Shake Hands All the Way to Beijing

I just received this from Avaaz.org:

Dear friends,

The Dalai Lama's Olympic handshake is circling the world, headed for Beijing. Click here to see more and join the call for dialogue!

As the Beijing Olympics begin, the world looks on with mixed emotions. It's a moment which should bring us closer together, and Chinese citizens deserve their excitement -- but the Chinese government still hasn't opened meaningful dialogue with the Dalai Lama, or changed its stance on Burma, Darfur and other pressing issues.

Even worse, extremists in China are promoting the view that Olympic activism like ours is anti-Chinese. We can't stay silent, but we also can't let our efforts be abused to divide people. So what can we do? The answer comes from the Dalai Lama himself, in an unambiguous gesture of Olympic spirit and friendship: a handshake.

It began in London, passed hand to hand by thousands of us -- now the handshake has gone online, and is criss-crossing the globe on its way to Beijing. All of us can join, Chinese and non-Chinese, and it comes with a promise: to hold ALL our governments accountable where they fall short, in Tibet, Iraq, Burma or beyond. We'll deliver our message in a bold media campaign in Hong Kong and around the world: Click below to see how the Olympic handshake started, sign up to join in, and watch it circle the globe --

http://www.avaaz.org/en/handshake

The worldwide outcry has produced a little progress, but much resistance from Chinese officials so far. If we are to see advances not setbacks after the Games, we need to show both that our voices will never fall silent, and that our challenge is a positive one.

We have one last chance to reclaim the spirit of the Olympics, with the message of friendship and dialogue we share with the Dalai Lama. The more people join the global handshake, the more powerful our message will be when it hits the Chinese and international media. So let's forward this email on, encouraging everyone to join in. "One World, One Dream" is an ideal that's bigger than the Olympics -- it's time for citizens around the world to take it back.

With hope and respect,

Paul, Ricken, Ben, Milena, Graziela, Iain, Pascal, Veronique and the whole Avaaz team

PS For a report on Avaaz's campaigning so far, see:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/report_back_2

In a representative survey of us from all over the world, 92% of respondents recommended we pursue this handshake instead of the often-suggested boycott -- there's a strong consensus that this is the way to get our message across right now.

For more about the Dalai Lama's support for the Olympics and positions on Tibet and China, see:
http://www.dalailama.com/news.229.htm
and:
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2008/05/chinese-student-interviewing-the-dalai-lama/

---------

ABOUT AVAAZ
Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Paris, Washington DC, and Geneva.

[Technorati tags: beijing | olympics | china | dalai lama | tibet]

Shake the Dance, and Exhilaration

I indulged myself today by participating in a creative writing workshop facilitated by my friend, Chris Kay Fraser. She's a great facilitator, and a terrific writing coach. As I'm planning to do something creative and out of the ordinary in the actual writing of the thesis, I thought I'd invest a few hours and play. Throughout the session, she offered us prompts to engage in free-writing exercises that allowed us to "turn off our brains" and engage with the affective parts of our beings, and just write. Having spent the past four years in this particular environment, it's been a while since I've given myself permission to connect with a flow of consciousness. I'll share two of what flowed from today's session:

Shake the Dance
Shake the dance of joy and disturbance away from my complacency.
Shake the dance down to the root of being and up to the sky of existence.
Shake the dance of the world and bring joyous sunlight to all who desire enlightenment and lightening of spirit.
Shake the dance and bring a righteous noise to the deaf and a rousing sound to the voiceless.
Shake the dance for the leaden and jump them to the hilltops amidst the frolicking of children.
Shake the dance of the downtrodden and give them wings to free their spirits.
Shake the dance of the spirits who first inhabited our souls and gave us unity.
Shake the dance for everyone, and for everything, and for everywhere, and for all time.


Exhilaration
There's nothing like the exhilaration of an audience's energy when I've got them. When I can throw an idea out to them, and they catch it, and hold tight as the idea's wings burst forth and soar to the top of the room.
People hold onto whatever part of the idea's back, or claws, or wings, or beak, or head, or even a single feather that they can.
And they soar together, the people and the idea. They soar high above their chairs, high above the floor of the room, and the stage on which I stand, and high above those left below, unable or unwilling to grasp the soaring idea.
Those above look down to where they once were rooted with minds filled with the weighty clay of convention. They look down with wonderment, and marvel at how much closer to the source of light and understanding they have come on the wings of a soaring idea.
And I am there, at the front of the room, looking up at them and smiling with the exhilaration of knowing that I have launched them skyward, to fly wherever the idea may take them.

