Viral Change (TM)

It’s not Nudge! It is the network stupid!

noreply@blogger.com (Dr Leandro Herrero) — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 17:28:00 +0000

Excellent review by Mathew Taylor. Me, myself and I However as you can see , as he is implying, the UK government is still in love with the ‘Nudge Theory’ (Richard Thaler, Chicago, Behavioural Economics) behind the Behavioural Insight Unit at the UK Prime Minister Office. This love affair is not breeding much because, as Taylor would criticise referring to a book by Morozov’s

‘the ability to analyze individual behavior in granular detail (…) and the enthusiasm (…) for behavior-changing interventions based on incentives and ‘gamification‘ leads policy makers to view all social problems as problems of individual modification not social change’

But this is problem created by the Nudge people themselves and the politicians who have believed them.

As we say in Viral Change (TM) , triggering behaviours is easy (‘nudge theory’) spread, sustain and maintain is the hard part.

In Viral Change (TM) we focus on the hard part, not because any masochistic inclinations but because without understanding spread, scale up, network effects, social influence and reinforcement mechanisms, ‘nudging’ is a disappointing tricking machine, despite its popularity, academic source and political marriages particularly at UK government level. The ‘Individual modification’ and ‘social change’ of the paragraph above cannot be reconciled in Nudge but they are in Viral Chang(TM)

We are planning the launch of The Viral Change (TM)Institute, which will have research, communications, education and partnership tracks. The ‘beyond nudge’ (AKA, it’s the network stupid!) will be at the core of the communication arm.

If we could get a tenth of the funding of other more glorious ‘social change initiatives’, with poor track record of changing anything, we could make some impact! All ideas welcome!

Ref. HomoImitans, Viral Change(TM) .

4/10 Not top down, not bottom up, its grassroots and multi-centric

noreply@blogger.com (Dr Leandro Herrero) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 08:42:00 +0000

Un-managing change

10 lessons from Obamaland to the design of large scale behavioural change in organizations. Viral Change™ in action series

10 reflections on the conditions for large scale change as practiced by Viral Change™

by Leandro Herrero

4/10 Not top down, not bottom up, its grassroots and multi-centric

In organizational life we are used to the dichotomy top-down and bottom up, that is as one being the opposite of the other, Clearly a lot of truth about it. There is an assumption that if you want an opposite to top-down it has to be bottom up. But in organizational terms, and even more as soon as you consider the organization as a social network, the true alternative to an exclusively bottom up approach, that is one-centric is poly-centric. Poli-centric includes the top down.

The successful political campaigns are multi-centric or poli-centric and the Obama campaign was one of them with heavy emphasis on the grassroots ‘centres’. The localized number of these was significantly greater than the opponent, which it would be wrong to say they did not use a grassroots approach.

Viral Change™ in organizations takes place by orchestrating a multi or polycentric approach. With the organization as a pyramid – and it could be a big pyramid or a flat(err) pyramid- statistically there are more highly connected and influent people in the bottom. That is why a great majority of champions or activists come from the lower layers but not exclusively. Viral Change™ takes place at different layers (to continue using a wrong two-dimensional concept) and peer-to-peer activity ( conversations, engagement, activists role…) is also taken place at different layers. This is how a social movement work, sometime spontaneously, vey often truly orchestrated.

In Viral Change we orchestrate large scale behavioural change to create a social movement. Business organizations may not be used to the term but this is what it is. That is why studying Obamaland is incredible useful. Viral Change™ is a true trans-disciplinary approach and as such we are constantly integrating insights from many ‘praxis areas’. Mobilizing people and creating movement – something that political and marketing campaigners do for a living – has not figured very high in the organization life other than a rather bland traditional HR approach to motivation and recognition. Business organizational life ant dist traditional human capital functions find this concept a bit alien. Not anymore.

I am preparing a series of presentations under the general title of ‘If you run your organization as Obama runs campaigns’ to stress the need to learn from the success ( and its failures) of that social movement . The Viral Change™ Institute, which is in pre-launch state, will have this as one of its research tracks

Viral Change™ Global L.LP. PO Box 1192, HP9 IYQ, United Kingdom

+44 (0) 1494 730999

ukoffice@viralchange.com

Viral Change™ is a trademark

Next: 5/10

I am going to vote, what about you?

Management Innovation – cutting edge . ‘Disruptive Ideas’ and ‘Reboot’ Seminars by The Chalfont Project

noreply@blogger.com (Dr Leandro Herrero) — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 18:11:00 +0000

Management innovation does not have to be all systems and process upside down

One shot, one day, little preparation, all hands and brains, your entire team, injection of disruptive ideas which can be actionable the day after: “The Disruptive Ideas Seminar” by The Chalfont Project.

email lucy-marshall@thechalfontproject.com . Management innovation as its best

Cutting edge injection of actionable new thinking

What if all teams had a sell-by-date, with automatic end no matter what?
What if your teams did not need to meet? A team and a meeting are two different things.
What if your aim as leader was to loose control? The more you loose the more you have.

