I have been posting a lot recently about how networks work. My new book is all about why and how the Network model will take down all those that organize traditionally. So what to do?
You have a traditional organization. Can you change to become a network and so survive the revolution? I think in most cases the answer is no. But with the right leadership - FROM THE TOP - you can do it. This post is about the context of one organization that had had the right leadership and has made this transition.
TV as we know it is the typical traditional organization. You watch what we think is good when we choose and all you do is watch. Appointment media like that is dying. But The Nine Network of Public Media in St Louis is no longer that kind of station. Yes they still do TV but the choice is massive and you can watch it all on your terms and you can also participate. But this is still nothing.
The Nine Network is much more than a TV station that has taken advantage of the digital realm. It is doing more.
First of all it is becoming the local community convenor to deal with important local issues. It started by helping people tell their own stories such as what they did in the war. The breakthrough project was when Nine took on ther Mortgage Crisis at the outset. It called the meeting of all who could help and created the space to help the community help itself. This was so successful that CPB funded a national program where stations, radio and TV, in the worst hit parts of America became the local facilitator of the community. Now Nine is involved in Education and Healthcare. Many other stations see this role as Connector as their future too. Here is Ideastream in Cleveland - another leader.
Secondly it is putting the public into Public TV. It has a school that teaches the public how to tell stories on video.
Thirdly it is connected to the St Louis Public Radio station. St Louis Public Radio. The two stations are physically linked in adajacent buildings and are building a Commons between them to enhance their role as Connectors of the Community.
Fourthly, 9 hosts the local online newspaper - The Beacon - that is full of journalists who could no longer work for a paper!
These local relationships are not one organization but are a real network. They are separate but together. They share resources. They look after each other.
So what was the context for this change? First of all there was the leadership issue. Jack Galamiche at then KETC was a man who saw what had to be done. Tim Eby, who had been chair of NPR, was the new leader at St Louis Public radio. He had sponosored the project that had all the stations in the NPR system look into the digital future. It is my experience that without the right kind of leadership at the top, traditional organizations have no chance.
The second was having the right kind of context. What would success look like? What could be the goal and so what then was the work to get there.
This was the context that we worked from. I think that any traditional organization can look at these slides and find a goal and so a path for themselves - provided that the leader wanted to do this AND could bring their board along too.
You will see that at the heart of this work is a shift in culture. There is no harder work. You will also see how, if you can agree to make this shift, how you then schedule work to help you make the transition. For we cannot change our culture by an act of will. We can only acquire new habits. We have to work our way into the new.
Here is what Doc Searls - a huge fan of Pub Media - discovered about Pub Media's pathetic efforts to cover Sandy in his area.
"12:48pm: In a crisis like #Sandy, one of the great failures of public television is exposed: there is almost no live local coverage of anything, despite a boundless abundance of presumably willing helpers in the Long Tail.
Public TV’s connection with What’s Actually Happening is astoundingly low, and ironic given its name.
Scheduled programs throb through the calendar with metronomic precision. About the only times they ever go live is during pledge breaks, which always give the impression of being the main form of programming.
If they were as good at actual journalism as they are at asking for money*, they would kick ass. I’ve included local public stations in my list here. None of them are go-to sites for the public. I just scanned through them, and here’s the rundown:
WNET in New York is itself almost inert. But it does have links to its three broadcast outlet pages. thirteen.org in Metro Focus has a scary visual of likely flooding in New York, last updated at 7:38pm Sunday. WLIW, another of its stations, has the same pointage. That’s about it. Its NJTV site is a bit more current. They post this: “Committed to serving Garden State residents during what is predicted to be an exceptional storm in Hurricane Sandy, NJTV will provide updates throughout the day plus Gov. Chris Christie’s next press conference. Monday night, join Managing Editor Mike Schneider for full storm analysis during live NJ Today broadcasts at 6 pm, 7:30 and 11 pm. Residents can also expect ongoing weather-related news updates on the network’s Facebook andTwitter sites. NJTV is also planning a joint broadcast with WNET’s MetroFocus news program on Tuesday night at 9:30 pm, to assess the effect of the storm on the Tri-State area.” Can’t wait.
WETA in Washington, D.C. has exactly nothing. WHUT appears to be down.
So when is Pub Media going to go to the public and crowd source important events? Andy Carvin was covering Sandy from his appartment - it's not even hard to do. So what is the reason that most stations don't do this?