[Technorati tags: inspiration | poetry | chris kay fraser]

The Department of Give-a-Damn

I had a conversation recently with one of my research participants. This person works for a relatively BAH organization where each person’s role is well-defined within the context of well-defined departments in well-defined divisions, all serving to further the vision, mission, and objectives of the organization, not the least of which is to make money for the shareholders. All in all, a pretty conventional, modern, business corporation. The problem for “Leslie” (a deliberately non-gender specific pseudonym that corresponds neither to the person’s real name, nor the person’s pseudonym in my research) is that Leslie’s role is not so well-defined. Don’t get me wrong: Leslie has specific job responsibilities. And, Leslie is among the top performers in the organization. But Leslie’s major contribution to the organization, one for which Leslie has been considerably recognized and rewarded, has been to Give-a-Damn.

Now, it seems to be endemic among employees of large organizations to not give a damn about anything that isn’t directly related to their job responsibilities (read: performance review and compensation). Often, as I’ve found in my research, that not-giving-a-damn is nicely expressed in terms that model the “transactional workflow” model that characterizes bureaucratic hierarchies: one department receives work from a “supplier” department, performs whatever process is appropriate, and passes the finished good or service to the next functional department in line. And that's the end of that. The individuals have no specific knowledge of what happens to their particular unit of work, or how it contributes (if at all) to the overall success of the organization. Nor do they... well.... give a damn about it. As another person so succinctly put it, “we are paid for what we are working on right now.” But this, in and of itself is not necessarily problematic. Assuming the organization’s objectives are well-defined, and the organization itself has had the appropriate functional decomposition, scope of control, and alignment of departmental objectives exercises performed, the entire thing should work like a well-oiled machine.

Sometimes, however, contemporary organizations operate like a machine whose oil needs changing. That’s where people who Give-a-Damn come in. They make connections among people who need to know about what each is doing, but don’t. You see, some folks don’t know what other folks are doing because the BAH design of the organization means they can’t know what the other is doing. Since there was no preconceived requirement for that particular flow of information, there is no information flow among those that should know - need to know - but don't. But, because Leslie Gives-a-Damn, and more importantly, understands the effects that the organization intends to have in its market among its (external) customers and suppliers, and also understands the internal dynamics of the organization itself, Leslie is able to make the necessary new connections among diverse individuals and departments, pretty much each and every day. And the machine continues to run, as if it were well oiled.

There should be a Leslie in every division. Someone whose job it is to Give-a-Damn. In fact, there could be a matrix management structure, with all the Give-a-Damners reporting up into a Give-a-Damn reporting structure. To parallel the reward-according-to-status hierarchy system for setting and measuring performance objectives and such, organizations can construct progressive levels that represent relative achievement, credentials, and business requirements for Giving-a-Damn: Associate Give-a-Damn, Junior Give-a-Damn, Give-a-Damn, Senior Give-a-Damn, Advisory Give-a-Damn, Vice-President Give-a-Damn, Executive Vice-President Give-a-Damn. It might even become a de facto requirement for the future Chief Operating Officer, President, or Chairperson to have experience Giving-a-Damn sometime in their career...

Or not. It seems to me that Giving-a-Damn is an emergent effect of individuals having a strong, reciprocal Socio-Psychological valence connection to the organization. Smaller organizational units within the larger organization that have similarly strong and reciprocal SP-valences can equally Give-a-Damn. If you care about your organization, and your organization demonstrably cares about you, then you’re likely to Give-a-Damn, much like Leslie does. In fact, much of Leslie’s own Identity valence is constructed along the lines of Giving-a-Damn.

By the way, want to know why Leslie called me today? Over the past number of months, both Leslie’s direct manager, and the organization as a whole have been sending signals that they don’t Give-a-Damn very much about Leslie, and others in Leslie's organizational milieu. It's not that they don't like Leslie, or don't appreciate what Leslie does (as demonstrated by the pretty good salary bump Leslie received at the last review). It's more like organizational apathy towards the people, and maintaining a tight focus on bringing in those results for stockholders - just the type of negative SP-valence energy that causes a person to question why it is that they work So Damn Hard. So how much longer do you think Leslie will Give-a-Damn, and effectively contribute to oiling what is a rather squeaky machine?

[Technorati tags: give a damn | organizational effectiveness | organizational behavior]

When Bureaucracies Fail

Recently, I suggested that bureaucracies and collaboration are mutually exclusive because of the basic premise upon which bureaucracy is built:

Bureaucracy, theoretically, is built on the assumption that it represents the ideal flow of information through a structure that is specifically engineered for competence, rationality, objectivity, and legitimacy – the right information being provided by the right people to the right place at the right time. Any given person, simply by virtue of occupying their office (by which I mean their legitimized role, function, station, or location) in a bureaucracy is socialized to believe that if they have sufficient information such that no gaps are apparent, then they necessarily have complete information upon which to act.

