Thoughts overcoming the speechless owner

About two years ago I commented on OttoScharmer's blog entry that was dealing with Attentional Violence. Now after reconnecting with a friend via Skype while he is currently on Cape Cod attending a workshop on group facilitation my memories brought me back to my blog comment (which you may read in completeness).

1. Don’t force change
2. Get into a relationship with people where they can feel safe to express their ideas and assumptions (without fearing to be turned down)
3. Let the process decide, whether the agenda is useful or the dialog is more useful
4. Step back in your role as “teacher” even though that his sometimes hard (as in a sense to give up power to the group)
5. Open up time constraints, if the process needs more time!

What would have been your tactics in a similar situation?

Questions or Answers - that's the QUESTION

Imagine you are faced with a tough problem at hand, new and complex. Imagine further that is a situation where you are asked to give advice or your expertise. The client is seeking a solution to the problem he can't solve with his own resources.

What to do?

Doing the analysis on what the problem might be and already been addressed by the client, provide a solution presentation to client. There will be a presentation in front of client management team. Then implementation of the recommendation.

STOP • Rewind the story • RESET

There is perhaps another way, or?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinker

• What is it that is really pressing or hurting the client?

• What is the right question to find out (also for the client to find out himself)?

TeamAcademy - entrepreneurial incubator for the times to come!

Today, just coming back from an inspiring meeting where CoOrpheumeum, TeamAcademy, LockSchuppen and SingularityUniversity have been the topics, some thoughts are racing through my mind.

What is so special about TeamAcademy that it has caught my interest a while ago?

PeterSenge, founder of Society for Organizational Learning, at his panel discussion (tune in at 1:11:10) at MIT mentioned TeamAcademy back in 2005. It seems like the entrepreneurial incubator for the future. Dialogue sessions as seen on the left are one essential part of the daily entrepreneurial work at TeamAcademy. The picture was taken in January 2009 during the IGNITION workshop in Jyväskylä. This kind of session is normal part of the entrepreneurial education, running up to 4 hours each (it sounds like a waste of time at first sight, but really needs quite some time to enable that people in the group feel safe enough to state their questions, feelings, problems, etc.)

Run in an old factory of the paper industry in Jyväskylä, close to the railway station, the place is set up in an OpenSpace style. This resembles current CoWorking spaces that are currently emerging around the globe, to foster the entrepreneurial power of small startups and team entrepreneurs. On the flight presentations, workshops, etc. can be set up with no big effort. Changing the environment to the needs of the entrepreneurs, this is what future work and design spaces will need to be - the more open and flexible the better.

Ville Hast (2nd from left) and Ville Keränen (3rd from left) have been the coaches for the workshop IGNITION for Leadership. Both are part of a spin-off of TeamAcademy, called MonkeyBusiness.

Their saying is for learning to happen:

More Action - More Chaos - More Mistakes - More Learning!
How true is that?

At the end of the three-day workshop stood a so-called "customer challenge". A Spanish company offering software for innovation management had given the real case in for the teams to provide useful consulting for their problem. As a Spanish company there recognition in the global world of innovation program provides was not yet valued. So their question was, "How and in which ways can we gain better recognition, and open new markets?".


Within a 2-hours session, the workshop participants in three different groups worked on solutions to be presented (in a short few minutes long video to be transmitted to the client via Skype).

In the end, every party in the process gained:

Team Academy - spreading the word through real-life experience of new kind of entrepreneurship education

Participants - reasonably priced workshop (including housing, food, workshop and party of TeamAcademy anniversary), direct conversations with TeamAcademy students, head coach (JohannesPartanen) and other coaches

Coaches - More practice with international diverse participants (Sweden, France, Germany, Finland, Netherlands)

Client - Diverse solution input in a very short and dense time, pricing feeds (probably) back into subsidizing the price for participants to attend

Entrepreneurship - the spirit of what can be achieved together has sparked all participants

All in all, this has led to starting the entrepreneurial think tank and incubator LockSchuppen. We also have set up a supporting CoWorking space, CoOrpheum, within an old ballroom to prototype the new forms of cooperative work (currently the crowd is working to convince the City of Dresden that it is worthwhile to emerge a "double" of TeamAcademy!).

What are you doing to achieve a similar vision in your city?

