Robert Paterson's Weblog

Circle of Trust Meets the Long Tail - Trusted Space?

Many of us agree that in a world of infinite content, that the value will no longer be in the mass market but in the niches in the Long Tail.

Our intuition tells us that it is in the niches where the scarcity and hence value lies - attention, attraction and hence energy. If this is true, then how do we find the right niche and unleash this power? What is the best filter?

I think that our best filter is our small circle of trust. It has both the power and the reach. I believe that this "circle of trust" is defined by our biology and not by software. Real "friends" are not an infinite resource but exist only in small numbers that fit the "Magic" or "Dunbar Numbers" that in turn fit the Fibonacci sequence.

So here is the data - based on the early part of the Fibonacci sequence and where I have assumed that the Circle of influence may be to the Power of 4.

So a circle of 8 - the ideal Trusted Space - can attract, affect and influence 4,096 people. If I have 144 in my circle we can reach just over 400 million others. BUT my bet is that just as the reach goes up, the gravitational pull goes down.

2 - 16

3 - 82

5 - 625

8 - 4,096

13 - 28,561

34 - 1,336,336

55 - 9,150, 625

89 - 62, 742,241

144 - 429, 981, 696

Notice anything? As we look at the sequence we see a Pareto or power curve - it's the Long Tail.

So what do I also "see"?

I think that there are two power curves here. One is reach and the other is power or gravity.

The greatest gravitational pull is at 2 - the most effective reach is 144. There is likely a "sweet spot" along the curve where reach and pull are best found in concert.  My bet is that it is in using the circles of 8 - 13 - 34. You can reach more than a million people with 34 and you can really attract 4,096 powerfully at 4.

If my intuition is correct, then the full power of social software might be revealed as we explore these numbers and their meaning. Does this not put a new face on marketing? Does it tell us how we will find and attach to content in a universe of infinite content? Does this say something about how to organize anything?

I am a historian by training - can you help by testing this and also by drawing it?

UFIT - Power of Community 2

This is what UFIT is all about.

On the surface this may look like any other exercise class. But it isn't. From the outset, UFIT was designed to build community first. At UFIT you find not only your body but also you find "Mates" - people who accept you for who you really are. Your increasing fitness is a by product of the social value of becoming a real member of a group that is there for you. As you become accepted as a true member, you too have the satisfaction of discovering that you too can help another.

For many like me - a Gym can be a frightening place. Middle-aged with a pot and completely out of shape - I don't like the idea very much of being shown up as an old geezer. UFIT is socially designed to welcome all - especially the nervous and the out of shape. And yes, UFIT includes many of the Island's elite athletes as well.

How did this happen? It happened because Gord and Eireann decided that that is how they would "Host" the space.  They knew that merely offering fitness would not be sustainable for the members or of course for them.

Here they are. Like parents in a family, they set the culture. Once set, the group reinforces it. Now the culture of welcome and acceptance is the norm and is violated only by those who seek to be expelled.

Have a look at the group picture again - notice the Circle.

In a traditional class we are all lined up as in class at school. We all look at the "Instructor". The instructor does everything better than we could ever do. UFIT's space is constructed instead around the energy of the circle - the foundation design for hosting community.

Look again at Gord - what is he doing?

Is everyone following his every step? No they are feeding off his energy. Gord is hosting the space not leading the class. No robots there either.

At UFIT I found that I was part of the group but that I was on my own as well. Gord set the tone and provided the map, each of us did what felt best in each rotation. So the elite did things that would have killed me. I puffed along at my own pace. Together and yet alone. No forced  obedience - no external standard but lots of external support. At UFIT we do the same thing but in our own way - like humans not robots.

At UFIT I can be Myself. In particular I can overcome all the hype about what my body should look like. I get not only my body back but also my image of what my body should be. I break free from the grip of society and paradoxically with the support of my community become me again.

I think what has happened is that UFIT has set the conditions for Mateship.

