Randomness, Serendipity, bounded rationality … and light cones
November 6, 2014
Kudos to Greg Lindsay for continuing to Work Out Loud as he explores the role of place, network, and data in engineering the conditions for enriching for serendipitous outcomes. He has a wonderful recent piece on Medium, where he continues to refine his thesis.
As the one of the three regular readers of this blog, you’ll know that this is a topic we love to think about too, so here are a couple of reflections/observations on this next iteration of the networked exploration of this topic.
As I’ve written previously I think serendipity is a ‘second order’ effect. The planned combination of elements of a thoughtful physical space along with mobile, network, and sensor data can at best be thought of as engineering randomness, in the hope of enriching for serendipitous outcomes.
I risk sounding like a pedant – quibbling about the difference between randomness and serendipity, and using probabilistic language like ‘enrich’. But, if this is to become a more widely adopted component of how organizations work, and I really hope it does, it’s important not to overstate or oversell. Given the complexity of the human system we call work, at best, I think we can hope to enrich. I don’t think that’s being too pedantic, do you?
Mr. Lindsay goes on to ‘stake a claim’, and connects serendipity to the dark and unknowable place of ‘unknown unknowns’. I get where he’s going, I do, and I think it’s a great connection but I was reminded of the concept of ‘bounded rationality’ and this gave me cause-for-pause.
Bounded rationality suggests that as I navigate life, I am making decisions based on the limited amount of information I have, and the finite limits of my cognitive ability. Within this model, unknown unknowns are, by definition, unknowable. It is information/data/knowledge so far removed from my context as to be irrelevant and have no utility to me or the decisions I may make. Put another way, even if I am randomly exposed to it, I am cognitively unable to make use/sense of it.
Where am I going with this I hear you burble? To clear things up, let’ borrow an idea from relativistic physics (said no one, ever) …
I was reminded of the concept of the ‘light cone’. The finite nature of the speed of light creates volumes of space-time such that light emanating from an event at some point (x,t) can never experience other points (x’,t’) outside of that cone. This wiki article and the accompanying visual may help here. Through a combination of forward-thinking place making and data I could experience people (information) in a way that was engineered to enrich for serendipity. Assuming my ‘eyes are wide open, and my brain is turned on’, there’s some hope that I’d be able to take an idea, a concept, or a thing and be able to rationalize it within my context to make a previously unknown connection. Because this took place within my context, it’s known (inside the ‘light cone’ if you will) and so represents a knowable unknown.
So, what does all this nonsense mean? Time to make my own claim on this now:
Through a combination of thoughtful physical space planning coupled with elements of rich mobile, network, and sensor data we can engineer the randomness of human interaction, in the hope of enriching for serendipitous outcomes. Such outcomes will be driven by engaged actors contextualizing previously unknown but knowable information/data/knowledge.
Thanks for listening,
DT
Snakes on a Plane? That’s so 2006.
November 19, 2014
Future Shock, my second favourite book about ‘the future’, was penned by Alvin Toffler in 1970. It remains a good read, with some pretty prescient observations about, well, the future. As I re-read it a few weeks ago, I was reminded that I should write up a post based on his description of an aborted experiment by the now defunct British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC).
As one of the three regular readers of this blog, you may recall we spend a good chunk of time thinking about how we can engineer the randomness of human interaction in the hope that we can enrich for serendipitous outcomes. One of the earliest examples I’ve found of this (outside of the problème des ménages [http://blog.lunchroulette.us/nous-avons-un-problme]) was in Mr. Toffler’s book, where he shared BOAC’s latest (at the time) ‘innovation’ – “The Beautiful Singles of London”. This involved pairing unmarried American male BOAC passengers with ‘scientifically chosen’ blind dates during their time in London. The scientific bit was derived through personal data being fed into a computer and processed algorithmically by ‘Scientific Introduction Method’ a subsidiary of a company called Autodates, Ltd.
The plan was ultimately cancelled following objections from two Members of the British Parliament who considered it ‘… an affront to British girls and to Britain’s reputation’. Curiously, sending what we might consider mixed messages now, a Member of Parliament was quoted as saying “I still hope young Americans will come here and get friendly with our miniskirted young girls”. Oh dear. This was all covered in the New York Times on September 13 and 16th 1969.
As I read more about this combination of engineered randomness and the aviation industry, I was reminded, perhaps unsurprisingly, of Delta Airlines’ recent release of their ‘Innovation Class’: a unique mentorship opportunity between an entrepreneur and someone, chosen ‘scientifically’, using their LinkedIn profile as an application.
Holiday experiences, airline journeys, meal times – each of these spaces represent containers that we try to set conditions around to enrich for serendipitous outcomes: be it romance or innovation. As I read Mr. Toffler's book, I was struck by how we’ve been trying this for a really long time, and reminded that it remains really hard to do...
Thanks for listening,
DT
PS. What’s my favourite ‘future’ book I hear you belch? Future Babble by Dan Gardner. It’s a great read with some soothing words of caution regarding those who spout prognostications and certainty, when a more probabilistic view (and some humility) is probably more the ticket.
Lunch or Cigarettes
October 24, 2017
Er.
I’ll have lunch please.
