The Settle
April 18, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
My business is change facilitation and my sport is rowing. I’ve learned a lot about both from cox’ns who provide the inspiration for this 4th in a series of four posts about change leadership using social business initiatives as an example.
The first 3 posts were about:
- Shifting the vantage point through willingness, not willfulness.
- Releasing the fairy tale and attendant story-lines identified with what’s non-integral and non-sustainable.
- Creating the conditions in which innovation and productive friction can take place by embracing different perspectives and individual lenses on the new direction.
This post is about execution and action which require one of the most important parts of a race or practice that the cox calls: the settle. A lot of business leaders get this wrong. They launch a new project with a racing start and push everyone to hold that pace indefinitely. But its the settle that results in purposeful attention, high quality and finding the optimal rhythm together. Just like in the racing shell.
Like cox’ns, business leaders facilitate the shift from urgent desire to unity and trust, through giving the right feedback at the right time. Doing so requires a multi-dimensional awareness, what you and your team sense, feel, believe and embody..not just what you know or want.
The settle can’t be confused with settling for less because its a moment by moment refusal to be less, especially when it hurts. It must be understood as the collective action that creates shared responsibility for aligning with the desired results. In social business, those desired results are some form of creating natural influence in your communities and networks and with your audience.
If you lead like a cox’n, that natural influence could show up as gold.
The Lens On It
March 22, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Its important to understand the difference between shift in belief and shift in perspective.
Beliefs shifts are identity, the “We’re the ones who.. (experience the world and our organization’s place in that world from a single present vantage point of power).”
That shared point of power is the one from which future opportunities, capabilities, culture, innovations, networks, relationships and processes are created. An example could be a shift from a push oriented to a pull oriented belief system from which a social business direction is created.
Team, partner, group, community and organizational members’ ability to shift will depend on both their individual desires and whether their individual complex systems of beliefs, assumptions and expectations align with or contradict the change intention.
But people will have vastly different perceptions about what, why and how. They’ll experience those through a personal lens involving their strengths, weaknesses, talent, skills, personality, risk tolerance, experience, maturity, shadow behaviors and many other factors.
A typical management response is to standardize and control in attempt to neutralize the impact of perception differences but the downside is to stifle innovation and productive friction. Trailer Park Boys provides an alternative.
If you’ve never seen or heard of it, Trailer Park Boys is a Canadian mockumentary about the residents of the Sunnyvale Trailer Park who share a Utopian vision of trailer park community including get rich quick schemes, getting high, circumventing the rules and regulations and staying out of jail. The stories center around three main characters who see the means to their desired fulfillment through different lenses.
Julian is tall, dark, handsome and a natural leader. He also has a glass of rum and coke permanently attached to his hand. A career criminal, Julian is the head of the extended Sunnyvale Trailer Park family and he always tries to take care of the people in the park, especially his best friends Ricky and Bubbles.
Ricky is Julian’s best friend and business partner, grows awesome dope, generally lives in his car, doesn’t always make the best decisions though and the boys often get in trouble as a result. However, Ricky’s heart is usually in the right place, especially when it comes to his family and friends.
Bubbles is the heart and soul of Sunnyvale, not to mention the smartest person in the park. If it were up to him Bubbles would lead a quiet life in the park. Unfortunately, he’s constantly getting caught up in Julian and Ricky’s schemes and is afraid they – or even he – will go to jail again.
Trailer Park Boys web site
There’s seven seasons of problem-solving, decision-making, change leadership, capability building, innovation and creative friction metaphor if you’re willing to think outside the trailer park.
The Fairy Tale
March 15, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Social business is a direction that requires a shifted vantage point, one from which you view the world as it is, not as it was.
Social platforms and technologies are a subset of a bigger evolutionary shift in which economics and ecology are the same and can no longer be at odds with each other. That applies to the ecology of business in exactly the same way as it applies to the ecology of the biosphere. Survival depends, or inter-depends, on it.
The shifted business is holistic, or integral, meaning that everything it does is good for “me, we, you and all”. The shift is easy to grasp when there’s products involved and you’re weighing profits against labor exploited, resources consumed and environmental footprint. In professional, financial, knowledge and creative service businesses many impacts are invisible but infinitely reverberate nonetheless, positively or negatively affecting “me, we, you and all”.
All the knowledge, thought, concepts, ideas, solutions, content and actions (including social direction) initiate at the vantage point, or intention “we are the ones who….”.