Back in 2005/6 NPR and its stations went through an Imagining Process (Called New Realities) where all the leadership in the entire system and 200 plus staff, the executive and the board of NPR - worked from this slide to imagine what life would be like in 2009/10.
Of course we have all been overwhelmed by the politcal aspects of NPR recently but how have they done in solving the paradox set for them above? How is NPR doing in both expanding its traditional audience and also being a factor on the web?
"Amid all that creative destruction, there was a one large traditional news organization that added audience, reporters and revenue. That unlikely juggernaut was NPR.
According to the State of the Media report, NPR’s overall audience grew 3 percent in 2010, to 27.2 million weekly listeners, up 58 percent overall since 2000. In the last year, total staff grew 8 percent, and its Web site, npr.org, drew an average of 15.7 million unique monthly visitors, up more than five million visitors. Its foreign bureaus and global footprint continue to grow while other broadcasters slink home.
And while NPR receives a small portion of its operating budget through government money, millions of people also think that its journalism is worthy enough to pay for through contributions, a trick that the rest of news media have had trouble figuring out, to say the least."
As we expected the web was goingto the the place to win or lose in by 2009. NPR are there and also stand out in the Social Media aspect.
"In a survey of more than 10,000 respondents, NPR found that its Twitter followers are younger, more connected to the social web, and more likely to access content through digital platforms such as NPR’s website, podcasts, mobile apps and more.
NPR has more than one Twitter account; its survey found that most respondents followed between two and five NPR accounts, including topical account, show-specific accounts and on-air staff accounts.
The data on age is hardly surprising. The median age of an NPR Twitter follower is 35 — around 15 years younger than the average NPR radio listener. This lines up with data we recently found about other traditional news media; the average Facebook user reading and “liking” content on a news website is two decades younger than the average print newspaper subscriber.
Not to put too fine a point on it, the future of news media lies in successful integration of social media to get the attention (and click-throughs) of a younger generation — a generation whose news needs are vastly different than those of the generations that preceded it.
Of NPR’s Twitter followers, the majority (67%) still do listen to NPR on the radio. But the other ways they access NPR’s content are indicative of a growing trend:"
Here is the relative position:
This is surely a strong base?
When we did the groundwork back in 2005/6 that created the conditions for this shift, we did all talk about the "Elephant in the Room" - the relationship between NPR and the Stations.
As the folks from the 300 stations went through the process - one thing became clear. They could not continue merely to be a repeater for the big magazines. They had to discover a local value that was distinct from relying on NPR.
In the public TV world, KETC has been working assiduously to do this. KETC is defining for many what "Putting the Public into Public TV" will be as NPR is doing for radio.
BUT have the bulk of the stations done the same in the last 5 years? Have they also made the break in culture and in operations to offer their community vital value?
You judge?
My intuition tells me that the public funding that the local stations rely on will be cut. There is so much momentum.
I think that NPR will in the end be fine - because they have built the direct bridge. They have realized the dream of the New Realities process - NPR have created the "Have it Your Way" reality.
They had to do this and all the stations have known this. The "Secret Plan" has been no secret. (Here are some station folks singing "Have it your way" in front of Ken Stern in St Louis in 2006.)
The tools that we could not have imagined back in 2005/6 that can aggregate and curate content from the public are all here now. Look at how the events in North Africa and Japan are being covered using these tools!
Time for the local stations to think about how this approach, these tools, and this culture can radically change their role, impact and costs.
Those that wish to defund us do not see us as neutral. They see us as the enemy.
They could not care about how little we cost. They care not what we do that is good. They see only that we are the heretic.
To plead relevance and value in the face of this hatred is naive in the extreme. It is to be a Jew in Germany in 1932 who thinks that simply because you had the Iron Cross in the last war and had been German for hundreds of years was going to save you. We will not win this by facts, good arguments or by appeasement.
This is a fight to the death. We have to be clever at how we fight. Plan to fight a guerilla war. A war that we can win.
We look to me now like the Brits and the French in 1939 and 1940. We have won the previous engagments so we think we can coast along, bomb with leaflets and we will win this one. I don't think so.
I think that France will fall and we will be grievously wonded. We must also be prepared to be hurt and to find a way of being effective and of serving the community even if we are wounded badly.
There is no time to be lost in taking out much of our own costs.
