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12 tips for fostering self-organizing work groups—at the very beginning

2011-10-28T01:15:12Z

Quick update for those of you who are here with me weekly. My neighbors who were fighting to save their house won! They get to stay! Lori’s headline: Self-organizing group saves itself—community helps! http://www.centraldistrictnews.com/2011/10/24/mitchells-get-new-loan-plan-can-keep-their-21st-ave-home. Woo hoo! Ok, now for the 12 tips…

If you haven’t heard, Bas and I have just begun research for a series of eBooks we’re writing together. I got these tips by studying 8 weeks of email messages between Bas (in Zandvoort) and me (in Seattle), and reflecting back on the other self-organizing work groups I’ve studied and been part of. I stopped at 12, because Daniel continues to complain that my posts are too long. More are sure to follow.

1. Try who then what. Choose the person to work with before you fully know what you’ll be working on together. You’ll have work ideas/plans/goals as individuals and imagined ideas for the group. You’ll have even better ones as a group if you start with who.

2. Embrace scary-to-do-it honesty. Be honest with yourself, and then with them, about how much you’d like to work together. Drop the act. If you think to yourself “This is the person I’d most like to work with right now.” don’t just think it. Say it out loud and see what happens. It’s scary to do. When I finally got around to being honest with myself about how much I wanted to work with Bas, here’s what I said (and the reply I got):

Jen embracing scary sparkler birthday candles

Lori: “I would like to talk more seriously about working together in the coming years if you’re interested.… our backgrounds, ways of being, perspectives, communities, love of learning, and even timing on where we’re at work wise, for me, couldn’t be a bigger sign that we should work together. It helps that I study highly successful groups. I know what these groups look and feel like before and as they begin. They look and feel like us. Two people 100% certain that they’d be better together than on their own. That certainty now exists on my end. Just thought I should say that.”
Bas: “Before I leave, just a short reply. YES!!! YES. I would love to work together in this way. For exactly those reasons! Same here. You have no idea Much much longer post after the weekend. Awesome!”

3. Lean is good—lean yourselves into loving everyone you work with. These groups always have two or three people at the start, no more. Depending on the work, this may be all the group ever needs (these are extraordinarily efficient groups, after all). Stay this size until you trust each other so completely that you can move in the world as one. An indicator of this is that each of you speaks on the group’s behalf with minimal to no concern, knowing that the group will adapt, adjust what individuals say as needed, forgive each other when needed, and reprimand each other when needed. Once you hit this “moves as one in the world” point, you’ll know who, if anyone, needs to be added next. You’ll know because you’ll either be done with your work or be able to imagine a specific person moving in the world as one with the group. And you’ll start with who again—a real who (“We’d be better with Priya than on our own.”) and not an abstract who (“We need a copyeditor.”).

Holiday decorations at our house - one toe in tacky land

4. Communicate with one toe in tacky land. When I was growing up, there was a fine line my mom loved to walk when decorating our home for the holiday season—a line between tasteful holiday decorations (just enough) and tacky (too much). She liked to come just up to that line and then consciously cross it with just a toe into tacky land (I now do the same to honor her good humor). It’s like that at the beginning of these groups. Communicate until you feel a pang of concern that you’re annoying them with how much you’re communicating. Apologize if you must (I usually do), and continue to communicate a lot early on. Trust that together you’ll overcome these pangs relatively quickly. After all, you are the people you want to hear a lot from. The more you verbally communicate up front, the less you’ll need to later on when you get so wickedly amazing as a group that you know what other group members would think, say, and do in any situation without talking much and you carry their perspectives in your head.

5. Be at least 51% human. This pattern shows up across the groups I study and am part of. At least half (often far more) of what the group communicates is about life and themselves as human beings, not about the work. Very smart, I think. Because this work will end at some point or evolve into something else while you will keep going. The more you know about each other, the more you can help your individual selves, your other groups, your communities, and your organizations—now and in the future. This sounds simple, yet it’s ridiculously hard for someone like me who spent almost 20 years working heads down in my corporate and academic worlds before my groups taught me to look up.

6. Treat group members like close friends and colleagues from the beginning. For example, asking for a bit of help with things that have little to do with your collective work. These people will soon become, or already are, your closest colleagues and maybe even your friends. They deserve to be treated as such. Working on little mini projects prior to your collective work helps you learn to work together and learn that you are important to each other. What this sounds like will vary widely, depending on who you are. For example “What do you think of my new tag line?” or “I don’t know what to do with this student/client/customer/partner/colleague/employee/child. What would you do?” or “Would you mind getting donuts for the brainstorming session? I’m running late because my kid threw up on me and the dog.” or “You record Skype sessions. How do I do that?” This work on little things demonstrates our strengths and weaknesses for the big things—the understanding of which is hugely valuable to the group as it learns.

7. Learn that collective definitions aren’t consensus definitions—they’re way better. For example, at the moment Bas and I define “different work” for our book project as follows:

Collective definition: 1) a group that 2) deeply loves their collective work, 3) together are working differently from the way they once believed they should work as individuals, and 4) are significantly redefining what successful work looks and feels like for themselves and their organizations or communities

When Bas says it, he ends with “organizations” and when I say it, I end with “communities”. As a group, we’re saying both. Our difference as individuals helps us as a group. I almost instantly saw this when a greater variety of people began showing up to share their stories for the book than would have shown up for me on my own. So I’d say share your own definitions of words/ideas/plans often, allow different definitions to evolve as a group, and don’t worry about consensus–you’re capable of even more. The more difference a group comfortably holds, the stronger it is—group members learn—because more others can identify with and connect to the group.

8. Experiment your ass off. Self-organizing work groups are groups of learners—each holds individual expertise but nobody holds expertise in what the group is doing together. So experiment and act like learners:

Play a lot
Draw pictures a lot
Fail a lot
Laugh a lot
Need help a lot
Give help a lot
Yell and cry when you feel like it

Don’t worry if you’re not interested in or ready to do all these things at work yet. Do what you can safe within your own groups and change to the extent you want to change. This year I realized that I actually can’t settle for less in my work now, because working this way is so rewarding, fun, and effective. Now that I can’t settle for less, neither can my work groups. Poor Bas. He learned early that it’s not a successful work group for me if I don’t cry at least once. I tear up when I’m overwhelmed by how lucky I am to be part of a group. But at least he was warned. Doug wasn’t.

9. Witness how excited you are to be working together. What this looks like will vary widely, depending on you. For example, noticing that you’re:

Relatively shamelessly sharing emotions (using emoticons, all CAPS, and exclamation points in email, texts, writing within the group).
Brainstorming together every opportunity you get, even if you have just 2 minutes together and even if it’s midnight your time and 9 a.m. their time.
Offering connections, help, advice, or a second pair of eyes and ears for something unrelated to your collective work—with minimal or no thought about whether or not you should.
Relatively shamelessly sharing of more of your whole self. For example, surprised to find yourself talking about something you’re passionate about that seems completely unrelated to work. By doing this, you’re demonstrating that you see them as more than a work colleague cog and that you trust them to be able to handle this part of you. Very brave for an individual, I think.

Important to witness in yourself so that you’ll know how to recognize new group members when you see them.

10. Lead with yes. I just remembered that I’ve heard this as advice given to people performing comedy improvisation. Start everything with yes. What I notice in our email messages is that Bas and I automatically do this for each other:

“Thanks! Yes, that will be soooo much fun.”
“All this sounds good.”
“Most useful reframing ever!”
“You’re ideas are great!”
“You are truly the most useful reviewer ever!”
“Overall, I love it. Specifically I love…”
And my personal favorite, which Bas does and I aspire to be more like, is an email message peppered with the word yes, as in “YES!…YES!…YES!…YES!…GREAT!…Let’s do that!…YES!”

It occurs to me that perhaps we’re all improvisational geniuses when we’re working with people we deeply want to be working with. Lots of “yes” doesn’t mean that Bas and I always agree. Frankly, I rarely feel the need to agree.

11. Invest extra time at apology points. For example, when group members apologize for something they did and it didn’t bother you, tell them so and explain why. Recent example:

Bas: “Sorry for the late response….”
Lori: “…apologies aren’t necessary for a late response. I didn’t notice it was late, for one thing. And my presumption if I ever do experience a response as late will be to assume you are dealing with a more important-that-very-moment self-organizing group and that you’ll get back to ours when you can. ”

This appears to be one of those little up-front things that leads to wicked amazingness as a group later on.

12. Honor individual priorities as a group. Early on, this starts by recognizing your priorities, showing them to group members, and trusting other group members to be able to handle them. For example, for me, a sick or injured husband, sister, parent, close friend, or pet (my fuzzy kids) always trumps work. Don’t worry if you fear showing your individual priorities at work or that you don’t fully recognize what your own priorities are yet. From beginning to end, self-organizing work groups teach us it’s ok to honor our priorities and help us recognize what our individual priorities actually are. Seven years ago, for me work came first–I thought. It was my self-organizing work groups that taught me otherwise. Who (people), then work (what).

Daniel, Grady, and rain gear--three of Lori's top priorities

Get Shareaholic

The difference between management and leadership

2011-10-22T09:05:00Z

Managers work to get their employees to do what they did yesterday, but a little faster and a little cheaper.

Leaders, on the other hand, know where they'd like to go, but understand that they can't get there without their tribe, without giving those they lead the tools to make something happen.

Managers want authority. Leaders take responsibility.

We need both. But we have to be careful not to confuse them. And it helps to remember that leaders are scarce and thus more valuable.

IttyBiz Confessional: “Help! I’m trapped in social media and I feel like I can’t get out!”

2011-10-19T04:24:05Z

Dear Naomi,

“A while back, I started using social media – Twitter, Facebook, a little bit of LinkedIn. Everybody told me it was really good for building a fan base, building loyalty, and getting traffic. The problem is, I’m spending a lot of time on it, and not getting a lot of results.

I’m surrounded by people who don’t seem to do anything but promote themselves and make inside jokes. It’s not that fun anymore but I’m scared that if I back out I’m going to get a lot of backlash from people thinking I’m too good for them.

The truth is, I’m starting to think I AM too good for them. The support network used to be really nice, but it’s changed. It feels like chatter, and I’m really not getting anything out of it anymore.

Everybody’s talking about how important it is to stay social, and I’ve seen what can happen to other people when they cut back their social media presence. (Naomi’s note: Here, the writer referred back to a series of tweets by a person in my social circle who harshly – and obviously, publicly – criticized one of my colleagues and me for not spending so much time on Twitter anymore.)

My social media activity IS getting me a few leads, but all the people talking to me or about me are people in my industry. I guess them linking to me or saying nice things about me theoretically gets the word out about me to THEIR fan bases, but I’m beginning to wonder if that’s really true.

It’s not like I think I’m a better person, but maybe I might have more important things to be doing with my time. It’s not that I don’t like these people, but I’m starting to think we’re spending far too much time doing something that isn’t helping our ittybiz, and it’s starting to feel irresponsible. I don’t want to stay in that trap.