And when they don't have complete information, but think they do, what we have is the clichéd failure to communicate. A case in point has just occurred right here in the City of Toronto, where it is no surprise, I suppose, that today's Star reports:

It's a classic case of the city's right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. Toronto hotelier George Friedmann is locked in a legal dispute with Toronto's real estate department over rent arrears on the city-owned St. Patrick Market on Queen St. W., near John St. At the same time, the city's Exhibition Place has given Friedmann and another caterer a multi-million-dollar contract to provide services at the Allstream conference centre that's to open next year in the former Automotive Building.

It begs the question [Side rant: No, it doesn't beg the question. I wish people, and especially reporters and editors, would get this right!] : Shouldn't somebody check if a company has other dealings with the city, particularly if there's a dispute? Apparently not. And lack of interdepartmental communication is nothing new.

Accurate and timely information flow works perfectly in a bureaucracy if and only if all instances of required information are anticipated beforehand, together with their respective requirements for information confluence in time and place. This, of course, is all but impossible, especially in a complex and complicated organization like a big city. Let's face it: when information bureaucracies were all the rage - say, about two hundred years ago, process and procedure things were a little more straight-forward. But even when bureaucratic management was effectively codified into the 20th century management lexicon by Max Weber, it remained problematic, especially in large organizations.

As regular readers might guess, I'm moved to wonder how a Valence Theory conception might possibly address this short-coming, even in an organization that chooses to remain solidly rooted in BAH-ness. After all, I am suggesting that Valence Theory of Organization can account for both BAH and UCaPP organizations, providing a wider range of guidance and options for decision-making in all types of organizations.

In this case of Right Hand v. Left Hand in the Matter of City Real Estate, the approach of the purposeful organization is to accomplish the objective of ensuring that, "we should know when somebody is not up to date with the city. These types of things should be co-ordinated," according the Councillor Mike Del Grande. In a Valence Theory conception of organization, the important information would have to do with the nature and strengths of the various relationship connections that exist - Economic, Socio-Psychological (which I'm considering changing to affective), Identity, Knowledge, and Ecological - among the organization's members. By focusing on the natures of the relationships among particular members of the valence organization, rather than on attempting to anticipate all possible procedural missteps in accordance with the principle of minimizing human judgement, there may be a better opportunity to catch such operational faux pas.

I am not an information architect, so it's not my place to propose a data structure that could appropriately accommodate the richness of mapping valence relationships in complex organizations. Perhaps David Weinberger's assertion that Everything is Miscellaneous, or Derrick de Kerckhove's contention that we are in the Era of the Tag, can provide guidance to those who would put some of these ideas into operation. Nonetheless, it is incidents such as this one in Toronto that demonstrate that we are at the limits of bureaucracy's effectiveness, even as its underlying assumptions are repeatedly challenged.

[Technorati tags: bureaucracy | toronto | decision making | effectiveness]

It's Not the Spanking Per Se - It's Identity Valence at Work

I feel for Prof. Colin Wightman of Acadia University. He was terminated from his position for

us[ing] his work-issued laptop to engage in “highly inappropriate communications of a sexual nature,” and that “the conduct giving rise to [the police's] ongoing investigation is utterly incompatible with the purpose, principles and operating imperatives of Acadia University.”

Prof. Wightman allegedly engaged in "a “consensual one-time fantasy encounter” involving bondage and a woman he met on an Internet dating site." Apparently the RCMP were called to investigate an allegation of sexual assault, but no charges were laid. Because of the investigation, he informed his employer, who "referred to a section of the university's code of conduct that states employees shall not “engage in community or personal activities in which there could be a conflict with the best interest of the university.”" The firing is now the subject of a wrongful dismissal lawsuit

The obvious response, that what an individual does on their own time is none of their employer's business may be valid, but perhaps no longer consistent with today's world. A report filed by the Canadian Association of University Teachers notes, "the termination of any employee who is innocent of criminal behaviour, but of whose personal beliefs and behaviours the administration might disapprove, is an extraordinary breach of employer-employee relations." The Association's opinion is founded in an Industrial Age conception of organization, in which one's work is quite apart from one's private life. A person is paid for what they do, what they produce, the time they spend on a task, or for an exchange of commodities - goods, services, or combinations thereof. The employer's control of an employee's activities and behaviours extends to the limit of that economic exchange agreement, and no further. Today, employers try to exert behavioural control through the use of employer-provided tools, including computers and network access, even when employer-time is not an issue. Many people, including me, find extending behavioural control beyond the confines of the workplace, and work hours, to be, at the very least, inappropriate, and highly problematic. My private life is... well... private! And certainly none of my employer's business - in both senses of that phrase.

