Robert Paterson's Weblog

Network Mapping - Is this the best way to make the transformation to a Network?

We see that many traditional organizations are betting that Social Technology is the key agency for making the shift to being a network. Their hope is that if all the employees are socially connected that somehow everything will be different.

But, so far, there is no sign that all this investment in social technology has made any difference at all. There is no change in the top down controlling culture. There is no change in the silos and there is no change in the customer relationship.

Above all there is no change in the core business proposition.

Merely connecting people in the old context does not work.

What is missing? I think what is missing is any sense of what the journey really is. What is the starting point? Where is the goal? How do we get there? What is missing are the maps and the navigational tools. 

This story is about the power of Network Mapping. 

I offer you the story of the transfomation of a public TV station in St Louis, KETC, to the Nine Network. 

Of course while the maps are central, the real primary driver to this kind of transformation is leadership and situational context.

On the right in this picture, is the CEO Jack Galmiche and on the left is Amy Shaw SVP Community Engagement. Without them, none of this would have happened.

So let's go back to 2006 and the beginning of our story. For the context is important too. The core business model of the station and the economic viability of its market were fading. 

In 2006, KETC, Channel Nine, was one of the most viewed PBS stations in the system. But the station was in trouble. The traditional model of "Give us money because only here can you see good quality content" was losing its power. The core economic value of the station was losing its currency. So was the St Louis itself. Once one of the great cities in the US, St Louis was the mid west version of the rust belt. The city was losing its economic power.

Simply working the old model harder would not work. There had to be a new business model that did not rely on broadcast TV and something also had to be done to turn the economic corner in St Louis itself. 

In this context, the board looked for the person who had the experience and the courage to do something really new. 

They found the right candidate. A man who could do the novel but whose age and experience also meant that he generated trust as well. Jack was in his late fifties and had vast prior experience in TV and radio. He was also a known innovator. He was also a native son of St Louis. He would be coming home to his last job. This would be his legacy.

No CEO can do this kind of work without support from below. Unkown to him then, this person was waiting for just this opportunity. Amy Shaw was the Community Manager at the station. She was buried in middle management in a role that was seen as nice to have in most stations. "Engagement" was a go nowhere position then. But what this meant was that Amy knew everybody in St Louis and she knew how to get things done without relying on power. 

The work of transformation began with the Jack asking the right question.

In 2006, KETC was "Important" for St Louis. How could he make the station "Vital" for the city?

For "Important" was not going to be good enough for the station to survive and to thrive. What was the station equipped to do  that would make it "Vital" and so attract the support of ALL of St Louis both rich and poor?

To answer the question, he had to "See" St Louis with fresh eyes. We used the brilliant work of Valdis Krebs to visualize the situation. We used Krebs' Mapping Tools to Locate the core problem and the core opportunity. Here is the actual set of slides we used in 2006 to develop the strategy.

Krebs lived in Cleveland. A city much like St Louis that had once been great but was in decline as industry is everywhere. 

Krebs showed us the goal on the right. A critical feature of the success of Silicon Valley is how connected it is. It is alive! Krebs then shows us Cleveland on the left. The city had fractured. Trust and connection had been lost.

Jack saw that St Louis had suffered the same fate.

 

There were great communities still in St Louis. There were great institutions. But they had become disconnected. In decades of the downturn, trust and cohesion had been lost.

If they were connected up again in the right way, St Louis might become vital again. The agency that helped to make these connections would itself become VITAL.

But who could be this trust agent? Jack saw that KETC could be just that. It was already owned by the community. It was connected not only to the wealthy but also to the middle class and to the poor. To whites and to the African American Commnity.

If any organization could be the Trust Agent, it could be KETC.

From this one insight came the new idea behind the station. It was to use the trust that the station had gained over a generation of service and take on the role of a "CONNECTOR".

KETC was going to the a Connector that would reconnect St Louis to itself and then reconnect St Louis to the world outside.

Jack knew where he had to go. But now the problem was how to get there. How was he to change how everyone worked and also how everyone related to each other?