It’s not often you get to start a blog post paying homage to the comedy genius that is Eddie Izzard, but, when you do, you take that opportunity and run with it …
So, turns out, loneliness is a nasty business. Loneliness and weak social connections can see a reduction in lifespan that is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Goodness … I’ll have Lunch please.
Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General from 2014-2017, opens a recent HBR Big Idea series exploring the loneliness epidemic, with a contribution titled ‘Connecting at Work’. Dr. Murthy rightly orients our attempts to address loneliness in the places we spend most of our time: with family, in school, and the workplace.
Reducing isolation at work is good for business - Vivek Murthy
As I am sure you can guess, we certainly think of Lunch Roulette as a way organizations can take concrete steps to help employees create and foster meaningful connection in the workplace. Which would in turn, we would hope, contribute towards wellbeing, and the development of protective factors to offset the effects loneliness and dissociation. We’ve long held the view that everyone working in an organization has a completely legitimate opportunity for (responsibility to?) engaging with everyone else and striking up a conversation accordingly - you’re all working towards the same mission, so why on earth not, eh?
Turns out it’s hard though. Firstly, for some, taking a break, away from the desk for a break, is just not the done thing. This is mostly cultural, and can be addressed.
Experimental psychologists have suggested that there are two additional factors in play - (1) We don’t want to break the ice, possibly from fear of rejection, or because we assume that the other doesn’t want to be disturbed, and (2) That if we do make a connection, we won’t be able to end the interaction. We avoid both of these concerns with Lunch Roulette: everyone opts in - so there’s no rejection because you’re all in it together, and you know it’s going to end as you’ve signed up for Lunch with a fixed time! For the individuals in the aforementioned study that were able to get past those barriers, there were uniformly positive benefits realised.
Wanting to engage with others, and being open to others engaging with you, seems to be critical to maintaining a sense of wellbeing that could potentially help mitigate the effects of loneliness, a vitally important skill as we age into our careers and through our professional lives. We won’t just ‘end up lonely’, we’ll have made choices, the ramifications of which won’t be fully realised until much later. There’s a real opportunity (responsibility) to begin thinking about retirement, and the care of our future selves, not just financially, but socially. Perhaps a simple, but intentional, lunch with a colleague is a way to do just that. If that’s too heavy a lift, why not just try a simple ‘Just Say Hello’?
Thanks for listening,
DT
Bringing a gun to a knife fight
October 17, 2017
We’ve been away two years, and that’s the headline we decide to rock up with?
Oh dear.
So much has happened in the last two years that it’s just not practical to go into any of it in any detail, needless to say Lunch Roulette continues to grow, and we continue to be fascinated by the conditions that can help people come together in the service of something bigger than themselves.
What prompted us to break out of our blogging stupor I hear you grunt? Follow along Dear Reader, follow along …
“Dear Lunch Roulette! Amazing service, just heard about you at a conference, excited to try you out, …”
We receive a lot of these notes on any given week and let me say right off the bat, we love them. It’s super nice receiving a little unbidden missive from someone who is excited you might be able to help them. Let’s read on.
“… we’re a team of 25 people … ”
Oh no.
There it is.
It’s just not going to work.
You start to tell me about how fast you’re growing, or that you’re the number one maker of something in the sector you compete in, but we’re afraid we already know. It’s not going to work at all and it’s not you. It’s us.
Let me explain.
Our solution is most useful for larger organizations who are looking to make cross-functional collaboration a part of their DNA through repeated practice of ‘engineered randomness’. As a rule of thumb, if you have fewer than 50 people, and you’d like them to meet less than a handful of times, all you need is a spreadsheet, and someone to help code some exclusion rules.
As you know, we’re scrupled, so we’re not going to try and up-sell you on this. We’ve given this advice so many times, it felt like a blog was in order. Bringing us full circle. So, if you’re a smaller organization here’s some helpful pointers from your supporters at Lunch Roulette:
Before you do anything, get some senior leaders to support the activity. Have them make it clear why getting to know people you don’t already is crucial for innovation and a healthy company culture. Have them also make it clear that it’s a muscle to build and flex, and not a one-and-done sort of activity. If you’re building a company with curious people, this won’t even need to be said (although it’s good to reaffirm if it’s how you want people to behave), and if you’re not building a company with curious people, you probably have bigger problems, so I’d stop reading this and get on with thinking about that …
Set some organizational intention behind #1. Meeting people, even if you’re curious, is weird. It shouldn’t be, but it is. You can lift that burden a little by setting it up so that everyone’s ‘experiencing the weird’ together - then it’s less weird, ‘cos everyone’s doing it …
The bookkeeping is the easiest bit. If you’ve gotten #1 and #2 under control, use your email system and a ledger of sorts to keep track of the trajectories people are on.
Obviously, if you’re more than 50 people this’ll quickly become a massive nightmare logistically - hence Lunch Roulette, but before that, the above should stand you in good stead.
As always, thanks for listening,
DT
We can get you past no … Probably.
July 29, 2015
A wonderful Daily Shout from New Yorker contributor Hallie Cantor caught my eye last week: “Everything I Am Afraid Might Happen If I Ask New Acquaintances to Get Coffee”.
Thankfully, processes like Lunch Roulette can help. Organizations that use our platform have made the act of opting into random lunch meetings super easy … so we can get you past the first two hurdles right off the bat:
They will say no.