How do I back out without the backlash?”

* Edited to remove identifying details

If I had a nickel for every time somebody privately asked me a question like this, consulting would be free.

Standard capitalist theory suggests that in business, the people you are supposed to focus on are your customers and clients. (Also, your shareholders. In your case, in case you forgot, your shareholder is you.) Social media theory says that since the whole world is your potential customer or client, you should just be social instead. Go “be your awesome self” in public and the rest will fall into place, so the thinking seems to go.

You did it. It was okay for a while.

But now you’re noticing that your social media return on investment is getting low enough that you can’t ignore it anymore. All your gurus are telling you that social media is even more Super Awesome than it ever was, but it’s not working. I mean, it’s working, kind of. But it’s not working.

Not like they say it does. Not like it used to.

But if you bail, you’re going to look like you’re not a team player. You’re going to look like you’re abandoning the people who got you here. You’re going to look too big for your britches.

You have a business to run, but you don’t want to desert your “friends”.

That’s understandable. Your peers were your support network getting to this point. They helped you through some tough times. They gave you someone to talk to on those nights when you’re so excited about business that you’re bursting, but your spouse gives you blank (or disgusted) looks whenever you bring it up.

First, please know that you’re probably doing the right thing by quitting.

I say this not because I think social media is a total waste of time – I don’t think that, at least not every day – but because historically, not following your gut because you don’t want to make someone mad at you is generally a very bad idea.

Think you’re too young to be having sex? What’s your problem? You think you’re too good for it?

Rather study than sit around getting stoned all the time? Don’t be a prude! It’ll all work out!

Serious doubts about marrying that guy? Do it anyway! Your brother flew in all the way from Wisconsin for the ceremony!

Second, if you decide to quit, it’s going to feel really icky.

There’s really no way around that. Social media may have been a part of your life for a long time now, and a big part, too. You’re getting rid of a multiple-times-a-day habit, AND a hangout, AND a social group, all at the same time.

It is going to suck. You’re going to wonder what the hell to do with your days. You’re going to think in tweets and Facebook updates for at least a month, probably longer, although it will start to dwindle. For the first while, you’ll spend huge chunks of every day thinking of something that would be FANTASTIC to tweet.

It will end. Take the time between now and then to catch up on some lost sleep. Detox goes faster when you’re unconscious.

As for what to actually do to get out of your oh-so-social bankruptcy-in-progress, you’ve got two options.

Option One: Go cold turkey.

If you want to quit, you can quit. There’s no law in any land that forces you to be on Twitter any longer than you want to be. Some people may bitch about it, yes, but they are not your friends, and they never were. Friends say they miss you – they don’t publicly criticize you for not being around to hang out.

True, a decreased presence in social media can impact how much your “friends” tweet or like or whatever your content, your services, or your products. That can seem a little scary. But check your stats. Even with a lot of social media promotion, you’re probably not getting THAT much more traffic.

(I have 10,000 Twitter followers. When I post something to Twitter, I average around 50 retweets and 30 clicks. More people are retweeting it than are actually reading it. Hmm.)

So if you want to get out now, by all means, get out now. You won’t die.

Option Two: Slowly creep towards the door and hope nobody notices.

The alternative is to slowly ease your way out. If you don’t outright hate what social media has become and your husband hasn’t already joined a Twitter Widower support group (they have t-shirts!) this isn’t a bad option. You probably won’t get yelled at, which is nice.

In this scenario, you pick two or three times a day – pick them ahead of time and don’t leave it to chance! – to log onto your social media website(s) of choice with a decided amount of time to be there. Instead of simply hanging out and seeing what happens, you consciously and deliberately engage with a few people who are important to you, ideally only commenting on conversations that took place at least an hour before.

It doesn’t matter what you say. It can be lame. You’re not trying to impress anybody. You’re just showing your face.

Your friends see that you’ve been around, but they see your responses coming well after the initial conversations took place. You get credit for being there, without actually having to be there.

Soon enough, nobody expects you to reply in real time anymore.

One caveat? While you’re in there?

DO NOT CLICK ON ANYTHING. You’re trying to prove you were there. Clicking on a link does not prove you were there. The objective here is get the hell out of social media without hurting anybody’s feelings, not to be entertained. If you’re going to waste time, at least make it count.

Get in, get out, don’t get distracted.

You can completely ease out over the course of several weeks, or you could stay at this level for the rest of your life. The attachment is broken, and your peak productive time is never interrupted by “just checking real quick” again.

The one thing to never, ever do. Ever.

One thing NOT to do. Do not, ever, under any circumstances, come out and say what you’re doing. Do not go onto Facebook and say you’re spending less time on Facebook. Do not do this. I cannot emphasize this enough.

If you do this, two things are going to happen, and they’re both really bad.

One, no matter how politely you tell people that you’re reprioritizing your time, a certain number of them will take it personally. They’ll either think you don’t want to hang out with them anymore, or they’ll think you’re casting judgment on how they spend THEIR time. You’re trying NOT to hurt people’s feelings, remember?

Two, you’re drawing attention to yourself for no good reason. It’s a bit like people who don’t blog for a while and then write a post about how they haven’t blogged for a while. A small percentage of their readers notice and care. The rest are only reminded of how little they noticed or cared.

Stay tuned!

Next week in the IttyBiz Confessional: “I’m scared I’ll never be awesome.”

What lessons are self-organizing groups teaching you right now?

2011-10-18T20:59:36Z

Here are a few self-organizing groups I’m learning with/from this week…

1. A touching and cute self-organizing group (love the response of all the different adults in the video):

2. A brave self-organizing group within my neighborhood:

The Mitchells trying to save their already paid-off home from foreclosure the end of October

3. A very visible collection of self-organizing groups right now. There are tons of videos and stories online. This one was shared with me by a community member who is occupying Vancouver (and inspiring everyone within earshot, including me):

Label Your Idea, Your Business or Yourself Before Someone Else Does

2011-10-10T00:23:36Z

When one billionaire CEO lambasts another, labeling his technology the “roach motel of clouds” he is bound to make news. Few corporate CEOs would be that vividly denigrating except Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison.

Fewer still would deliver a lightening-quick, equally negative label back, as Salesforce’s CEO Marc Benioff who compared Ellison to an “oppressive dictator” adding that Ellison’s product was a “false cloud.” Ellison batted back, describing Salesforce’s cloud: “It’s like an airplane, you fly into the cloud and you never get out.”

That’s a rare public battle that shows the newsmaking power of quotability — and that when you throw mud you often get dirty. Yet perhaps your surest way to credibly stand out in your market or your life is by adopting their “Compared to what?” cue — done your way. Let me elaborate.

Just weeks earlier Benioff, keynoting Dreamforce, his huge conference in S.F., had boldly compared his company’s transition to a social business with the Arab Spring in the Middle East. Benioff said customers, like the citizens in those countries, were going to revolt against traditional corporate software and towards social media. With images behind him as he spoke of Arab citizens writing “Facebook” everywhere, Benioff said, “And the signs we saw, they didn’t say, ‘Thank you, Microsoft.’ They said, ‘Thank you, Facebook.’ We need to pay attention to that at this conference too.

It’s not so long from now we’ll here about a corporate spring. We saw Khadafi fall, we saw Mubarak fall. When will we see the first corporate CEO fall?”

As Scott M. Fulton dryly noted in ReadWriteWeb, “This really endears a company to executives, comparing the boardroom to oppressive Arab dictators.” As well, some experts have said that the effect of Facebook has been overstated.

Yet consider characterizations by Ellison and Benioff as occupying one end of the continuum of quotability with most CEOs clear over at the other end, still using the mush of corporate speak which even they cannot remember without reading their notes.

Interestingness is the Instigator, the hardy pigeon that can carry your message most anywhere.

Interestingness makes a message get heard above the noise. Money can’t buy interestingness, yet vivid comparisons can create them.

The good news and the bad is that reputations can be ruined or lifted by how most anyone labels something or someone – as long the label is as vividly indelible as India ink. More than money, title or even good looks, your capacity to craft the most vivid characterization will make it bob, like a cork, to the top of the water of alternative messages. Who says it matters less and less — if it sticks. A janitor can have a bigger megaphone than a CFO.

Yet we are all too close to ourselves to self-label. We know too much to choose the relevant detail from the mass of knowledge we have. We need to listen to our candid, close friends, our customers and our critics. We need to seek the specific example that proves the general conclusion of what we stand for, our main differentiating benefit or talent. Then we scan the landscape for the comparison.

As in the above examples, use the “Compare to what?” cue to stick your label in other’s minds, whether they intended to remember or not. Make the comparison:

• evoke a mental picture

• unexpected

• emotional

• brief

To nudge you to start now on crafting your “Compared to what?” label, consider the staying power of these real examples.

• Disparaging comparisons may be remembered, yet often make enemies…

“If you’re watching cable TV to get the news, that’s like going to Olive Garden because you want to live in Italy.” ~ humor writer Andy Borowitz

….unless the comparison is widely believed and apt for the people you want to reach with your message.

“Patents, like plaque, build up in arteries, restrict flow of innovation in our economy. I’m worried about heart attack” ~ Venture capitalist, Fred Wilson, in a Tweet

• The more unusual the comparison the more it will stick in our minds

“Parker has access to trends and signals that are invisible to many people. For him it’s like hearing a dog whistle.” ~ Shervin Pishevar of Menlo Ventures

• Make the comparison apt for your audience

“When we finish a storyline we let out little puff of white smoke like the Curia in Rome.” ~ Leonard Dick, a writer for the TV show, The Good Wife and, previously for House, when interviewed for his Harvard alumni bulletin

• The stages that something or someone undergoes can be grist for a comparison

“The difference between salad and garbage is timing and chemistry. Perhaps the timing is right.” ~ My friend Gary, when discussing a woman he’d recently met.

• A pithy “if-then” boosts memorability

“If writing is a muscle, this is my gym” ~David Eaves, describing his blog

• Up the emotional wattage by tapping an emotion

Startle

“In an age when more humans have access to cellphones than clean toilets…” ~ Anand Giridharadas

Survival

“Some pictures you save. Some pictures save you.” ~ fire prevention advertisement for Tyco

Poignancy

“When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.” ~ Leonard P. Matlovich’s headstone

Like many of you perhaps I am drawn to some people because they are quotable, even if their topics are outside my usual interests. Who are some of the quotable people you follow? Some of mine are Atul Gawande, George Will, Umair Haque, Whitney Johnson, Roger Rosenblatt, Peggy Noonan, Nick Kristoff, Olen Steinhauer, Michael Lewis and Jonah Lehrer.

What quotable individuals attract you?

For more ideas on quotability consider reading Tongue Fu!, Made to Stick, Tell to Win, and The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling.

Six-ish life lessons from my self-organizing community

2011-10-05T02:40:19Z

My self-organizing community gives me so much, so freely, that often my personal humanity-sippy-cup runneth (no wait, tippeth) over. I live within this community, as this community. And it is because of this community—real human people and groups and ideas—that I can find gratitude for every single day, especially on the bad days.

