Endless Knots

The virtual winner: The first Pulitzer to a distributed news organization

In a way, all news organizations are distributed, i.e. you can't really get most breaking news stories without showing up. But newsrooms have been the energy drinks for reporters for forever. As previously reported, I started my reporting career at the Pottstown Mercury in a rectange of six steel desks, three facing three. And keys to the newspaper car in order to go on assignment.

But until this year's Pulitzers were awarded, a truly virtual news operation had never received one. Here's a great story from NY Times reporter Brian Stelter on InsideClimateNews's virtual operations. They received the award for national reporting with their journalists in Washington, Boston (dear beloved city), and New York. Here's their "about" and the description of their wild celebration (plus a couple of other lines0 from Stelter's Times story:

'We’re a virtual organization,” said the publisher of the six-year-old Web site, David Sassoon, from his office in New York. So the celebration took place in a telephone conference call; whatever Champagne flowed, flowed in separate locations.

InsideClimate News may be the leanest news start-up ever to be presented with a Pulitzer, journalism’s highest honor, a prize that is typically awarded to regional and national newspapers. It beat out 50 other entrants and two finalists, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, for the prize.

With a full-time staff of just seven and a nonprofit business model, InsideClimate News exemplifies a new breed of news organization that depends on donations, both from rich charitable foundations and a handful of ordinary readers.

 

 

Marissa Mayer, we need to talk: This genie is way out of the bottle

Dear Marissa,

Apparently, I'm not the only one who has a word or two to say to you. Tom Ashbrook (On Point, "Yahoos Ban on Working From Home") is holding forth with some savvy guests even as I type; Maureen Dowd has a biting op-ed in yesterday's NY Times ("Get Off Of Your Cloud"); and the bloggers have gone wild. Not to mention that I've received numerous emails including this one from a client: "Wish you could write a counter to this and have it published.  This does not help the cause..."*

I regret that I've had to make you a category here but with so much emotion swirling around the HR edict ordering all-hands on the Yahoo! deck, let's begin with some facts:

1. As a computer scientist, you might want to look at real data. There is little evidence to support the notion that people need to be face-to-face to collaborate OR innovate. Yes, there are moments to come together but not perpetually. Professor Tom Allen set the lie to this idea 35 years ago with his ground-breaking research for Digital Equipment Corporation. Simply, if people are more than 50 meters (150 feet) apart, the "probability that two people will communicate [at least once a week] as a function of distance separating them" plummets. Here's the chart:

2. "Can Absence Make a Team Grow Stronger?" With two business school professors, we researched 54 high-performing teams in 26 companies across 15 industries and the resounding conclusion from the data was "yes, indeed." Here's the quick summary from the Harvard Business Review where the study was published as "Best Practices:"

Some projects have such diverse requirements that they need a variety of specialists to work on them. But often the best-qualified specialists are scattered around the globe, perhaps at several companies. Remarkably, an extensive benchmarking study reveals, it isn't necessary to bring team members together to get their best work. In fact, they can be even more productive if they stay separated and do all their collaborating virtually.

The conclusion for Yahoo!: unless you're doing very simplistic projects, i.e. routine processing chores, stocking shelves, and the like, you're staffing your teams incorrectly. If you're looking for innovation, you need diversity, the subject of many studies before and after ours.There is no way that you have that diversity in toto within driving distance of your Silicon Valley. It's 2013, not 1950, the year the number of manufacturing workers reached its peak in the US.

3. Which leads right into this point. As per the title of this post, the genie is waaaay out of the bottle. Do you actually believe that people today work in intact teams? When you force everyone to co-locate, you're most likely not bringing in the people who actually work together. Do you have contractors? Partners in other companies? Suppliers? Vendors? Developers in India/China/Philippines/Singapore? Do your sales people spend their time in the office? (If your answer to this one is yes, perhaps we've pinpointed a big part of your problem.)