They will say no and laugh at me for not having enough existing friends to get coffee with
My favourite, and probably the thing I am most afraid of when talking to any new person is #16, “They’ll want to talk about CrossFit.” That, unfortunately, Lunch Roulette cannot help with.
In other news, a Vox article that caught my eye last week reminded me of an earlier Lunch Roulette blog posting bemoaning the fact that people pooh-pooh lunch. After a decade in Switzerland the authour of this piece realised that there’s something a little odd about that, and decided to share. Have a read, it’s an interesting cultural reflection.
Finally, if you’ve 20 some minutes to spare, have a watch of our friend Greg Lindsay as he describes more of his recent thinking on ‘Engineering Serendipity’.
As the regular reader of these scribblings you’ll be interested to note that Mr. Lindsay is now talking about unknown knowns … a more realistic position, we felt, that we shared with Mr. Lindsay earlier this year. As you may recall (lol), we highlighted our thinking through talking about light cones and relativity. So, apparently that is a thing that can work.
Physics #FTW.
Thanks for listening,
DT
Deep Learning and Systemic Insight
June 8, 2015
A number of months ago, I staked the following claim:
Through a combination of thoughtful physical space planning coupled with elements of rich mobile, network, and sensor data we can engineer the randomness of human interaction, in the hope of enriching for serendipitous outcomes. Such outcomes will be driven by engaged actors contextualizing previously unknown but knowable information/data/knowledge.
There’s an emerging community of thinkers/doers exploring the intersection of data collection, modeling, and people analytics - in the service of engineering randomness. In the context of ‘work’, this paragraph represented the best synthesis of my noodling at that time on the topic.
Wait, why is work in single quotation marks?
When I talk about 'work’, I typically refer to actors engaged in activities that contribute towards something that is bigger than any one of them. Interestingly this is inclusive of profit and non-profit 'work’ … and it’s also inclusive of, perhaps, civic engagement.
Now, hold that thought for a moment, while we turn to Deep Learning …
Earlier this year, some researchers from Google DeepMind, published some research in Nature which demonstrated 'Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning’. In short, a deep learning architecture was fed images from classic Atari games. In addition the architecture was fed the game score at that time. In general, as the number of learning iterations is increased, the architecture determines ever-increasingly optimal strategies for increasing the game score.
For example, in Breakout, the 'machine’ learns the 'shimmy’ (the strategy of applying a little noise to position of the paddle), before figuring out that popping the ball over the back of the wall is a quick way to get rid of a lot of blocks, and increase your score. A mind-blowing, accessible, and visual introduction to this research can be found here.
Think about this for a moment. An algorithmic infrastructure, given minimal input, subsequently determines the underlying rules of a system - and then learns to navigate that system with a view to increasing an objective function.
Now, hold that for a moment while we turn to distributed computing …
With services like Amazon Web Services we have unprecedented compute power available to us, but it’s actually really difficult to write software that works optimally across hundreds-of-thousands/millions of machines. Adding compute power works when the underlying problems are separable, or embarrassingly parallel, but less so for problems that are intractably complex - you know, like social systems.
Interestingly, companies like [Improbable](www.improbable.io) are exploring exactly such architectures - with a view to simulating complex social problems. Improbable CEO Herman Narula explores this in a recent a16z podcast and alludes to the potential power of enriching simulated worlds with sensor and Internet of Things-enabled devices …
Now, let’s bring it all together …
What if we:
Find a space to explore (space could mean workplace, city etc.)
Create a sensor rich data abstraction of the workings of the space
Build a simulation of the space, enriched by the rich sensor data
Such a simulated environment might be a real boon to exploring cause/effect in a way that mirrored the true complexity of the social nature of the problem(s) faced in spaces containing people.
Now, imagine the following (and I admit this is all tenuously sci-fi stuff …): what if those simulations were fed into a deep learning architecture? Could a machine then 'learn’ the unwritten rules for how people navigate the underlying space? (I fully appreciate that the generation of the simulation data is an additional unnecessary step - this is perhaps most useful when the simulation is exploring the effect of an as-yet unimplemented intervention - prospective questions might explore whether 'the rules’ changed in (un)expected ways).
Such algorithmically generated insights could be amazingly powerful tools for objectively exploring the spaces that contain our interactions - and, most excitingly, all of the pieces needed are currently available, or in active development. It’s an exciting time to be thinking about people analytics.
Thanks for listening,
DT
Employee Engagement: Black Holes and Time Warps
January 9, 2015
Just to come clean, I actually don’t have anything to say about time warps. So, if you’re one of my three readers who happened to want to learn about the theoretical conditions necessary for such a thing - you are out of luck. I’d recommend the following as it’s a good read on exactly that topic.
So, New Year, and a commitment to you, dear reader, for more frequent posts. That’s right - one a week. You. Are. Welcome.
So, what is the subject of this week’s post I hear you sniffle?
It’ll start with a rant.
I am extremely lucky in that I get to attend, and oftentimes speak, at a host of meetings in any given year. Some of them are technical in nature, some are not. For those meetings that are not, there are always a couple of presentations, panels, or even whole sessions devoted to ‘corporate culture’. What usually sets me off, and that typically results in a snarky tweet, is when someone speaks about culture as if it’s something you can directly manipulate.
The five usual readers of this are rolling their eyes at this point, knowing how much I love to wallow in the pedant(ic) (a river somewhere, I’m sure).