This behaviour on the part of employers is only indirectly explained using a conventional conception of the purposeful organization - that is, the idea that an organization exists to accomplish something among a group of people. If the individual in question performs their duties appropriately, and does nothing inappropriate on the job, the organization's purpose is fulfilled. Pushing the limits of this idea a bit, organizations justify extending their behavioural control beyond the workplace by putting forward the theory that outside-the-workplace behaviours in certain circumstances reduce the individual's effectiveness inside-the-workplace, or reduce the effectiveness of the organization's marketing efforts, or create an ineffective, inconsistent or unsafe workplace environment. In my opinion, this argument is specious at best in most instances.

Most often, the organization falls back to a position of "but this will make us look bad," or variations thereof. Whether that argument is valid with respect to employment law in an instance such as that of Prof. Wightman is a separate matter - and now a matter for the court to decide. What it does demonstrate is the action of Identity Valence: that an individual constructs their identity partly on the basis of their associations with organizations in which they are members, and an organization constructs its identity partly on the basis of its individual and collective associations with its members (be they individuals or other organizations).

Acadia University's self-construction of identity does not, I presume, include (consensual) bondage, enactment of sexual fantasies, and spanking. (For that, you have to go elsewhere.) This limitation on the nature of Acadia's Identity valence relationship with its members creates some obvious and problematic tensions with respect to both the boundaries of employment law, and the rest of the individual's life. (This is in Canada; in most American states, individuals are employed "at will," which means wrongful dismissal is a foreign concept in most U.S. locales.)

I'm not saying that I agree with Acadia's decision in the matter of Professor Wightman; I don't. But I certainly understand the university's action based on a Valence Theory reading of the case. I would suggest that a useful answer to such cases comes from examining the interactions between Identity valence, and the other valences with respect to, for example, kinky behaviour in a private, off-campus, place. If the behaviours do not impinge on the connections between Identity and Economic, Knowledge, Socio-Psychological, and Ecological valences, no employment action should be taken. Otherwise, the organization may well be within its rights to terminate employment. It becomes a far more challenging and subtle case to adjudicate, but certainly this approach is more consistent with living in a UCaPP world.

One more aspect to note here: As I suggested in an earlier post, the more bureaucratic an organization is, the fewer interactions there are among the valences. Terminating an employee for violating the Identity valence relationship without examining the implications with respect to interactions among the other valences may do the organization more reputation damage than not. Specifically, it would be a sure sign of bureaucratic lack of thinking and judgement on the part of an employer, in this case, Acadia University. And tell me, would you want to go to, or send your daughter or son to, a university that prides itself on lack of thinking and judgement?

[Technorati tags: colin wightman | acadia university | wrongful dismissal]

Me for President?!

Must be some sort of write-in ballot...



...or, could it be some sort of viral marketing thing from the Ha! Ha! Made ya look! School of Marketing. Although this sort of thing scores high on the consumer-identifies-with-the-ad scale (Hey! Tha's ma name! And I'm on somethin' tha' looks lahk tee vee!), I think it misses the mark (no pun intended) when it comes to truly creating an identity connection between potential customer and the organization. For those who still believe that eyeballs and buzz sell product, tell me (without the help of Google) what brand was connected with the (in)famous Bridezilla wig-out hoax?

[Technorati tags: viral marketing | me for president]

Tasteless Satire? I Would Say the Opposite: Spicy and Bitter!

Both defenders and detractors of the New Yorker's Obamas-as-Terrorists satirical cover cartoon, The Politics of Fear, miss their respective points. It is true what critics of the cartoon say, that the cover art is tasteless and offensive. But it's supposed to be tasteless and offensive! Just ask Northrop Frye:

“Two things, then, are essential to satire; one is wit or humour founded on fantasy or a sense of the grotesque or absurd, the other is an object of attack” (p. 224). Irony itself is the “humor founded on … a sense of the grotesque or absurd,” as Frye describes. Irony is the delivery vehicle; it is the attack that transforms irony into satire. As Frye observes, “The chief distinction between irony and satire is that satire is militant irony” (p. 223). [Quotations from Frye, N. (1957). The Anatomy of Criticism: Four essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.]

Militant irony - I like that. Sort of fits with the subject matter. The key to understanding the problematics with the cover is to understand who, or what, is the target of that militant irony according to who views the cover.

