“Where has all the talent gone, long time passing, where has all the talent gone, long time ago?”

It is still very fashionable to write about the talent in your organisation. This is especially true when one is talking about invention and innovation within communities, industries, and organizations. In these circumstances it is the need for talent that gets air time.

Writers, bloggers, guru status speakers, consulting firms, CEO’s, magazines, etc all go on and on about the need for talent, the war on talent, the essence of talent, and the cultivation of talent. This is ironic to me because one Black Ice Issue in contemporary organizations is the waste of talent.

Most talent in most organisations gets wasted, lost, burnt out, etc on a failed project. The talent gets tarnished, gets tired, gets bored, gets locked-in, gets shutdown, or simply leaves the building.

“Where has all the talent gone, gone to “failed projects” everyone”….

I would like to illustrate my point by writing a little about a case I know well. This individual worked with me on and off over a 12 month period. He worked impressively with me on imagining and modeling a number of innovations for his company. Together we worked on strategy, process innovation and new business models.

He is a talent. His boss described him to me as simply the best young talent he has worked with over the past 20 years. He shines when it comes to innovation. He is the type of talent that most writers, bloggers, and guru speakers lecture us about. He is the type of person the company needs to nurture, to develop, and to promote. He is the type of talent that the “war on talent” is suppose to be all about.

One day he got shifted from his innovation role to head of a team on a major renewal programme. He was shifted there because the programme was flawed. The programme was plagued by power politics. The programme was way over budget and kept slipping all its ‘hard and fast’ deadlines. The programme was an ill conceived attempted to rectify decades of neglect. The programme was never likely to deliver any tangible benefits to the company.

He soon became exhausted, stressed, angry, and disillusioned. He became a totally wasted asset. He began to switch off the innovative elements in his brain in order to better survive the rigors of his new job. His talent was being wasted in this new job. He was starting to burn-out in this new job. But until this job was done there was no scope for him to do what he does best and that is to innovate.

“Oh when will they ever learn? Oh when will they ever learn?

Black Ice Issues are usually hidden from your view.  They are there or they are forming but you can not see them.

Why?

First and foremost you can not see what you are not looking for.

Second you can not see them when you are looking directly at them.

When you look at your healthcare provider as a business you will surely believe it is well.  They are expanding.  They have recently acquired another healthcare business, etc, etc.  All the indicators are good.  What is especially good is they have kept your premiums low.

Furthermore you want to believe your healthcare provider is well because you rely on them to provide for you when and if you are sick. Anyhow there are laws, rules, regulations, etc that your provider is bound by so that will ensure you do not have to concern yourself with this issue.

Yeah that’s right in your case this is not an issue so you can continue with “business as usual” in this area of your life.

Well actually you can’t!

Why not?

To answer that question you only have to look at the environment in which healthcare providers have to operate.  The healthcare environment around the globe is currently plagued by the same Black Ice Issues.  These include the high cost of new technologies and contemporary service delivery.  These types of issues have led healthcare managers to cut costs everywhere.

When an organisation is put under stress by sustained cost cutting then its staff is likely to be far less productive than normal.  Lower productivity leads to lower morale which leads to mistakes which leads to management reviews which leads to further cost cutting solutions.  In the end you have the perfect conditions for Black Ice Issues to present.

Given the demands on healthcare systems, of all shapes, sizes, and varieties, around the globe there is an immediately compelling case for you to look for Black Ice Issues forming within your provider.  For instance, if your provider is dealing with merger and acquisition issues for itself or its suppliers then the warning bells are ringing.  Even if your provider is the aggressor in a takeover, a de-mutualisation programme, or a simple trade sale then you have reasons for concern about its wellbeing.

But the best indicator that your healthcare provider is sick is that it has undertaken a major project for cultural change, IT renewal, retail reconfigurations, etc.  If this change programme has a current or a projected life expectancy of longer than 12 months then your provider is probably sick.