Unless Yahoo! has completely turned its back on development trends that are, say, as old as the Internet itself, team members are scattered around the globe. Yahoo! should do a study of where its team members are situated. We can place a pretty confident bet that they're not all in proximity of Yahoo! HQ.

And that's just the start of what's wrong with this 20th century edict.

4. Let's talk about culture for a moment, one of the big points of the "YAHOO! PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION--DO NOT FORWARD" HR memo that All Things D's Kara Swisher had up within moments, it seems, and which has been published everywhere.

Forcing people into the office hardly builds loyalty. It's abundantly clear that Yahoo! is attempting a massive and quick turnaround of its culture. The insults about the workforce, as reflected in posts around the web, are legion. The parking lot is only half-full at 9:30 AM. Stopping right there, in some companies, this is regarded as a virtue, meaning that carpooling and the like are working, cutting down on carbon emissions. (For more on this, take a look at the pioneering climate initiative at Unilever, which has coupled aggressive carbon reduction gains with new ways of working initiatives, both increasing productivity and innovation and reducing travel miles.)

There are equally numerous reports on the new Google-esque perks at Yahoo! -- better food, dry cleaning services, nicer digs, for example. What builds culture is commitment, positive reinforcement, and challenging work. If you think people aren't coming into the office because they don't like the food, I strongly recommend that you commission a study on this.

Likewise, do you have evidence that people don't collaborate? That people truly are slacking off at home? Data in study after study indicates that people are more productive when they are able to get up, do whatever morning things they have to do at home (tend to kids/parents/animals/themselves) and then get right to work, saving needless hours on the highway. Hello? Aren't we talking about a bit of traffic on 101?

A most startling stat on this, "The hard truth about telecommuting," from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Monthly Labor Review last June by Mary Noonan and Jennifer Glass and excerpted in the Dec 26 Scientific American: telecommuters on average work 5-7 hours longer per week.

5. 24/7. After ordering people back to their cubbies, are you also prohibiting them from working at home? Consider what you're saying in the-now-much-quoted HR memo to Yahoos: "To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. Some of the best decisions and insights comes from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and important impromptu meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo! and that starts with physically being together." OK, Yahoos. Turn off your phones at home; don't check your mail first thing in the morning (or last at night); and absolutely do not call from your cars. That applies to you, too, Marissa. Are you referring to your "speed and quality" when communicating from, as reported, your 14-day maternity leave?

6. I nearly can't bring myself to comment on this last point for which the young mother-CEO has been excoriated from GMT-12 to GMT+12. A few of your quotes are enraging to other parents, as you've heard. Just this one will follow you for life: "The baby's been easy. The baby's been way easier than everyone made it out to be." I had "easy" babies too but I found it best to keep that under my hat. Most babies are not and it's quite hurtful to other women to rub it in, i.e. stuff a rag in that comment forevermore. And it's irking your coworkers that you have permission to build a nursery next to your office (even if you paid for it). When are you building sidecars for all the other new moms?

Meanwhile, Marissa, please invite in, say, 40 or 400 or 4000 of the mothers, not to mention the fathers, in your company and listen to what it's like to get through a day. I'm watching a software executive who's your age with major responsibilities, as she is juggling young kids, big corporate decisions, a lot of travel, and being a good family member while her husband, although he doesn't travel as much, is also running on fumes as he works very long hours, cooks, and tells endless stories to the kids. And they can afford help.

There is something profoundly unglued, unrealistic, and uncompassionate in your new approach. Virtual Teams work -- I know. I wrote the book. Maybe you should read it.

--Jessica Lipnack, CEO, consultant, writer, mother, grandmother, and unsolicited advice-giver

 

To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together. - See more at: http://allthingsd.com/20130222/physically-together-heres-the-internal-yahoo-no-work-from-home-memo-which-extends-beyond-remote-workers/#sthash.BzYp4u24.dpuf

To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together. - See more at: http://allthingsd.com/20130222/physically-together-heres-the-internal-yahoo-no-work-from-home-memo-which-extends-beyond-remote-workers/#sthash.BzYp4u24.dpuf

To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together. - See more at: http://allthingsd.com/20130222/physically-together-heres-the-internal-yahoo-no-work-from-home-memo-which-extends-beyond-remote-workers/#sthash.BzYp4u24.dpu

*For the record, I posted the news as soon as it reached me last Friday.