There are many in the U.S. (and elsewhere) who are literalists. They often appear on the right of the political spectrum. They do not understand the nature of either irony or satire - they are the say-what-you-mean-and-mean-what-you-say, plain talkin' folks that largely voted for GWB in the first (and second) place. Many of these people, who have already expressed their distrust of Barack Obama, will only see the cover, and not read - let alone understand - the accompanying article on "politics of fear."

As it stands, depending on which poll you read, somewhere in the vicinity of one-third to nearly one-half of Americans polled in fact believe that Barack Obama is (or was) Muslim (he isn't and wasn't), and/or cavorts with terrorists (he doesn't). For them, the satirical nature of the cartoon will be missed, and their politics-of-fear beliefs are confirmed and reinforced. They will not perceive, nor be able to comprehend, that it is their own beliefs that are being satirized through, in Frye's words, "wit or humour founded on fantasy or a sense of the grotesque or absurd."

But in thinking about it, humour founded on fantasy, the grotesque and the absurd sort of describes American politics these days, doesn't it?

[Technorati tags: barack obama | new yorker | cartoon | satire]

On Exciting Customers, and Forging Relationships

So I'm finished with transcribing the first round of interviews (yielding about 400 pages of transcripts) among eighteen participants from five organizations. I'd doing a read-through of the conversations to help set the stage for the second round of interviews that more directly probe the context of relationships in organization. In that context, there is the idea that, unlike functionally-defined organizations, both customers and employees are equivalent members of the valence-defined organization. Here's how one of my participants put it, describing his idea of how his customers perceive his organization:

We believe the currency of our business is relationships, so I think that those people who reached out to us, there is … a sense that there are real people behind a real product, [who] are excited about what they’re doing, and that’s infectious.

So the question for the more conventionally self-conceived organizations is, are they as institutionally concerned about how excited their customers are, or do they just care that they continue to spend money?

I would say that in a valence-conceived organization, being institutionally concerned about customer excitement would ideally transcend the marketing function, pervading and being manifest in all aspects of the business. In a functionally conceived organization, on the other hand, customer excitement is a marketing responsibility. Regardless, organizationally pervasive concern for customer excitement would certainly be characteristic of a more-UCaPP, as opposed to more-BAH, organization.

[Technorati tags: customer | marketing | relationship | excitement]

Why Bureaucracy and Collaboration are Mutually Exclusive

“I think [collaboration] is a very misunderstood way of working. That if anyone were to look at that as a vernacular shift from teamwork, it’s completely different from teamwork.”

So says Loreen Babcock, the CEO of Unit 7, and one of my research participants. There may be teamwork, or multiple contributors to a project, in a bureaucratic organization, but not true collaboration. True collaboration involves admitting that there are aspects of the situation that you don’t know that you don’t know; that non-obvious others can make a contribution in unanticipated ways; and that you are willing to reveal what otherwise might be considered a lack of competence in a public forum through the act of reaching out. Teamwork, on the other hand, is based on the assumption that information in a bureaucracy is fragmented among its component roles, and that the way to ensure complete information is to identify and bring together the necessary components.

Bureaucracy, theoretically, is built on the assumption that it represents the ideal flow of information through a structure that is specifically engineered for competence, rationality, objectivity, and legitimacy – the right information being provided by the right people to the right place at the right time. Any given person, simply by virtue of occupying their office (by which I mean their legitimized role, function, station, or location) in a bureaucracy is socialized to believe that if they have sufficient information such that no gaps are apparent, then they necessarily have complete information upon which to act. Moreover, admitting insufficient information in the absence of obvious gaps (which, de facto, occurs in the act of collaboration – seeking out what you don’t know that you don’t know from those who are not necessarily part of the pre-determined procedure) is an admission of either one’s own incompetence in their bureaucratic office, or a failing on the part of the system. Neither of these can be admitted or tolerated openly for fear of the adverse, personal consequences, namely, that the occupant of the office is incompetent, irrational, or not acting objectively in their assessments. In either situation of the incompetent office-holder, or the incompetent office, the true bureaucratic system will protect itself by eliminating the troublesome or flawed component element, and replacing it with a functionally equivalent component.

So how does this explain the difference between collaboration and teamwork, and what is the connection to Valence Theory and my earlier post on the nature of bureaucracy? Simply this: Teamwork in the context of bureaucracy is grounded in what some might call the flow of information, and that I would identify as the Knowledge valence – information, expertise, skills, experience (and secondarily in the Economic valence, indicated by the issues surrounding the transactional nature of teamwork, e.g., the so-called free-rider problem). True collaboration brings more balanced aspects among all five of the valence relationships, and is better able to enact Effective Theory of Action, that is, the ability to anticipate, perceive and act on the intended effects of the decisions we make, and the actions we take.