There are also signs that UFIT is then setting the conditions for Fellowship. This June a group of Fellows formed from within the community and ran in the Relay for Life. They raised $11,000 dollars! I wonder what next? What can the UFIT Fellowship achieve?

As I dig into understanding this new type of organization - my hope builds that maybe we have found a way of breaking free from the machine world.

Here is their Facebook site. Here is their YouTube Channel where we will be adding many more videos.

Please look at the comments on Facebook about Tara - This is not your usual exercise class

Natural Organization and Beauty

Fred First has a wonderful eye - he sees what most of us miss. Here is a great shot of Nature's ideal design unfolding.

Here are his comments.

reboot9 - Thomas has asked me to speak to this

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Many a one believes himself the master of others, and yet he is a greater slave then they. How has this change come about?"

                                                            Jean Jacques Rousseau - The Opening of the Social Contract

The End of the Machine Age
In 1905, Henry Ford began to implement an idea that was to transform our world. It was to provide expensive and complex objects cheaply and widely to masses of people by organizing people at work as parts of a machine.

The money price for these goods was low but the social price was high. Those that worked in this new system had to give up all independence of thought and behaviour.

For nearly a century, this idea worked well. Unprecedented access to goods and services arose. The physical quality of life improved for most people. By the end of World War II this idea had spread to all forms of organization - not just manufacturing. Now Schools, Universities, Healthcare, Entertainment and, in particular, anything to do with Government, shifted to the model. It became our reality. It became normal. It became the only way.

But, at some time in the 1970's, something began to go wrong.

Some threshold was passed in the 1970's where the ever tightening grip of central control and the ever growing scale of complexity, that had to be controlled, meant that this model hit the point of diminishing returns. Now the system now builds friction and internal stress faster than output. In some cases, all it offers is more stress and dysfunction.

Rob exaggerates?

30% of boys in school are on drugs. Is this their fault or the system?  Food has never been cheaper but there are clear signs that industrial food is at the heart of a health crisis. Energy in the form of the income of the sun is infinite but our limited definition of energy restricts us to a technology and to a  supporting process that may end life as we know it on Earth. Never before have more resources been applied to healthcare and we yet have an epidemic of cancer, depression and of obesity.  The US military has never been so powerful and yet it is mired in a conflict that it can only lose. Governments have never had more resources but now seem unable to help people in real need such as post Katrina.

No one can say truthfully that allocating more money to oil exploration, to healthcare, to education, to the military has any chance of making our predicament better. More money only seems to make it all worse.

But Hope is not dead!

All over the world, pioneers have discovered by themselves, and as if by accident, a new model that had no name, but that works.

When I say works, I mean that this model enables the very small, the poor and the dispersed to offer better goods and services than the old system. It also allows people to leave the bondage of the machine system and to find again their voice, their spirit and their humanity. Using this model, we can have it all ways. We can have access to goods and services at low price but with a high utility. Unlike the Ford Model, the social impact is not more depression but more freedom and joy.

So what is this new model called?

In Software, it is called Open Source. In banking it is called Microcredit. In business it is called eBay, or Google, or Southwest or Starbucks. In gaming it is called Second Life or World or Warcraft. In academia it may soon be called Wikipedia. In politics it was the Dean Campaign. On the web it is called Blogging or Web 2.0 or Social Software. In office design it is called the Commons.

As we will see in the stories, all these ways of doing things are at a deep level the same. All these names are really based on one big underpinning idea. So let's name this idea.

Trusted Space

I call it "Trusted Space". Let me show you what it is and how it has the power to be used universally in all fields of human endeavour.

The Ford model has a primary metaphor and a primary process. It is the metaphor of the machine and the process of efficiency. Our new metaphor is Nature and our new process is Growth. At the heart of this new metaphor is the truth that Nature has a deep organizing model that she uses in all circumstances.