What Andy has done in global news is an example of how even with tiny resources but with the brand we can have power.
We have to plan to fight back. No with ranting but how all successful popular wars are won. We must do the one thing we can do that they never can or will - we must serve the people.
Our future is not in showing Nova.
Our future is in mobilizing people to solve their own problems. Who else can help people find their way to a new economy? Who else can find another way we can be healthy that does not rely on the system? Who else can help us get to grips with the mess that is our education? Who else can take on Big Food or Big Pharma and all the other "Bigs"?
Please have faith in your selves. This is one fight where the good can win.
You have real power. Use it. Get Real. Get on the right side of history.
The picture above is of Horatius defending Rome with two companions while the bridge was cut down behind them - thus saving Rome from a massive force. MacAulay writes this is how Horatius took up the challenge:
Then out spake brave Horatius, The Captain of the Gate: "To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his gods
On the surface the attack on Pub Media is based on the idea that the state should not be in the broadcasting business and that this is especially true if the broadcaster is aligned to one point of view.
There is a point to this. Imagine my fellow Pub Media fans if Fox was to now get government funding - you too might go nuts!
But I think that the reason for this attack now is deeper than that.
And I think that the attack is based on the most human of responses. When something new and true and so dangerous arrives on the scene - we laugh at it. But as the new and the true and so the threat to the status quo gets its feet, the power people in the status quo get an insight.
They can tell at a cellular level that this new thing could be their doom. And their response?
Please let me explain what I think that THEY see and why THEY have started the Inquisition to root out Pub Media.
In the last 5 years, Public Radio and Public TV have started to find a new role for themselves and it is this new role that scares THEM.
This role of course is a Public Service Media organization that gives people who have no voice a voice in the issues that concern them.
CPB is funding a number of experiments that are having results in this key area of informing more than the news cycle and giving people a say. None of this is done in commercial media.
All of this is largely web based - so the stations are also learning how to expand their horizon beyond the "air" and broadcasting.
There are 12 stations involved and the point is to find out how best to do this - to become a rich centre of information outside the news cycle that can be both local and a national resource. Where the public can find the best information and the best conversation about things that concern them. AND SO be truly informed and SO have a real say.
The new is full of music labels complaining. Not only about piracy but of the tight grip just a few large outlets have on what gets played and the costs of getting air. Well guess which media outlet gives the Indie labels the best opportunity for air at the least cost? NPR Music!Here is how the Hollywood Reporter ran this story. This idea came directly out of the work done back in 2005/6 by all the stations to find a starting point for offering the music audience a place based on their taste and their time rather than simply playing what the station wanted. The music audience and the musician's interests are well served here. Both sides win. This does not happen on commercial media where the interests of the station those that own it rule.
CPB has also backed TV stations like KETC in St Louis who have been exploring how to put the public onto TV and how to offer the public a safe place to have the conversations that are otherwise impossible in America today.
Now known as the Nine Network for Public Media, KETC has a media school, the Nine Academy, that is turning out hundreds of citizen videographers,. Giving the people the tools to have a voice of their own.
In 2009 KETC hosted a national project involving more than 30 markets worst hit by the housing crisis to learn how each local TV and Radio stations could work together to offer people help that they could trust. In each market the stations worked to bring together w ide ranges of resources into local networks of trusted help. This is all but impossible for a commercial station.
In 2010 KETC has been experimenting in how to host a year long "Conversation" about an explosive topic that normally collapses into rhetoric - Immigration. Most of the content is local and much of it made by grads of KETC's school. KETC is learning how to offer people a civil place to hod string views and how to switch the power from the station to the people. Impossible for a commercial station.
This year KETC is co managing a project that will also be nation and is highly controversial - On how we might improve our schools.
What THEY fear the most is that this kind of new role for Public Radio and TV may end up with
You being better informed - you will have escaped the sound bite world and in music the play list that THEY want
You will be better engaged - because you will have the real opportunity to have your voice heard and you will have learned the skills to do this well
You and your local community will have more power to change things
THIS is what THEY fear.
We may feel that we could and should have made more progress - but THEY can see it.
They care not about Morning Edition, Car Talk or Masterpiece Theatre.
They do care that you may become more informed and more empowered. Public Media is on track to pull this of and so must be stopped.
I don't see this as a Left or Right Issue. It is do you want to be part of the solution or be passive?