In 2006, KETC was a typical PBS station and it was a typical organization. It showed national programs from the network locally. It also made a few local magazine shows that talked about St Louis. It was organized traditionally. The CEO made all the calls. Each department was a silo. Inter departmental issues were decided by the CEO. It was operationally slow. It also knew next to nothing about the web or about social media.

Krebs showed us a process that could enable us to do this. This process is all based on a fundemental character of a natural system. They are all fractal. So the very small is a model of the very large. What this means in practice is that if you try out something very small that fits the network model, you have practised the eventual goal. If you then set up a series of projects that build on each fractal, over time the new becomes your new normal and you end up at your goal. 

So the process that you will see below, using Krebs' diagrams, is what we found to be the key to understanding the tactics of making the shift from a traditional organization to a network. We start with a tiny internal project that costs no money but that puts the key staff into the new framework. On a small scale, they learn by experience, like riding a bike, how the new works and what it feels like.

They learn by doing.

We then learn what we did wrong and make changes. And then we do it again but now with a larger project. We keep repeating this until the internal team now can do this naturally. We then start at the beginning again and add new partners. We take the fractal out of the internal to the outside. When this is normal, we take the model out to the national system. 

This was the process. This is now what we did.

We looked for a small project. The project would be a tiny fractal of all the change that we knew we had to have.

We found it in supporting Ken Burns' documentary - The War - We set up a small committee chaired by Amy Shaw that brought every department into the same room. We also added some very young interns who had all used social media and blogging. (The full story is here).

This team had to work across the silos and up and down the hierarchy. It was fun to watch the interns instruct the old film veterans in the skills of blogging and the use of the Flip camera. It was an eye opener that Jack refused to settle disputes and forced them back into the room. It was great to see Amy blossom in her role as facilitator.

We set out to ask St Louis to tell us their stories of the War and we created a site where we posted them and we created a physical space - like the Antiques Road Show - where we could collect them face to face. We wrapped the documentary with St Louis stories. We brought our audience INTO the story.

Along the way, KETC learned a few important lessons. How to use the web, use social media, how to use new editing tools, how to work accross silos and how to work without the CEO having to do it all. St Louis also saw KETC in a new light. They saw the station putting the public onto Public TV.

We had learned enough to go to Krebs' next stage. 

In late 2006 the Mortgage Crisis had hit St Louis hard. What we noticed was that it was all but impossible to find help that people could trust. Knowing what we had learned in The War, we asked ourselves, what if we could connect most of the helping agencies and set up a trusted resource that would help all St Louisans in this terrible time. Might this approach be seen as VITAL?

This is what the station did.

KETC was the Weaver that made the connections to the support agencies and helped weave them into a network. And as KETC wove, the nodes started to talk to each other in a new way. As we did this, people in St Louis started to see the station with new eyes. Most whom KETC helped were not our traditional viewers. As we did this, those with influence in St Louis also saw this new side to the station and wanted to help too. Most importantly for KETC, those in power in PBS and CPB backed the experiment. For they had the intuition that this role might be the right role for all of public media.

All the while, the culture was changing in the station. It was now becoming normal to work across the silos. It was becoming normal to use the web and new video editing tools. Social media was now normal. It was normal for an intern to be the lead on a project where she had the expertise. It was normal for people to have solid working relationships up and down the ladder of power. It was normal for the CEO to ask a junior person for advice.

None of this was driven by any social platform. What did take place was that all the key staff moved into one common bull pen. Everyone was face to face in their daily lives.

It was the work and it was the success of the work and how the work was felt in the city that helped staff accept the new. There is nothing like being stopped in the supermarket and having someone hug you for what you are doing to reinforce that this change is good. There is nothing like having a man walk in off the street and give Jack his medals as a token of his gratitude.

With this local success, the leadership of public TV asked KETC if they could take this Mortgage project nationwide. Over 26 cities with TV and Radio took part. And the same things started to happen there too both nationally and locally. The new work changed the people.

The Fractal effect works!