If you have any reason to suspect your provider is sick then go talk to people who work there.  If they complain of working excessively long hours, of system malfunctions, of bureaucratic red tape, of slow decision-making, etc then you know they are under extreme press and stress and so you can conclude that the whole place is a sick bay.

If this is the case for you there is only one question left.

"What do I do when my healthcare provider is sick?"

This blog first appeared in April 2006 as "organising a street with no rules".  The ideas presented herein are fundamental to what has been written since here.  Clear Space Thinking is all about developing mindsets that work like a street with no rules.  Once you have this type of mindset and you have 'a clear and present purpose' then all you need is to build a naked culture.  If you can build 'a naked culture' then you will succeed in whatever you attempt in C21st. 

Towards a naked culture. 

Take a stroll down Exhibition Road in London and you will notice it provides access to some of the best institutions in the world including the Science Museum and the Museum of Natural History. Four million visitors to those institutions use Exhibition Road each year. It also serves the daily needs of local and commuter traffic passing through Kensington and Chelsea. The most interesting thing about Exhibition Road however is that it is about to be totally transformed into “a street with no rules” (see report http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1427660,00.html).

This street will have no signs, no traffic lights, no road markings, and no parking or speeding tickets. People and vehicles will intermingle. Pedestrians will become road users just like cars, trucks, motorcycles, buses, and all other vehicles. Each of them will share this street on equal terms. The truly remarkable thing about this street however is it will be efficient and effective. The journey time for those traveling in vehicles should be the same as it is now. The journey time for those on foot should be improved.

No rules on the street.

The concept of “a street with no rules” may seem truly crazy to you when you pit it against what you know and use each and every day. This is because western organizational thinking is dominated by “systems led people”. You are locked into your current street formats because these people think first and foremost about their systems. Users are an afterthought. Users therefore have to fit the best way they can into centralized, micro-managed, bureaucratic, and automated systems.

However the real issue is not the concept of “a street with no rules”. The issue is our lack of talent to organize this type of street. Simply put we need more “people led systems”. We need people who think first and foremost about other people. We need people who thrive in devolved, self-organizing, self-regulating and empathetic systems.

Coincidently, the people we need are coming into view more and more each day. They are emerging now because they already live on “a street with no rules” and it serves them very well. The street they travel most was deliberately organized with no rules. It is fast, efficient, user friendly, and meets their ever-changing needs as users. Their street is the “Broadband Internet”.

I want to test my Black Ice Incubator on a global scale.

I am not entirely sure what the best ways will be to do this but together you and I will figure it out.

I want to start by establishing clusters of incubation projects. Each cluster will submit an issue. The clusters can then either work together on a shared purpose issue or work independently on a totally separate set of issues.

The first step is for you to form a cluster of no less than 3 and probably no more than 16 people. In the end the same 3 to 5 people will do the majority of the work anyway but they will have less interference with fewer people in the mix.

How many people does it take to change the world? My considered answer is 3. Every successful project at NASA started with a team of just 3 people. But those 3 have to be committed to the new purpose not the old vision, strategy, leadership team, brand, etc. Those 3 have to get off on ambiguity, uncertainty, discontinuity, confusion, and mess. Those 3 are difficult to find so get started.

The issue can be anything to do with Internet based business models. It can be a global or a local issue. It can be a development or an execution issue. It can be a tangible or an intangible issue.

One issue I would like to see a cluster working on is a thrill seeker's challenge - “what business model could succeed in merging the tangible world of commerce with the intangible world of commerce being set up within Second Life?”

Do you want to build a cluster of your own and join in?  Please come and join us at Richard's Black Ice Incubator and let's get stuck right into your issues.  Four things you need to do. First read the blogs on issues and new ways. Second identify your issues. Third assess the potential impact on your organisation. Fourth simply contact me [at] lipscombe.richard@gmail.com

In early 2007 I began to take strong exception to the use of the word “collaboration”.

In the middle of 2006 I had no such feelings.  Back then I used Collaboration often.  It was the hallmark of an IT Strategy I helped fashion.  It was the word everyone used to describe the challenge ahead in using Internet based technologies to their fullest extent.