Which organizations have the best virtual/flexible/agile work policies?

This is a request for information: I'm looking for examples of how companies, nonprofits, and NGOs (even government agencies) implement their flexible work policies. Also known as virtual/distributed/agile/collaborative work approaches, these guidelines can cover everything from carpooling to work-from-home to hoteling to who-knows-what.

I'm gathering this info for a talk I'm giving for a global company--virtually, of course--at the end of the month.

Which companies have the most innovative approaches? And what pitfalls have they encountered? As always, I will credit anyone who responds in my presentation, a practice I've adhered to since I began giving talks umpteen years ago--and write a post here also giving you credit.

Thanks so much!

Organizational mapping, crisis mapping & disaster response

My colleague, NetAge Director Doug Carpenter, recently brought my attention to the need for better organizational mapping during major crises. This led us to take a look at Haiti, where the need for understanding who's doing what and how they connect to one another remains intense more than two years after the devastating earthquake. We believe there's broad applicability given the state of crisis/disaster preparedness and response. Here's our thinking.

 

It’s well known that crises give birth to self-organizing networks. In the panic that follows an earthquake, for example, people both on the scene – and those empathizing from a distance – step outside the constraints of their normal routines and act to set things right. Reports on how effective these networks can be are legion, whether we’re talking about the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, or the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in Japan.

In each situation, people quickly improvised to bring together vital information that could aid in the response. And they were effective: they put people back in touch with their families, rebuilt roads, moved food, and saved lives.

Yet the vast quantities of data that were available to assist in making these efforts more effective also served to hinder their success. We have tons of data but the systems in which that information is encased rarely talk to one another. Likewise, individuals who are experts in particular data sets are hampered in their ability to look across information domains.

One significant challenge then in crisis preparation, management, and response is how to bring meaningful and interrelated data together in ways that can be easily seen, used, and analyzed both in the immediate response and during the long-term recovery.

Organizational mapping can serve as “ground-level truth” -- a starting point for bringing together vital information. For example, an organizational map can be created to depict the U.N. presence in Haiti:

 

 

Any node in the network can be placed at the center and can be represented and described in multiple ways – who leads it, who works for it, what each person’s role is, what its purpose and goals are, who the organization serves, where the people and the organizations are located, and what they’ve accomplished.

We can also draw lines that reflect the organizations’ relationships to one another thus providing a map of the UN’s organizational geography in Haiti and a glimpse into the relative strength of this expansive network.

Next we can add other organizations, making a dent in capturing the thousands of NGOs operating in Haiti.

From here, we can layer other networks and alliances such as the web of those responsible for providing food, health care services, and infrastructure development. We can shine the light on a   specific network or look at them all at once.

Visualization is the first step. Next comes the ability to navigate the organizational terrain since the data reflect a range of invaluable information. Want to find a plant-disease expert in Port-au-Prince? A simple search makes this possible. Likewise, should you want to find the leader of a faith-based initiative based in the U.S. who is in charge of literacy programs in the south of the country, this too is possible.

The third, and perhaps most important, capability that network mapping makes possible is analysis. Using simple network metrics, it is possible to determine which networks are the most connected and which are most isolated, which areas are receiving the most attention and which are underserved. Regions that are highly connected are likely to be more resilient than regions that are disconnected. Network mapping provides this type of insight and answers strategic questions currently understood and those yet to be considered.