For Nature is not random. Every component and every entity in Nature has a destiny or a developmental life cycle. Everything in Nature starts somewhere small and then does it best to fulfill this developmental destiny. An acorn seeks to become a forest. Stardust seeks a young sun to form around to become planets. A fawn seeks to become a herd. A lion cub seeks to become part of that herd's health system. A baby seeks to become a tribe and then a society. Inside of this society, a self-aware individual seeks to expand their spirit to include the universe itself.

Every component in Nature has an ideal trajectory that defines its developmental destiny. Each component of Nature has an ideal trajectory that connects with others to fulfill this destiny. For Nature offers no guarantees. Every component does not meet this ideal but the ideal exists.

So what then is the process that can drive an acorn, a baby, a business, a university or a nation to develop along its optimal trajectory for development? There is no secret. There is no mystery. The answer is very knowable and understandable. It is what I call "Trusted Space".

In the last 20 years, the new science of Chaos and Complexity has given us an insight into the world of probability that governs all complex systems. Get the "Initial Conditions" right and your baby will tend to grow up to be a fine self-aware and social being. Get the initial conditions right and suns will tend to form into a spiral galaxy. Get the initial conditions right and the acorn will tend to form a tree, and then a wood and then a forest. Plant your tomato plants after June 8 on PEI and you will likely have fruit in August.

Mother Nature does not micromanage an entity throughout its life cycle. She uses leverage.

She allows for the best beginning to set the best course for the best potential. An entity that has enjoyed the best Initial Conditions will, all on its own, have a high probability of fulfilling its ideal potential. Conversely, if an entity has suffered from poor Initial Conditions, there is little chance of getting back on track let alone meeting the full potential. Nature is neutral. She just sets the rules.

Think about this for a moment. Think about how this will affect how we allocate social resources once we begin to have confidence in how Nature works. Where do we now invest most of the money - early or late? Think then about how well schools are working. Think then about crime and healthcare. Here are the financial costs in dysfunction that a small society like PEI has to carry because we invest late.

We are committed to investing late because we do not yet see the value of investing in Nature's design for development. But what if we could see this better way more clearly? What if we could get help and support from others? Maybe if we could see more clearly and get more support we could ourselves use this model in our own lives.

What would happen if our primary leadership role was no longer to act like a line foreman in a Ford plant but to behave more like a gardener? What if we stopped acting like Firemen and saw ourselves as Fire Marshals? What if we humbly accepted Nature's 14 billion years of experience and did it Her way? What if we stopped trying to control all the transactions and looked instead improving at the social climate instead?

If we were to do this, we would have to know what the best social climate is for humans. We would have to have a simple model to follow and to learn.

Here there is the good news. Nature's models are always simple and research has discovered the simple model for setting the initial conditions for human development for human babies.

So what then is the optimal family culture that sets up the trajectory for optimal human development? The Optimal Culture to set the optimal development curve into play is an "Authoritative" culture.

Authoritative Parents are Parents who establish a warm and nurturing relationship with their children but set firm limits for their behaviour.

This is quite different from Authoritarian family culture, where the parents are highly controlling, requiring their children to meet an absolute set of standards. It is quite different from Permissive family culture, where parents are overly nurturing and who provide few standards for behaviour and are extremely tolerant of misbehaviour. As an aside, can you see where I am going with this as we move into the realm of human organizations?

Babies do best when they find that they live in this optimal culture and where their parents do a lot of two principal activities.

They have lots and lots of conversations with their babies. They touch their babies all the time. If they do a lot of this for the first three years of life, their main job is done.

So as with all of Nature's rules, this is a simple equation and is easy to understand. Focus on the first 3 years of life. Embrace an Authoritative Culture and touch and converse a lot. But like all of Natures simple rules it is hard to do, if this is not your norm or your sense of reality

So what is happening to families today - think organizations while we think about children. What happens then if a baby has either the optimal or the less than optimal initial conditions? How does this work out in real life?

