If you build it...

On the 28th of April 2o1o, the Officers' Mess Committee approved a proposal to take over the dilapidated and run down bottle shop facility. In all fairness it wasn't the bottle shop that was dilapidated or run down, but just the stock and the interest.

Without knowing the specifics of the history of bottle shop, I know that the management of it was contracted out. This not only included staffing it, but buying the stock and pricing it. It is difficult to expect a commercial entity to put its capital into Wine on the shelf with limited expectation of a return on investment. Thus begins a downward spiral (invest less money, offer worse deals, nobody comes etc etc)

In many ways it makes sense that the Committee owns the stock. The capital that they have belongs to the Members, the wines bought with it represents a provision of a service to those Members and if profit is only an enabling motive then the Committee makes different decision about investment. This is not a pure ROI problem...

The primary goal of the Committee is to service its Member's needs, a measure of success is the membership ratio (number of Members/number of potential Members). Profit simply acts as an enabler to this effect. Probably not worth pointing out that Lean and Six Sigma doesn't work here...

The Committee agreed to the proposal to relieve the Contractor of their contractual obligation to stock the bottle shop, and this was a mutually beneficial situation due to the unanticipated incentives discussed. The approved budget was $8000 to stock the bottle shop, now the challenging bit began

Gladwell to find them

Over the christmas break, a friend slipped me a copy of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. I consumed that in my festival of literature this year, which lead me to listen to Outliers from Audible. And finally, Tipping Point via the library. Completely out of sequence, but none of the effect was lost.

Firstly, I would like to point out that these other methods of consuming books, audio or hiring from the library may share the risk of getting a bad book, but the good books will still need to be purchased. I have saved nothing here.

Anyway, if you are looking at a way to re-evaluate the way you think about thinking, well Gladwell is as good a place as any. Some other good books that have kept me interested this year, of a similar ilk are:

• The opposable mind - Roger Martin
• Did you spot the gorilla? - Richard Wiseman
• Quirkology - Richard Wiseman
• Tribes - Seth Godin

Finally, my obsession with mind mapping has lead to the included representation of Tipping Point

2009: An Odyssey

Whilst I am not one to regularly make New Years Resolutions, I have decided on a couple of goals for 2009 to address some frustrations that spring to mind about 2008.

1. iPod Zero = I am to achieve a steady-state of no greater than One Week's backlog (6.5h at current rate)
2. Weight = 95kg +3/-0 for 3 months or longer
3. Read 12 books (already @ 3.3)
4. Complete MBA (Advanced) - and avoid having a specialisation in anything Finance-related.

In 2008, I was a late comer to the wonderful world of podcasting & iTunesU, but I really did attempt to fill my head as much as I could. That currently leaves me with a backlog of 17.7 days, so by any means I choose I must reduce the levels to no greater than one week's backlog - iPod Zero. This strongly supports Goal 2, as the longer I run/gym the more audio I can consume.

The other goal worth explaining is my realisation that I had completely stopped reading books, instead engulfing myself in RSS feeds, skim-reading articles and podcasting the nights away. Thus, a modest book a month I think is a reasonable re-introduction.

I don't think the list is exhaustive and there should probably be something that helps me prepare for the Bundle of Joy expected in Winter. As always, I am open to suggestions for additions or appropriate rewards

Into the Pan

Part 3 in reviewing the set of workshops from last week is the one-dayer with the sister organisation of here and here. Now the focus was on repairing the Archetype Creation which had so spectacularly failed on the Monday. 

To open, I showed a couple of animations from the Dilbert site as I knew the organisation were familiar. Then I got them to discuss who their favourite characters were and why. After suggesting to them that the Dilbert comics were not actually written about their organisation and that people around the world can identify with them, the breadcrumbs had been dropped.

Importantly, I also changed the 'story-telling' prompt from 'Tell a story about a day at work' to 'Share your experience in dealing with your primary customer' (understanding that the earlier narrative capture had indicated that this would be fertile ground). In the second stage of emergence, I suggested that the character in front of them worked in their organisation and that they would have to adopt the role of their 'Best Friend', 'Worst Enemy' and 'Innocent Bystander'. I have some thoughts on this but wonder how that sits with other practitioners

Now due to the introduction of an example, I set myself a target for success which was to achieve no Dilbert characters in the Archetypes. I did not set one for the swapping of customers for members of the organisation, do you have any suggestions? In my opinion, this event was a success and once I get the characters finalised I will upload them.

To close on the Archetype creation, I will note that I backed  out of the Values and Themes elements for this workshop. Basically, I was uncomfortable with their use and was seeking to achieve a modicum of success through adjustment of the approach. I will have to invest some more headspace into how to prepare the Values and Themes.