By this time at KETC, the new had become the normal. No one was going to go back to work in the old way. Emergance had taken place. Emergence is like when a small child connects enough words and can make all the right sounds and then one day just starts talking in sentences. 

Since then KETC and many stations have taken this idea as the Trusted Local Community Connector as the core of the work to make Public TV vital.

Health such as in epidemics and also how to navigate Obamacare. Education and even Immigration (And Here) have all been featured in national and local projects.

Nine have even set up a school to help people learn how to make videos. Really helping the community to have its own voice. Nine also incubated the Beacon - a network of Journalists who now work at St Louis Public Radio. And talking of St Louis Public Radio, traditionally public TV and Radio do not get in well. But in St Louis both stations now work next door to each other and share a "Commons" between them - a public space for shows and exhibits. (More here)

KETC has transcended just being a TV station. The transformation had taken less than 3 years.

Here in an article run by The Current - the trade Newspaper - is how KETC was seen by its peers by 2009. 

KETC/Channel 9 to become Nine Network of Public Media

CPB President Pat Harrison will be in St. Louis on Oct. 12 as KETC/Channel 9 unveils its new brand identity as the Nine Network of Public Media, the station announced today (Oct. 5). It's part of the celebration for the opening of its new digital facility, the Nine Center for Public Engagement. There'll be six interactive demonstration stations in the new building: nineVoices, a website where community members post videos with solutions to local problems; Homeland, an immigration initiative; nineAcademy, digital video storytelling; the Public Insight Network, a site where participants serve as resources for pubmedia news gatherers; and interactive experiences with Nine on Twitter and Facebook. The staff of KETC's news partner St. Louis Beacon, located in the new center, will also be there to discuss their work as a nonprofit online publication (Current, March 30, 2009).

Of course Downton Abbey is still important. But that is nice. It is this role as the Trusted Facilitator that can help communities tackle very complex problems that is where the public support is coming from. This role is making Public Media vital.

But without the ability to "See" the work, I do not think that any of this could have been imagined or done. For if you cannot "see" where you are or where you need to go, or how to get there, you must surely be lost.

And here we owe Valdis Krebs our thanks.

The coming Cultural Revolution Part 3 of 3 - Why I joined Change Agents Worldwide

In Part 1 of this series, I showed that the people are ready for the transformation of the organization to a more social and networked model. In Part 2, I showed the situation where an established leader of a leading traditional organization had to make such a massive change.

Today, let's look at at what such a change process might be like and why having a network like Change Agents Worldwide as your facilitators would make sense.

Cultural Change is like going to live in another country - it is not a mechanical process

Imagine if you lived in rural Ireland in the 1880's. 

Image Source 

Your first language might not be English. Your culture would be of a peasant in a state ruled by a foreign power who made all the rules without any participation by you. Your master would be English who lived a very different life than you. You would not own your farm and could be dispossed at any time. Millions had been already. But this was the only life that you knew. It was your normal. It was your culture. You were criticized by your masters for not having more self initiative. But there was never going to be any change to this, so long as you lived in Ireland.

Now you have a brother who lives in New York. He writes to you often about life in America. You and your family share his letters that are read to you by the priest. For you do not know how to read. You get a sense that his life is better. It is hard in New York but he has hope. Especially he has hope for his kids, who are at school. Who can read and speak English. Your nephew is going to join the police where a cousin is a sergeant. Your brother is deeply involved in politics and has become part of the Irish group that runs the local ward.

What you hear above all, is that your brother has much more opportunity and freedom than you do in Ireland. But, so long as you continue to live in Ireland, you cannot get free of the grip of your local culture.

You cannot become like your brother so long as you stay home. This is the critical issue.

This is where your brother lives and he and his family become American by being immersed in the new culture. Nearly every rule that governed life in the old country is the opposite here.

This is what it means to have cultural change!

Some observations about what cultural change is and so how to experience it

Culture can only be learned by prolonged immersion - Culture is a set of unspoken rules about social habits and expectations that are shared by a community. Like a language, or like learning to drive a car or to fly a plane, they have to be habituated. So they can only be learned by an immersive process.