Then one day I thought about the word.  I thought about just how long people had been using it as the descriptor of a much needed change in the way we thought about and organised our work.

I remembered urging clients to Collaborate in the mid 1990s.  Ten years on it is still “the word” being used to urge people onto bigger and better things?  This idea, concept, or word has surely failed us? 

I began to think about it more and more.  I began to question the appropriateness of the word for the task we have at hand.  I realised it had become a “buzz” word but what did it really mean?

Collaboration has two distinct meanings:

1) to work, one with another, cooperate, as on a literary work

2) to cooperate, usually willingly, with an enemy nation, esp. with an enemy occupying one’s country.

By the way my reference is Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) which is based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

To further refine the meanings of this word I looked for the synonyms – collude, join, assist, abet.

Was this what I was really meaning to urge my client to do?  I think not.

Perhaps what I really meant was Cooperate?

Cooperate has a neat definition – to work or act together or jointly for a common purpose or benefit.  Synonyms include - collaborate, join, participate.  Cooperate brings purpose and benefit to the defintion and participate as a synonym.  This is the word I need to use.   Again my reference is the Dictionary.com Unabridged (V1.1).

Cooperation has become a strong theme for me in 2007.  For me it means to act with a common purpose and for a shared benefit.  It will be a recurring theme within my Clear Space Thinking over the next 12 months.  It fits my notion of Disrupt with Purpose.  It fits my notion of "use value".  It is the word that conveys the precise meaning I have in my mind when I converse with my clients.

“What’s in a word?” you ask.  Nothing and everything is my best reply.

Now onto the next 12 months…..

What a relief it is raining today at my place.

This glorious event prompts me to continue what I started with my blog about water earlier this week.

Rainwater is connected to global climatic events.

Rainwater can be a heavenly gift for some and a curse for others.  Too little and too much rainwater can be life threatening.

Rainwater is prone to cluster.  A few miles away it was coming down in torrents but not a drop to my parched land.  Rain storms lash coastal townships while the desert is starved of a single drop.

Rainwater suddenly comes to the desert and there is life again.  Deserts after rain are amazing places. Flowers spring into to full bloom, small creatures scurry around to harvest their food, and the whole place is transformed from a barren wasteland to a productive wonderland.

Rainwater is free.

Rainwater is unpredictable.

Rainwater is essential to the continuation of life on this planet as we know it.

Whatever happens to you in your life one thing remains a constant.

Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness.

One example of this saying goes as follows.  If you are a great communicator then clearly that is a great economic strength for you.  You may be employed by an advertising firm, a newspaper, a public relations company, or even as a speech writer for a head of state.  In each event you will be in great demand as the purveyor of other people’s ideas, policies, plans, etc.

Often people with great ideas are not great communicators.  They need help from others. 

However on the other side of your talent for presentation and communication is a weakness.  It may be as simple as your latent ability to be inventive, innovative, creative, or imaginative.

As I write this I am thinking of a colleague who is both a great communicator and a creative person.  His great strength of being a communicator of other peoples’ ideas is therefore often being pitted against his need to showcase his creativity.  His greatest strength is also his greatest weakness because he finds it difficult not to inject his creativity into his communication of other peoples’ ideas.  Unfortunately whenever he is being his most creative with his communication the essence of the original idea gets lost.  The communication is creative and interesting but the core idea is a flop.

When the core idea is poor then some creative, innovative, and imaginative communication does the propagator of the idea some good.  A bad idea coupled with a creative presentation and communication is often a success.  You have seen them at your workplace.  Everyone is scratching their heads to work out why and how that idea got up with top management.

But when the core idea is magic and it gets lost in a whirlwind of creative presentation and communication then every one losses.  Equally you may have found yourself scratching your head wondering why a truly brilliant idea failed to raise any interest with top management.

What can you do to strengthen your greatest weakness?