And another 27 or so Disruptive ideas to the test for your entire team.

All one day, all hands, all brains (tip: and it doesn’t get better as a team building)

What if some of them could be implemented at zero cost and make huge impact?

Contact: l lucy-marshall@thechalfontproject.com

Or..........

Sacred cows, elephants in the room and other cast in daily management at the core of ‘Reboot’, a one day Game Plan crafting for your team: The ‘Reboot’ seminar

Game Plan in one day? Its 2013, yes you can!

· Contact: lucy-marshall@thechalfontproject.com

The Grand Davos Award from the World Communication Forum awarded to Dr Leandro Herrero

noreply@blogger.com (Dr Leandro Herrero) — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 13:58:00 +0000

The Grand Davos Award from the World Communication Forum awarded to Dr Leandro Herrero (Davos, February 2013)

On Thursday 7^th of February, Dr Herrero received the Grand Davos Award at the Gala dinner of the World Communications Forum in Davos. The award, known as 'the best of the best' was in recognition of his inspirational contribution to the Forum through his presentation on Viral Change". The interest in the approach, methodology and philosophy behind Viral Change" was extremely well received and prompted an unscheduled change to the programme to allow a dedicated time for Q&A.

The World Communications Forum (http://www.forumdavos.com/index.php) gathers PR, Internal Communications, Corporate Affairs, digital marketers and other professionals in the communications/marketing arena from many countries around the world. The approach and practicalities of Viral Change" (bottom up, grassroots, behavioural based, scale up/viral, informal organisation, storytelling and backstage leadership) particularly appealed to the diverse audience.

Great news!

Lucy Marshall

Viral Change Global LLP

3/10 It’s about you, and between you (not us at the top, not the leadership team)

noreply@blogger.com (Dr Leandro Herrero) — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:16:00 +0000

Un-managing change

10 lessons from Obamaland to the design of large scale behavioural change in organizations. Viral Change™ in action series

10 reflections on the conditions for large scale change as practiced by Viral Change™

by Leandro Herrero

3/10 It’s about you, and between you (not us at the top, not the leadership team)

In one of the multiple accounts of the 2008 Obama campaign, David Plouffe, then campaign manager , now senior adviser in the current 2012 Administration, wrote in his book ‘The Audacity to Win’ about the importance of the grassroots movement. This may seem obvious and indeed common to many campaign and political strategies. What was different ( and it is today) in Obamaland is the extraordinary emphasis in the transversal, tribal, ‘people like me’ (see previous section) connectivity and collaboration. Put it simply, the message was a persisting, its is about you talking to other people like you, not about Barack Obama talking to you. Of course Obama did talk to them, and indeed with superb rhetoric. So they were not short of top-down messages. But the campaign itself de-emphasised that at the expense of ‘you and between you’.

The 2012 Democrat campaign outnumbered the Republican one by several factors of magnitude in ‘local clusters’ and their ‘local organisers’. The ‘total numbers’ were less relevant that the clustering and the sense of belonging. It was about ‘them’: those local communities, local offices, local groups and the communication and connectivity between them. Then, technology comes in of course to facilitate it, and indeed it did (the ‘republican technology’ was well behind and for all purposes failed, there is not nicer way to put it)

We in organizations tend to dismiss a bit this tribal (‘its all about you’) element in favour of, perhaps, it’s all about the objectives, or the strategy, or the guidelines form the top or even the vision. Obama and Co also had objectives, strategy, guidelines an vision but seemed to say, don’t get distracted, focus on that vision but it is really, really, really about you: how you discuss it, what it means for you, what you can do, how you can bring in others. This may seem obvious to many. Usually these are the people who would say that ‘things have changed a lot’ and the new organization is really bottom up. Let’s call a spade a spade. This is the exception.

In our Viral Change programmes we focus 75% on the grassroots, bottom up ‘people like you’ and ‘it's all about you’ engine of change and 25% on the top down messaging. Messaging is very important indeed but it is very easy to steal air time with messaging and forget everything else. Messaging is the ‘push’. Viral Change™ orchestrates the ‘pull’. The more protagonists the grassroots are, the greater the scale up of behaviours.

We bring technology in (if we can and) Enterprise Micro Blogging systems such as Yammer play a fantastic role in the tribal connectivity. Again, many people get fascinated by the technology and forget that collaboration is a behaviour not technological feature. In other words, connectivity is not collaboration.