Again though, I’m going to exhort that the words have a meaning, and the meaning is powerful, so let’s use them correctly (as opposed to saying things that sound good, but have no real meaning, or cannot be used in a meaningful way).
Culture is not something you can directly manipulate. It is a higher order effect that may change, as you alter something else. You can’t, in my opinion, speak about culture, or culture change, with any credibility, unless you actually speak about your role or work in manipulating the things that can (and ideally did) alter an organization’s culture. Which, in my mind, include but are not limited to: the people at your organization, the work they are doing, and how they interact with each other. All of these things will be a blend of intrinsic and extrinsic factors, coupled with tools and physical space. Changing these things will change culture. It’s also amazing if you can connect your intervention(s) to outcomes that cleanly demonstrate cultural change (and I acknowledge that this is very difficult).
So, assuming you’ve made it this far, you’re likely asking yourself - where do Black Holes come into this, and what’s this about Employee Engagement? Well, Employee Engagement is just the same kind of higher order effect as culture. The same levers that influence culture, influence engagement. And, as for black holes - take a look at the following artistic impression, and then meet me below.
See the stuff shooting out of the top? According to the press release: “Also shown is an outflowing jet of energetic particles, believed to be powered by the black hole’s spin.” The energetic particles are the higher order effect, and to change them, you’d need to do something to the interior processes of the gravitational event.
Of course the analogy is not perfect, but the visual serves me as a remainder of the importance of focusing my energies (pun intended) on the correct lever(s) when making, and subsequently speaking, about change.
Oh, and the connection to Lunch Roulette? It is such a lever for affecting cultural change … just wanted to throw that in there too. Let us know if you’d like to learn more.
Thanks for listening,
DT
Serendipity as engineered randomness
July 30, 2014
Last year Greg Lindsay wrote a wonderful piece for the New York Times that described how a number of organizations were seeking to ‘engineer serendipity’ - either through modifying their physical workspaces, or by instituting processes that enrich for fortuitous encounters.
Sound familiar? Of course it does! Conceptually this is one of the reasons for Lunch Roulette (in all it’s implementations).
Where am I going with this I hear you grunt? All of the processes/tweaks described are great - and will most certainly enrich the number of 'random’ interactions, and by extension serendipitous ones - but it’s important to note that the sought after serendipity is a second order effect.
What do I mean by this?
One of my favourite definitions of serendipity is the following: “the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way”. Serendipity is a second order effect (the ’development’ here is key) because, it’s not enough to just be a participant in a random act, you have to be aware, or made aware, of the act - and be able to contextualize the act in a new and somewhat unexpected way. This is even evident in the roots of the word. The Three Princes of Serendip were latter day Holmesian observers, “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.”
This observation is important, I think, for a couple of reasons.
For organizations to engage in this, it has to be beyond "engineered randomness’. There has to be a component devoted to increasing, and maintaining, individual awareness and mindfulness. Only when you’re truly aware of your surroundings can you really make any serious progress in an unexpected direction.
Secondly, assuming a heightened level of awareness and subsequent translation of random acts into serendipitous ones, the organization has to have in place a measurement scheme to associate the ultimate outcome to the conditions that contained the act in the first place. Without this, it might be akin to random, engineered randomness and really, who wants that?
How then to instantiate such a measurement scheme I hear you curse? Good question. At the moment I am not sure, but maybe I’ll have some thoughts in time for next weeks thrilling installment.
Thanks for listening,
DT
“But you can’t please all the people all the time”
May 29, 2015
I’m currently reading Jon Ronson‘s most recent book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. My title from today’s post made me think of Chapter Two and his description of everything that went down with an author who’d made up some song lyrics.
I’m going to come clean. The lyric above is not from Mr. Marley - I changed 'fool’ to ‘please’. There, I said it … Phew, weight loaded.
What am I going on about I hear you toot? I don’t write for weeks, and then all of a sudden I start talking about plagiarism. What’s up with that?
Let me elaborate dear reader.
I attended Day One of The Conference Board’s Digital Workplace Seminar event yesterday. It was a good time, and I enjoyed speaking about data and change (slides can be found here).
The topic of Employee Engagement came up a number of times, and was mentioned very early. As my one regular reader knows this is a favorite topic of mine.
As you may know, ‘engagement’ levels are lower than leadership within organizations would like. When measured, on average, you can expect about 30-40% of your organization to be ‘engaged’. This big annual reveal seemingly sends ‘leaders’ into paroxysm’s of angsty hand-wringing. What to do, what to do?
The question I asked yesterday as we began to go through this again was simply Why? Why are we so upset that only 30-40% of our colleagues are ‘engaged’? If you think about work as a rational service-based contract between employer and employee, unless ‘turning up engaged’ is something you’re compensating me for (and have previously clearly articulated as something you are expecting from me), why are you then beating yourself up that more people are not doing the seemingly irrational thing of turning up ‘engaged’?
Another way to look at this is to congratulate yourself that you’ve got a 60-70% rational workforce all of whom are (hopefully somewhat) focused on doing what you paid them to do.
I don’t think we really care about ‘engagement’ at all. I think this has become a proxy catch-all term that poorly captures some of the things we expect to be useful in the workplace but haven’t developed a sophisticated enough way of thinking about, measuring, or operationalizing at scale (I say this without having done any real research. Feel free to correct me on this as I expect there are some amazing organizations doing awesomesauce stuff on this, and I’d love to learn more).