Harold nails this for me. I have been struggling to understand the blockage that keeps so many from understanding.
Might it be that we are so used to dealing with "problems" that have known and rational "answers"? That is what school is. "Robert" 2 x 2 what is the answer?" This is how we learned what a "Problem" was. We also knew that there was a Known answer or a Known Algorithm that would produce the answer, We also knew that the best people knew the answers and the algorithms. They were at the top of the class and now are at the top of the organizations. They "Know".
But as we all explore the shift from machine to network, we may know the theory but actually how this plays out in practice cannot be known in advance. Just as Columbus could "Know" that if he sailed west he would find land but he could not know when or what it would be like or how to get there in detail.
Columbus had to explore and feel his way there.
Crossing America in 1805 was to truly explore. Off go Lewis and Clark into the truly unknown and unknowable. They could only explore and use trial and error. They did know that the Pacific was west, as Columbus knew that some kind of land was west. But that was all. They did know to take the "right" people with them. They selected the best back woods men. They also had a special person - "Sacagawea". She was an Indian woman with a baby.
What did she bring? They knew that they would be in Indian country all the way. She had two powerful things to add to the strength of the party. She knew many languages and the culture - she could connect the explorers to the locals and vice versa.
But maybe even more important, she was a woman and she had a baby.
This sent out a signal to the system that this party was NOT a war party. For without that, even if they had had a male Indian who could be the cultural connector, they would have all been killed before the meeting!
So what do traditional organizations need to "cross the chasm"?
I think that they need to stop thinking that is is a problem that can be resolved by finding a known answer. That the top person can know.
The top person can give herself a break. She cannot know but she can fund the expedition as Queen Isabella did.
So there is the theory - here are some examples from recent history that I know a lot about because I have lived them.
When I worked with NPR back in 2005 the question was "How will social media affect us and what should we do?"
The great thing then was that No One could know the answer to that question. And if by chance one of us did, no one else would just accept that answer.
So what we did was to set up a process of discovery where it was agreed at the outset that no one knew.
We then set off, nearly 1,000 people, on a number of test journeys where groups "Played" with creating stories about what the future might be.
After 6 months a number of pictures of the future emerged that were consistent. All that you now see as being normal for the new media was nailed by these people back in 2006. It was all novel then and no one had done any of this. But this 1,000 people had invented the key principles and had invented stories about how this all worked in the day to day lives of people. They had discovered the world of social media as it might apply to radio.
I thought, wrongly, that most would then rush off and enact them. But this did not happen. Fear still held many back.
But ALL now had a common picture of what was important. A picture that ALL had co created. So while fear may have stopped many from changing, no one doubted the principles of what they had discovered.
The results? There is no doubt in my mind that, while NPR may now have the political fight of its life on its hands, it knows better than any other traditional media organization how to use Social Media. It has also delivered on them as no other media organization has.
Why? In the project we included over 250 NPR staff so the sense of having discovered the truth was well spread. Most of the key facilitators for the project were the senior executives and members of the board too - so there was no need to "sell" up or down. The majority of NPR had done the exploring themselves and could trust their own experience.
The other organization that has really "got it" is KETC - Now the Nine Network for Social Media - Jack Galmiche, the President was an active player in the NPR project and when he got his new job running KETC in St Louis, he also had the experience of creating the future and so the courage to go for it in TV.
KETC has been through many voyages of discovery. All the staff now have experienced the new. Many are now highly adept. They have discovered this for themselves. No one taught them!
KETC is now the acknowledged leader in the use if social media to augment TV.
KETC is now also a viral infector of the public system.
As KETC trail-blazes, it has worked with other stations. In the Facing the Mortgage Crisis project with about 60 across the nation. They too "experienced the new". The best of them then went for it too and now a critical mass of stations have enough practical exploration under their belt to go for it.
They are about to launch a new nation wide project that will cause the infection to spread further.
I think that this idea of a voyage of discovery is much more helpful that the idea of problem solving.
So selfishly how do you do this? Is there a book or a formula? Is there a snappy consultant who will show you how to do this?
No, I think that what has been shown to work best is to hire a "Sacawagea".
The issue is culture and fear of the unknown. There are no snappy answers. As John Seely Brown says in Harolds post - you have to "Marinate" in the situation.