The network mapping application, OrgScope, is based on technology developed at Xerox PARC in the 1990s and can be attached to physical mapping systems such as Google Maps. OrgScope, combined with a crisis mapping effort, creates the possibility of being able to locate trouble spots in real-time, identify and match local resources, and significantly strengthen the capacity and preparedness of aid agencies.  Such an approach would provide multi-dimensional perspectives on any crisis, where multiple vectors are brought together in comprehensive and consistent views. It would also address one of the fundamental problems voiced by Anahi Ayala, an expert in the use of new technologies for crisis mapping, in regard to such efforts in the Haiti disaster response:

“One of the main problems that emerged was not only the need to communicate but the need for a coordinated and homogeneous message to be delivered to the affected communities. The problem was posed by the fact that as agencies and organizations were growing in number and size, all of them were trying in different ways to deliver messages to the beneficiaries of aid, with the result of many messages, sometimes contradicting each other, delivered to many people, sometimes not the right receiver for that message.”

Consistency in response stems from consistency in available information and its interpretation. New approaches such as organizational mapping make this possible and herald a new era in crisis management.

 

David Goodman on food, water, energy, health & wellness, governance & public policy

Each year, my friend (Antioch alum, too, we met in college) David Goodman sends a letter to friends with his thoughts of days past and those soon to come. This year's letter, posted with David's permission, is particularly cogent and forward thinking with a lot of downright useful information (be sure to read down to Governance and Public Policy). Hope you enjoy it too.

 

WINTER SOLSTICE LETTER
FROM DAVID GOODMAN
DECEMBER 21, 2010

Dear Friends, Family and Business Associates:

We are now starting the second decade of the 21st century. This season’s 10 second sound bite seems to be “The American people are angry at their elected politicians. They went to the polls on November 2, and voted accordingly.” My grandfather used to say that when I was angry and blaming someone for a perceived wrongdoing, I should take a deep breath, look inside myself,and see what part I played in causing the problem in the first place.

The seeds of anger leading up to our November mid-term election were sown long before October, 2008 when our economy collapsed. They were sown by unsustainable practices in business, politics and how we live our lives. Didn’t we learn in Sunday school that ‘as ye sow, so shall ye reap’? What will be the harvest of excessive self-interest and lack of willingness to take responsibility for making changes? Here is my take on some of the problems we face, broken down into 5 interconnected global categories:

Food is something we all need - but US citizens are amongst the most obese in the world. 66% of all Americans are overweight, according to the US Center for Disease Control. Certainly the politicians we voted into office did not force us to SuperSize ourselves by eating unhealthy junk food promoted by Mad Men. When people are either malnourished, or overnourished, psychological problems magnify and may result in extreme frustration and anger. Many people are alarmed about our food stock’s nutritional value. They are angry at food agribusiness practices based on intense chemical fertilization, related soil erosion, patented genetically modified seeds and Roundup Ready herbicides that are poisoning us, the soil and contributing to the demise of agriculture’s most important ally, the pollinating honey bee (Colony Collapse Disorder); all of these practices and more directly affect the quality of our food supply and are unsustainable.

Water is critical to our survival as is food. Globally, humans are either depleting or polluting their water resources at a rapid rate; we have basically run out of potable water in much of the world. None of our politicians told us to despoil our sacred global water resources although they may be doing little or nothing to abate this continuing disaster. Americans consume about 150 gallons of water per day while many in other countries consume less than a ½ gallon per day. In the US, many natural subterranean aquifers are overused and are not renewing. This includes the largest underground reservoir used for irrigation in the United States (and the world) called the Ogallala aquifer which runs from the Dakotas down through Texas. The Ogallala waters one of the most “productive” farming areas in the entire world which is our country’s breadbasket. This depletion of water was not caused by any coordinated effort from our elected representatives, but rather by our collective demand for “cheap” food grown and delivered by big corporations, which includes irreversibly sucking up our water resources...all of which is unsustainable.