[Technorati tags: teamwork | collaboration | bureaucracy | valence theory | effective theory]

Visualizing the Proposal

A word cloud of my proposal for A Valence Theory of Organization, courtesy of Wordle (click the image for a larger view):


(Thanks, Leigh!)

[Technorati tags: wordle | word cloud]

An Open Letter to Toronto City Councillor Joe Mihevc

Dear Joe,

As you know, I have not been a supporter of the St. Clair Right of Way, and especially not of the process or analysis that was used to justify it. In fact, both came out of a very cynical type of agenda-based politics that foment citizen apathy and disregard for those, like you, who have chosen public service. It is a sad and unfair situation when the collective actions of politicians that result in many members of the public feeling that their elected representatives are simply not hearing legitimate concerns, result in all council members being tarred with the same elitist, and anti-democratic brush.

I am writing to you today to ask you to lower your shield of objection- handling, and blind support of the Mayor's transit plan for the city, to honestly consider a matter important to public safety, and the specific security of those of us who are residents along the St. Clair Right of Way corridor. As has been reported in the press over the past few days, and as Royson James of the Star points out in today's column, the concerns raised by the District Fire Chief must be seriously considered in a non-partisan way by City Council. The fact that the absolute measurements of the clearances along the RoW suggest that fire vehicles can possibly squeeze by the obstructions that the RoW design introduces does not instill confidence. In fact, quite the opposite is the case: the clear political manipulation that is occurring creates a chill of fear, both in the residents whose lives and property will now be at increased risk, and those among the public service who risk speaking out against partisan political interests.

How many lives must be lost before remedial action - at much greater expense to the taxpayers - would be taken? How much property must be damaged, including both private property lost in fires because of slower response, and public property caused by equipment collisions along the RoW as indicated by the District Chief? And, how much more risk will be created because of the tight clearances during the winter months, when snowfall creates additional blockages? Is the City ready for the inevitable negligence lawsuits that will arise from the first tragedy to occur, now that it has been warned of the danger?

And finally, how much lower will the public regard for its elected officials sink because the legitimate concerns of citizens among a variety of poorly conceived issues are systematically ignored and sloughed off? The Right of Way was one such issue. The new recycling and garbage bin plan that seriously inconveniences and discriminates against women, the elderly, the disabled, and many of those that live in the city core, is another.

I urge you to realize that these safety concerns are not proxies for yea or nay votes for the Right of Way itself. These are concerns that have been legitimately expressed in the public forum by someone with specific knowledge and the courage to speak out. Please support having the design sent back for correction now, in order to save lives later.

Regards,
Mark Federman

[Technorati tags: joe mihevc | st. clair | right of way]

Valence Marketing at Unit 7

One of the consequences of framing a company as a valence organization is the realization that employees and customers are equivalent. Several of my participant organizations have recounted how the stark difference between the ways in which they regarded and treated their employees, and how they regarded and treated their customers led to their respective cultural transformations. But what does it mean to perform marketing from a valence-organization perspective?

Unit 7, one of my participant organizations (which has given me permission to disclose their identity), provides an object lesson in valence marketing. As reported in a recent article on BrandWeek.com, 39 members of the 100-person Unit 7 organization decided to immerse themselves as their target consumers to learn more about living as recently diagnosed, Type 2 diabetics.

Most are perfectly healthy people. Yet they’ve subjected themselves to a unique, pioneering experiment. For 14 weeks, the members of this group assumed the roles of patients newly diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. They hit the gym religiously; they watched enviously as their friends ate candy bars that they could not; and they picked up a blade and forced blood from their fingers.

The aim of this experiment wasn’t to show how far medical science has come. Instead, it demonstrated how far the study of marketing has come. The members of the group are all employees of a relationship-marketing agency called Unit 7, and it is attempting to be at the forefront of what can be best described as “empathetic marketing.” In the past, marketers relied on focus groups of diabetics whom they interviewed in an attempt to guess what living with the disease was like. Since launching the program, however, some of the guesswork has been factored out; nearly half of Unit 7’s staff now has a much clearer idea of what living with diabetes is like.

This expertise is valuable to the health-related companies that Unit 7 counts among its client pool, corporations such as Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis and Bristol-Meyers Squibb (which is currently developing new diabetes drugs with AstraZeneca). Unit 7’s leadership believed the value of this experiment went beyond what it could learn about diabetes alone; the sort of deprivations to which the firm’s marketers subjected themselves were a window into the world of any consumer forced to make health-related lifestyle changes.