So, my advice? If we are going to continue to measure this stuff – and we will – can we stop starting at 100 and working our way down? Can we stop beating ourselves up for every missed percentage point of the employee base that’s not ‘engaged’? Why don’t we start from 0 and thoroughly enjoy those wonderful colleagues who are doing the irrational and turning up ‘engaged’.
Thanks for listening,
DT
PS. As I write this, I wonder if I’m going to hear more about this topic next week as I learn about ‘[The Happiness Industry]’(http://www.versobooks.com/events/1118-the-happiness-industry-book-discussion-with-will-davies-greg-lindsay-and-melissa-aronczyk)
Coordination by proxy
March 27, 2015
So, this happened earlier this week:
@odguru Coordination of knowledge within a system is, I believe, a Wicked Problem. As such it has no solution, just strategies for coping.
— David Thompson (@dcthmpsn) March 24, 2015
Seems like a good question, right? Why are organizations taking so long to figure out effective knowledge collaboration? As my reply implies I think that the fundamental issue of knowledge {management, coordination, collaboration} is ‘wicked’ at it’s core. Here’s more on what I mean by wicked.
One contributing factor to how this problem exhibits itself, and most likely a factor that ensures that this problem persists, is that of scale. Which got me to wondering if anyone has looked at the tension of exploration vs. exploitation as a function of organizational size? A guess might be that at some point an organization becomes large enough that the cost of exploring and discovering ‘who is working on your problem’ is outweighed by simply working on your problem directly.
We have some experience with this here at Lunch Roulette. An email comes through to the info email account:
“Hello, I work at Company X in Division Y and I think this would be a fabulous tool for fostering collaboration across both my and other divisions within my Company. Can you help? Many thanks, John”
Weeks later:
“Hello, I work at Company X in Division Z and I think this would be a fabulous tool for fostering collaboration across both my and other divisions within my Company. Can you help? Many thanks, Jane”
What do we do?
“Dear Jane, Thank you for your note of inquiry! You are right, Lunch Roulette is a fabulous tool for fostering collaboration across divisions within a Company. We can most certainly help. The first step is for you to speak to John in Division Y. We’re working with him, and he had the same idea as you. This might mean you’re facing the same kinds of problems, and it might make sense to think about them together, with us. Looking forward to working with you, Lunch Roulette”
I would imagine this happens a lot - especially for larger vendors and providers of external services. Coordination through a third-party might seem odd, but it’s really a process of ‘problem-based abstraction’, which some of our customers have actually found quite useful. I guess it’s a value-add of working with us!
Thanks for listening,
DT
Culture eats strategy for breakfast and no one is having lunch …
March 9, 2015
Some people attribute the quote connecting culture and breakfast to Peter Drucker. Others do not.
What everyone seems to agree upon, irrespective of where it originated from, is that ‘the culture’ of an organization is going to determine how much ‘different’ you can ultimately drive.
Which brings me neatly to today’s post.
Lunch Roulette - the awesome-web-based-engineered-randomness-solution - is only useful if it’s used. It’s only useful if you have a culture that lunch (or a scheduled break of some kind) is an expected part of the day. Turns out, especially in the US, this isn’t always a guarantee.
This was nicely explored in a recent piece posted on ‘The Salt’ at NPR. Most folks, do not lunch away from their desks.
How bonkers is that? Surrounded by people working at the same company, on stuff that somehow connects in the service of the bigger picture, and no one wants to have lunch and talk about it …
All this, despite exhortations from innovation ‘gurus’, human resources and networking professionals regarding the power of finding someone new to talk to. Don’t believe me? Here’s Reid Hoffmann on the importance of ‘Network Intelligence’. To borrow a nice quote from slide 27:
“When your employees share what they learn from the people in their network (about technologies, competition, talent), they help you solve key business challenges faster.”
Simple as that.
Make it as easy as possible for your employees to connect - have a think about setting up a Lunch Roulette instance; we’ll also work with you to create a cultural norm around taking a break and letting the mind wander in productive and beneficial ways. At least we’ll try, we both know there are no guarantees.
Thanks for listening,
DT
Clowns, Jokers, Rocks, and Hard Places
February 27, 2015
If you haven’t yet, take some time to have a read of Aimee Groth’s wonderful article on the self-organizing management schema ‘The Holocracy’.
To undertake a whole scale transformation of how an organization works - how decisions are made, and how power is distributed - is a complex and audacious task. But, it also struck me as somewhat simplistic at the same time.
What do I mean by this, I hear you toot?
What if we view the self-organizing model as the complement, the diametric opposite, of a completely designed model? Either we let the system decide, or we decide for the system. We manage to the extremes. Because, at the extremes we, have more clarity and that’s really all we want ever - is clarity, and as much as you can give us thanks very much.
My initial reaction to Ms. Groth’s piece I tweeted about:
Either/or is easy. It’s both/and that’s hard, and where the magic lives.
— David Thompson (@dcthmpsn) February 18, 2015
I suspect it could be worse to just appeal to structures on the extremes - because sometimes you’ll need a blend of both approaches, and by not having them, you’ll be leaving value on the table. Being able to hold different patterns of work together long enough, in as stable and productive way as possible, is vital. Acknowledging this, and subsequently balancing it, are most likely two of the most challenging obstacles facing any organization, in any industry.