Energy is needed by humans for everything; including growing food, lifting water out of the ground for drinking, and purifying water for health and wellness reasons. Much of our energy comes from fossil fuels formed in the Carbonaceous Era 300,000,000 years ago; but in the last 100 years, the world population has used half of the planet’s oil stores. It appears to me we take energy for granted in the United States, where it remains about the cheapest in the richest 33 OECD countries (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). Gasoline, the oil derivative we consume (and waste) more than any other country, costs about $2.70 per gallon in the US. In Europe, gasoline costs about $7 per gallon because they accept a higher tax to “discourage” wanton consumption. If our government levied a $4 gasoline tax on us, you would see a revolution and politicians wouldn’t be yelled at by the voters, they would be lynched by both voters and corporations. US consumption runs at about 1000 gallons of gasoline per person per year while average global consumption, not counting the United States, is about 140 gallons per person per year (the Chinese consume 100 gallons annually per person). The global result of this massive consumption of fossil fuel is an unprecedented concentration of atmospheric CO2. This is why we have global warming which along with many other energy derived pollutants is unsustainable.

Health and Wellness is a subject about which virtually all US citizens have an opinion – most often unhappy and angry. Politics aside, all of the above three paragraphs describe global dynamics detrimental to our health and wellness. Without a necessary abundance of food, usable and plentiful water, and sufficient sustainable energy, we have no basis for assuming that global health and wellness is likely to continue into the future. Even though the average life expectancy is improving globally, the health and wellness of Homo sapiens in geologic time may be coming to an end if we continue our present ways which are unsustainable.

Governance and Public Policy mixed with public anger often results in a volatile and
unpredictable outcome. Unfortunately, I have seen this “dynamic” up close and personal when my brother was murdered in 1964 by angry extremists (The Ku Klux Klan) who objected to our public policy that all citizens have an inalienable right to vote. I believe the anger we see today manifests as a result of complex challenges humans are facing that are almost overwhelming, but that we have created ourselves. The matter in which Food, Water, Energy and Health and Wellness are dealt with are decreasingly requiring local solutions and increasingly requiring
global public policy solutions. A majority of Americans overwhelmingly voted in a Democratic Administration in 2008 because so many people were fed up with the Republicans. Now, a majority of Americans overwhelmingly voted in more Republicans. It is unlikely that our governance and public policy will be able to address the underlying challenges when so much money and effort goes into “political football” games. If each of us is not paying attention to public policy, someone else will make it for us (most likely the business community). Flip flop
voting and perpetuating the fight among politicians is a net losing game for all of us and is unsustainable.

What can we do to address some of these issues? I have attached Exhibit A with a few
suggestions on improving our condition in all of the five topics above.

I hope you have a good holiday season,

Warmest Regards,
David Goodman

PS: I have taken the 5 topic words of “Food”, “Water”, “Energy”, “Health and Wellness”, and “Governance” from Antioch College’s Pedagogy for the 21st Century in a new initiative called the “Global Seminar”. However, what followed in each of the paragraphs above are my own thoughts, albeit similar to what others are discussing around the world today.

Exhibit A
THINGS YOU CAN DO TO CHANGE THE WORLD (Just Examples)

Food:
1. Eat sustainably produced food. Support small, organic farms and be willing to pay more for better quality. If possible, eat locally grown food that has not traveled 1500 miles to your table; this will help avoid loading our air with unhealthy diesel fumes.

2. Eat more meals at home because it is probably healthier (and less expensive).

3. Cut down on red meat irrespective of where or how it is grown. It is a huge contributor to GHG’s (greenhouse gases)

4. Eat less ocean fish; we are globally exhausting our fish stock and fish we eat are often laced with PBTC’s (perpetually bio-accumulating toxic chemicals), like mercury, which are detrimental to your health.

Water:
5. Stop drinking bottled water. If you are concerned about water quality, invest in a filter and re-use bottles. Shipping bottled water, particularly from Europe, does nothing but poison the air with more diesel fumes.

6. Give money to support clean water for underserved US communities and people in
“Third World” countries.

7. Read as much as you can about water practices. Understand water public policy in your community.

Energy:
8. When your existing incandescent bulbs burn out, buy fluorescent, halogen or LED bulbs which last longer, use a fraction of the electricity and therefore lower pollutants and GHG’s.