Conventionally, gaining this type of knowledge is part of ethnography - living and participating as one of the community that a researcher is investigating. By itself, this is a relatively known form of research, something that Unit 7's "me-too" competitors are anxious to point out. But despite some of their sour grapes responses reported in the article, Unit 7 is onto something: Their remarkably collaborative culture is beginning to extend out beyond the walls of their agency, in true valence fashion. Unlike other marketing organizations that would consider this experiment as merely a research exercise, Unit 7's collaborative context sets the stage for this experience to be an authentic valence connection that strengthens the flux, or tactile intensity, among the companies and consumers that now comprise Unit 7's total valence-organization environment.

Congratulations to Loreen Babcock, and the other 38 members who participated in the B-Roll Inquiry.

Update (25 June 2008): Charles Green, who writes on matters of trust in business, provides his take on the B-Roll Inquiry, and why the naysayers have (cynically, in my view) missed the point.

[Technorati tags: marketing | ethnography | unit 7 | loreen babcock]

And Speaking About Placeholders...

This post is a placeholder post, for yet another placeholder word replacement that I need to come up with. What is a good word (that could be derived from any language) that means the strength of one's multi-faceted valence connection to an organization? As I'm writing this, and keeping with the science metaphor of valence theory, I'm thinking flux, or valence flux.

How does that work for you?

[Technorati tags: organization | valence theory | valence flux]

What is the Question to Which Hierarchy is the Answer?

In a pseudo-non-hierarchical organization, one of the most frequently asked questions is, who’s in charge? Who’s providing the leadership? Who decides what gets done first? Okay, so that’s three variations on the same theme: Who’s on top? The answer is often expressed in hierarchical terms, where the hierarchy in some pseudo-non-hierarchical cases reflects the hierarchy of knowledge, rather than the more conventional economic, or status and class hierarchies. But, perhaps the best answer emerges from my aphorism that, when no one is in charge, everyone is in charge. I observed this in my own department a while ago. Although it may be counter-intuitive, it is consistent with the emergent nature of a UCaPP-oriented, valence organization. I am finding evidence of such interesting, counter-intuitive behaviours among a couple of my participant organizations, one of which reports that when you have a more-UCaPP culture overall, bureaucratic inefficiencies (like strict procedures, protocols, and navigating administrative minefields) can be eliminated without incurring a higher risk of adverse consequences. Indeed, they find it a far more effective way of getting things done.

The secret to all of this, and something that seems to be characteristically inherent in a UCaPP culture, is a shared [something]. I’m using the placeholder [something] because I haven’t yet found the right word. It’s more than vision (since vision is the wrong sense metaphor in a UCaPP world). It’s not merely the tactility, because shared [something] incorporates worldview, imagined future, collective motivation, and collaboratively constructed group – or organization – identity. It’s not necessarily manifest in shared objectives or goals, since these are, in my view, emergent, contingent, and continually in flux. It is [something] that sustains the organization as a whole, and provides the psycho-social energy necessary for the truly organic, valence organization to maintain homeostasis in a complex world.

But to the point, the shared [something] enables emergent leadership of the organization as an entity, without the necessity of any one person (or sub-organization) being dominantly directive. How well can this possibly work? Well, in a specific instance of an organization form more conventionally known as a European city – Bohmte, Germany to be specific - they have applied this principle to the problem of traffic. As reported by Der Spiegel (in translation):

Saturday, Bohmte of Lower Saxony is official[ly] with Osnabrück, the first German municipality without traffic signs in the [city-]center. … Bohmte had taken part as one of seven municipalities from five European Union member states in the European Union project, “Shared space”, with which all road users used the street space equally. The citizens celebrated the day with a road celebration. The renouncement of traffic signs, traffic lights, Fußgängerinseln and other barriers creates mutual consideration between the drivers, cyclists and pedestrians and increases security in the traffic, said [European Union parliament president Hans Gert] Pöttering. “Consideration, indulgence and caution in handling are with one another particularly in the traffic indispensable.” The project is however not only an indication of intelligent and courageous traffic policy, but also good European co-operation. … Minister Stefan Schwegmann was pleased, which had Bohmte now a central place. “Shared space is not only a traffic concept, but it has something to do with lives, meeting and communication.”

Well said, Minister Schwegmann! By giving up the presumed need to control, and focusing more on living, meeting (especially of minds), and truly communicating, the questions for which bureaucracy, administrative control, and hierarchy and are the answers may lend themselves to far more interesting approaches.
(Thanks, David!)