So if you want to be successful, please think of hiring someone who knows the other native people out there and the new culture. Who is a native of the world that you aspire to go to. Who is less of a guide than a trusted friend. Who you can talk to quietly in the evening around the fire and have her hear you out. Someone who risks as much as you do on the journey - or even more than you. Someone who is safe and who helps you feel safe as you take risks.
Social business is about a shift in how we do work, moving from hierarchies to networks. The highest value work today is the more complex stuff, or the type of work that cannot be automated or outsourced. It’s work that requires creativity and passion. Doing complex work in networks means that information, knowledge and power no longer flow up and down. They flow in all directions. As John Seely Brown said, you can only understand complex systems by marinating in them. This requires social learning. Complex work is not linear. Social business is giving up centralized control and harnessing the power of networks. It is as radical as was Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management in 1911.
The potential of social business is organizational survival. Enterprises must be able to share knowledge quicker than before. This requires a shift toward something like a starfish framework that not only allows for independent action but also distributes knowledge through all the parts. Social learning is how organizational knowledge gets distributed. Social businesses can learn quicker.
The main barriers to social business are cultural. People in charge of most organizations today got there by doing things the traditional way of the MBA mindset. They feel they do not need to change and few are willing to give up power and authority, even if it is for the good of the organization.
He is trying to ski by thinking. He is thinking so hard that he cannot "hear" the hill or his body. He is thinking so much that he might miss a fallen skier or a tree - for he is thinking so hard that he cannot see. His fear also causes him to miss the key risk and control factor. Fearing falling or going too fast, he leans back instead of down the hill.
He is thinking so much that he cannot have a conversation with his own body or with the world that surrounds him.
He is thinking so much that he gets exhausted very quickly because he is fighting himself, the hill and the universe. And just thinking so hard uses up so much energy.
He is not having a "Deep Conversation". He is relying on his rational mind to guide him in a novel and complex situation. This is what most of us do at work and in our personal lives.
The most important conversation that we need to have is within ourselves. This is the core lesson of having Deeper Conversation. That to have a deeper conversation with others and with the univers, we must be able to have such a conversation inside us. This is the topic of this our last of 4 parts of my 4 part series that synthesizes a longer series of talks I have had with the brilliant Johnnie Moore. (Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3)
It's the classic psych drama. We have got so used to giving our rational mind primacy that we allow it to fill our consciousness with its chatter and worries. Mothers worry about what the book says about their kids. Managers seek control. You wake up in the middle of the night consumed by a fear and if you can surpress it, find another one right behind it. At school this part of our mind is the only part that counts.
Yes the new skier has to "know" the theory of skiing - well maybe not... Adults have a huge problem learning to ski - I did at 40 - but kids know no theory. Their rational mind has not yet taken over. No one told them the theory of walking or language, they just got on with it and did what FELT right.
Kids use their full range of channels. They listen to their body and they feel their way into novelty. They learn to walk and to talk and to stand upright. They learn so much before they go to school!
But we adults, who know better because we have been to school, wait to be told by a higher authority. In this universe, all the other parts of our mind are closed down and the Ego is given precedence.
So how do we get the rest of our mind back. How do we tune into all the channels in our body so that we can feel the hill or our way though a novel and a complex situation? For as all adult ski learners know, we have had this ability whacked out of us at school and at work.
Johnnie reminded me that it's all about habits. We have lost the habits that help us access this power to use our whole mind, so it helps to set up new habits to bring the whole mind back and to put the Ego into his place - a minor character!
Sit as often as you can in a circle. This brings the field into its best quality. Access the Field.
Before you get down to business check in as to how you all are. This might be how you feel - what you are feeling about the task at hand in your body. This type of sharing brings up the common humanity of you all. The leader may be feeling anxious in her stomach about the result. Hearing this, we can all relax more. Any good consultant has such a go around at the beginning of a meeting so that the Field can be awaked. I know to many this may sound very new age - but my question to you is do you want to ski like me or like my son?
Surely no one wants to ski like me? That is what is at stake here. Real results - getting all the wisdom from all the minds into play and in getting more cohesion in the team are what is at stake here.
Beware of "Action" as a demanded result.
You know what has happened here don't you? Trying too hard leads to a failure and then to bad feelings and then a habit of trying too hard and so on. The point of good sex is not the erection but the communication and the shared love. Bringing your rational mind into the bedroom is a disaster. So it is in meetings.