A great deal of the ‘Communication industry’ spends a lot of time on the quality, quantity, effectiveness, measurement, channels etc of messaging. For obvious reasons! But communication is not change or engagement per se and it needs a good ‘pull effect’ to expand and multiply the message itself. Top down communicating systems follow an attrition model: big at the top, small in results. A good learning from the political strategists of Obamaland is that no matter how much of top-down communication they could provide ( and Mr Obama did!) what really was going to matter was that transversal, local clustering, ‘it's really about you’, grassroots organizations. Obama campaign was extremely successful because it was not a campaign but a social movement. Viral Change™ orchestrates these social movements inside the organization and in the macro societal world. Oh well, Obama did not call us but the Viral Change was published first in 2006 – maybe somebody …

NOTES

Some of the differences between the campaigns and camps are well summarised in this Pinterest collection http://pinterest.com/infographics4u/2012-elections-infographics/

David Plouffe’s ‘The Audacity to Win’ was published by Viking in 2009

Viral Change™ is described in two books, Viral Change™: the alternative to slow, painful and unsuccessful management of change in organizations (2006,2008) and Homo Imitans, the art of social infection. Viral Change™ in action (2011) by Leandro Herrero

Viral Change™ Global L.LP. PO Box 1192, HP9 IYQ, United Kingdom

+44 (0) 1494 730999

ukoffice@viralchange.com

Viral Change™ is a trademark

Next: 4/10

Neither top down, not bottom up. Grassroots and polycentric

It’s tribal (people like me, one of us), reinvent the organization chart (2 of 10)

noreply@blogger.com (Dr Leandro Herrero) — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 21:02:00 +0000

Un-managing change

10 lessons from Obamaland to the design of large scale behavioural change in organizations. Viral Change™ in action series

10 reflections on the conditions for large scale change as practiced by Viral Change™

by Leandro Herrero

[2]

Let me introduce you to Walter. Walter is a 91 year old World War II Veteran from Maryland who can be found with a cell phone in his hand in a video in one (or many) of the Obama campaign sites. He is fighting a new war. His ammunition consists of a laptop and that cell phone. He is in his house and is calling people from a list shown in the laptop’s screen. I suspect neither the laptop not the cell phone is his. He is following a script (also on screen) and is calling people of his age (more or less). One of the first things he says after hello, I am Walter, is ‘I am voting for Obama’. I will deal with the significance of this expression of ‘intention to vote’ in another post.

Walter is campaigning. He is talking to his peers. He is not talking to 20or 30 year olds. He is engaging with people (from the list) who from the other side may hear and feel Walter as being ‘one of them, ‘somebody like me’. Technically (for us in the business of large scale change, Viral Change™ ) he is exercising ‘peer to peer influence’.

The power of peer to peer is underestimated in organizations. Not that it is unknown, after all we all have heard or used the expression ‘peer pressure’ but this is where the ‘curiosity’ stops. People don’t know what to make of it, and, incidentally, it always sounds bad…

Now get yourself a copy of the Edelman Trust Barometer. The Edelman company produces an excellent annual report on trust (organizations, industries, geographies…) and year after year, with some minor variations, the lowest source of internal organizational trust (for the purposes of ‘believing’ what’s going on with your company) is the CEO. Let’s be kind. It means the top hierarchy, not that absolutely charming and well mannered CEO who is on TV from time to time. The highest source of trust however (with a glitch in favour of ‘academics’ last year) is ‘people like me’, that’s it, people like you and me, one of us, our horizontal tribe, the ones we talk to everyday and talk football or cricket or baseball, take the children to similar schools, more or less same age, ‘my mates’; you may be one rank above me or two, or below, but that does not really matter around the water cooler, or the cafeteria, or in the car park. My peers.

And here is the beauty ( and the trick). If my super-Vice-president comes to me and tells me that we have to go South, I will say OK, and perhaps I may even ask why, but, I’ll go South. He thinks South is good. The CEO thinks South is good. The Strategic Plan says that South is good. I am not sure about South. Actually I think South is a lousy option. Why South for goodness sake!?

f you, my peer, mate, water cooler friend, car park talker, school run share, last night football absorbed, tribal member, colleague in the same division, free mutual psychotherapist and somebody ‘I do know well’ comes to me and in the middle of a football, or school or holiday or dreadful journey conversation say to me, ‘by the way, we really must go South’, my brain may be suddenly aroused out of the unexpected and I may even have one or two questions such as ‘ are you on something?’ but the chances of me believing that, at the very least, South is now a very reasonable, maybe even extraordinary destination, are very very high indeed, a few hundred points above the same message coming from my Super Vice-president. I expected him to support South, I did not expected you to let me know your belief in South with the same sincerity as our twenty other conversations. Call it trust (Edelman does) or legitimization or comfort to me, South is very credible.

If on top of this you say to me not only that ‘we really must go South’ but that you are actually going South yourself, the chances of me doing the same are even higher. And most of this process may even be unconscious. Our mind has a wonderful Reverse Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the neuronal system and we may even end up ‘really’, ‘seriously thinking’ that North was really very very silly after all. Psychologists call this ‘cognitive dissonance’ which is a fancy name for saying that we tend to produce comforting feelings to our decisions even if they contradict our previous thinking (‘I am terribly late, well the concert was not that good’)

The power of peer-to-peer is formally called to arms in Viral Change™ programmes whether inside the organization or in the public arena. One of the sub-chapters of the book Homo Imitans reads ‘ youth to youth, granny to granny’ to make the point of this transversal power. Decades of traditional management have largely ignored this in favour of the top down, hierarchical, cascaded down tsunami of information and guidelines. In terms of behavioural change, and large scale behavioural and cultural change in particular, the score is Peer to per 10, top management nil. Obama campaign managers have understood this. Walter understands this. Walter is thrilled to be asked. The 78 year old young fellow at the other end does not mind to hear from Walter. Walter is, at that crucial point of human interactions, more credible than Obama himself.