So, no amount of books, courses and tuition will change a culture. Nor will orders to change how you think or live. Nor will teachers who are not of the new culture themselves. But this is how we have been used to "Change" in organizations.

So You Can't Change the Whole Place at Once - The Irish went to New York one family or one Village at a time. The whole of Ireland did not cross at one time.

In part 2 we saw that Fisher built Dreadnoughts one ship at a time. He could not transform the whole Navy at once.

It is best to use the Adoption Theory process here. Start with the most ready. Work it out with them. Then enlist them to help with the next most ready and so on. Peers must help peers. Successful immigrants create support systems in the new place. The Irish who were resented by many, organized to look after each other and dominated neighbourhoods, polictics and the police. 

Rely mainly on peers to help each new wave. Tell lots of stories. Enable folks to hold real power in the new.

Set Up Facilitating Structures to support and accelerate - Make it easy! - Major Shipping lines redesigned their entire business to support mass immigration. They redesigned their ships, marketing, costs to focus on this group. This was where they made their money too! Ellis Island was set up to facilitate the arrival process too.

There will be the equivalent processes for a process to help a large organization make the shift. 

Build a New World - In the 1880's, immigrants got on a ship and went to a new world literally. By so doing, they could leave the old behind and be immersed in the new. You have to create this reality too.

You can't still be in Ireland and become American.

A new culture has to be embodied. People have to move to a new place in physical terms where the new rules apply and that is organized itself according to the new rules. You cannot still live in an Irish Rural Village and try and be American. The Dreadnought was very different from older ships.

This implies not only a new kind of web environment but a new approach to face to face and what is an office - if there is an office!

Summary of the Work

This is not your typical "Change Management Process". It is not about engineering. It is about understanding how humans behave.

It is a dance rather than a set meal.

It is all about trust and in the end it is about love. This is not a term used much in business but it is a term understood in the high performing part of the military. The consultant cannot be the outsider. The consultant has to become the client. Such an assigment might take many years to complete.

Such work demands a long term partnership with advisors who know their place. For in this work 99% of the work has to be done by the client or it will fail. Such an approach demands a certain kind of ego and native experience. 

It is this high leverage that keeps the costs down for the client. The consulting costs are trivial when compared to the effort put in by the client.

Why CAWW?

So why hire CAWW to help you do this?

We have a unique perspective of Old and New - There are 2 types of people in CAW. There are those like me who have been natives of the new culture for a very long time. We know it not because we have read a few articles but because we have long since left the old country and we are natives of the new. Natives who not only know all about this by experience but also have ourselves large networks of support and talent.

There are also others who are still in the corporate world. They are like portals into the system that has to be changed. So CAWW lives both in the old and in the new country.

We have created a New Country - Whether we are a freelancer or still have a job in CAWW - we both inhabit a new country that models the form and behaviour of what your new country may be like.

We have leadership in a vast range of related issues - Every area of concern has at least one leader in CAWW. If there might be a missing aspect, the network can fill the gap.

We are global and have great diversity - Members are of many nationalities and so can help with the cultural nuances of a global customer. Being global, we are also on call 24/7.

CAWW does not have the cost burn rate that drives the need to bill typically - There is no office. There is no senior partner overide. There are no recuiting costs. The admin costs are tiny compared to a conventional practice. CAWW is a true network. 

 Find out more here.

 

Related articles

The coming Cultural Revolution Part 2 of 2 - Why I joined Change Agents Worldwide

The Coming Cultural Revolution Part 1 of 3 - Why I joined Change Agents Worldwide

Does big change ever happen from the bottom up? Why you will fail if you try there first

The coming Cultural Revolution Part 2 of 3 - Why I joined Change Agents Worldwide

This is a portrait of Admiral Sir John Fisher as First Sea Lord. To save the Royal Navy and to push it ahead of all other navies at at time, he set in motion a change in culture that risked losing it all. He knew that if he did not make this change, another navy, the US, France or Germany would do what had to be done and then the RN would never catch up.

His story will be retold soon in modern organizational life.