Thanks for listening,
DT
Exploit vs. Explore
May 12, 2014
Okay, fine. We’re late, we said we’d commit to one post per week, and then a whole bunch of things intruded and what fell off? That’s right. Contributing a post. Sorry about that …
What were you up to that prevented you from writing a thrilling and compelling blog post, I hear you murmur? I chaired, and presented, at iPharma 2014 in NYC
And what did you present, I hear you dribble?
Well, funny you should mention that - it’s the subject of this post. I spent some time describing the natural tension that exists, at both the individual and organizational levels - regarding how we work. I explored this (pun intended) as a dichotomy: Exploit vs. Explore. Slides can be found here in this snazzy embed, with 10 sexy talking points following below.
What does this all have to Lunch Roulette? Well, I’d have thought that was obvious – Lunch Roulette is a web-based process, that enables the exploration dimension in a really simple way. Good for you as a professional, good for your organization. Interested in learning more? Drop us a line.
Thanks for listening,
DT
Redressing the Baseline: Exploit vs. Explore from David Thompson
10 Sexy Talking Points
I took a systems view, so really the talk had nothing to do specifically with the pharmaceutical industry, but everything to do with how we work
I limited myself to knowledge work - so no poking at small volcanoes with sticks … (think about it, and then check slide 2)
I considered knowledge work as consisting of the following: Mediated interactions, decisions, process, action, results and – one hopes – value creation.
Doing those things, executing those actions that constitute knowledge work, would result in the delivery of a business’ promise to its customers in the form of a service or product.
While the primary role of any organization is to fulfill its promise to the customer through existing products and services, to retain a competitive advantage most organizations are also engaged in the active creation of new ones. We call this act of creation ‘innovation’ and use it to represent not just the emergence of an idea (i.e. something never before imagined in the context of the organization) but also its realization.
Innovation is not the province of a special department or team – if innovation is the search for the future products and services of an organization, on some level all employees are incentivized to innovate.
Work can also be thought of as the navigation of a problem landscape, with two primary modes of traversal - exploration and exploitation
There is a natural imbalance between these modes - with individuals and organizations favouring the exploitation mode. Individuals face all of the challenges that are described in both the behavioural economics and social physics literature.
Organizations face similar issues, and could borrow from the field of behavioural economics when it comes to organizational design - does the organizational chart really cut it anymore? Perhaps organizational structures need to be designed with a view to include the irrational foibles of people?
Size remains a key factor in fostering organizational complexity
This is the bonus Easter Egg for the random Souls who’ve made it this far … I’d heartily recommend Extra Yarn. More on that in a coming post.
Sex and Serendipity
January 30, 2015
Earlier this week, on January 28th to be precise, a friend sent me a note excitedly letting me know that on that day, in 1754, Horace Walpole used the word ‘serendipity’ for, apparently, the first time in the history of the English language.
Accompanying this article was the following little nugget attributed to Julius Comroe:
“Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering a farmer’s daughter.”
Wowser.
Maybe my mind’s in the gutter, but that seemed like a saucy outcome that Dr. Comroe was alluding to: Our needle searcher much to their surprise, instead of the needle they’d been lusting after, had found the farmer’s daughter instead. Sexual hilarity ensues …
Or, maybe, Dr. Comroe actually meant something like this:
“Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and finding a sewing kit”
I know boooring … perhaps a little more accurately connected to the concept of serendipity though, at least in the way I’ve been thinking about it recently
My marvelous friend, the one who’d sent me the original note, then suggested the following:
“Perhaps she (the farmer’s daughter in a haystack) too was once looking for a needle and found hanging out in the haystack much better than the sewing life that sent her to the haystack in the first place. Together, the man and woman originally sent to a haystack to find a needle realize that the utopia in which they’ve been living is actually a dystopia. It is in the haystack that they first discover free will and abandon the search for the needle forever!”
On that note, I think we’re done.
Thanks for listening,
DT
Why the Org. Chart May Not Cut it Anymore
January 23, 2015
Editors Note: This is our first guest post, and I’m thrilled to welcome Megha Pandit Rao and Alexandra Hughes. As so much of what we’ve spoken about in some of our earlier posts here relates to Employee Engagement, we put our heads together and had a think about some of the failings of the org. chart.
Why the Org Chart May Not Cut it Anymore January 14, 2015
Structure has a profound effect on employee behaviors, attitudes, and engagement, all of which are inextricably linked to customer satisfaction. So with more than 70 percent of American workers not engaged or actively disengaged in their work, it’s a wonder more companies aren’t examining their structure and asking, “Is this really working”?
For many, the answer is, it isn’t.
The traditional organizational structure of most for-profit companies – the one that involves a litany of org charts – is increasingly outdated. Companies with an overly matrixed or hierarchical structure are often unable to compete with the agility and flexibility afforded to organizations opting for a less traditional structure.
An alternative to a hierarchical model is one that embraces self-governance to some degree, meaning employees have greater control over their roles, and utilize models such as John Kotter’s Accelerate system. In a variety of instances, organizations that have shifted to this approach have seen a parallel rise in a variety of key performance indicators, such as higher levels of innovation, employee loyalty, and customer satisfaction. They’ve also experienced lower levels of misconduct and stronger overall financial performance. One recent example made popular by the New York Times is that of the Valve Corporation, a private computer software company of about 300 employees. Valve operates with a completely “boss-less” structure and an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion.