 

Here is a linear view of the difference in outcomes. At 2 the difference appear to be small. The babies that have had Authoritative Parents. Who have had their parents touch them a lot and who have had lots of conversations understand 300 words. Those that have largely experienced Authoritarian or Permissive parenting understand 150 words. But then look at the power of the developmental trajectories.

By grade 10, the Optimal kids have the cognitive ability of a typical 2nd year university student. The less optimal kids are stuck at grade 5 level. This research by Dr Doug Wilms at UNB is focused on cognitive ability but there are social aspects around behaviour and self worth that are tied in as well. It is the full potential of the person that is at stake here. Their health, their ability to get good work, the link to addictions and  their ability to parent the next generation are all involved.

This is true in organizations as well. This slide shows the mortality differences inside the UK civil service over a 25 year survey by Dr Sir Michael Marmot. (The Whitehall Project). Here the trajectories are reversed from the Wilms view of Cognitive development.

The lower, you are in the hierarchy the more likely you are to die early.

What is the reason? The less control you have and the more you are treated like a thing and are not allowed a voice, the more you shrivel as a person. You get ill and you die.

The whole search for Work Life Balance inside traditional organizations is false. It is their combination of Authoritarian and Permissive culture that causes the stress.

They tend to minutely control your task and your voice and yet allows very dysfunctional personal behaviour.

I am no longer sure that the traditional organization can be reformed as an act of will. To do so demands that it give up its culture. In most cases the new is emerging de novo

Now with the web as the facilitator, applying these new ideas has become possible outside the old system. The new is now emerging on its own and in some areas has enough scale to take on and to decisively defeat the old.

This then is how the Trusted Space for babies is being applied in many new organizations.

The adult version of Touch is an organizational norm of relationship of empathy. As we will see in the stories, organizations that work well in the new, have the norm of seeing the other as itself.

The adult version of Conversation is well Conversation. This does not mean talk, it means that we all speak to each other as peers. It does not mean that we know the same things, but that we converse with each other as human being who all have a voice and our dignity.

The ideal culture for management is neither Permissive nor is it Authoritarian. It is Authoritative. Leaders establish a warm and nurturing relationship with their colleagues but set firm limits for their behaviour.

Just as the optimal parent does pay attention to the essential hygiene issues, so does the optimal leader. But they know that Job#1 is to set and maintain the culture of Trusted Space.

What happens inside the Trusted Space of your organization is that all the people tend to use the same relational norms that you have set as the overarching culture and that they tend to help each other along their own trajectory to their full potential.

I see this as Einstein saw the potential of the atom. Before Einstein, people thought of Atoms as being components of physical things. So Uranium was only a metal. But he saw that inside every Atom was the potential power of all but unlimited scale.

Inside every man and woman is also the power of the universe. So long as we saw our power as being only physical, that's all it could be. Now, bathed in Trusted Space, we have the potential as self conscious and spiritual beings to unlock the power of the universe that is inside of us.

What organization based only on the physical power of the machine can compete with that?

Enough theory - Here is a link to my companion Site - Trusted Space

Go to the Heart side of the site and enjoy the stories that illustrate the theory. If you need to know more, then go to the Mind side of this site and I will back up what I have said here.

Trust is good business

Nice piece on making trust and reputaion the centre of what you do

Will our Titanic get home safe?

Imagine that you are a passenger on the Titanic. Could you possibly imagine that it could sink? It was so big, so comfortable, so well run. It felt like home.

When the lookouts saw the berg they rang the bell to alert the bridge. The officer of the watch tried to miss it by reversing the engines. But the inertia of the ship was too great and she continued on a path that ripped open about 300 feet of her plates.  It was 11.40 pm on April 14 1912.  Hardly a shudder was felt by the passengers. It seemed that nothing had happened.

But at that moment the ship was doomed. No one felt any urgency at first. The first distress call on the radio was not sent until 35 minutes later. 150 minutes later, the bow submerged.