How you answer that, and live up to it, and tell your new story, defines your direction and its alignment with evolution, or devolution. Its no longer possible to intend it both ways. It hasn’t been possible for decades but now is the time to let go of the attachment to the old story, which in essence has been a fairy tale. Ending the old story and replacing it with a new one creates uncertainty but doesn’t have to be a dreadful thing. That’s why the tales end with: “And they lived happily ever after.”
The Vantage Point
March 14, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Established small business owners are conflicted about social business and the shift towards “pull” platforms. They try to move in the new direction but aren’t ready to let go of habitual practices.
They’re trying to grow and develop and at the same time protect and survive. They’ll go to great lengths to “sell” me on the rationalizations and justifications for their interruption-based sales and marketing tactics and their reporting-based internal systems, structures and procedures.
I’ve learned its impossible to convince anyone to shift his or her vantage point if that business owner doesn’t sense, is in denial about, or not not able to live up to, a new direction like social business. They’re just not there and can’t make “sense” of it. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re lost causes.
We just have meet them where they are, let them fail and flail without judging them or jumping to unwanted conclusions on their behalf. “If you don’t act now it will be too late” is an example of one of those assumptions (and one that I’m prone to if I’m not vigilant).
Every client has a vantage point: their personal, or cultural, system of beliefs, competencies and desires. Professional service providers have two options:
- Tell them what’s wrong with where they are and what it costs them.
- Meet and accept them where they are if they’ll own it, present the corresponding opportunity and facilitate the shift to a new set of beliefs, competencies and desires.
I don’t know the right framework for the second option, but I know its not a plan.
Let Me Interrupt
February 20, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Someone asked me the other night what kind of coaching I do and without thinking I responded: paradoxical.
Most clients I work with want my help marketing their ideas, solutions and content. They’re very receptive to my approach:
- create your “one of a kind” point of power at the edges or intersections – markets, industries, areas of interest or expertise etc.
- discover your voice and develop your stories around that point of power
- give and don’t hold back
And then they get scared and overwhelmed and go back to their old ways which stopped working long ago: email blasts, snail-mail announcements, hiring the magical business development manager, handing out cards at networking meetings etc. They give themselves over to the habitual impulse to interrupt instead of giving themselves over to their story.
When the old methods fail I suggest examining and clearing, with my facilitation, the assumptions and expectations blocking change. And that’s when the paradox kicks in. Because this is what they believe the process should be: telling me their stories! How they got where they are. Why they do what they do. The history, the details and most of all – the reasons.
They claim to be very receptive to my simple approach: unconditional permission to allow me to interrupt if I start to get more information and story than I need to know in order to facilitate an identity shift. Then I interrupt 5 times in 10 minutes and its “Call in the Marines”.
If it weren’t for paradox it would be easy, right?
Think about it this way:
Story is your ideas, solutions, and brand in form – the content.
Identity is your beliefs, assumptions and expectations “minus” the content (story, knowledge, thinking, form).
Do You Care About Me?
February 16, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
I confess. I rarely comment. But since I want to participate more I thought Google Buzz might be a good sharing and discussion platform.
So this is what I’ve observed after a few days experimenting with Buzz: very few tech/business people, often referred to as celebrities, dominate the public discussions. The vast majority of those who follow them race to make comments, agree or disagree, troll, rail against, offend, self-promote, cross-promote, ask for something, spam, praise and sometimes add value. This of course, is nothing new in public discussion groups.
What’s different and dramatic now is the scale…something like 10 million Google Buzz posts the first few days. So I followed a few of the celebrities, and observed how they engaged an almost instantaneous swarm of tens of thousands of followers. My sense: a collective need arises that I can only describe as: “Do You Care About Me?”. And I thought…do they care? How? And what does care even mean?
I can’t think of a better starting point for any brand (including global microbrands) to grow and develop in the Web 2.0 and beyond world, than to ask those questions. This is my first pass at a framework to facilitate that process. I followed a model that I created years ago for knowledge awareness, and its been valuable.
Why do it? Because to care is the natural state and point of power. Its also a state tremendously negatively affected by contradicting and limiting complex belief systems that inhibit growth and development.
“I Care” – is there a better way to change the status quo?
Embodiment – Its Directive
November 7, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Embodiment: the “E” in DRIVE
One of the 5 elements of the RedShift DRIVE Self-Awareness and Change Leadership Model, and key to shifting identity in the emotional/neurobiological dimension, is Embodiment.
Huge change shifts can create the perfect storm of heightened unwanted feelings combined with an increasingly perceived need to refute emotions. But to put on a false front is to live in conflict with oneself, blocking the motion of being and diminishing creativity, natural influence and personal power. The result is unhappiness, frustration and resistance that spreads when what is denied and can no longer be contained, is projected onto others. In extreme cases, it escalates to a toxic environment, self-harm, abuse and violence.