This community gives me more perspectives to ponder and space within which to ponder them than can be individually imagined or described.

Wow. Just wow.

People, experiences, and perspectives so different from me and mine that my world turns quietly upside down: a snow globe in the palm of a friendly hand. Yet somehow, they are also familiar. Their voices are my voice. Their heart my own heart.

My self-organizing community is everywhere I’m learning as much as I want to, as fast as I can, and all the time, just like the river does. It’s also where I lay my head at night to dream and to rest. It’s home. A river bed.

What is your self-organizing community teaching you this week? Here are the lessons I’m learning from mine right now:

We humans can create infinite time for those we love. Best example this week: my dad, writing and sending email to my sister and I. Not his own email messages, although those count too. No, this was a message from my mother to us. E-mail from my mom, who has Alzheimer’s disease, and who had something funny to say to her daughters but who is no longer inclined to send email messages herself. Infinite time my dad has for my mom. Infinite time, I’ve learned, that Jen and I have for them too. Note: my mom also has a stubbornness combined with a sweetness that brings to mind an image of the imaginary lop-eared offspring of a mule and a fluffy bunny. She still plays Soduko on her iPad. She’ll not let this ultra-fashionable device go entirely without one hell of a fight! This brings to mind another lesson…
We humans are utterly overflowing with courage. Beyond my family (who demonstrates this daily for me), I witnessed stunning courage this week thanks to my self-organizing community. Here are four examples:
- Offering help to another when you don’t believe that you have much to give and/or when you yourself are recovering from tragedy and believe yourself to be the one in need of/receiving help. My dear friend did this for me this week. My living room walls were feeling sad around me, and he filled them with beautiful artwork that was sitting in his garage and closet. This friend recently lost first one, and then another, family member to terminal illness, has been struggling financially this summer, and may well lose his job in the coming months. Yet when my own artwork failed to inspire us as we were hanging it, he instantly jumped into his car and brought us multiple pieces of valuable artwork, including his own, to fill in the gaps. Do you even know how courageous you are my friend? How amazing? I will NOT let you be blind to this!
- Walking up to a total stranger and improvising a collective song in the moment. Thanks for sharing Cathy.
- Owning and speaking my edge opinions. Thanks for sharing Amy. I think we all have perspectives and opinions that live outside the mainstream. Think we’re all center to something and edge to something else. Am I openly speaking my edge perspectives like Penn so bravely does here? Could I be doing better? Hmmm…
- Demanding better from and for your government, your institutions, and your individual self simultaneously. Thanks for sharing, whoever found this for me. Watching protesters in the street, all over the planet, gives me goose bumps of excitement for us all. This brings to mind another lesson…
We humans can embrace anger and forge it into art and action:My two favorite examples from this week:
- Find “Art” with a capital A a bit stuffy? Try this manifesto. Whenever I listen to Lenelle, I imagine I get to co-invent the word artist and goddess along with her. Hmm, let’s see. Open, powerful, creative, funny, gorgeous, kind, angry when anger is truly warranted, trusting of self, and a real and human being. I’m just now learning to honor and trust my own fear and anger, Lenelle, so thank you for sharing your work and yourself.
- Something in my heart just loves the fact that the Occupy Seattle folks—coming together downtown to demonstrate support for the Occupy Wall Street folks in New York city—decided to occupy first and then to come up with a demand once together. BTW, you can weigh in on their demands here: Occupy Seattle’s demands. Creative moving with and channeling growing community anger is what I see here. Should I love or fear these people who demand that we all get to co-create our organizations, communities, and government? People who openly invite me to have a say in what it is they are protesting? People who want my help in whatever form I chose to give it? I choose love.
We humans are utterly overflowing with creativity.Three examples my community brought me this week:
- Office building post-it-note wars. Score on this appears to be cube dwellers 1 and lifeless buildings and cubicals zero. Am planning a post-it sunflower in my home office window as a show of solidarity.
- Artificial leaves drawing energy from water and the sun. Um, wow. Cool.
- In the kitchen. Skip what I said in this post and just check out the beautiful photos of my friend Diane’s infinite culinary capacity in the kitchen here. Seattle-area friends, you’ll find her soon at the Redmond Whole Foods, demonstrating cooking, baking, and God-knows-what-else like the improv ninja kitchen artist she is.
My community members are all around me, and are working on my behalf, even when I’m unaware of it. One example from this week: I just learned about this great series of videos created this summer by a local group less than a block from my house. At the corner store! Go Grrls!
We humans appear to be stretching our own old, hardened boundaries all over the place these days. My own hard “cannot be changed” boundaries have proven stretchy, fluid, and sometimes imaginary, within my self-organizing community. Most of the people and examples above are examples of this for me too. The Collective Self site used to be focused entirely on my own self-organizing work groups research with my own hard lines drawn around it. A year ago, for example, I would never have linked the Collective Self site to a religious site, political opinion articles, news sites (mainstream and otherwise), or to profanity-laced artwork (no matter how spot-on and kick-ass and lovely), nor would I have shamelessly promoted my dear friends’ work in the community. Yet here I am. Surprised to find myself outside my own narrow boundaries yet again, thanks to my self-organizing community. Two final examples of boundary stretching shared within my self-organizing community:
- Progressive left vs. conservative right boundary being stomped on in Nebraska right now. Go, boundary stomping Nebraskans, go!
- Christian tradition boundary expanding to include Jewish tradition in a quiet, thoughtful, and lovely way.

Thank you community for stretching and, in doing so, stretching me well past what I imagined I could be and believe. You are a gift.

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Graceful receiving and letting go: lessons from a self-organizing group

2011-09-30T01:12:01Z

So my dear friend Diane just got the job of her dreams. Literally. She’s been having vivid dreams about it since the day she realized she might actually have a shot at getting it. I’m thrilled for her. It fills me with joy that she’s moving in the direction of her passion and her heart and her truest self—to the point that tears of joy welled up in my eyes when I first heard the news. That was my initial and deepest response. Yet her new work likely means that she’ll leave a group that we’ve been growing as together for 1½ years. Sigh. Diane is leaving our group. This seriously sucks.

From an individual perspective, self-organizing groups can at times appear to be extremely fragile. Each group member holds 100% of the power to change the group, and 100% of the power to leave the group at any moment, and group members know it. Because these groups give individual group members different things, other group members may well walk away from the group before you’re ready to see them go. Like Diane, for me. The story of the group that Diane is now leaving demonstrates why my half joyful and half sulking individual self can somewhat gracefully both let her go and be open to receiving what’s coming next.

Group incarnation #1. In February 2010, I decided that what I really needed in my life was a local group of people who were interested in a Self-Organizing Systems Discussion Group. I sent out a call to every group I could think of and 15 local people responded saying they’d be interested in attending a monthly discussion. Yet only a couple of people actually showed up to these meetings, which was disheartening (even to a researcher who intellectually understands that amazing self-organizing groups always start small with just two or three people who get close enough to move in the world as one before the group grows bigger). Diane and I were the only two people who showed up every single month for this group.

Group incarnation #2. In June 2010, we noticed that those of us who regularly showed up to these discussions were all consultants or considering evolving into consultants, so a few of us reimagined the group as a consultant’s support group and the Seattle Consultant’s Grotto group was born. Over the past year, the group evolved into a 10-member group that meets monthly. This group has supported the individuals within it in many different ways—offering encouragement, broadening our ideas, connecting us to resources, and bringing many of us new work. There are now many group members who reliably show up each month, Diane and I still almost always among them.

Laughing at a Seattle Consultant's Grotto meeting

Group incarnation #3. Now it’s September 2011, and Diane’s new full-time work means her departure from the group. It occurred to me that three of the four original members have moved on from this group. Two have moved into the full-time work they wanted and one formed another informal group closer to her home to satisfy her desire to walk to meetings and connect with other work-from-home professionals. This leaves just original member me with a very clear picture of what I now need. I need local co-workers. I don’t want just a support group anymore. My energy for working alone is at an end, if it ever existed. With Diane’s departure, it occurred to me to propose that the group reimagine itself again as a work group. Will be interesting to see what the group imagines itself to be at our October meeting. I now know that I need local co-community builders, co-researchers, co-consultants, co-trainers, and co-partners-in-crime. I need co-workers! I also know that I’m not alone in this need. And, what I find most interesting, is that I couldn’t have imagined better human beings as co-workers if I’d gotten to invent human beings myself. Doug, Neil, Tim, Cathy, Annie, Bonnie, Catherine—within these names lives a co-worker dream team for me right now if ever there was one.

So, it still sucks that Diane will leave the group. Yet I can gracefully let her go as she leaves, because I know that for her leaving means moving on to what she most needs now (yea!) and that it doesn’t actually mean she’s leaving my life (double yea!). We’re part of a community now. And we’re friends. In fact, Daniel and I are having dinner at their house in a few weeks. I also intend to show up in the front row of a few of the cooking classes she’ll be teaching this year, because she’s an amazing cook, and my best meal is a pretty spread of the $1 tacos created by the chefs that park their food truck on our corner.

Mmmmm, look what Diane can do! Wow!

And it sucks that what the group has been until now, it may no longer be going forward. Yet I can gracefully receive and co-invent what’s coming next, because I’ve experienced this group reinventing itself before, and I’ve experienced my life and work getting better as a result. The group also helped make it clear what it is that I actually need right now. The group also put into my lap many of the people and ideas and skills that I need right now as my own work evolves from a focus on small self-organizing groups into a focus on community.

This is what it feels like to live and work as self-organizing groups and community. The difficult parts of life can still be difficult in the moment. Yet the gratitude and joy received from these groups turns many difficulties into gifts. Thanks to Diane, I found myself experiencing a difficult situation as a gift in the moment, not weeks or months later. Thanks group, lesson learned.

Farewell, lovely and talented Diane. The group will miss your remarkable openness, your even more remarkable smile, and your even more remarkable cookies and cakes. I can hardly wait to see what you do for our community next!

Look what else Diane can do!

She can do this too!

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Next Phase of Your Career: Design

2011-09-26T15:14:51Z

The future of the Internet is design: from fine art galleries to the size of the box you type in name. So start figuring out how to rejigger things to make your career relevant.

Here's how I know what's coming:

First, a flurry of emails arrive in my in-box each day touting “free infographics.” After sniffing around, I discovered that infographics garner so many clicks that SEO mavens publish quick, cheesy infographics to hand out for free in exchange for links back to publisher sites. The infographics suck so much that I’m not even going to show you one, but there’s a lesson here: people love pictures.

This means that you will be more valuable and more relevant if you can think in terms of visuals. This makes sense. It’s clear that in the last twenty years, as emails became the norm, if you were great at communicating via text, you had an advantage.

Not that everything can be reduced to an infographic, but what can be reduced is made more interesting. Short is good, and concise is fun, and in a world where we have too many facts, we appreciate a quick picture that synthesizes facts into something meaningful rather than a summary of disjointed facts.