Even then, it still seemed unbelievable to many that the great ship would founder. Many of the men gave up their seats in the boats thinking that there was not much risk really. How could a ship of this size really sink. Many also reasonably thought that on that busy North Atlantic route that rescue would be close at hand.

They were right. Everyone could have been saved if the right message had got out in time and the right action had been taken by those who could have helped.

15 miles away the Rappannhock sailed by but had no radio. The Californian was in sight of the Titanic but her radio operator Cyril Evans had turned off his radio. Before the Titanic had struck, she had asked him to "Shut up!" because his signal was interrupting Titanic's efforts to send routine traffic.  So Evans heard nothing of the Titanic's crisis.

The watch officer of the Californian saw the distress rockets but thought they were signs of a party. After all, who would expect the Titanic could be in trouble?

The Carpathia did get the message. Captain Rostron did his best. Carpathia was only designed for a flank speed of 14.5 kts, but Captain Rostron diverted all steam to the ship’s engines, locking down all auxiliary power, and achieved 17.5 kts for the run-in to Titanic’s reported position, 58 miles distant. When she arrived at 4.15 there were only 705 passengers still alive. 1,500 had died.

So why the History lesson? Because this story feels so much like what is happening to us on PEI.

On PEI it all looks so safe and lovely.

How could our agriculture sink? It all looks so safe. It is well run by hard working people who know what they are doing. Sure we have had a few tough years but good markets will come back. Won't they?

I think that Agriculture is to PEI as the Titanic was the the White Star Line. It is our jewel and it is the face of the Island. It defines us.

Like the Titanic, we have been steaming fast though dangerous waters. All aboard feel that we must in the end be safe - what could sink us?

There have been some warning messages about danger but we still feel that we can find better markets in time.

I think that we may already have struck our own ice berg. Like Titanic, we hardly felt it. The band is still playing and there is no sign of the inevitable sinking that will take us all down, not only farmers but our entire society.

Here is what the first impact of our "Berg" looks like.

The risk is our momentum. We may be moving so fast in the commodity agriculture system that we risk doing so much damage to our soil vitality, to our water quality and to our biosphere that it will be very hard to recover. Once we lose these essential aspects, there is no coming back. The ship has to founder and all on her too.

Only if we slow down and then change course can we save our farmers and save ourselves.

What does this mean? Am I blaming the farmers?

No!

Our farmers are trapped. At the moment, they have no choice. They have to continue to serve their masters - the few big players that control the inputs, the credit, the distribution and the prices in "Big Ag". If they don't, they die. Big Ag sets up the system that drives them into the Ice Field. Who makes all the money in Agriculture? It is not the farmers.

If we change how and where they get their money, they can do this. If we can make farming profitable in a new way, they can do this. If we can make farming essential for society and pay for this, then they can do this.

Join me this weekend in Trusted Space Food as I talk with John MacQuarrie about an important new way of how a community can connect with its farmers that can free them from bondage and align their needs with the needs of their society. Find out how others are becoming free from the trap of Big Ag. Find out how we might miss hitting the berg and all get home safely to port.

Join us as we explore the world of ALUS

Chapter 1 - Can we Change - It's all about Incentives

The Path of the Courtesan - The mind

The Mind - The Core of Courtesanship

The underlying premise of this series is that real power and real independence for women lies outside most of the conventional routes. The choice I am going to advocate in this series is to re-examine the role of the Courtesan. If you seek to have real power that belongs to you and that you can keep all your life - read on.

The choice is not to become more like a man nor is it to become more feminine. As I learn more, I see that their common accomplishment was to become the complete and integrated woman with a strong anima and a strong animus. They chose neither to over compensate on the masculine side not the feminine. They found the middle road.

In their mind - they have a particular facility with how men think and see the world. In their body, their great appeal is that they are warm and compassionate.