Nothing in our traditional view of the organization let alone the supreme representation of the corporations’ plumbing system, the organization chart, says anything about the Walter-to-Walter mechanisms. In fact, they are ignored. The emphasis is you to your direct reports, your direct reports to their direct reports and so on. Ditto in public sector, societal campaigns. Traditionalists work doctor to patient, social worker to dysfunctional family, priest to immigrants, and community leaders to gang members. Viral Change™ activists work recovered patient to patient, ex-dysfunctional family to dysfunctional, settled to immigrant and ex-gang member to violent group in the streets. Viral Change™ Activists 10, Traditionalists nil. OK, 1, or 2, or 3, in a good day.

In Viral Change™ we reinvent the organization chart, we work with Walters and we orchestrate bottom up, grass-roots, polycentric leadership, change of ways of doing, fixing of problems, and shaping of new cultures. The CEOs, C-anything of our client organizations in Viral Change mode love Walters and are thrilled that Walters are the real leaders. Obama loves Walter.

NOTES

The Walter video clip can be found in http://www.barackobama.com/news/entry/walter-and-the-obama-2012-call-tool/

The Edelman Trust Barometer has its own page at http://trust.edelman.com/

Viral Change™ Global L.LP. PO Box 1192, HP9 IYQ, United Kingdom

+44 (0) 1494 730999

ukoffice@viralchange.com

Viral Change™ is a trademark

Yes I can (profile you)

noreply@blogger.com (Dr Leandro Herrero) — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 11:44:00 +0000

Un-managing change

10 lessons from Obamaland to the design of large scale behavioural change in organizations. Viral Change™ in action series

10 reflections on the conditions for large scale change as practiced by Viral Change™

by Leandro Herrero

Yes I can ( profile you) 1 of 10

It should be pretty obvious to all of us working in organizations of some sort, but the social network of the organization (the social network IS the organization) is not equalitarian. There is no democracy in the distribution of influence and connectivity between individuals. There is not even a Bell curve or normal distribution. It’s a power law. Small number of people have high levels in influence and connectivity, large numbers of people have low levels. And once you have high levels you tend to acquire more (Mathew effect, described in Viral Change™)

The top-down communication systems in which most management practices are based upon assume equality and uniformity. Translation: everybody is equal, everybody needs to hear the (same) message, everybody needs to get the cascaded down powerpoints. This is what I describe as ‘World I’ in Homo Imitans (you can download that chapter here). ‘World I’ is an attrition model. Start aiming at all, and efficiency goes down in the information tsunami. At the end a few people pay attention, let alone do something about it. ‘World II’, which is behavioural based as opposed to information and messages, is a scale up model: some people start doing something, other copy, critical mass appears and eventually a large number of people are doing something (new) good or bad... I have explained elsewhere how we need both to work in tandem (Viral Change™ (2006,2008); Homo Imitans (2011)

But let’s go back to the reluctance of the network to buy equality and uniformity. The HR produced Bell curve which defines an average (of people) as performing well, a few on one side doing very well and a very few excellent; and in the other side a mirror of doing not so well and less underperforming, tells us noting about the ability of people to influence others, whether they have positive or negative influence, are sceptical or not, engaged or not , supporters or disenfranchised etc. It’s sad that the climax of employee mapping often used by HR can tell us so little about the employee ‘social GPS’ position in the company. And, for the record, no, the Bell Curve people and the Power Law people do not correlate

Incidentally, this assumption of ‘equality of all employees’, certainly equal as human beings but not equal on performance – according to your own Bell curve – and not equal in influence/connectivity/engagement according to our Viral Change™ power law, is in Organization Development and management practices a mirror of the old problem of Economics. The entire Economics is based upon the assumption of the rationality of people but there is a small problem, many of us behave pretty irrational. The entire ‘new’ Behavioural Economics discipline was born as a result. We have a mirror problem: our HR systems assume equality of employees (again, for good reasons of fairness, let alone Employment Law) but this assumption is useless particularly to understand change

Political campaigns a la Obama have long understood, and recently mastered the art: profiling. It sounds a bit technical and market-research but what it means is that in this approach there is no point to treat everybody the same. A connected mum very active in school and worried about education funding or education quality gets no personal message (by the local activists) about health care reform, youth employment , let alone the Iran threat. Profiling is hardly a new concept but the Obama movement/campaign has refined this to its best and at a micro-level not just as a macro-social phenomena. This has been possible due to the smart use of gigantic data available, sophisticated technology and an obsession with de-centralisation and grass roots (topics I will address is the rest of these series). Incidentally the Republican party had access to same data but was very bad as its use, the technology failed them and there were not near as de-centralised and localized as the Obama camp.