In the design world there is a sense that design is not so much about product or endpoint but rather the interaction one has with another person. Davin Stowell, of Smart Design says, “Companies used to come to us asking for products. More recently they have been asking us to help them understand their customers. It’s almost as if our role has transcended from design experts to relationship consultants.”

I just received the book Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little. I did not read it. I skimmed it. Because, as the author, Christopher Johnson writes, “We have a collective obsession with brevity in all media.” I’m not going to argue here if this is good or bad (although I think it’s good). I’m going to tell you that if you don’t get on the brevity bandwagon, no one will listen. And presenting information visually is one of the most reliable ways to present it with brevity.

A list does that as well, by the way. It’s sort of the stepping stone between text and infographic. Which is why lists are so popular online—you can skim them. So, here’s a list of things you can do to start thinking more visually:

1. Read Tufte. He’s the king of information design. Every big thinker you admire has read Edward Tufte, trust me. The last time I read Tufte was in Seth Godin’s bathroom. No kidding. He keeps a Tufte book there.

2. Think short. Short writing already rules the Internet. You get noticed with short big-ideas, 140-character quips, and a 20 minute summary of a career's worth of research. Infographics take bunches of very short ideas, and create a single, consise idea on top of them. A good infographic is like a poem that ends at just the right time.

3. Demand more meaning. It’s not enough to stack pictures of missiles to show an arms race. The information you put together needs to amount to something new. Statistics should not surprise people so much as the conclusion the infographic draws from the statistics. Check out the arms race infographic in the book Diagrams: Innovative Solutions for Graphic Designers. It blew my mind how quickly it allowed me to synthesize tons of arms race data and feel smart about it. And then I realized that a good infographic is the visual of a good blog post with lots of links — a fresh and solid argument on the surface, and lots of small pieces of evidence underneath.

4. Consider not only text-to-visual but also verbal-to-visual. Alexis Finch creates graphic renditions of speeches. She is able to go beyond a speaker’s outline to capture the most interesting ideas and how they relate to each other. Finch creates, in effect, her own version of the topic. Here is a sketch she did of a speech I gave at Tech Week.

5. Market yourself visually. The limitations of a text-based resume are clear. Solutions are not so clear. But Vizualize.me has a good start on solutions with their chart-based resume service. For example, text is too linear to describe today’s non-linear careers. But a chart-based resume shows time in a more useful way to an employer:

6. Steer your career visually. If you have a text-based resume, you need to always think in terms of bullets – is your project leading to a bullet on your resume, and if not, why are you doing it? With resumes going visual, you will need to think in terms of visual accomplishments. Brazen Careerist (my company) just launched a visual self-assessment tool that combines thousands of details about your activity on Facebook and LinkedIn to show a simple graphic of your strengths and weaknesses as a job candidate.

7. Use photos with more intention. The number of photos we take is incredible. And I’m starting to think that the next generation will laugh at how many photos we have taken. What is the point? Who will look at them all?

At some point, when we are just clicking to click—with no visual intention—then the photo serves to put a wall between us and the experience rather than a window.

What are you doing behind the lens all the time? Raise the bar for yourself; allow only good photos. Melissa forced me to learn about good photos when she started taking them for my blog. Her photos are fantastic. Which served to show me how bad my own were. So she gave me lessons, and she edited. She rejects 90% of the photos I send her. But I learn a lot that way. See the photo at the top? I took 20 photos in the art gallery to get one good one.

But for most of us, photos are a good entry point to the next version of the Internet. Because if you force yourself to publish only good photos, you force yourself to think more about images and what they communicate to the viewer. It’s the first step in transitioning your career to the visual Internet.

Moving with and through fears as self-organizing groups and communities

2011-09-20T23:52:30Z

At a Seattle women-in-business networking event last Thursday (thanks Su-Zette Sparks and all the other amazing women at Russell Investments) a woman I had just met called me fearless. When the word touched my ears, I turned around and looked behind me certain that it couldn’t possibly be me she was referring to. But it was me. Have you ever had one of those moments? It was as if she said to me “Oh you’re the star center for the Seattle Storm basketball team!” Yeah right. All 5’2” and every non-athletic, slightly overweight bit of me!

I used to have tons of fears, so being called fearless by a stranger is something new. I looked back across the Collective Self blog entries from the past year to see what happened to me and my fears that would warrant this reaction. As it turns out, I’m not fearless: surprise, surprise. It’s just that I’ve gotten a remarkable amount of experience seeing, facing, and moving through those fears as part of self-organizing groups and communities. To the point that, as of this summer, I became able to easily identify individual fears that show up as one of three types:

Type 1: Scooby-Doo ghosts: that is, illusions that aren’t based in reality, can’t actually hurt me and those I care about, and therefore I don’t actually need (non-cartoon watching friends, Scooby Doo was a cartoon TV show favorite from my childhood that involved a group of friends solving mysteries and unmasking ghosts or monsters that ended up never actually being real ghosts or monsters)
Type 2: Self-organizing group boundary indicators: a sign that I’m nearing the boundary of one of my self-organizing groups and should pay closer attention to the needs of the group and my individual self to either bring the group closer together or recognize that it’s time for me to let go of the group
Type 3: Warnings of imminent danger to my individual self’s life, like the time a mother bear with cubs crossed my path while I was hiking in the woods

Fearless work colleagues Grady, Ansel, Joe, and Blue Hedgehog

As an individual, I have #3 hard-wired into me. I think we all do. As self-organizing groups and communities, we also appear to have a triage system hard-wired into us that allows us to distinguish different types of fear and make smarter choices about how we choose to act.

Being seen by a stranger as fearless has its perks, I suppose. That woman, for example, may decide to actually look at the business card I gave her, connect with me again, or read the Collective Self blog, or even hire members of my community as consultants. But get closer to me, and you’ll know that this isn’t fearlessness. I move in the world today as self-organizing groups and communities—living beings that have remarkably good fear-identification and triage systems built into them.

Reflection on past Collective Self blog posts reveals a 3-step process for moving through individual fears that I’ve been living as these groups:

Step 1: As an individual, feel fear/be afraid of something
Step 2: As a self-organizing group, experience facing your fears, together, in a safe environment and get lots of practice identifying what type of fears your fears actually are (Scooby-Doo ghost? Boundary indicator? My self-organizing groups teach me both when they have my full attention “Lori, you’re being an idiot right now. That fear is unwarranted.” and just as often when they have just part of my attention or we’re focusing on something else entirely, as the examples that follow demonstrate.)
Step 3: As a self-organizing community, move with and through the fear to the point that it no longer matters (just a Scooby Doo ghost) or is experienced as an important tool (a self-organizing group boundary indicator, for example)

I love examples, so here are three from my own experience. Suggest reading the example that sounds most interesting now and coming back to read all three when you’re consciously trying to understand and move through a fear of your own.

Fear example 1 – using a crowded urban park:

Lori’s individual fear: “I will be mugged, bothered, and/or saddened by pan-handling and homeless people if I use Cal Anderson Park —the large park in my busy urban neighborhood—in the evenings.” This fear stopped me from using this park for years.
Practicing using Cal Anderson Park as self-organizing groups:
- September 2010 example
- December 2010 example
More fearlessly using Cal Anderson Park in the evenings as a self-organizing community (read from “In the Park” down): May 2011 example

Fear example 2 – using “woo woo” language:

Lori’s individual fear: “I regularly experience synchronicity as these groups, but if I use words like synchronicity or serendipity in my writing, I may not be taken seriously as a researcher.”
Practicing using the word synchronicity in my work, in February 2011
In August 2011, more fearlessly using synchronicity (also notice community response in comments following the blog posts):

Instance 1 (scroll to the details of hint #9 in this post)
Instance 2 (scroll to The River Place in this post)

Fear example 3 – sharing my whole self:

Lori’s individual fear: “If I share my whole self in the Collective Self blog, my individual experiences may interfere with the group and community experiences I am trying to document.”
Practicing showing up as my whole self on the Collective Self blog (in both cases, as/helped by a self-organizing group):
- In February 2011
- In March 2011
In August 2011, more fearlessly showing up as my whole self (more visibly showing up as a learner within the Collective Self community than ever before)

My self-organizing groups help me practice moving with and letting go of fear, and my self-organizing community pulls and pushes me through fears to give me an even broader and deeper perspective on them. As we pass through these fears together, the fears that don’t matter cease to exist and the fears that do matter have become valuable teachers and tools.

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The Cult of Done Manifseto

2011-09-14T23:00:00Z

I love finishing something. Being able to check that item off my list is an awesome feeling. I'm a huge fan of the Inbox Zero concept because of this. This is why items like the Cult of Done Manifesto makes me so happy. For those who don't want to click the link (although I suggest you do for the cool poster), here is the short text of the manifesto:

There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
There is no editing stage.
Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
Once you're done you can throw it away.
Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
Destruction is a variant of done.
If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
Done is the engine of more.

Point #2 is by far my favorite of this chart. Its freeing. I know my PM friends get frustrated with me when I say a task is 'pretty much done'. This isn't a situation where I'm trying to get them off my back about the status of a task, but a way of saying that its as done as I know how to make it. It is an acceptance of the large amount of ambiguity in life.

Point #4 just makes me laugh.

Point #10 is so true. That doesn't mean that you don't have a new task that looks exactly like the one you just failed at, this time to do it correctly, but it does mean the original task is done.

Point #12 is pretty much this entire blog. :-D

Learning about myself through the doorway of self-organizing groups

2011-08-29T22:38:46Z

Thanks to Doug Nathan for pulling these experiences out before my eyes where I could see them, and thanks to my community for teaching me that no matter what I say as an individual, that I’ll be supported and loved.

Consciously studying my own and close others’ self-organizing groups has changed me and just keeps on changing me. One of the biggest, scary-to-say-out-loud changes for me is that now I consciously move in the world from three different places of self-recognition and can imagine a fourth place. I use metaphors here because the experience goes beyond what words can convey, and I use fish metaphors because I come from a family that loves fish.

Places of self-recognition:

My individual self (fish)
My self-organizing groups self (school of fish)
My self-organizing community self (river)
My self-organizing planet self (ocean) (Frankly, this one is still more imagination than reality for me, but I figure if Maya Angelou and His Holiness the Dali Lama can pull it off, then it’s within our grasp too.)

This summer, I learned that as I move through life, regardless of what happens in the moment, I always have a choice. I get to choose how to experience and see what’s happening. Will I opt for my individual perspective? Will I think from the effective-multi-perspective of my close, trusted and respected others (my self-org groups)? Will I recognize what my community as a whole would say and do? I didn’t use to have these options. I used to have just one perspective: my individual perspective.

I’ve learned that moving into, through, out, and back into these places doesn’t mean that I give up what I was at the previous place. One place isn’t better than the other. If it was, I figure, the less-useful-perspective would eventually disappear. But that doesn’t happen. So they aren’t stages. They aren’t steps in maturity from which a lucky few get to look down onto others. They are landing points. They are places where consciousness can sit, view itself and the universe, and make sense of itself. Each one is what I already am and awareness of myself at a new place just adds to the perspectives and options that I have available to me as I move through the world. Today I imagine that all human beings have landed their consciousness at these places, at least for a moment.