Ultimately, high-functioning organizations that take steps towards greater strategic agility and self-governance, and less hierarchy, can and do see increases in engagement, productivity, and profit.
So what can “super structures” gain from adopting a less controlled, more self-governing structure? And what are the aspects of the less traditional model that contribute to an organization’s success? In our reading, research and experiences, we suggest five areas in which less traditional models excel, and from which traditional organizations can really learn:
Realizing the business value of personal projects. Giving employees room to develop and pursue personal passion projects that are relevant to their employers’ business can and do lead to new and innovative products and ideas. The transition from skunk works project to sustainable product that drives business value is arguably more challenging when the idea emerges from deep within the organization. A more dynamic organizational structure ensures continual churn, and a clearer line of sight to ‘the surface’.
Shedding layers of rules. Put simply, the larger an organization gets, the more complex it becomes. Yet, an abundance of rules can make employees feel like they’re working for a bureaucratic taskmaster, not a revolutionary company. Fewer rules across the board – from hiring to submitting an expense report – will help to increase transparency, embed autonomy, and breed dexterity.
Hiring outside the box and celebrating individuality. Smaller, loosely-governed companies are often more open to hiring unconventional candidates that don’t fit the mold. In fact, many prefer candidates who are smart but unskilled, knowing that they have the capability to learn as they go and still be an asset to the organization. The high-functioning organization of the 21st Century is a continually learning entity. Hierarchical structures do not prohibit this, but they naturally invite siloed learning.
Understanding that failure might be an option. Maybe it’s because so many of today’s start-ups fail that there is a certain level of acceptance with this, but acceptance of failures lessens the burden to be perfect and ensures that employees aren’t afraid to innovate at the risk of not succeeding. Having a non-traditional organizational structure allows you to diversify risk, and tolerate failures in a way that avoids catastrophe for the whole.
Asking why and why not. Simon Sinek started with Why – to get to the heart of purpose, in a way that frames everything we each do. That is hugely powerful. If we align on the greater ‘why’ of the organization and of our roles, wouldn’t we naturally become more efficient as a result of that shared understanding and focus? Similarly, the ‘why not’ can be just as critical. If employees aren’t able to question the things that are happening around them, they can’t be the best organizational citizens. We suggest that this should include the very structure within which they find themselves working. For the health and future of the company, leaders should empower employees to question whether there are better/faster/safer/more effective ways of doing each and everything they face.
All of this sounds complex. And, it is. Not every company can embrace all of these tenets, and hierarchies are typically ill-suited to handle complexity unless employees are infallible, and typically that’s not the case.
Often the first step is a small one, like eliminating paper-laden approval processes. Wherever you begin, remember that those org chart-driven structures just don’t cut it anymore.
Thanks for listening,
AH, DT, and MPR
About the authors:
Alexandra Hughes: Alexandra Hughes, MPS, has a decade of experience in health communications, social marketing and behavioral science, advising government agencies, non-profits, and Fortune 100 companies on issues ranging from breast cancer and childhood obesity, to vaccine hesitancy and reproductive health. She provides counsel for some of Ogilvy Washington’s key clients, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Merck & Co., Inc. Alexandra holds a Master’s degree in Public Relations and Corporate Communications from Georgetown University.
Megha Pandit Rao: Megha is an organization development and human capital specialist with experience across financial and professional services, healthcare, hospitality, restaurant services, luxury brands, and nonprofit and government agencies. Her previous work included redeveloping an organization’s recruitment, selection, training, and performance management systems. Her current role with MSLGROUP involves creating targeted, engaging and effective internal communications that empower employees to be their best selves at work each day. Megha holds a Master’s degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from New York University.
Social learning
June 11, 2014
I’ve written a couple of posts exploring the tension individuals and organizations experience as they balance wanting/needing to innovate, with the tendency to, well, not. We looked at some factors that support this ‘laziness’ - both at the individual and organizational level.
I’ve also shared some of the recent research from the burgeoning field of ‘social physics’.
In today’s thrilling installment, I’ll rationalize how these two sets of observations sit together, and do they fit together I hear you burble? Well, yes, they do (I think).
Turns out that engagement (as defined by the social physics 'gang’) could be rationalised as the process through which an organization or individual is able to redistribute its energy from the ‘explore’ dimension (inclusive of the desired pattern of new behaviours), and use it to change their current state of behaviours (their pattern of exploitation, if you will). I’ve tried to draw this below.
You. Are. Welcome.
This takes place through social learning and the accommodation of alternate patterns of being. Without this, one imagines the adoption of new behaviours becomes unsustainable; the context you are changing within won’t tolerate your shenanigans and you’ll be unable to realise your new mode of being. This insight has plenty of implications in lots of different fields, and something I’m sure we’ll elaborate on in future posts.
What’s this all got to do with Lunch Roulette, I hear you grunt? That dear reader I’ll leave for another post.
Thanks for listening,
DT
House Hunters, Curiosity, … and the Future of Work?
January 16, 2015
Fine. I admit it. I really like the HGTV ‘reality show’ House Hunters. Whatever. Judge me all you will.