9. Try not to use your clothes dryer, one of the biggest users of electricity or gas in your house. You can buy a $10 clothes drying rack instead.

10. Drive a car (Prius or other hybrid) that uses less fuel. Insist that car companies sell electric powered cars and power companies deliver renewable energy, particularly wind and solar. The US has about 1 million megawatts of installed electric generation. There are potentially 4 million megawatts of wind power that could be developed off the US coast and even more inland. Insist on public policy leading to healthy uses of renewable and sustainable energy.

11. If you are buying a new house, make sure it is green certified. See this website for an example www.e-solarproperties.com. It should not cost a lot more and will add big resale value later, and can eliminate most of your energy uses. Buildings of all types generate 40% of US GHG’s.

Health and Wellness:
12. Do all of the above

13. Get rid of your supermarket-purchased cleaning agents and buy green products or use plain soap and vinegar. Many studies show our home air environment is more
concentrated with carcinogens from cleaning fluids than the air outside our houses or
apartments.

14. You know what to do.

Governance and Public Policy:
15. Be sure to vote since only 41.5% of the eligible voters cast their ballots in 2010.

16. Work hard at understanding what drives public policy. After having been a CEO of an electric generating power company for 23 years, I have seen how business determines most public policy over time. When the voting public does not pay attention (or understand), business gets what they want. Follow the money. Unlike 50 years ago, big corporations are global and less beholden to their country of incorporation, but are still driven by profit. We, the people, must take control of public policy and demand that corporations not only make a profit, but are also socially and environmentally responsible. We may be angry, but let’s not get discouraged and leave public policy to others, particularly corporations, because that is unsustainable.

“Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten”.
-- Cree Native American Prophecy

Telecommuting goal to reduce carbon footprint in Hubei province

Remember my obsession with "green teams" and ideas generated by readers to use virtual meetings to clean up the carbon? Encouraging article in China Business News: "Telecommuting to solve Hubei’s carbon emissions problem." Check out the optimistic last paragraph about the impact of virtual meetings on carbon emissions. (My only nit is whether the virtual meeting carbon reduction is corrected for emissions of the IT infrastructure to support such meetings - a quibble, to be sure):

When the China Mobile Hubei Company recently called on other companies and the public sector to work together on a low-carbon smart city initiative, to turn Hubei province into a “low-carbon area” a dozen companies applauded the idea...

The National Development and Reform Commission selected Hubei, earlier this year, as one of the first group of bases in the country for low-carbon pilot tests.

It did not seem to be an easy job. The province is famous for its traditional concentration of heavy industries and scant regard for the environment, but, emerging telecom developments seem to paint a much more hopeful picture.

In fact, the telecommuting sector has the greatest potential for carbon emission reductions in China, and could save 340 million tons of CO2 emissions in 2020, Guo told the audience of environmental experts, local government officials and company representatives.

In the long run, he said, savings from virtual meetings will increase at a much greater rate – about 623 million tons of CO2 annually – by 2030, thereby cutting commercial aviation emissions by nearly 40 percent...

Michael's reports from Christchurch

Three years ago this past February, I spent three weeks in New Zealand with Daughter #1 and son-in-law #1. At the end of that journey, we visited Christchurch (A), the city near the bottom of the world, and the taking off point for many a visit to the Antarctic (viz. Shackleton, etc).

 

That the city is named for the Oxford college located across the street from my hubby's, Pembroke College, made it feel a bit like it was related to us (I know, it's a stretch but...).

While there, I spoke to the NZ Knowledge Management Network, thanks to Michael Sampson, the collaboration expert who lives there. After the talk, Michael drove Miranda, Jay, and I to his house outside the city for dinner with the Sampson family, numbering 9 at the time; now there are 11 (including the parents).