[Technorati tags: hierarchy | control | bah | ucapp | bohmte | management | leadership]

Requiescat in Pace: George Carlin, 1937-2008

Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker and Tits. And none of them are as obscene as "died of heart failure Sunday. He was 71." As a testimonial to his keen observation of humanity's hypocrisies, and the loss of one of our greatest comedians, here is his classic, Seven Dirty Words:



[Technorati tags: george carlin | seven dirty words]

Thunderstruck!

In the midst of conducting research conversations with my government participant organization, I was hit with this inspiration:

Bureaucracy seems to ossify an organization by interfering with the complex interactions among valence relationships.

It may be that the relative location of an organization along the spectrum from BAH to UCaPP is determined by the degree to which valence relationships are able to interact with each other in complex ways within individuals, and how that complexity is expressed via the valence connections among the people.

Does this make sense to anyone out there?

[Technorati tags: bureaucracy | hierarchy | organization | bah | ucapp | valence relationships]

How to Sabotage an Organization

Via David Weinberger, from a declassified CIA manual on Simple Sabotage, circa 1944, to create general interference with organizations:

1. Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
2. Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of per­sonal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic” comments.
3. When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and considera­tion.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.
4. Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
5. Haggle over precise wordings of com­munications, minutes, resolutions.
6. Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
7. Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reason­able” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
8. Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the juris­diction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

It is amazing to me how much this resembles what has been reported in a few of my research interviews!

[Technorati tags: organization dysfunction | bureaucracy | administration | hierarchy]

State Religion

Here are the two (presumptive) candidates for US President on the place of religion in America today. McCain: America is a Christian nation and must have a Christian president. Obama: "People are tired of seeing faith being used as a tool of attack."



Isn't it interesting how McCain's views are almost identical (substituting one Abrahamic religion for another) to those of the leaders of some Middle Eastern nations with whom the US is at odds.

[Technorati tags: john mccain | barack obama | religion | christianity]

They're All Goniffs!

Goniff: [also spelled gonef, gonif, ganef, among other variants] (Yiddish) a thief or dishonest person or scoundrel (often used as a general term of abuse).

Yeah, that pretty much describes both Bell and Rogers. Rob Hyndman links to a couple stories, including this one about astronomical data fees being charged by Bell, even under the misnamed "unlimited" data plan. Bell seems to have no compunction about misleading the public through deceptive, but attractive advertising, counting on a fine-print disclaimer to undo the impression made by the tiresome beavers.

And Rogers is no better. In fact, a friend of mine just went through the maze of Rogers deception. She called the customer (dis)service department to complain about the service she was receiving, and the "helpful" customer service rep mentioned that she was probably paying too much on her cable bill. He offered to switch her to a new, digital package, that would cost her $5 less per month, and significantly increase the number of channels she could watch. What's not to like?

The tech arrives to install the new equipment. "Which TV is the HD," he asked. My friend is definitely not tech savvy, and didn't understand the question. I told the tech that neither hers, nor her roommate's, TVs are HD. Turning to my friend, I said, I hope you're not going to be charged for High Definition service, because that usually costs more. She called back to customer service, explained the situation, and the CS rep asked the tech whether he had an extra regular digital tuner that he could install. The tech said he did, and the CS representative said that he would adjust her monthly bill accordingly. But after he checked and rechecked the work order, the tech suggested that my friend call back, to make sure that the reduced price went through. She called, and found out that instead of her bill being reduced by $5, it was actually going to be increased by $30 per month! And, to top things off, she discovered her Rogers Home Phone plan was also changed (not by her) to eliminate her 500 minutes of "free" (i.e. included) long distance. Rather than being more economical as was originally promised by Rogers, my friend's next bill would have been nearly $100 more! This is apparently how Rogers treats one of its "best customers" - someone with Rogers Home Phone, High-speed Internet, and Cable service - lie, cheat, and steal.

Disclaimer: I kicked Rogers out of my home a number of years ago after becoming completely fed up with such tactics, including the deceptive bouncing cable bill, and the "free" cell phone, that we never accepted, never received, and never activated, for which we were nonetheless billed, with the bill eventually being referred to a collection agency for nonpayment, and could not cancel until it was escalated to the VP level. Why does Rogers think they have the unrestricted right to reach into our wallets? According to another friend who did marketing work for Rogers, "their attitude is that they own the customer."

[Technorati tags: bell | rogers]

Getting Quoted

It's not everyday that one gets quoted in The Economist, let alone being given half a article focused on one's musings. But it happened, and I didn't even notice. Seems like someone really, really likes Johnny and Janey.

[Technorati tags: the economist | why johnny and janey can't read]