I. Don’t. Care.
Let’s be honest, you probably don’t care either, except it’s the unfortunate backdrop to this week’s post.
One of the reasons something like Lunch Roulette appeals to me is because I’m curious. I get to meet random people, chat with them and, inevitably something of mutual interest will come up. I’ve discovered this is helped along, immeasurably, by actively listening, and then thinking about how what the person has told me ‘sits’ with the things I am interested in and looking to more fully explore.
I reckon being curious is a good part of being engaged just generally but that’s quite a bold conjecture that I haven’t formally explored. Hey ho, I am getting off topic.
So, I hear you squeak, how do these two themes of reality place-based television and curiosity collide?
Well … I was watching, um, House Hunters recently, a riveting episode set in St. Louis. When, in one of the montage scenes, I saw the House Hunter working on a manuscript entitled ‘Virtual Work’. Just a quick snippet, but enough to pique my interest.
As someone who is interested in ‘The Future of Work’ (as ridiculous as that sounds), I found this person online, including their CV, and began poking through their academic work. This included really interesting gems such as ‘A Taxonomy of Virtual Work’ and ‘The gamification of work’. How exciting, and an unexpected intelectually enriching consequence of my reality TV indulgence.
So, really, I guess it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, whether it’s Lunch Roulette or House Hunters - engaging in it with your Eyes Wide Open, and Your Brain Turned On, is going to stand you in good stead.
Thanks for listening,
DT
Tell him about the twinkie
February 6, 2015
There’s always room on a Friday for Ghostbusters quotes. Am I right?
Never mind. Don’t answer that.
For those of you that remember, ‘the twinkie’ referred to above, was being used to describe the magnitude of the paranormal problem the Ghostbusters were about to find themselves in. It was a sugary prop for a discussion about measurement.
Which is exactly this week’s topic.
As you, my frequent reader knows, we’re all about curating conditions to enrich for the the likelihood of serendipitous outcomes. That’s really what Lunch Roulette-like services are all about.
While fingers-crossed and hoping is a good start, we should strive for measurement in this which, as I’ve previously mentioned, is hard.
Earlier this week I revisited this topic and began to noodle the following. I’m offering this more of a hypothesis at the moment, but I think we’re onto something.
What if emergent organizational properties (e.g. culture, innovation, engagement) require a method of measurement that is as emergent as the property that is being measured? For some recent thoughts on emergence, have a look at this post.
What might this mean? Well, for one, it would provide a rationale behind why we don’t currently do it. It might be as expensive (both from a time and resource perspective) as setting and preserving the conditions to enable the emergence in the first place.
What might such an emergent measurement scheme look like? I’d imagine, some sort of oral history and evaluation. As my friend (Alexa Beavers) has suggested, something like the Most Significant Change might be appropriate. This methodology is used within the social sector to measure impact - itself a higher order/emergent property of an intervention.
Gosh, we’ve come quite a long way from that twinkie, eh?
Thanks for listening,
DT
The other half of Working out Loud: Eyes Wide Open, Brain Switched On
February 18, 2015
In the Epilogue of Noreena Hertz’s wonderful book ‘Eyes Wide Open’, she exhorts us to keep our ‘eyes wide open and our brains switched on’.
Prof. Hertz’s book is all about navigating complexity and making decisions with incomplete information. Her advice, admittedly obvious, is quickly ignored - so her reminder (any reminder really) is a good one. I also think it’s an important piece of ‘the puzzle’ we’re exploring here, so is the focus of my post this week.
But first, let me introduce the concept of ‘Working Out Loud’ (WOL). Coined by Bryce Williams in 2010, WOL is the narration of observable work using social channels (typically digital in nature). The concept has been driven by John Stepper, with John leading the way in showing folks how to do this.
The Working Out Loud concept made it onto a list yesterday, authored by Dion Hinchcliffe, wherein Mr. Hinchcliffe described ‘The required skills for today’s digital workforce’. As Mr. Hinchcliffe describes it: “Working out loud allows one to let the network do the work and breaks down the silos that have rebuilt up with virtual workplaces and today’s far-flung multinational teams.”
Jolly good.
But, only half of the puzzle.
Let’s take the concept of ‘Working Out Loud’ to it’s limit. What happens when everyone’s doing it? All ‘work’ happening within an organization would be captured, on a fully searchable and persistent platform. That is probably a good thing, of course, but to be sure it’s the easier side of the equation. The harder question, is Now What … ?
To continue the Ghostbusters theme … Come Here Francine.
A couple of months back, I made the following observation:
“Through a combination of thoughtful physical space planning coupled with elements of rich mobile, network, and sensor data we can engineer the randomness of human interaction, in the hope of enriching for serendipitous outcomes. Such outcomes will be driven by engaged actors contextualizing previously unknown but knowable information/data/knowledge.”
See what crept in there: ‘ … engaged actors contextualizing previously unknown but knowable information/data/knowledge.’
If you don’t have curious people, ‘engaged actors’, looking to solve problems to benefit their organization, having all the data, in one place, and searchable, isn’t going to get you where you need to go.
Working Out Loud is an important piece of the puzzle - but having people in an organization looking to explore what you’re curating, in their context, in the service of ‘the mission’ is the missing piece for me.
The biggest omission on that list? Curiosity. An Essential Workplace Skill.
Thanks for listening,
DT