There is a lot to learn from us within the organization. At the very least we need to review the way we have most of our HR/OD/Management practices practically blind to ‘micro-profiling’. Everybody gets the same message, same interpretation, same PowerPoint, same stories. The old fashioned and failure prone ‘management of change models’ are very weak at profiling because they are based upon that lack of understanding on how the social network works. These models are very poor because whether explicit or not understand the organization as the one represented by the organizational chart.

In our Viral Change™ programme we take time at profiling small groups of individuals who many not be very high in the hierarchy but have a tremendous ability to pull other peoples behaviours. These (distributed) leaders are the real engine of change. Our primary engagement is with them, not the entire organization. Yes we can (orchestrate large scale change) More to come

NOTES

The ‘yes we can profile you’ was the heading of an article by Daniel Kreiss, at the Stanford Law Review Online, 2 February 2012

For a detailed (too detailed) and fascinating account of the progression of sophistication in targeting and profiling in US politics, read The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning

Campaigns by Sasha Issenberg ( Crown Publishing Group, 2012)

Viral Change™ is describe din two boks, Viral Change™: the alternative to slow, panful and unsuccessful management of change in organizations (2006,2008) and Homo Imitans, the art of social infection. Viral Change™ in action (2011) by LeandroHerrero

Viral Change™ Global L.LP. PO Box 1192, HP9 IYQ, United Kingdom www.viralchange.com

ukoffice@viralchange.com

Viral Change™ is a trademark

Next: 2/10 It’s tribal (people like me, one of us), reinvent the organization chart

How social movement also fade - and a reply

noreply@blogger.com (Dr Leandro Herrero) — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 06:53:00 +0000

Meta activism is a wonderful think-tak tracking social movements. This is a recent post on how these are fading and their interpretation.
2012 As The Morning After: Citizen Movements Lose Momentum | Meta-Activism Project
Viral Change (TM) orehestrates socila movements and in doing so we are aware of the need to do it 'in campaign style'. This is my response to their blog post:

"The ups and downs of a social movement, both of the type you are tracking and study and the ‘internal within the organization’ that we orchestrate (www.viralchange.com) are a sign of health. Any scaled-up social movement needs to peak and come down. There is no such a thing as stable social movement. As movement it will trigger changes in the system (societal, organizational) which they themselves may spread and stabilize but the movement is the engine and an engine cannot run permanently over-heated. A good orchestration of the movement (very difficult to achieve in emergent societal) should cater for peaks and lows and adopt a campaign style where ‘pulses’ are planned in a recurrent way. This is how we do it inside large organizations. A one off, top down ‘tsunami approach’ (PUSH) as we call it will fade without the readiness of bottom-up (PULL) system. See www.homoimitans.com . What we are seeing is normal but orchestrators should be aware of the need for, dare I say, managing and crafting the movement. The role of the digital world is of course a modifying important one – and you are experts in understanding this "

A New Kind Of Social Science For The 21st century | Conversation | Edge

noreply@blogger.com (Dr Leandro Herrero) — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 07:38:00 +0000

I believe that Nicholas Christakis is making one of the greatest contributions to the understanding of the communalities between biological infection, idea infection and behavioural infection. I have widely acknowledged his work in mine and in particularly quoted in Homo Imitans, the art of social infection: Viral Change in action. Mo vote for the Prize Nobel in Transdisciplinary Sciences (which needs to be invented). His work is fundamental to understand many principles of our Viral Change™ . Here ins an interview in Edge

A New Kind Of Social Science For The 21st century | Conversation | Edge

Crash diets and good habits ( and the organization)

noreply@blogger.com (Dr Leandro Herrero) — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 10:22:00 +0000

"Organizations can always benefit from better habits. Every day"

Seth's Blog: Crash diets and good habCrash diets and good habits
Crash diets don't work.

They don't work for losing weight, they don't work for making sales quota and they don't work for getting and keeping a job.

The reason they don't work has nothing to do with what's on the list of things to be done (or consumed). No, the reason they don't work is that they don't change habits, and habits are where our lives and careers and bodies are made.

If you want to get in shape, don't sign up for fancy diet this or Crossthat the other thing. No, the way to get in shape is to go to the gym every single day, change your clothes and take a shower. If you can do that every single day for a month, pretty soon you'll start doing something while you're there...

If you want to make sales quota, get in the habit of making more sales calls, learning more about your market and generally showing up. If you show up, with right intent, you'll start making sales. The secret isn't a great new pitch or a new pair of shoes. The secret is showing up.

Your audacious life goals are fabulous. We're proud of you for having them. But it's possible that those goals are designed to distract you from the thing that's really frightening you--the shift in daily habits that would mean a re-invention of how you see yourself.