The key result is to have the team both together and open. Then the "Whole Mind of the Team is brought into play. THEN you can start to see your way through the paradoxes that make up any complex situation.
Let me give you 2 examples - one a corporate one that Johhnie and I worked on with NPR and 300 stations and the other a new problem that confronts me and all of us in middle age.
This was the complex problem that we used to have a Deeper Conversation inside NPR where all the senior management, the board and over 200 staff participated along with the leadership of 300 stations. At the outset NO ONE could know the answer. That is the definition of a Complex problem - the answer cannot be predicted rationally it can only emerge as a result of lots of trial and error. What we did was to set up many many meetings where the groups "Played" with this problem - we in effect set up a process of iteration that could enable answers over time to emerge.
The challenge was this - We assumed, now rightly, that in 2009, the web would be ubiquitous. NPR and the Stations were then in 2005 at a high point with their listeners on terrestrial radio but at ground zero with the web. How were they going to grow the web side and not lose the listeners? How was NPR to do this and not lose the stations? What were the stations going to do? For one thing was clear, and that was by 2009, the world would be very different.
To set up the larger field where all could participate - we used "Play". I have found that if you think of complex problems that might involve you losing your current power in role, the job of protecting your status quo is paramount. This is why when we ask the Usual Suspects to think of the future of their field, say health, they act to preserve the status quo. They cannot go beyond this. A rational role based discusion about novelty has to fail. For our ego will force us to lean back and try and protect what we know and our current power.
So we made this exploration into a game. I won't go into the details but to say that to wrestle with complex problems demands that you give up your role. Back to kids again - they learn all the vital lessons of life via play.
The results come through emergence which comes from trial and error. In complex situations you CANNOT know the answer up front. It is impossible. Remembering this is very helpful. No senior NPOR person presumed to know. All were equals in ignorance. This opened up the field. At the end of each session, each group had to put on a play - they had to express what they thought the future would be - and you know they were right - they found it.
Does this work? Each of the many independent sessions came to this conclusion - that the power of choice of what to listen too had to shift to the listener. Now we all know this right? No we only know this as lip service. You have to have wrestled with this and seen the alternatives and felt that this is true to accept it. We all "Know" that we have to lean DOWN the hill to get control - BUT this is not what we do as learners for though we know it to be true - we CAN"T do it - it is too scary and too counter our old reality.
Does this work? Well what media organization is best equipped for dealing with he online world right now? I would say NPR. So what was the result of our work with NPR? It was not the plan that came out of the process. It was that 300 people in NPR had wrestled with the problem and had felt their way into the future, so that when a new leader arrived with the mandate and the attitude to go for it, there was a mass aha! Not the normal resistance that you get when a big change is dropped in the organization from on high.
Meetings that start with a demand for action and results - are often code for a desire to lean up the hill. Let's stay in the rut where I can control what is going on because I feel safe there. When you demand results or action - what do you mean? Most of the time it means a focus on the minutiae - like the skier focusing on thinking his way into the turn - forcing himself to turn rather that letting the hill and his body do it all for him. When we work on the surface we force the whole team into this posture. It is our fear that keeps us from skiing. It is the fear that stops many still in radio and the media from allowing the gravity of the Hill of the New Web to help them get a new control.
The ongoing result that all teams need in complex times is to be so comfortable with each other that they play intuitively like a basketball team on fire. Look at this player - he is not thinking - he KNOWS where the pass will go. We have to really know each other. We have to bring our Whole Mind into play.
If you work on the key result being a well functioning team, THEY will do the heavy work. The real ACTION is to get the team using all their whole mind as individuals and as a team. Like a good skier, there is no time to "Think" on the court. You have to be able to sense what is going on.
So let's extend this a bit and look at an issue that affects us all - our health. My task - to find a question that engages anyone. From a personal point of view.
Here is one for me and for you that I hope illustrates this principle. I am looking at the health costs for PEI. An important question but very abstract and with many people with hard views. So how to use a question to break the logjam? This is my starting question that only invites each of us as people into the realm of the question. I start as Johnnie suggest with a question that gets us to react by feeling it out.
See the red line. That is how men on PEI age and deteriorate. The average age of death is 75. But by 65 the average man is in such bad health as to be helpless and dependent. From this stage more than half his lifetime cost to the health system will be spent. These are real data points.