On Sensemaker

I am drafting this in the QANTAS Lounge in Melbourne as I wait for my flight back to Adelaide in an 90mins. 

The reason I am in Melbourne is that I have spent Thursday evening and Friday at the Victorian Police Academy doing the Cognitive Edge Practitioner network catch up and Sensemaker Session which was fantastic to discuss some of the lessons identified from applying the Cognitive Edge Methods with new 'graduates' and also to meet some faces behind the blogs.

The Sensemaker session, I found to be quite straightforward and expect that the real learning points will be in playing with the data. I have in my mind a few applications in mind that I will be seeking to exploit (for want of a better word), the key will be getting funding to pay the licence fees.

A couple of criticisms of the day would be that the demo data had a major flaw which detracted from the logic in the conclusions in the case study. The other would be that the Ritual Dissent was limited in value due to the predominance of inexperience with the methods and software, thus not allowing much in the way of meaningful criticism. This latter criticism is of course the minor factor as it is merely a demonstration of concept.

All in all, a worthwhile event and I will definitely add my case study to the Ning Site, Steve

Baptism of Fire: The Sequel

As was started in a previous post, the following two workshops took the participants through Model Creation by Social Construction and Ritual Dissent. These activities went significantly better partially because the participants were more comfortable with the understanding where it would lead but also because the activities were broken up with some more familiar activities.

I have since delivered the resultant action plans to the Business Unit Manager, who was not put of by the AVT Creation failure, but instead is willing to take on some assistance to attempt to achieve a self-emergent continuous improvement. At this stage (given the proximity to the end of year), the move forward will be by delegation of the "Simple" tasks to any person and some "complicated" activities to  the appropriate person/s. In the new year, there is a plan to take on some of the "Complex" via a Social Network Stimulation which will assist in the induction process as well as giving credibility to the whole process. Needless to say, there is an opportunity to trot out the immanently released Change Management guide. This guide had a particular selling point of embracing the cynic... I promise I will post on this in the future as it is finalised.

To wrap up on the experience, the spectacular failure of the AVT Creation Workshop will remain more strongly in my mind than any minor successes over the three day, but isn't that the point?

This workshop was succeeded by another with a sister organisation, on which I will post on shortly.

On the shoulders of GIANTS

I was listening to a podcast from the Duke University public lectures from iTunesU (the podcast is titled Values-Based Leadership, sorry I can't work out how to link directly to it). For me this podcast has probably done what the Leadership Exchange was meant to... I am definitely inspired after listening to it. I can recommend that you hunt it down and have a listen (or a watch, there is a vodcast too)

But it did lead me to question how often do we acknowledge those giants? There has been discussion in our organisation about getting in touch with our former members, but as yet nothing meaningful has been done. I would like to see not just a list of names and numbers but some interactions, maybe presentations at the Annual Conference or get togethers in the regions... I think personalising the giants is the first step to standing on their shoulders...

Asian History - China Olympics

I think that is obligatory to have at least one post on the Olympics... So I considered a piece on National Pride or the perceived injustices. But that might just be a little too cliched...

I can't let the opportunity go by to commiserate with Oenone on her Road Race and wish her the best in the Time Trial today. But really, I think I need to comment on the Opening Ceremony. What a fantasticly rich series of metaphors to depict a 5000 year history.

The easy line might be to criticise the closed media or ridicule the one-eyed bias of the show. But instead I will honestly own up to not knowing enough about Asian history and I consider this the motivation to learn more

Multiple Ontologies

I found this and this through Skepchick (though I am not sure how I got to her blog).

The issue of education of children (and extrapolate as you will) is one that I hold dear. As a child I fought tooth and nail to not be forced to attend Religious Education. Now in retrospect, I was only ever fighting the fact that I was being forced to attend. I had chosen not to attend because the presenters of the material were unable to satisfy my curiousity about inconsistencies.

So how do these tales tie together? My $0.02 would argue that the role of educators is to provide balanced education in as many fields as the professional educators can provide. I think the role of the parent in this is to guide how a child interacts with the knowledge. Surely, no censorship but guided education is far more worthy in the pursuit of excellence?

I think that by providing rounded education de-politicises the curriculum and encourages everyone to their role. Thus religion in education is 'studied' not practiced allowing exposure to the gamit of Dahmic, Abrahamic, atheist and other schools of thought (faith) which would surely assist intuiting tolerance.

Maybe the real fear here is that children may find joy in the multiple moral tales available to them...