Through no insight or skill of my own as an individual, I stumbled into spending extended periods of time within self-organizing groups. These groups gave me the courage and time to finally notice that such a thing as self-organizing community exists. The more conscious I grow of my self-organizing community, the more I am able to simply float along within it, as it, releasing the burden of my individual worries, most days. The more individual worry I release, the easier it is to experience that these places—fish, school, river, ocean—are available to us all the time. I’m not an expert at this; I’m a learner. Everything I learn today, I learn from/within/as my community. I’m sharing what I know of these four perspectives now, because it’s never been more clear that my own life, work, freedom, and joy are directly connected to yours—to that of my community.

The Fish Place: Being an Individual

If you were raised to recognize yourself as an individual, I don’t need to tell you what moving through life as an individual can feel like these days, but here are a few of my own experiences:

Experiencing wonder, surprise, and delight
Making mistakes, being hurt by them, fearing making more mistakes, and pulling away from situations in which (and people with whom) I might make mistakes
Living in my own head, in the past and in the future, to the point that I miss a good deal of what’s happening around me and also misconstrue what’s actually happening around me
Struggling to make sense of the world around me and what’s happening
Making snap, not-well-thought-through judgments and decisions
Experiencing fear, disconnection, anger, destructive conflict, isolation, exhaustion, overwhelmed, depression, and frustration to the point that they seem to stop me from moving forward

The School of Fish Place: Being a Self-Organizing Group

As part of a self-organizing group, I get to practice—in a safe environment—moving in and out of my individual self and my group self. These groups demonstrate to us that we can be more and do more as collectives than as individuals. I get to practice becoming something more than my individual self and practice letting go of my individual self. The words in the following table describe the experience of moving in and moving out of an individual self and a self-organizing group self.

Self-Organizing Group Self	Individual Self
+Moving In Most of the time: • teaching and learning from ourselves stretching ourselves • adjusting our own behavior to keep the group together • enjoying ourselves • enjoying disagreements and conflict • being more honest with ourselves • surprising ourselves as a group • co-creating our work and our lives • reflecting and reminiscing together • receiving help when we need it, even when we don’t ask • learning to view our individual flaws, mistakes, and weaknesses as gifts ( or at least as opportunities for connection and learning) • Feeling “in sync” with others • rapidly forgiving ourselves and each other • feeling grateful and lucky to be part of the group	+Moving in Feeling: • Wonder • Fear • Disconnection • Anger • Destructive conflict • Isolation • Exhaustion • Overwhelmed • Depression and/or • Frustration
- Moving Out As you leave or shortly after: • Feeling a deep internal sense of accomplishment and pride in your group and/or its work (Wow, look what we did!) • Feeling yourself becoming increasingly aware of your needs as an individual, separate from other group members • Noticing others in the group making the transition easier for you • Experiencing a sense of loss and some sadness • Recognizing that you’re ready to move on, mentally or actually saying goodbye, and emotionally moving on • Recognizing that you had a valuable experience as a group member • Noticing yourself reflecting on why and how the group worked • Recognizing that you’ve changed and that you now look for opportunities to live and work in a more collective manner	- Moving Out • Seeking out or noticing others who are different from you and better in some way or at something that you could learn from and be better with • Actively spending more time with these people • Noticing yourself becoming more: o Motivated o Energized o Creative o Connected o Agile o Resilient o Open o Reflective o Effective o Visible o Happy o Content

The River Place: Being a Self-Organizing Community

With enough experience moving in and out of my self-organizing group selves and individual self, something new happened this year. I began to experience my “self” as a place within which my self-organizing groups and my individual self exist. I call this the self-organizing community self. This is something that I both experience within my own being and also that I experience as part of my actual communities (which I’m suddenly aware of in a much more concrete, real way than in the past when “community” was just a word and not a lived experience).

This place is new in my awareness and experience, so forgive me if what I say here seems rough. As my self-organizing community, I am:

Aware that community purpose is my individual and group purposes
Able to deeply value the community—including the people I don’t know personally within it—demonstrated by:
- Showing up grateful and ready to learn
- Listening first and often
- Forgiving rapidly
- Not feeling the need to attack other perspectives or to defend my own, recognizing that multiple perspectives are needed, welcomed, encouraged, and accepted in the community—my own and others
Able to trust all the individuals and groups within the community (whether I know them all personally or not) and many of the groups and people connected to the community
Noticing remarkable flexibility, agility, resilience, and grace all around me as a common occurrence and one day noticing that I myself can move in the world the same way
Allowing fear, disconnection, anger, negative conflict, isolation, exhaustion, overwhelm, depression, and frustration to be momentary flickers of their former selves, most days
Staying in the current moment (being the current) most of the time
Experiencing synchronicity as an everyday sort of thing and able to see more connections and opportunities than I could imagine
Receiving absolutely everything I need from the people and groups around me and being fully aware of this and grateful for it
Experiencing my old boundaries collapsing, regularly, and surprised by how little I’m worrying about it anymore
Daily giving thanks for the wonder within our individual selves, the courage within our groups, and the wisdom within our communities

The Ocean Place: Being a Self-Organizing Planet

As an ocean self, I suspect that one:

Feels free and at peace regardless of circumstance
Spreads peace and freedom everywhere you go and with everyone you meet
Recognizes everything experienced as an important, necessary part of your own wholeness
Feels connected to everyone and everything
Leads with complete trust
Communicates with minimal or no words at all, for example through smiles, hugs, jokes, laughter, physical comedy, tears of gratitude, and stunning openness and honesty

I’m basing these bullets on the presence and actions of remarkable groups and people all over planet earth, not myself. I yelled at three people, two cats, and a dog last week long before I realized I had a choice in the matter. I appear to have quite a long way to go to be able to consciously move from this fourth place, but I’m starting to imagine it as a possibility, which I think is the most important part. Some may see this fourth place as an ideal, for example, as God or a god-like state that we humans should aspire to. My perspective is a little different. I see all four of these places as part of the wholeness that makes life work. After all, fish don’t just need rivers and oceans. Oceans and rivers need fish.

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Tralalala tralalala checklists checklists tralala

2011-07-12T08:02:52Z

Alright. A month ago I was at Rally (Rally!) and had a bunch of shivanautical insights related to checklists.

Namely that I need them. Badly. Oh, so very, very badly! But also that I don’t like them very much.

Here’s what I wrote about checklists while doing some stone skipping:

Why checklists are so very useful.

They are a map.
They tell you what to do and where to go and when.
They create forms and shapes to hold things for you.
They let you not hold so much crap in your head.
They make spaciousness. See also: the flow chart of spaciousness.
They bring in new patterns and order.
They allow you to biggify because there aren’t so many limitations on growth — i.e. the limitations based on holding everything in your head (again).
They save lives. Surgeons and pilots use them to be more efficient, work smarter and avoid catastrophe.
They allow for growth in all directions.
They are adaptable.
They give you the structure/form/container/that lets you have freedom and play!
They are queenly. Yay, sovereignty.
Things can still happen if/when I’m not there to do them.
They allow for important things to be transmitted to groups of people.
They create room for rest.

Why I resist making/using checklists, even when I know I need them:

The name. Bleh.

Any other negative associations?

Ahahahaha. Yes. Like these:

[+ grown-ups] [+boring] [+predictable] [+should] [+inowanna iguana!] [+resistance] [+Bargal-esque]

Ah. Okay. Bargal was this company I worked for in Israel where everything had to be filed in triplicate.

And I think the whole checklist thing has morphed into a symbol of exactly that kind of depressing, time-consuming, stick-up-the-ass system-for-its-own-sake which I associate with that incredibly straight job.

So yes. Definitely resistance!

What I want from this new kind of checklist:

Qualities of:

[+navigation]
[+freedom]
[+play]
[+possibility]
[+advantage]
[+speed]
[+agility]
[+flexibility]
[+guidance]
[+ adaptability]
[+treasure]

Check baby check baby 1234.

Alright. So what am I going to call this new kind of checklist?

Is it an index?

A listing? Like listing to port! Tee hee!

Treasure inventory?

Treasure registry. Treasuregistry. No good.

A treasure checklist. A treasure chest list. A chest list. CHECKERS.

I’m calling it checkers. For now. Where’s my Checkers?

So that was a month ago.

I came up with CHECKERS for each part of leading Rally.

And then didn’t print any of them out.

Last night I was running the Rally orientation, and it came time to explain the fine art of Schmurphling. Which is a thing that I invented. For Rally. It’s awesome. You should come to Rally and schmurphle with us some time.

And I was all, oh tralala this is not a problem. I explained all the different and varied Rules of Schmurphling and it was fine.

We schmurphled. These particular Rallions seem to be exceptionally accomplished schmurphlers and we were getting into some pretty advanced schmurphling, dare I say.

Then we finished and I realized I’d forgotten to mention the SECOND MOST IMPORTANT RULE OF SCHMURPHLING, which is that if you don’t feel like being the schmurphler you can call Silent Retreat!

But I forgot because I didn’t have my CHECKERS.

“And that’s why you always have a checklist…”

In my head, I’m imagining J. Walter Weatherman saying that, of course.

Things I am reminding myself of right now:

What Cairene would say: systems are always in motion. You add, you subtract, you make changes. You look at what is working. And then what you can mess with.

What Hiro would say: go to the essence. Look at what a checklist gives you (support, containment, permission) and fill up on those qualities first.

What I would say: It’s all practice. You play. You ask questions. You experiment. You move the pieces around. You remember the fractal flowers. You dance on it.

Each piece is useful.

Every understanding — about why checklists are powerful, why I resist them, what I need to change in order to make them work for me — is useful.

And there’s time.

Everything moves and changes.

At the next Rally (#12!), I’ll have a slightly different system.

And I’ll learn something new that will help make it better. Something about what isn’t working. Something about what might help.

I’ll establish a new hypothesis, invent a new metaphor, wear a new costume.

At the very least, it will be interesting.

Play with me?

No advice please, but stories of your own flawed systems are welcome.

So is humming TRALALA with me, making up silly names for checklists or talking about any of this stuff.

Love to the commenter mice, the Beloved Lurkers and everyone who reads!

If this kinda seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

Build Work Around Teams to Solve the Estimating Problem

2011-06-27T00:00:00Z

Some teams are moving away from forming, closing and reforming teams. In this instance you may have variations in the total size of the team (as peaks and toughs in demand call in temporary support) and the work varies from maintenance of a set of legacy systems to new product development and other things, but you also have something really valuable: Continuity.

People have been making a big deal about the value in keeping working teams together based on the team effectiveness that grows over time. I buy into that. But I want to amplify the case for building work around teams rather than vice-versa by highlighting that the established teams also come with established capacity and estimating standards.

Take your team today for example. Look back at your history and assuming you've collected the data you'll be able to work out the average size of a project (Days, T-shirt sizes, dog breeds, or my favourite - types of beer.) You'll see that you team addresses X number of requirements per month. You don't even need to be working in iterations. You just have to be releasing software to get measurable start & end data.