To Conquer a man, first conquer his mind.
To keep a man, make yourself a necessity to his life. (Diana)

Let's dig deeply into Diana's dictum. Let's start with what conquering "His Mind" may mean. By the end of this post you will see that this process is not as simple as you may think at first glance. We will end with a hint at what becoming  a "Necessity" may mean. In the following chapter we will enter the bedroom and get the full meaning of what Diana is saying.

What is the mind of a courtesan and how is it formed? They begin their education not conventionally at school but by being schooled.

Join Diana and I in Trusted Space and find out more

Paradise Lost or Gained? Science on PEI

Imagine - you are a transplanted Scot and one of the world's leading scientists in your field, Marine Natural Products. You have had your own lab in South Florida for 15 years.

Your wife is a native of South Florida and has a large and supportive family nearby.

You have two boys aged 5 and 7 who are close to their grandparents and who are used to the South Florida climate.

So why would you give all this up and move thousand of miles north to work and to live on Prince Edward Island? Why would this now be the picture of your life?

Find out in Trusted Space - Science

Todd Mundt - The Iowa Story - A Story for all Public Radio?

Ignorance is surely a form of bliss. Before September of 2005 I knew nothing about and I knew no one in public radio. Like all people who are both ignorant and disconnected, I did not care except in some weak and intellectual way about public broadcasting in America. All I knew was that I quite like WGBH TV, which is on our cable feed on PEI, and that I was getting tired of their never ending appeals to my guilt to support it.

But then I got a call from Jackie Nixon and my life changed.

As I traveled the country and met so many people, I fell in love. I fell in love with an idea. The idea is that public radio could become a vital force for the renewal of society and of democracy in America. I fell in love also with a community. I had no idea that such a wonderful and vibrant group of people existed as do in Public radio.

That's my problem. When I knew nothing and no one, I did not care. But now I do. Like any true friend I worry about my friend. Will she make the right decisions. Will she be OK?

I fear that I have become the archetypal "Jewish Mother" often fretting and carping. So I ask your indulgence. My fretting and carping is a product of my own lack of control. You do what you do. I sit in another country and worry.

But while I worry and I fret, I also am seeing signs that give me hope. I wonder if I had been looking in the wrong place for the first moves that would start to unlock the system?

Isaac Asimov gives me a hint.

His premise is that system change is impossible at the centre. In his great book Foundation published in 1951, he tells the story of Hari Seldon  who, knowing that the system was in terminal decline, sets out to establish a place for Renewal far away from the centre.

Silly me! Naively I had thought that change would begin in Washington.

But now I wonder. What about the edge of the public radio system?

What could we learn from the edge? What if I was to talk more to those that lived out there?  Whom could I call that could shed more light on the central blocks for progress - making a shift in relationships between stations and in speaking directly with the listeners?

So I called Todd Mundt in Des Moines. As he talked to me about Iowa, I could not help but to think of all of you.

Judge for yourself. Here is Todd in Trusted Space Media talking about the new role for local stations, about the challenge of inter station rivalry and the challenge of being radically transparent with listeners.

What's coming up next week in Trusted Space?

In Media - Join Todd Mundt and I as we talk about how to implement Radical Transparency in both Planning and Action in Iowa as Todd and Cindy work with their community to make Iowa Public radio more relevant to the lives of Iowans.

In Science - Join Dr Russ Kerr and I as we talk about why a world renowned scientist has left his lab and his wife's family in Florida to come to PEI. Find out what it has been like for him and his family as they make their way not only at work but as a family in such a different place.

Lifestyle - Join my sister Diana and I as we explore the life as a Courtesan as a healthy model for equal relationships between men and women. This week we talk bout seeing Education and the mind differently and we look at sex as a transcendent experience

Food and Farming - Join John MacQuarrie and I as we explore a vital transformative path for farmers who work and who get paid primarily as restorers of the biosphere

Health - Join Gord McNeilly and I as we explore health as coming from being accepted and supported in a community versus taking a pill.