First you can be aware that it is attached to your perceive strength.  Second you can be aggressive in understanding when your weakness is likely to take over from your strength.  Third you can actively downplay your strength and then accentuate your weakness in any conversations that is likely to lead to a request for you to do what you are so good at doing.

Always remember too that your greatest weakness is just the other side of your greatest strength.  So you can often successfully showcase your great strength by first alluding to your weakness.  It is counter-intuitive but it will work much better in many instances than simply banging on and on about your perceived and acknowledged strength.

Historically the great walls were formed to keep the hordes out.

Today the walls are formed to keep the hordes in.

Historically the great walls were built with stones.

Today they are built with opinions.

Historically the great walls were circumvented by new technologies.

Today they are propagated by new technologies.

Historically the great walls signalled progress.

Today they signal regress.

Historically the great walls protected communities.

Today they constrain communities.

Historically the great walls limited ideas, innovation, diversity, etc.

Today they limit ideas, innovation, diversity, etc.

There are so many things I want to write about but there is one thing I feel compelled to talk to you about.

I want to talk about water or more precisely in my case the complete lack of it.  At my place we have none.  It refuses to rain.  The place is as dry as a bone.

I live on the outskirts of a city of 3-4 million people and everyone there is on strict water restrictions.  The major dam supplying water to them is at an all time record low level of just 20%.  Go figure what to do when you have so little water and so much need for it. 

Yeah the answer is easy. These residents have to save water by reusing it, using it more sparingly than they otherwise would, and by preparing themselves to face up to even tougher restrictions soon.  Soon they may have to tell their kids that they will not play football this year.  This will be a fact of life unless and until there is a torrent of rain.

Water restrictions on this level will constitute a huge change for the whole community.  This will be a culture change with unknown repercussions.  This type of change usually brings people together.  It can help build strong bonds across communities.  It usually brings out the best in people as they adapt to new circumstances.  It also brings out the worst in some people.  It often therefore leads to excessive regulation and government control.   

Life as I have always known it is being changed by external events that are beyond my control.

Climate change is impacting us with drought and yet in other places around the world there is water to spare – they are suffering the devastation of floods.

Hence my title “there is no water here but too much over there – go figure?”

Why do so many change projects fail to deliver?

Leaders often claim that politics has scuttled their change process.

Those opposed to the change “play politics” with the whole process and in the end they suffocate it.  But does this always happen?  Can the politics of change be made to work for not against you?  What would you have to do to make the politics of change your ally rather than your enemy?

The first thing to do is to recognize that politics is always present in your change process.

You expect it so you are never surprised by it.  You plan for it so that it does not catch you out.  You learn to avoid being caught up in the political game that others want you to play.  You respect those who are good at playing politics and you acknowledge the parts they will play in your change process.  You stay focused on change issues when you are dealing with the political players because that disarms them – they can only ever become potent players when you engage them in change solutions.

You remain transparent in all that you propose.  You devolve decision making to a maximum within your change process.  You do not invest in a vision but you remain steadfastly to a clear and present purpose.  You welcome, accept, and work with dissenters.  You assume that everyone and no one is a stakeholder in your change process.  You always put proposals into a political context – who gains, who losses, and who has a hidden agenda that you can not make out.

You stay positive when the opposition goes negative.  You stay in the moment when the opposition attempts to drag you into your past failures.  You stay on message when it looks as if it could advance your interests to become a purveyor of half truths.  You cooperate with powerful influencers without ever becoming their captives.  You oppose propositions that would compromise your proposals but win support.  You simplify your language when you are explaining your change proposals but you never ever simplify your intentions.  You develop strategies that match your change proposal’s complexity.  You are concrete about your outcomes but elusive about your pathways or roadmaps to that new state. 

You never stray from a big picture view of your change proposal.  You must accept that the detail is merely the detail but the big picture issue, model, and execution plan is the change mechanism.  You must understand that most political debates get tied up in the detail.  You must accept that not all the axioms on the politics of change are valid.  You must understand that the devil’s in the detail if and only if you do not have a big picture view of that detail that links it into holistic change process.   