Organizations can always benefit from better habits. Every day. Do that first.
its

HOMO IMITANS! -Locked-in patient walks and talks again after copying baby daughter - Telegraph

noreply@blogger.com (Dr Leandro Herrero) — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 12:33:00 +0000

Locked-in patient walks and talks again after copying baby daughter - Telegraph

Medical staff suggested that if he attempted to copy his daughter – who had since begun babbling and making basic sounds – it may help him learn to speak again.

He soon began to make the same sounds, and later progressed to forming meaningful words. By March 2011 he was able to leave hospital using a walking frame.

Mrs Ellis said reading books with his daughter had helped her husband's speech and that playing games and using her toys had improved his co-ordination.

noreply@blogger.com (Allison Spargo) — Mon, 28 May 2012 10:11:00 +0000

The Age of Activism - Europeam Communication Summit, Brussels, 5-6 July 2012

Dr Leandro Herrero has been invited back by Qudriga University to be an expert speaker at their European Communication Summit in Brussels on Friday 6th July.

Speaking on the issue of The Age of Activism, Dr Herrero will provide his valuable insight regarding the saturation of messages, the increasing difficulty in distinguishing signal from noise, the commoditization of attention and the dangerous naivety of mistaking human collaboration with 'click-tivism'. How he believes that Internal communications must lead to "change-ability" or they will be left as Information Traffic Management or Top-down information conduits. Without transforming themselves into change-makers, their value will fade even more. They need to understand how social movements are created, how Viral Change" works and how 'engagement' in 2012 means doing something/changing something, and not simply being heard or participating.

Dr Herrero speaking at European Communication Summit in Brussels July 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Allison Spargo) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:30:00 +0000

http://www.communication-summit.eu/2012/02/21/leandro-herrero/

Dr Herrero will be sharing his thoughts and Speaking on the subject of the Age of Activism ......

Meet Dr Herrero at Eyeforpharma Sales & Marketing Excellence Conference in Turkey 21st February 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Allison Spargo) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:19:00 +0000

Dr Leandro Herrero has been invited to speak at EyeforPharma's Sales and Marketing Excellence Conference in Turkey on Tuesday 21st February 2012 at the Conrad Hotel in Istanbul. He is also offering a small number of select, one on one "surgery" sessions during the afternoon. If you wish to book a slot with him please contact Zeynep Bubik zeynep.guvenerbubik@novomed360.com.

Chicago Ceasefire: a successful programme using viral change techniques

noreply@blogger.com (Allison Spargo) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:37:00 +0000

What’s it like to live in a neighborhood where practically everyone has witnessed a shooting or
lost a loved one to violence? Is there a way to stop the senseless violence that robs innocent children of their future? CeaseFire believes there is. And we’ve gotten results in some of the toughest neighborhoods. Watch “The Interrupters” on Frontline on public television on Tuesday, Feb. 14 at 9 p.m. EST/ 8 p.m. CST: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/interrupters/

Gary Slutkin MD
Executive Director, CeaseFire
Professor, Epidemiology and
International Health
UIC School of Public Health
312-996-5524 (o)
www.ceasefirechicago.org

CeaseFire is an evidence based practice demonstrated effective by independently run and independently funded studies.
CeaseFire has been named one of the "Top 100 NGOs in the World" by the Global Journal.
(Listed number 30 in the world)

Sir Howard Bernstein, a CMI Companion and CEO of Manchester City Council, on the skills and behaviours needed to achieve public service reform.

noreply@blogger.com (Allison Spargo) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:33:00 +0000

http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/opinion/1113167/chartered-management-institute-opinion/

BOOKS AVAILABLE ON ITUNES .....

noreply@blogger.com (Allison Spargo) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:17:00 +0000

You can now find all five of Dr Leandro Herrero's books as ibooks on itunes

Homo Imitans: the art of social infection: Viral Change(TM) in action

Viral Change: the alternative to slow, painful and unsuccessful management of change in organisations

The Leader with Seven Faces

New Leaders wanted: Now Hiring!

Disruptive Ideas

Dr Leandro Herrero invited to provide keynote speech at Quadriga University Internal Communications Event in Berlin 13th October 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Allison Spargo) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 10:05:00 +0000

Dr Leandro Herrero has been invited to provide the keynote speech at The second Quadriga University Internal Communication conference, organised in cooperation with Communication Director magazine.

At the same event, Soren Jakobsen, Senior Partner of Viral Change, Denmark will be providing two interactive Workshops on Viral Change(TM) on 14th October 2011.