How many requirements were addressed?
How many weeks work did it take?

Is this a reasonable sample size? Once a team has hit a controlled rate of delivery, you've sufficient data to estimate for the future.

A caveat to my position: By team I include the person who is managing the requirements that flow into the team. The quality and standards around requirements are probably the most variable aspect of many project teams, and it's just as important to normalise the requirements as the solution delivery work.

Are you a trend spotter?

2011-06-23T03:23:15Z

Ten years ago, when I was pitching my book to publishers, one publisher leaned back in his chair and said, "I don't get it, she's never worked in Human Resources, she's not part of Generation Y, and we can't even figure out what her career is. So how is she qualified to give career advice to young people?"

I got sweaty. I had pretty much run out of money, and I had spent my last dollar on getting clothes that would hide that I was pregnant. Every time I thought about this book deal falling through, I felt sick.

My agent said, "She is great at seeing trends. She sees trends before everyone else. Generation Y is going to be huge in the workplace. Alternative careers are going to be huge. She is the only person talking about it. She is a franchise. She will be writing books about trendspotting for the rest of her life."

I could have hugged my agent. I had never thought of myself the way she described me. I mostly just thought of myself as someone who couldn't even handle playing on the professional beach volleyball tour for more than a year.

So, with my agent's endorsement (sort of—I think she has fired me because of my insolence when it comes to not following publishing industry conventions) I present my three favorite trends of this year:

1. Cheating on your company will be okay. Companies will allow employees to do start-ups while they are full-time as a way of keeping top talent. Right now entrepreneurship is totally hot. A lot of people quit their job so they can do a start-up. Microsoft has officially allowed people to do a start-up while they work full-time. Other companies will follow.

2. Thieves will have to change tactics as people will leverage social media to track down and punish thieves. This is actually already happening. Check out this guy who snapped photos of someone using his stolen Macbook via his stolen Macbook. But the trend will become so big that people will have to resort to new tactics of thievery to avoid the public embarrassment of social media.

3. We will live in an era of eccentric collections. A few trends are converging right now. First, materialism is not cool. Gen X hates it, but also, post-crash America has revealed a new, credit-weary consumer. Second, content curation is a huge online right now – companies launching products that help people make sense of too much stuff. The convergence of these two situations will be that people shift their natural, human tendency to collect from the physical world to the virtual world, which means what we collect will expand.

Paul Hassing is a guy who sends me great links about collections. He's the person who first told me about Pinterest, and he sent me a link to The Puddle Blog, which is a great collection of puddles.

I like that I got to spot three trends in one post. I notice this stuff and it starts burning in my head until I have the chance to tell someone. I can't tell if I'm on target until I start telling someone. An audience makes a difference. Are you wondering if you have trends in your head that you're right about?

How do you know if you're working hard enough at it? Melissa is great at spotting trends for social media and for fashion (two areas I'm not good at). She is pretty difficult to work with, but she gets hired by random people to do random stuff, like tell them what social media tools will be best for attracting renters in rural areas in the next three years. Are you wondering what Melissa does with her days? She reads. She mostly reads off her iPhone, which she sleeps with. She reads so much that she has to have a stack of magazines wherever she is. Just in case. Here is what she was doing two hours ago:

Do you know what she's doing right now? She's thinking. She is staring at the wall. Probably processing all the stuff in her head. This is what most trendspotters do: look, listen, process. Of course other trendspotters get paid for doing it, but Melissa illustrates the point that it might be something you're born with—the ability to spot trends. Because that kind of stuff that you're born with is the stuff you do whether you are paid or not. (Would-be novelists please take note.)

I was talking to Tyler Cowen last year. Or the year before. Whenever it was that his book, Create Your Own Economy, came out. Before Business Week named him the world's hottest economist, which, of course, makes me feel hot because I have spoken with the hottest economist in the world.

In fact, I have argued with him. Tyler was telling me that happiness is not that important to people—that some people just find pleasure in consuming information and ideas and they don't need the trappings of happiness. First I told him he was crazy and maybe a sociopath and then I stole his idea and made it my own in my wildly popular post which I never acknowledged as perhaps a little bit stolen: Is your life happy or interesting? Anyway, Tyler is great at spotting trends, which makes him the world's most interesting (is that what famous means?) economist and also a totally fun blogger. (Here's his blog.)

Bottom line: you can bet that if you do not process information as a way to feel like you are alive, then you are probably not a trend spotter.

How do you know if you're on to something? Remember that picture at the top of the post? Did you know what it was for? If you've had a baby, the answer is yes. The idea of a parent rocking next to a sleeping baby is so incredibly obvious that it's amazing this chair has not been invented before. Parents get sick of holding a baby. You do not know this until you've had a baby of your own. So the chair is an absolute yes. It's got great craftsmanship and it's a great idea. Everyone will say yes to this chair. (And then people will say, how much? )

The way you know if you're right or not is that you hear peoples' reactions. Good ideas get two reactions:

One reaction is like when the proverbial light bulb goes on when the person hears or sees the idea. The idea is so on-target that it's a pleasurable moment for the person who sees a piece in the jigsaw puzzle of life fitting into place.

The other reaction you can get to a good idea is shock: This is terrible, awful, upsetting, offensive. You know you're on target with that reaction as well. Because you think it might be right, but it's so counter-intuitive that people cannot see it's right because they would have to switch their world view. I experienced this when I started saying that women should not report sexual harassment.

How do you know if what you're saying is not new? You see confirmation that you're right. It's the kind of confirmation where you can tell for sure that the world agrees with you and you are right smack dab in the middle of a trend. Because if you're right there with everyone else, then you're not doing anything new.

I had that feeling when I looked at the New Yorker cover a few weeks ago. Just when I was settling into the idea of me being a city girl with a farmer's wife life, I see that I'm a Park Slope cliche:

Welcome to my turkey paradigm

2011-06-14T03:33:17Z

The way we were. Throughout my career, I always seem to find myself in business process review and implementation. As I am very comfortable questioning…well…everything, I end up …er…helping people let go of the “way we used to do things”.

It’s hard work. Mainly because people really love their paradigms. Here are some of the business process paradigms that I have come up against:

What they say to me…	What I wish I could say back…
The only way to tell if a document is controlled is if it’s signed. In ink.	Document control can be done by software. Which runs on a computer. Welcome to the 90s.
I need to approve this form so that I can know what is going on.	You can subscribe to the RSS feed so that you’ll be informed each time the form is generated. Welcome to the 90s.
It only takes me 15 minutes so why worry about that step?	It happens 300 times a year, which is 4500 minutes or 75 hours. That’s the equivalent of a 2 week vacation that’s wasted on…nothing. Don’t you keep saying you’re too busy to (fill in the blank)?
Transferring costs from one budget code to another takes no time. Why worry about it?	But there are 100 of you generating requests for transfer which keeps an entire team busy for one week. That’s about $100K a year spent on…nothing. There, now we can afford that new expert I keep telling you we need to hire.

I, of course, have no paradigms. None whatsoever. Because I am perfectly open-minded and never resist change.

Except when it comes to turkey.

Welcome to my paradigm. During our planning meeting for our Christmas 2010 Turkey dinner, my Dear Husband (DH) brought up some process improvement ideas. During our post-mortem of last year’s dinner (what? you don’t do a post-mortem on all of your projects?), we noticed that we were still spending too much time in the kitchen in that crazy period when the turkey comes out of the oven and it is time to get everything on the table. In an effort to improve on this madness, DH suggested that we do as much cooking as possible either the day before or even the morning of the dinner: the gravy, the cranberry sauce, the tourtière and even the mashed potatoes. Our resulting schedule was a complete re-engineering of the Christmas turkey dinner and I was onboard for every single change that he suggested and even came up with some myself. Because, as I mentioned, I am completely open-minded to change.

But towards the end of our planning session, DH made one more suggestion. He kept it to the end for a very good reason. Because he knows me.

“We could also make the turkey one day ahead.”

Say…what?

“I was talking to this woman at work, she loves cooking just like you do, and she makes the turkey in advance, then cuts it up, puts it in a shallow roasting pan, pours homemade chicken stock over it, covers it with aluminum foil, pokes some holes in it, then just heats it up in the oven. This way when the guests arrive, they smell the turkey but you get none of the hassle of carving it to serve it…”

I looked at him, absolutely horrified. Cut up the turkey? When you take it out of the oven, it’s in pieces? Chicken broth?

It has taken me this long just to be able to write about such a travesty.

Welcome to my turkey paradigm.

Shifting paradigms and other MBA crimes. Before we get into my turkey paradigm, or any of the paradigms that I encounter in my business life, we need a common understanding of what exactly is a paradigm. In simple terms, a paradigm is a thought pattern or a framework of ideas, a set of rules if you will, that is accepted to be true. The term was originally coined to describe a set of practices that define a scientific discipline at any particular period of time, but it has now suffered such abuse at the hands of MBA-wielding professionals that it has almost lost its meaning. (Ooops.) But for the sake of this discussion, let’s consider it as “the box”, as in, when you think “outside of the box”, you move outside of your paradigm or what you accept to be true. Because we haven’t killed that analogy enough either.

These days, paradigms are shifting all around us. (Double oops.) Here are examples of paradigms that I see everywhere, as well as the challenges to those paradigms which will cause them to shift. (See? I can’t stop.) I plan to write a blog post on each one of these subjects…eventually.

The paradigm	The shift
A book is something that you hold in your hands with real pages that you turn. I will NEVER read books on an e-book reader.	I named my new Kindle “Never say never”.
There is no place for democracy in a company functioning in a capitalist framework.	Yes, there is.
We need Wall Street and Bay Street for our economies to function or else the universe will explode. That’s the reason for the 2008/2009 bailouts.	No, we don’t.
We need to pay CEOs $50 million / year so that they’ll continue to do a great job.	CEOs have become the new monarchs. They earn their salaries no more than Kings and Queens do.
Performance reviews help employees to improve themselves.	Performance reviews don’t work.
If we give access to all employees to the wiki, they’re going to delete important information.	Right. Because Wikipedia doesn’t work.

It’s my paradigm and I’ll cry if I want to. So as you can see from the above table, I am not afraid to challenge any paradigms. This is because I am a very open-minded person who embraces change.

Except when those ideas are totally ridiculous and silly. Like cooking a turkey one day before, cutting it up, putting it in a shallow roast pan, and pouring chicken broth all over it.

Because everyone knows that there is only one way to prepare a Christmas or Thanksgiving turkey: you brine it the day before, you stuff it, you roast it in the oven until it reaches an internal temperature of 160 degrees F, you take it out of the oven, you put it on the table so your guests can “ooh” and “aah” how perfect it looks, then you carve it and serve it.

Which brings me back to my Turkey Paradigm.

We all resist change. Every single one of us clings to set of ideas and principles that we just can’t let go.

Even me.