You must respect the political process and all its players so that you do not get blindsided by the change blockers.  You must understand that people who support you because they already have a change process in play that seems to support yours are often the greatest blockers in the game.  They will support you in their language but block you in their actions or inactions.

Finally you must accept one simple truth about the politics of change – delay is the deadliest form of denial.

I have been asked to repeat the following blog because some people have actually spent the time needed to complete the Disrupt with Purpose course.  They must be mad - truly wonderfully mad...  But anyhow here is a repeat of what I wrote recently to those of you so brave as to join me on the 30 Day Trial of Disrupt with Purpose.

What follows is an unedited repeat so if you think you have read this before you probably have done just that:

I thought those of you who took up the challenge of my 30 Day Free Trial of "Disrupt with Purpose" might wecome an update.

Since writing the content for your 30 Day Trial I have used it to:

1) develop, with a colleague, a new business model for healthcare and wellness

2) extend my contribution to the work being done by a client and a friend as he builds a new and robust church

3) find a "special sense of peace" on a whole range of personal issues 

4) better understand why Google has been such a great success and why "we ain't seen nothing yet" from the Googleplex (more on that later).

For you though I wanted to further illustrate "Disrupt with Purpose" by referring to two items from our contemporary western culture.

First the TV show "House" (which I have written about before) is striking because it deals with the ultimate change issues - matters of life and death.  The script writers have created a facinating character.  His clear and present purpose is to be "correct" in his prognosis because he wants to save his patient's life.  More often than not his methods are unorthodox.  He is quick to use all available technologies (medical equipment and drugs) to disrupt his own "thinking patterns" about the challenge he confronts.  He takes huge risks as he prescribes radical, counter-intuitive, untested, and abnormal courses of action. Finally he could careless that he is perceived to be uncaring, egotistical, reckless, brutal, etc.  Thus he is hardly a role model for success in most contemporary organisations.

But if you want to develop your own version of "Disrupt with Purpose" then House can show you the way as you learn to: 

1) be a minimalist and do only what you need to do to achieve your purpose

2) use new ideas, tehnologies, mores, etc to disrupt the status quo and conventional thinking

3) forgo the conventional approach to change of being inclusive and sharing because it slows you down in ways that could mean your patient dies

4) be thorough in your investigations of cause-and-effect linkages for the problems or symptoms you are presented with

5) trust the fact that everyone "lies" even on their deathbed so there are always, yes always, hidden agendas.

Second the TV show "The West Wing" is striking because it deals with the power to "Disrupt with Purpose" in a political settting.  On the hustings the character of Senator Santos is revealed.  He has integrity.  He has a clear and present purpose in that he wants to reform the education system in the country.  The principles that underline his passion for reforming education soon spillover into all the other issues he is confronted with on the campaign trail.  He disrupts because he opposes conventional wisdom and the status quo.  But he has a purpose for his opposition in that he genuinely wants to change the outcomes for people who are dependent upon government decisions in the normal course of living their life.  He is a rare politician because he understands the rules of the political game but he refuses to play by those rules when and if they threaten to alter or compromise his purpose.  He knows he can not "Disrupt with Purpose" if he is not true to himself, his core values, his change agenda, and to his stated beliefs.

If you want to develop you own version of "Disrupt with Purpose" then "The West Wing" can help show you the way too as you learn to:

1) stay focused on your purpose because you know that merely winning the political game does not guarrantee your change agenda will succeed

2) take advice from experts but never become a "captive" of your advisers

3) choose to be yourself even when to do so means you must forgo a chance to be popular

4) be true to yourself and to your principles especially when they are being used against you by your competition.

Many years ago I worked as a “change agent” (oh what a terrible term) for a global organization.  My client was an Executive.  He wanted to restructure the place.  He was sure the way to do it was to provide excellent customer service.  Everyone was deemed to be a customer under his regime.  So there were internal and external customers and everyone had to be thoroughly delighted with the service provided.  What an easy gig that would be.  I was eager to get started.