Now see the black line. This is my goal for my own life. Aging as we know it is not natural. The black line is the natural aging process. In nature aging hits a threshold and then the deterioration stops - if you make 85 and are fit and not demented you will likely stay the same until you die - and that might be 95 - 100 - or 105. You will die - but you wont deteriorate more. There is a ton of evidence and work behind this - just trust on this right now there are books and books to be written and I can only point this out to you in this post.
The research suggests that I and you can push this point of stability back to 55 or 60 - my current age. I can be at choice. I can choose to change nothing and I will get ill and degrade. Or I can choose to change my life and have a good chance that I will die healthy and a contributor. Now I can choose either one - newspapers chose degradation - but it is a choice.
But choosing life is not enough. Knowing where to go is not enough. Like NPR I have to find out how to live differently. I will have to learn how to change the habits of a lifetime. This is hard.
How hard? This involves my giving up modern food. All processed food as a start. All grains and all dairy too. It means that I have instead to eat what people did in our hunter gatherer period. I also have to do many other things to get a better fit with my deep biology. Sleep more. Be outside more. Walk more. Have a mission in life that is bigger than me and so on - I will be posting tons on this later.
So here is the point. I know this. You can know it too. You know that when you ski you must lean down the hill. But knowing and doing are 2 different things. Changing the habits of a lifetime is very very very hard. Doing something that NONE of your peers are doing is as hard. This is the landscape of real change - being out of step with the mainstream - not knowing what to do - being pulled back all the time by your old habits.
Like Beowulf and Grendel - you have to have the energy to kill the old inner you.
But if you have asked the right question, we can wrestle with it. You can feel enough to kill off the old you who will fight to keep you stuck.
Thought is not enough. You must have emotional power that comes from how you feel about a situation. Here is my feeling test about my health that is raised by the Question I posed.
Do I want to become feeble at 65? What will this mean to my family? No I don't want that - I would feel as if I betrayed them because I know what I know now - that had the choice and chose pizza over them
Can I afford to be feeble? I worry about my savings and if I will have enough - can I afford to be feeble? I don't have the money and I doubt the state will have it either - I will be fucked if I stay as I am.
How do I feel now? How do I look? How capable am I now? Would I like to feel, look and be better soon? Of course I want to look and feel beter - I have noticed how weak and inflexible I am and wish I was fitter.
I know I am weak of will and that changing all these things will be hard - so what feedback and what support can I tap into to help me? I know I cannot do this on my own? In the few times I have made other major changes, it was the support I had that made all the difference - I know that I am weak!
Are there good tips that I can use to help me? I need reinforcement to get over the early hump - I know that other people's experience will help me
I have a rational argument but my feeling argument has more power over my behaviour - The Rational is the Volts - the Feeling is the Amps. It's the Feedback that encourages us and shows us the path:
I have lost 15 pounds and most importantly my 6 months pregnant belly is nearly flat - this is very reinforcing
I am never hungry - and the signal that I get when I am full kicks in immediately - that helps me not overeat.
When I fall off the wagon and have bread and cheese I feel like shit - not guilty I l feel bloated and sick
I look forward to my walks with the dogs - I want to do it more than they do now - it helps me think and do better work too
My wife is completely onside and my friends who have not seen me in some time comment on how well I am - important people are encouraging me
So I could not have a plan from the question but the question gets at the heart of the matter FOR ME.
We all have to feel our way into change. The mind is not enough. The body has to power us into the new. We have to be able to hear what our body says. We have to be like kids again and play our way into the future.
So what is the biggest lesson of all?
We come back to Johnnie's key lesson. We have to calm the mind so that we can hear the rest of the conversation in our body. Our mind can show the way but the getting there is all bout the rest of us. This goes for teams too. If we can create enough personal trust we can access the Whole Mind of the group. THEN we can win any game set for us.
Your work and mine is to put him in his place - shut him up - so that we can hear the full you and me.
Projects Powered by Podio I am working with Christ Church Cathedral Choir - Grace Church to set up a Virtual Choir School - The team is all over the world and we use Podio to do our work
What's wrong with this skier? 
Sit as often as you can in a circle. This brings the field into its best quality. 
You know what has happened here don't you? Trying too hard leads to a failure and then to bad feelings and then a habit of trying too hard and so on. The point of good sex is not the erection but the communication and the shared love. Bringing your rational mind into the bedroom is a disaster. So it is in meetings.
The
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