Any information, resources, photos or advice would be appreciated. One way to help would be to use “Commons” as a del.icio.us tag.