I arrived for what I thought would be a 1-2 month gig – I stayed 3 years.  Why did it take so long?

The simple answer is that we were far too successful.  Why were we so successful?

The simple answer is we undertook a far more complex change assignment than we ever intended to and that process work so well we kept changing things.  The process was a little akin to repairing the steering on an old car.  Suddenly the steering works really well.  Now you notice that the brakes are not that good.  You mend the brakes and the engine seems to need repair.  At the end of it all you still have a bomb of a car but you have the best of everything in it.  Well this was something like that except that with this bomb of an organization we started to do “state of the art” things.  Why were we able to do “state of the art “things with a bomb of an organisation?

The simple answer is “openness”.

Openness is a rarity in organizations.  When you achieve it you are able to do so much more with so much less.  When you achieve it you are able to dispense with rule making, control, bureaucracy, and red tape.  When you achieve it you can save time, energy, labour, money, etc.  When you achieve it you can build any type of organisation you want.  When you achieve it you gain a fluid corporate culture that will mould itself to best fit the prevailing environment.  When you achieve it you have a purpose directed self-regulating organisation.

Openness is a necessity if systems are to survive and thrive.  Open systems use the feedback from their environs to adapt, change, grow, and evolve.  When your systems are closed they are subjected to entropy.  Eventually they will die.  Organisations are no different really.  When they are closed, retentive, secretive, and bureaucratic they die too.  They may die slowly and painfully but they die nonetheless.

Why were we able to inject “openness” into this organisation?

Well in truth we got lucky.  We were so full of theories about culture change that is it a miracle that we achieved any of what we did.  Our stroke of luck came when we began to think that what we all signed on to do was complex, extremely difficult, and probably impossible.  We accepted that we really had no chance of success because no one in the place, except us, wanted it to happen.  Once we digested all that negativity and disappointment we became utterly determined to succeed in every aspect of everything we did.  We became determined to become the epitome of “openness”.

Week one we decided that everything we did was to be out in the open.  We would be fully transparent.  Yeah I know people use that word everyday as they bang on and on about their change program.  The difference was we actually did it.  We also decided to be accountable.  We would be accountable for every outcome of our work.  We wanted to be held accountable for every decision we made.  Finally we decided that we would look for equity in all our proposals for change.  We would eliminate any "unintended consequences" of our actions.  We would restore equality wherever we saw needless inequality and could intervene to mend it.

Armed with our three principles of transparency, accountability, and equity we were an unstoppable force for good changes.  Good change means fully realized benefits.  Change that delivers benefits is change that sticks.  Change that sticks in one area (like the old bomb car) points to much needed change in other areas.

Week two we discovered an interesting fact about the culture of the place that helped us deliver the type of changes we needed to win people over to our side.  We noticed that the corporate culture was “tribal”.  Yeah the Executive did not believe it either when I first mentioned it about 9 days into the job. But it was tribal.  I referred to it as being akin to that of a Australian Aboriginal Tribe.  The people in this organisation were nomads who moved every 3-5 years to a new post.  They moved from Europe to USA.  From Africa to Europe an so on.  This was a nomadic existence and so the corporate culture was well suited to the lifestyle. But it was conflicted.  It was confused because it had a command and control management structure.  It had a closed, secretive, and bureaucratic overlay resting on this culture.

Week three we started to change the place.  We started to devolve budgets.  We started to devolve authority.  We started to devolve accountability.  We started to “free up” the Tribal Culture.  Yeah that is right it began to take over and the place began to run as it always should have.  So all we had to do was to get the bureaucratic structures and controls out of the way of the Tribes.

Week four we had achieved an amazing degree of “openness” and so from that point on we were always going to change the culture, improve customer service, and liberate the tribal ways.

It was 3 years later that we folded our tent and went away.  The tribes were no longer restless.  The tribes were in their clusters.  The tribes had formed their communities of interest.  The tribes were well and truly in control of the place.