I’ve always done it this way but for a good reason. According to John Fisher’s transition’s curve, which describes the process for personal transition, I ran off the curve at Disillusionment in my Turkey Paradigm when I decided that “this wasn’t for me” after surfing the web for about 15 minutes and (thankfully) finding nothing about advance cooking and cutting up of turkey. According to Kotter’s 8-step model for organizational change, I certainly saw no urgency in trading off the beauty of presenting a roast turkey against the questionable convenience of this cook-cut-reheat approach. And, sure, when it comes to roast turkey, I’ve “always done it this way”, but I have a much better reason than, say, the reason for the “0″ on this form.

Not the greatest picture but I was a little busy

Never say never. Our re-engineered Christmas Turkey Dinner 2010 was a huge success. We were able to enjoy time with our guests and still pull off a full-course turkey dinner, complete with homemade tourtière, made-from-scratch Christmas Log cake and cookies, cranberry sauce, gravy, mashed potatoes and green vegetables.

As for that turkey?

It tasted as delicious as it looked when it came out of the oven in its glorious roasted splendour.

Whole. In one piece.

Will I ever cut up a turkey to save time and hassle?

Never.

But then, I also said I’d never read books on an ebook reader, didn’t I?

Turkey Dinner for 18 and PMBOK OR What Happens When Project Managers Cook

The Future of Business Analysis #Rant

2011-06-16T13:57:00Z

For a little while now I have been mulling over a blog post that says something about the remarkable reluctance of the business analyst community to join the lean-agile wave of change sweeping industry. Yesterday and today I saw the tweeted Agile Australia conference (which didn't stand up against the #LSSC11 conference for tweeted conferences) and read a post at Laura's blog about BA's adopting agile practices which pushed me to get this post up.

Your responses are most welcome.

1. You seem to suck at your job. Fix your attitude.
There is something very wrong when the solutions teams are becoming better informed about how business works, and better at developing and managing relationships than the BA community. And it's happening at more and more places. It's not wrong for developers and testers to do this. It's wrong for Business Analysts to not be at the forefront of this aspect of doing business.

Business Analysts are supposed to understand business. Culture, Structure, Process, Systems, Customers, Behaviours, Values. In reality many people are 'order taking' and pushing paper from place to place doing busy work.

The BA community is changing, but it's at the edges, and the changes are coming slowly. The middle of the pack - and that probably means you or your colleagues is just not doing their job well and are not adapting to the demands for quality, value and efficiency from all parts of the project community.

Pick up your game. Starting now.

2. Not only do you suck at your job you're making work suck for other people. Have some respect for other people.
Frankly the way you think about work is exemplified in the solutions you design for other people. Your scientific management theories and your simplistic ways of thinking about workflow for example make you design systems that are hard to use and restrict a person's ability to do good work. Hello Call Centres. Hello back office processing centres. Hello corporate websites.

When programmers groan about the quality and attitude that analysts display, that's just one vocal and educated aspect of your stakeholder community. What about end users? What is your idea of how work should be done going to do to the next few years of their working life? What about customers? How are the systems you articulate going to shape their relationship with your company?

When you design other people's work via system interfaces and workflow remember to put the humans involved right in the middle of your thinking. There is plenty of evidence out there to help you work out that the best way to enable staff to help customers is to enable them. There is evidence to show how tightly designed processes reduce everybody's satisfaction. Go look it up.

And while you're at it, look up how to build in a continuous improvement program for yourself. You don't just need an immediate step change; you need to build something into your work life that keeps you sufficiently educated to not be dangerous.

Remember: People in the centre of your design work.

Back to work now. There's nothing more to see here.

You can reframe anything

2011-06-06T11:36:21Z

Melissa is driving through Darlington trying to avoid the police. If they see me they’ll arrest me, and we know they know my car. I put the front seat back all the way so I’m out of view. I keep my seatbelt on because in case they see us, I don’t want to be breaking any extra laws.

I have to start this story when I was getting a divorce. People told me the cleanest, easiest divorces are when there are two good lawyers. So I asked around for the two best lawyers in Madison. They knew each other, of course. And negotiations went smoothly, except for my lawyer quitting first when I started blogging about the divorce and then when I agreed to talk about the divorce with the New York Times.

The police are not actually chasing us. But we feel like we’re on the run. I told my lawyer – not my divorce lawyer but my new lawyer, who deals with about-to-be-arrested types – that the police have been to my house three times to arrest me. The Farmer is so stressed he’s not even coming back from the hayfield for lunch. The lawyer says, “You’ll have to stay away from the house til I can get the papers signed by a judge.”

I was thinking of staying at Jeanenne’s house for a few days but I feel bad asking her to harbor a fugitive. So Melissa and I are on our way to Madison.

As we pass the turnoff for our house I worry that we don’t have our computers.

“Hold it,” I say. “I have an idea. Pull over to the side and drop me off in one of those corn fields and I’ll wait for you while you go get our computers.”

“No. This is not The Bourne Identity. We have two iPhones and a charger. That’s enough.

"You remembered the charger?" I say.

"Yeah."

I look up at Melissa from my overly reclined seat and say, “You are such a good friend.”

We get onto the highway which is pretty safe. I sit up and call Ryan Paugh to see if we can stay with him that night.

He says yes.

I tell Melissa that Ryan was not phased by the warrant.

She says, “I don’t think anyone who has agreed to be around you would ever be fazed. Except the Farmer."

“You call him the Farmer? Are you insane? You live with him.”

“Yeah, when I feel like we’re living a movie I need to use his character name.”

We drive for an hour and a half.

It turned out – I’m back to our divorce settlement now – it turned out that my ex did not want money from me or custody of the kids. He wanted to make sure I paid our IRS debt. So I accepted responsibility for all our debt – IRS, credit cards, doctors – and I signed that I’d pay the IRS before anyone else.

Ever since then, his lawyer has gone after me for the $4000 in lawyer fees. It’s my responsibility to pay them, per our settlement, but not until after the IRS. So I keep having to file papers showing that I am still paying the IRS, and that I am not secretly a millionaire.

The problem is that it’s easy for the lawyers to demand tons of court documents and it’s very hard for me to comply. Remember, I am the on who can’t get a driver’s license because of the paperwork. I miss most airplanes because I can’t keep track of all the numbers. I don’t know my left and right.

So I missed a bunch of court stuff. And then I got indignant that the amount of filings they were demanding was harassment. This is, by the way, not an unfounded thought. It’s a problem with debt collection in PA and WI and if I end up in prison you can bet I’m going to become some sort of legal activist.

We get to Janesville and I realize I will be happy having a day off. Successful people reframe bad situations. I can do that.

But I don’t want to ruin my family life. I call the Farmer to apologize. I tell him there is fun cheese in the fridge for dinner. I apologize ten times and ask him to pay the $1000 retainer to the lawyer.

He asks where my money is.

I tell him that building up my diverse and exciting inventory of goat cheese is an expensive endeavor.

He says he would never invest in a startup.

I don’t tell him that marrying a serial entrepreneur is like investing in a startup: You part with your sanity in exchange for a huge lottery ticket and a guarantee that life will be interesting.

The local police have empathy for the Farmer. One off-duty cop stopped by to tell us that there is a warrant out for my arrest. That was a nice heads up. The officer told the Farmer and the Farmer told me and I told Jeanenne and Jeanenne told about fifteen people until she got to the person at my ex-husband’s law firm that could withdraw the warrant. Or whatever it’s called that she was going to do. But the thing she did triggered something in the system that forced the police to arrest me immediately.

I have had two narrow escapes when they have come to my house. But now I’m on the run.

Melissa is excited to go to Chipotle. I’m excited to go to Starbucks. These are luxuries to girls who eat off a farm.

We are mid-burrito, when Melissa gets text message. It’s the investor we are supposed to be meeting in Chicago. James Altucher. We are huge fans of his blog and he does not know he’s an investor but we want him to be an investor. He is confirming that we’ll be there in three hours for dinner.

"What!?" I say. "You told me it was next week, not this week."

"He said next week but it should have been the week after. This week is always a hard thing to understand because this week and next week are regional. You know, like if it’s Tuesday and you say this Tuesday is it next Tuesday or this Tuesday?"

"You didn't check the date? Are you kidding me? You are so lame! That is so lame!"

"We have enough time to get there.

"Yeah. If we had a private jet."

"No. Really. We do. Let’s just go right now."

We go. I drive. Melissa looks around my car for a shirt she might like better than the one she has on. She finds nothing. She asks if there is a Forever 21 near the place we’re having dinner.

I tell her we can go there after dinner if it’s an all-night store.

Then she puts on my makeup.

She's very serious. Then she smiles.

I say, “You look so good in my makeup.”

She says, “I think that’s because you never see me in lip gloss.”

"What? I don’t have lip gloss."

"Look," she says. "I found this in your glove compartment."

"Oh yeah. I got that free from Booty Parlor. It’s a porn shop for women. They want me to write about them. That lip gloss is an aphrodisiac… that’s so great for our investor meeting… Here, give me some, too.”

Who, me?

2011-05-24T17:31:54Z

The other day I was in a dance store (is that even a word?), getting some teaching clothes.

The woman working there asked me where I dance and I said, oh I don’t dance.

Actually it was more like this:

Oh! No no no no no. I don’t actually DANCE.

As if DANCE is some concept or thing so far removed from me and my entire life that she might as well have asked me when I trained to be a rodeo clown.

Interesting. By which I mean: kind of hilarious but also disturbing.

Let’s look at this.

About three seconds after I said it, I realized how incredibly incongruous a thing it was to think.

Even though apparently I do think it.

I had to stop and make a list about why this might be something else I’m wrong about because even if my monsters have convinced me that I’m not a dancer, look at all these things that are also true:

The list.

Point 1: I am the number two teacher in the world of something called…wait for it… Dance of Shiva.

And even if I don’t consider it to be dance, it’s still a movement technique. It’s agility and coordination training. It’s flailing and flying, which are dance-like.

Point 2: Plus I’ve taught this method to professional dancers and choreographers in order to help them be better at what they do, namely: DANCING.

Point 3: I have been dancing for my entire life.

Point 4: Actually, I still attend a few dance classes every week.

Point 5: When I was nineteen I had a gig as the assistant choreographer for a children’s traveling folk dancing troupe. I also taught dance at a summer camp. Oh, and I taught Ironic Aerobics and Dork Dancing at last year’s Week of Destuckification program.

Yes.

But oh god no I’m not a dancer.

My fuzzball monsters were extra sneaky with this one because the sabotage had been so subtle I hadn’t even realized that they were there.

It was so obviously and unquestionably true that dancing has nothing to do with me. That dancer is something completely OTHER. It was easy for me to speak without thinking because I already knew the answer.

But then I remembered that this exact same thing happened last summer.

Here it is again.

The day before I flew to Taos last July to teach at Jen Louden’s Writer’s Retreat, I went to get a massage.

The massage therapist wanted to know what I was going to be doing in Taos, and I said teaching at a writing retreat.

She said, “Oh, you’re a writer!”