In the end, all communications are about change: a new contingency, a new product, a new strategy, a new communication tool, a new costumer, a new challenge, an unforeseen crisis change. Dr Herrero, CEO of The Chalfont Project, Managing Partner of Viral Change LLP, and author of 'Viral Change' and 'Homo Imitans', explains how Communication (World I) alone, is not Change and that only through changing Behaviours (World II) do we create scalable, sustainable change within Organizations. World I and World II work together to achieve this.
For further information please visit http://www.internal-communication.eu/programme/

VINTAGE FROM Seth's Blog: The warning signs of defending the status quo

noreply@blogger.com (Dr Leandro Herrero) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 10:20:00 +0000

Seth's Blog: The warning signs of defending the status quo

The warning signs of defending the status quo
When confronted with a new idea, do you:

•Consider the cost of switching before you consider the benefits?
•Highlight the pain to a few instead of the benefits for the many?
•Exaggerate how good things are now in order to reduce your fear of change?
•Undercut the credibility, authority or experience of people behind the change?
•Grab onto the rare thing that could go wrong instead of amplifying the likely thing that will go right?
•Focus on short-term costs instead of long-term benefits, because the short-term is more vivid for you?
•Fight to retain benefits and status earned only through tenure and longevity?
•Embrace an instinct to accept consistent ongoing costs instead of swallowing a one-time expense?
•Slow implementation and decision making down instead of speeding it up?
•Embrace sunk costs?
•Imagine that your competition is going to be as afraid of change as you are? Even the competition that hasn't entered the market yet and has nothing to lose...
•Emphasize emergency preparation and the expense of a chronic and degenerative condition?
Calling it out when you see it might give your team the strength to make a leap.

The behavioural 'why' of the London riots

noreply@blogger.com (Dr Leandro Herrero) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 12:22:00 +0000

The copycat factor has only been mentioned in passing. Herd behaviour/social copying is a mechanism at the core of what I describe in my book ‘Homo Imitans’. Triggering behaviours is easy, social imitation follows if the followers can see and feel how easy, advantageous, and ‘rewarding’ the act can be. For example that breaking into a shop and steeling has no immediate negative consequences. It will take just a few to do this for others to join in. The difference is between people who don’t feel this is ‘rewarding’ and the ones who do. The later ( the looters) are ‘just’ doing what they can do. In this respect the answer to the question ‘why they do it?’ is strictly speaking ‘because they can’. I myself cannot, for example, because the simple mental picture of me doing it is not only not rewarding but revolting. My education has shaped my library of consequences in a way that blocks some behaviours as producing a reward, a positive consequence.

So, give as many million explanations as you wish, you will go backwards in arguments and you’ll hit education, early years, parenting and an early-years social environment. The idea that current cuts for example have anything to do with this is an insult to the imagination and to anybody with a reasonable IQ. That this comes from some politicians is just a sign of their brain calibre. That they are given airtime, a tragedy. I am far from trying to simplify the chain of events and saying ‘it is just social copying/imitation/herd behaviour/copycat effect’. As I said before it is easy to trace back to ‘reward systems’ and hit education. But, at the same time, we need to acknowledge that once something like that has started, the scale up ( and the scale down) are incredibly easy and what it was ‘a mechanism’ turns into ‘a cause’, an automatic, self-reinforcing, repetitive easy to copy. In small scale, the mechanism follow the same principles behind suicide clusters or group hysteria. Understanding the nature of ‘homo imitans’ has practical consequences.

Social copying and imitation work equally on the positive side. See altruism behaviour x your brain feels there is a positive reward ( for your values an beliefs for example) x other people do = altruism will spread. So, back to the ‘educational library’ of good or bad, goodness and evil. The scale up mechanism is the visibility. If I see dozens of people in my neighbourhood helping old people living alone, I am in the path of imitating ( right library provided!) If I don’t see anybody, I may or may not do it myself. If I can see looters on screen or 24/7 coverage or receive tweeters saying come and copy, it’s all fun, nothing negative happens, we are hundreds, your brain will consult ‘the library’ and will say, go on, now you can. I am afraid we are incredibly unsophisticated copying machines. I am not saying for a minute ‘ and that is all that matters’ to understand but, for those in a position of political responsibility, it would be worth acknowledging this so that we can all go back to the mother of all ‘library building: education

The ‘why’ repertoire provided by the perpetrators will be as broad as artificial. Cognitive dissonance, the ability of the brain to match our actions with justifications, is a fantastic library of reasons: because there is noting to do for youth, because we are unemployed, because we don’t have respect, because we are not treated like persons, because they are not jobs, because we are angry with society, because the capitalist world, because the bankers get paid a lot, because there is social injustice... Please add your own. These are all ‘facts’ in search of a link with an action. You might as well add the Pope visit to the list. Surely, somebody, somewhere must call the emperor of the arguments as the most naked of the emperors and stop anybody on newsnight or question time or radio 4 from carrying on beyond 2 milliseconds. (Give airtime to stupid arguments and these will spread like looting behaviours in our brains)

What we have seen is critical masses of individuals given the opportunity to exercise highly rewarding behaviours (for them) usually outside their possibilities suddenly within reach, following other critical masses, reaching thresholds where ‘the acts become the norm’, scaled up by the ability of social media to provide 24/7 ‘social proof’ (it is happening, I can do it, others are doing, my vales system says this is great, I am doing it). Twitter and texting make the connectivity possible and instantaneous so the scale up is robust. No doubt about that. Modern network theory marrying behavioural and social sciences can explain the reality of the past weeks. We will have to be careful in analysing the ‘why’.