So no puzzle whom I thought about when the 7.0 (or 7.1, both reported) earthquake struck yesterday fewer than 20 miles from the city center. Michael's done three posts so far, beginning with one just a few hours after. They're all fine (yay). Here are a few paragraphs:

It's almost 16 hours since the earthquake hit near Christchurch. We had a lot of cleaning up to do - broken glasses, fallen bookcases, bedroom furniture on the ground, a huge mess in the garage, and more. Two garage cupboards collapsed, and so Timothy (8) set to work and put one back together. He worked for at least 2 hours with the drill, and has built it much stronger than it was. There weren't enough screws to finish the second one, but that was started too.

My office computers sustained minor damaged. I haven't been able to turn the iMac on yet, but it almost hit the floor. It was half on my desk, face down, and half off. On the lab desk, the 30" monitor fell off the desk backwards and landed on a pile of books. Again, I haven't been able to test anything yet. My brand new Lenovo W510 got scratched - even before I turned it on.

Message to other consultants about BP disaster

Dear colleagues,

Many of us have worked with BP (we did one small project for its-then Organizational Engineering group in 1993, thanks to Lilly Evans).

Many more of us have pointed to some great examples at BP, like its early start in knowledge management, communities of practice, and its unusual organization designs.

Now BP is at the heart of a colossal safety failure that killed eleven people, seriously injured many more, and which threatens the entire Gulf of Mexico.

Those of us in consulting spend so much time talking about communication and organization and so many other terms that I first listed them here then deleted them all because the stream together sounds like so much gobbledygook.

Although it will take time to determine everything that went wrong (here's an excellent piece by Forbes blogger Christopher Helman, "BP's Deepwater Disaster: What Happened and Why?", who suggests, among other reasons, a decision-making call that may have been in part to blame), this horrific incident offers both a practice field for prevention and a readiness plan for the next time something like this happens.

What advice can we, brilliant consultants of the world, offer BP and the US government right now--and offer to future BP-like disasters? No one in this catastrophe may ever hear what we have to say but every disaster (Haiti was barely 14 weeks ago) cries out for better collaboration, faster knowledge exchange, greater innovation.

I posted an initial thought yesterday. Yours?

Curtis Ogden on "Dimensions of Social Spaces"

Father of twins+1 and deep thinker about networks at Interaction Institute for Social Change, Curtis Ogden, has a thoughtful post on the IISC blog that draws some boundaries and installs some furniture in the invisible space between people, the relationships. Curtis draws on anthropology's "moral spaces"--Autonomy, Community, and Divinity (don't be put off by your preconceptions of this word)--and applies them here. I think they work--his "few thoughts" on what to do with the insight:

• Autonomy: Differentiation. Create the opportunity for people to individually speak/write about their own hopes, fears, skills, etc.  Don’t force agreement. Encourage differences of opinion. Create opportunities for individual thinking.

• Community: Integration. Direct people’s attention and conversation to what they share with others. Help facilitate agreement. Point out shared interests beyond differences of opinions. Create opportunities for a group to work together toward some common goal.

• Divinity: Elevation. Share stories of moral exemplars (virtue can trigger feelings of uplift). Have people think/speak about places and events that are “sacred” and expressive of their deepest values. Play inspiring music.  Read poetry. Meet/immerse people in the natural world.

"Computers, eReaders, and cell phones don’t grow on trees"

How green is your eReader/Kindle/iPad (not that anyone has one yet)? Common sense suggests that digital-anything is greener than the analog device it's replacing. "Which is Greener: Paper or Digital? The Answer May Surprise You" gives a bit of pause, right up there with the finding that Google searches are, yup, not without environmental impact.

One quote from the article worth thinking about:

“Making a computer typically requires the mining and refining of dozens of minerals and metals including gold, silver, and palladium as well as extensive use of plastics and hydrocarbon solvents. To function, digital devices require a constant flow of electrons that predominately come from the combustion of coal, and at the end of their all-too-short useful lives electronics have become the single largest stream of toxic waste created by man. Until recently, there was little, if any, voluntary disclosure of the lifecycle ‘backstory’ of digital media.”