Feelings freely expressed, on the other hand, are valuable pointers to what people believe, and how they perceive themselves, in relation to change in their personal, professional and organizational lives. Awareness of those beliefs means they can be examined and replaced if they’re not aligned with what’s desired or with a new direction. Its a mistake to create an environment in which change must take place in mind only. That’s because identity, as well as the moment-to-moment choice to protect or grow, is embodied at the cellular level. Awareness includes body awareness. Expression comes through the body as well as the brain. Organizations can unlock institutional culture (collective beliefs) as well as institutional knowledge.
Social tools, computing and networks support an environment in which lasting, multi-dimensional change can occur; in which creative power is unlocked through participation, inclusiveness, authenticity, and transparency and in which leaders will continually sense and re-align the levers of growth and protection.
Rigor – Its a Challenge
October 22, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Rigor: The “R” in DRIVE
One of the 5 elements of the RedShift DRIVE Self-Awareness and Change Leadership Model, and key to shifting identity in the logical/philosophical dimension, is Rigor.
Good consultants, coaches and facilitators know that the likelihood of lasting change increases when people find their own answers, decisions and solutions with our help. But what’s less evident is that a rigorous inquiry process, necessary to bringing a hidden belief into the light of awareness, can provoke strong, negative reactions. That’s because every belief that contradicts growth and development has hidden trade-offs and payoffs.
For example, a client may be willing to examine the belief that, despite evidence of an increasing shift to social business, as the seller, he or she has the power over the buyer. The client may grudgingly admit to the cost of the trade-offs of delaying or rejecting social business. Examples of these trade-offs are: late adoption, behind the learning curve, limited customer intelligence, risk of losing market share, lack of social community experience, etc. Consultants generally make recommendations that address the trade-offs. But the results of those recommendations, if implemented, get to the low-hanging fruit and result in incremental change at best or no lasting change at all.
Rigorous inquiry uncovers the payoff. In the example, the payoff to believing in business as usual, “we have the power”, could be individual or organizational self-preservation that mandates total control, invulnerability, and holding all the cards close. In other words, its the contradiction of social business.
There’s a logic to the payoff and its underlying beliefs. Acknowledging that logic is a more effective approach to helping people with change than pointing out its wrongness. Its not the easy path because individual or cultural emotional response to uncovering the payoff can be extreme resistance. Consultants who are fearless and patient enough to hold that space for clients to work through their resistance will recommend the transformational change befitting clients who can finally let go of the payoff that once served them well, but that did so in a world that no longer exists.
Business and Social Media: A Non-linear Process
November 16, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
Social Media:Community Snapshot
Social media will increasingly become more important to businesses that must find new ways to gain influence and increase attention share in peer-to-peer (friends) networks.
However, the strategies being developed to help companies accomplish this are often loosely based on a traditional sales and marketing funnel analogy, identifying community members as:
- visitors
- prospects
- leads
- opportunities
- customers
The funnel goal is to focus efforts on the people who are most likely to be influenced to take action and move them through the funnel.
This is an effective social network model but is based on assumptions that are not applicable for many businesses. The graphic simply illustrates a non-linear social community model as a connected group of people, including a tiny percentage who talk and a very large percentage who listen only, and who all have latent needs. Often, that’s it!
In this model, people (peers) who listen only to other people (peers and brand) may be just as likely to be influenced as the small percentage of people (peers) who talk. And there’s no way of knowing what the brand (people) can do to facilitate that. It requires experiential learning.
Because many communities look and act like this, its critical that business social media strategies differentiate assumptions from myths and not base their quest for quantitative metrics and ROI on those myths. Its harder to do that than it sounds because we individually and collectively (culture) identify with what’s worked in the past. Its what we “know”.
But success could mean testing many assumptions about the 95% of community members who listen only, and learning how to earn their attention and better understand them. Compared to traditional marketing methods, its a less clear, test and learn approach, dependent more on time than money. But that should not mean a casual or haphazard, half-hearted approach to social media.
Regardless of how tentative you feel about it, or how small you start, take it seriously. This is the future, and whatever the size of your business, an important decision you’ll make and change that you’ll lead.
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The RedShift Web Site Pages and the corresponding Blog: Creating Natural Influence, do not enable comments. I'm more comfortable getting feedback on social sites than here, where the work is so close to who I am, where I've been and where I'm going. If you have a comment or question, or would like to suggest a topic for an upcoming blog article, please contact me. Thank you.