And of course I went into instant stuttering denial. Explaining that actually I was going there to teach yoga and other forms of movement cough – dance! and brain training, and that I don’t really write.

Even though this is demonstrably false.

This was the same writer’s retreat at which I had also taught the year before and gone through the exact same thing then.

Identity is funny.

Yes. Yes it is.

Just thinking about everything that comes together to create a sense of self…

The mind-boggling collection of internal rules about who gets to self-define as what. And why you don’t get to be a whatever-it-is.

The way we silently agree to be put into one box or another.

The number of flying shoes and perceived flying shoes that we’ve internalized over the years.

I’m remembering the girl at school who told me that my arms weren’t graceful enough for me to take ballet. “I guess you could always try gymnastics,” she said.

Remembering walking into my summer art classes, looking longingly at the kids doing jazz and tap.

And being determined not to admit that I wanted to be there too. Because I was so afraid of discovering that I wasn’t any good at it.

Identity is also fluid.

That’s the good part. Or at least, the reassuring part.

When we get to recognize the internal rules for what they are, we get to start deprogramming and destuckifying.

We get to stop being impressed by what the old rules say.

And then it’s not about I am a ___________ or I am not a __________.

It’s just play. It’s costumes and exploration and experimentation.

It’s messing around with choosing communities, changing metaphors, and rethinking how you approach the culture of your you-ness.

Hard stuff. But also amazing. Scary. But also empowering.

What happens next.

Here’s the funny part.

The best tool that I know of for taking apart these kinds of deeply internalized rules (“I don’t get to be a dancer because x, y and z”) is Shiva Nata.

So I am going to be using dance to take apart the pattern that says I don’t get to claim dance for myself, and to bring in the new patterns to replace the old ones.

I’m going to dance by doing algorithms with my body and making connections in space. I’m going to dance by whirling and blocking and crossing the midline.

I’m just not going to call it that. Until I am.

And comment zen for today…

Alright. Here goes. I do not wish to be told that actually I am a dancer, even though I know it’s meant to be reassuring.

And I don’t want to talk about how actually we need to get beyond identifying with one thing or another because we’re all one with everything.

Instead I want to think out loud about the bigger theme: the various ways that we deny or hide from aspects of ourselves.

So if you’ve ever had trouble admitting that you are a thing, do a thing, have a connection to a thing, I would love to hear more of these stories.

As always, we let everyone have their stuff and we don’t give each other advice (unless people ask).

Love to the commenter mice, the Beloved Lurkers and everyone who reads.

p.s. If you’re considering coming to the Shiva Nata teacher training in September, please know that not being a dancer and never planning on being one is absolutely fine! Disastrous uncoordinated flailing is what we’re going for!

If this kinda seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

The pink door.

2011-05-18T16:14:48Z

My very favorite place to think about that jumbled thing that is culture is at the Playground.

It’s been nearly a year since we found the space, and in that time I have watched it transform from a tiny, sweet thing in my head and heart into the most amazing place I have ever been.

I puzzle over what exactly makes it so magical. And why does it smell so good?

Then I boggle over all the rituals, traditions, customs and stories that come together to make something the way it is.

How once that something is a thing, it continues to generate more customs, more traditions.

Why is this night different from all other nights?*

This week we’re on Rally (Rally!) and it’s the ninth Rally, so as you might imagine, we have all sorts of Rally customs that have emerged from previous rallies.

Inevitably we expand on these customs or change them. Some of these have become ritualized and set, and some become increasingly baroque, in the way of things.

* Sorry, obscure reference! See? Traditions!

And new customs are born each Rally. Each day, even.

Like yesterday when Darcy wore the flouncy floofy pirate skirt to lunch at a restaurant.

It became immediately apparent to all of us that taking things from the Costumery and wearing them out to lunch is an absolutely lovely way to bring more of Rally into the parts of our day that aren’t at the Playground.

I’m pretty sure you’ll see me this afternoon brandishing a cutlass and wearing a tiara at one of the food carts. See? Like that. It just sort of happens.

Or tonight at the wine and cheese evening (a tradition started by Jessica at the last Shiva Nata teacher training and cemented at Rally #6), we’ll be having a mini show-and-tell. I can see how that might stick too.

Who knows. By Rally #10, it might just be what we do. And it will get more interesting each time.

Traditions.

We have traditions about monsters and sunglasses and blanket forts.

We have rituals of stone skipping. We randomly yell silent retreat!

And none of this is prescriptive. It’s not about expectations of how you need to be.

It’s never this: “Okay, so this is how you have to do things.”

It’s more like this: “We kind of have this tradition of moving the fairy door around. You don’t have to do it. It’s just a thing that happens a lot.”

Customs and ritual work like code. They’re shorthand. They carry the qualities of Playground culture:

Curiosity, play, light-heartedness, invention, inspiration, creativity, agility, wonder, spaciousness and sovereignty.

Who keeps the culture?

The biggest difference between the culture of Rally and the culture of say, a city, is that no one lives at the Playground. There isn’t continuity in the same way.

The Playground is an island. And empty one, except for me and Selma.

Of course since so many people do multiple Rallies, it often happens that at any given Rally we have experienced Rallions.

I think at the current Rally there are at least two people who have already rallied.

But it won’t always happen, which means that part of my role is to be the keeper of the culture. The curator, in a way.

I can’t keep it all in my head. And that’s not the way culture works, anyway.

So I put some pieces in the PLUM (the Playground User Manual). And I have a version of the Book of Me that is a Book of Playground.

I don’t ever want the culture of Rally or of the Playground to be about expectations. I don’t want people to worry about how to be or what to do. I want the culture to hold everyone in safety, permission and amnesty.

That’s what it’s there for.

Something kind of funny. Funny-unlikely.

Yesterday at Rally I was looking for something and happened on some notes from a class I taught at my Kitchen Table program.

Notes about this thing that is culture. And it was so perfect.

Here’s what I had said, and forgotten:

Culture is all the stories that come together to create a feel for the whole.

Culture gets stronger through being tested.

Culture is subtle. It lives in your business cards, in your systems and policies, in how your space works (even if people can’t see it).

Culture is an accumulation of you-ness.

Culture creates and solves all problems.

Culture is transmitted through many things. Know your beacons.

If I were queen of an island, what would that island be like?

Door and doors.

We have this very charming fairy door at the Playground. You can see it on the contact page, of all places.

Which kind of implies that the best way to contact us is through the fairies, not sure if that’s a good idea or not.

And it’s become a thing at the Playground that whenever you see it, you move it. To a different wall or a different room or on top of a lamp or next to a treasure chest.

It sounds kind of stupid but it’s highly entertaining. And then each room ends up feeling slightly different at any given time because there’s a door or not a door, and it’s always not where you expect it.

Now we have a second fairy door, because Lisa brought us one. It’s pink! And it doesn’t get moved around at all ever.

But!

New traditions have already sprung up around it, as they do.

People bring little decorations to the pink door.

The pink door came with tiny rainboots and a bucket with a tiny key. Now there are little plants next to the door. And a ladybug and some tiny pebbles.

And someone promised to bring a footbridge. See? It’s crazy.

Biggification.

When I think about my business, and the past nearly six years, I think a lot about the beautiful things that have been accidents or surprises.

Who knew that the Friday Chicken would still be going strong after nearly three years (we haven’t missed a week and this is the 146th week…)?

We’d never have built a Refueling Station at the Playground if it hadn’t been for Crankypants McGrumblebug’s Kvetchtastic Whine Bar at the Kitchen Table.

Traditions are funny that way.

Funny and endlessly fascinating.

You plant culture in the form of love, trust, hope, gwishing and so on.

And then you see what you get, based on what it interacts with.

Play with me? And comment zen for today.

It’s a hard and complicated adventure growing a business. Or running a blog. Or doing any form of working on your stuff.

And documenting the culture of your business, or your art or your internal world is a really hard practice, because it’s so close that it’s hard to see. And because we have pain and grief about what isn’t the way we want it to be.

So this stuff can be hard.

It can also be really useful.

If you want to invent customs and rituals with me, you are welcome. And if you want to think out loud about this thing that is culture, that works too.

As always, we all have our stuff. We let other people have their stuff. And we don’t give each other advice unless people ask.

Love. And cutlasses!

If this kinda seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

Alignment

2011-04-25T09:21:00Z

Long-term brands and relationships are built on alignment. Here are a few examples ("I" is the royal I, not me in particular):

A perfect relationship: I want your company to help me, and your company wants to help me. We're both focused on helping the same person.

The Walmart relationship: I want the cheapest possible prices and Walmart wants to (actually works hard to) give me the cheapest possible prices. That's why there's little pushback about customer service or employee respect... the goals are aligned.

The Apple relationship: I want Apple to be cool. Apple wants to be cool. That's why there's little pushback on pricing or obsolence or disappointing developers.

The demagogue politician relationship: I will feel more powerful if you get elected and get your way. You will feel more powerful if you get elected and get your way.

The search engine relationship (when it's working): I want to find what I'm looking for. You want me to find what I'm looking for, regardless of the short-term income possibilities.

The Mercedes (formerly Cadillac) relationship: I want a prestige product that reliably delivers an expensive label that's unattainable to many. They want to reliably and consistently charge a lot for a car that sends a message to everyone else.

The farmer's market relationship: I want to eat sustainable foods that make me feel good. You want to grow sustainable foods that make me feel good.

Compare these to the ultimately doomed relationships (if not doomed, then tense) in which goals don't align, relationships where the brand took advantage of an opening but then grows out of the initial deal and wants to change it:

The Dell relationship: I want a cheap, boring, reliable computer. You want to make more profit.

The hip designer relationship: I want the new thing no one else has yet. You want to be around for years.

The search engine relationship (when it doesn't work): I want to find what I'm looking for. You want to distract me and take money to send me places I actually don't want to go.

The reluctant purchaser relationship: I don't want to waste money on something I didn't know I wanted. You want to make a commission.

The troll relationship: I want to laugh at a buffoon who doesn't realize he's making a fool of himself. You want to be respected by the mainstream.

The young actor relationship: I want the fresh-faced young movie star. You want a career that lasts more than a year.

The typical media relationship: I want to see the shows, you want to interrupt with ads.

Alignment isn't something you say. It's something you do. Alignment is demonstrated when you make the tough calls, when you see if the thing that matters the most to you is also the thing that matters the most to the other person.

The tension that comes from misalignment can work for a while, but it's when alignment kicks in that the enterprise really scales.

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Check baby check baby 1234.

So that was a month ago.

“And that’s why you always have a checklist…”

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Who, me?

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The list.

Yes.

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What happens next.

And comment zen for today…

If this kinda seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

The pink door.

Why is this night different from all other nights?*

And new customs are born each Rally. Each day, even.

Traditions.

Who keeps the culture?

I can’t keep it all in my head. And that’s not the way culture works, anyway.

Something kind of funny. Funny-unlikely.

Door and doors.

But!

Biggification.

Play with me? And comment zen for today.

If this kinda seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

Alignment