PS.: Inspired and driven by (in inspired order ;-)):

• PeterClaussen (visionary & former plant manager of BMW Plant Leipzig; I remember well our conversations during these times :-))
• JayForrester (founder of the field SystemDynamics, I met him back in 2007 during a workshop at MIT Sloan; he told me at the age of 89 years back then, "Even if others don't yet understand your idea or vision, work on it. You will learn from feedback yourself!")
• SingularityUniversity (founded by RayKurzweil)
• SystemDynamicsSociety 
• PI Community (founded by OttoScharmer)
• OttoScharmer's blog (action researcher on organizational change, author of "TheoryU")
• CharlesVanDerHaegen (who told me in August 2008 the following, "I will be going to Finland to see the Penguins!"
• RayKurzweil (founder of SingularityUniversity, inventor and author of "The Singularity is Near" whom we met at the 4th DresdenFutureForum)
• SocietyForOrganizationalLearning 
• RainerWasserfuhr
• FraukeGodat (running a prototyping of a TheoryU CaseClinic with me back in Berlin in March 2009)

What you don't see is what you get

All too often in live we look for the tangible results overlooking that the beforehand creative process is on the one hand necessary to make it happen. On the other hand we can't really measure it.

What if we could make the left part of it visible to our boss, colleagues, customers?

Thanks to GordonMacKenzie and "Orbiting the Giant Hairball"

Obstacles that Make You Grow

From a very dear friend, even though we have only met once or twice in Berlin in Person, Frauke has been the inspiration to start bringing my vision of creating a better place for co-learning ad collaboration into place. Thanks a lot Frauke and also to Wiebke for making the change happen :-) Self-HUB is coming back!

The following are true whenever you face a dead-end road of your dreams. You are sure that nothing will work, and any energy will be a waste in its own. NOT QUITE SO :-)

IF YOU FEEL LIKE IT DO PUT YOUR FINGERS ON THE KEYBOARD AND SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE OF THE PAST.

And some inspiration from the past international BPW President:

Inspiration for New Year 2009

If you never face obstacles,

Could you be a success?

Could you set strategies

To achieve your greatness?

If you never get criticize,

Could you fix flaws in time

Before they cause problems

Before they do you harm?

It takes the darkness of a cocoon

To turn a caterpillar into a butterfly.

It takes an extreme pressure and heat

To turn coals into a diamond mine.

To attain the highest honor in life

Face challenges without fear

Let wisdom be your guide

To victory and cheers.

Warm Wishes,

Chonchanok Viravan (Nok)

(Written by Chonchanok Viravan, 12 Dec 2008)

• Tell me and I will forget
• Show me and I will remember
• Involve me and I will understand
• Step back and I will act

Chinese proverb

.... and so it happened with the CoOrpheum

The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Create it Yourself

Copyright: SingularityUniversity

For roughly two years I am working on setting up a team entrepreneurial startup think tank here in Dresden. It's name is LockSchuppen and the goals are ambitious. People tell me sometimes that this would be crazy. Interestingly these are not the entrepreneurial orientated ones, at least they are bound to a company and get their monthy cheque. Perhaps they are just scared and see that they could do similar with their visions they have in mind and don't dare to bring them into action.

Why is that so?

What is it that makes people often see more the risks than the chances in taking something new into the world?

If you are in a similar state, I highly recommend PeterDiamandis' video lecture at Singularity University:

When in Doubt ....

1. THINK! (by PeterDiamandis)

2. DEFINE YOUR IDEA

What makes your idea connected to the mainstream? Or is is way ahead and seemingly impossible?

What has been your experience in bringing it forward?

InternetOfThinking - a major breakthrough, already tipping-pointing?

InternetOfThinking - how we will see CoLaboration (the next level of CoWorking) in the near to instant future. The foundation is already there, we only now have to make use out of it (collaboratively (!))

One possible tool is the WikiWall (still in a sort of Alpha-state). How cool would that be when the collective knowledge of intvolved parties would come together and create collective intelligence? 


Probably COINS2010 in a few weeks time will show more already. A white paper is already under way, on and in which fields of knowledge creation, sharing, keeping or sharing this could be useful. 


What have you achieved today collaboratively, through which technology or tool?

The Benefit of SocialNetworks - seen back in 50's ;-)

EdgarSchein with a few really valuable insights toward the web working community that is now evolving everywhere in his just finished online lecture on culture.

Probably most of us are not aware that this (web working) has happened some 60 years back. DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) already was using DECnet back in the 50s when engineers in need of solving a problem in Maynard, USA, put their request via DECnet into the international company network. Only to get an answer from a colleague down in Australia.

And it has been also a form of distributed CoWorking way before the internet became a public commodity.


How can we accelerate the smooth transition into evolutionary change within and amongst organizations and institutions?