Social infection is catching on

noreply@blogger.com (Dr Leandro Herrero) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 15:20:00 +0000

Social infection is catching on
Latest news from Institute of Internal Communications (UK)
Wednesday, 22 June 2011 20:10

Your company needs you…or people very much like you.

Changing employee behaviour in the workplace is the holy grail for communicators and traditionally it’s been led from the top by senior managers.

But Dr Leandro Herrero says that’s the wrong way round because the main way behaviour changes is by social infection – i.e. we copy ‘people like us’.

“The idea of senior managers as role models is completely overestimated,” says Leandro. “Even the idea that these guys have more power than anybody else is overestimated

(read the article below)

Social infection is catching on

A TALE OF TWO WORLDS - CHAPTER 3 FROM HOMO IMITANS

noreply@blogger.com (Dr Leandro Herrero) — Mon, 30 May 2011 18:40:00 +0000

Homo Imitans has now been published. You cn get information about the book here
You can also download a sample chapter from the same website
Please pass onto anybody you think may be interested

Homo Imitans and Viral Change (TM): Pass it on! Review of Homo Imitans by Chris Rodgers (Informal Coalition)

noreply@blogger.com (Allison Spargo) — Tue, 24 May 2011 07:54:00 +0000

A brief look at Leandro Herrero’s latest thoughts on his Viral ChangeTM approach to orchestrated social change.
Early in 2008, I set out my thoughts on Leandro Herrero’s book Viral ChangeTM (here). Much (though not all) of his thesis on ‘how change happens’ resonates with my own informal coalitions view of organizational dynamics. In his latest book, imaginatively titled Homo Imitans, Herrero further emphasizes his view that social copying and social imitation (hence “Imitans”) can play a powerful role in an orchestrated approach to organizational (and wider social) change. (Read more.........)

Dr Herrero Challenges conventional thinking on traditional top down communication at IOIC Conference in Bournemouth

noreply@blogger.com (Allison Spargo) — Fri, 13 May 2011 17:21:00 +0000

Dr Leandro Herrero, CEO of The Chalfont Project and Managing Partner of Viral Change, says top-down, didactic communication doesn't achieve anything.

He says if you really want to make a difference in an organisation you need peer-to-peer influence and social copying. read more here ....

Dr Herrero's new book, Homo Imitans launched May 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Allison Spargo) — Wed, 04 May 2011 12:52:00 +0000

HOMO IMITANS LAUCH PRESS RELEASE May 2011
Man’s primitive instincts – key to successful change management
Change programmes fail so often because of an over-reliance on management theory and best practice and too little attention to the fundamentals of human behaviour as revealed by anthropological studies. These are well-known but too little applied in the business environment.
This is the contention of Dr Leandro Herrero, the pioneer of the concept of Viral Change, who will speak on how to achieve sustainable behavioural change at the Institute of Internal Communication’s annual conference in Bournemouth on 13th May.

Dr Herrero focuses on the value of making use of the strong human tendency to copy others with whom they identify – a concept discussed in his new book Homo Imitans.

A powerful form of ‘social infection’ is created by identifying a small group of influential individuals within the organisation to act as advocates and activists for new behaviours – these are often not individuals who are high up within the formal organisational hierarchy.

Once they understand and believe in organisational goals and associated behaviours themselves, this type of champion should be free to engage peers as they think fit, with formal leaders taking a backstage role and providing support.

Data indicates that around 70% of change programmes fall well short of expectations in terms of successful outcomes. Reasons identified by Dr Herrero include: over-reliance on the ability of the formal management hierarchy to influence; and on the ability of systems, processes, new technology and formal communication programmes to embed lasting change across the organisation.

He also questions undue focus on understanding and changing attitudes as a foundation for change programmes, commenting: “You can’t really change a mindset, or indeed identify what it actually is. It is the behaviour you observe, and what you should be aiming to change. Trying to understand what is going on in people’s heads is nice, but not the key to success.”

Dr Herrero believes that more formal communication programmes support the process of social infection by raising awareness and understanding, and highlighting success stories for the purpose of positive reinforcement.

In his new book, Leandro contends that the failures of change management programmes, performance within organisations, and even government-orchestrated social change interventions, all have something in common.

He comments: “All these failures stem from the misunderstanding of the differences between two separate worlds, each with their own rules and their own tempo: the world of communication and the world of behaviours.”

He believes that ultimate success “depends on mastering both the understanding and respect for the differences of the two worlds and the establishing of bridges between them without getting them mixed up. Management in particular cannot tell the difference. It muddles them together as if they were one single territory.

"The consequences are a series of messy and wrong expectations either about people or management systems.”

ENDS

Press enquiries to:Catherine Park, IoIC Tel: 01908 313755 / 07957 999725
Allison Spargo, The Chalfont Project Tel: 01494 730999