Some leader, whose organization is at the top of the tree, will recognize that, unless he or he makes the real change, a competitor will and that will be the end.

This person will make this change, knowing that it also will mean that all the rules that made that organization #1 will have to change and that the organization will have to start again from scratch. But they will make it knowing that, when you have the headstart in this type of race, you will keep the lead.

I tell this story as part 2 of a 3 part series (Part 1 is here) on why and how this change will happen and why I think that Change Agents Worldwide or CAWW, the network I have just joined, may be able to help in this great matter.

In this story we will look at 3 ships and the century long transition it took for the RN to shift from sail to the modern battleship.  It is a story of how success and power holds you back. It is a story of how it takes a wrenching change from the TOP to shift a powerful player in an old paradigm to take leadership in the new. 

In part 1 of this series, I told the story of how the people change. Millions of people are ready for the network world and the technology that will support this is here. It just all has to be put together in the right way. This is what our story is all about.

HMS Victory was built in the 1760's. She was already an old ship by 1805 and the Battle of Trafalgar where the RN took hold of a global dominance that it held until 1918. 

Here she is in about 1900.

She embodied not only the paradigm of sail and wood but also as importantly a culture.

It was her culture that lived on well into the age of steam, steel and turret guns. As much as anything, this was what Fisher had to change. For the real problem that faced him, and all navies, was that if you used the culture of Nelson in a modern warship, you would fail. The culture would not support the new tool to have the full use of its new power.

Here is what Fisher had to work to overcome.

In Nelson's navy, the #1 rule in combat was to get in close. It was to close the enemy and pound. It was all about courage and the kind of training that meant that the RN would out gun the enemy. Any one who stood back could risk execution as Admiral Byng found who was shot for cowardice.

This would make it very hard for a big gun ship who could shoot miles away. The RN did not shoot from far away. In Nelson's navy, real men got close. It was all about courage and class. It was bad form to use science or distance. 

In the sail navy, watch officers were gods. So if you were an engineer, you had no standing. This was going to make it very hard for engineers who would be needed to run all the machinery of the steam navy. The Navy saw itself as a club of gentlemen. They saw engineers as lower class people who had got their place not through family and character but by going to school. 

These kind of cultural differences are what holds back the traditional organization today. We have a view of the kind of relationships that are normal and best. These do not work in the network world. We have a view of the kind of skills and the kind of person that fits best too. These skills and these kinds of people are not enough in the network world either.

So the RN then, and we today, end up with something that looks modern but that actually has very little capability when compared with what could be possible.

And this is what this looks like. HMS Inflexible in 1881. Her first captain, had been Fisher himself!

At first glance , she may look quite modern to you. She is made of steel. She is steam driven. She has a huge turret amidships with 16 inch guns. She has masts but only as insurance. 

But she is not modern and has very little real capability. And the reason is that she is operated and so designed using Nelsonic culture.

The big guns are muzzle loaders and take a long time to load. They have to be swung into line with the body of the ship and are loaded and rammed from there. She is designed to fight alongside the enemy. Her engineering crew have very little status. One of the key signs of success in the navy at this time was how clean the ship was. Hard to pull off when powered by coal. 

She looked mean but really it was the mystique of the RN that was her real power.

From the 1880's until 1905, this is what navies did. They all added features of the new but all kept the old culture. Is this not what most organizations are doing too today?

But, by 1900, all navies were wondering if a ship that only had big guns and that would enagage at long distance would be the winner. Of course such a ship would invalidate doctrine and make all existing ships obsolete overnight. But who knew, so no one made the dangerous move. 

In 1905 this idea was tested at the Battle of Tsushima. Here the Japanese under Admiral Togo demolished the Russian fleet. The opening shots were fired at 6,200 metres disabling the Russian flag ship. Later analysis showed that only the big guns had any value. It was also clear that being slow was fatal. Much more engineering had to go into the propulsion.

So Fisher was faced with a terrible decision. If he built a ship that embodied the new culture, he would make very ship in the RN obsolete and he would up end the operational culture. All other navies could start from ground zero with him. But if he did not, then the RN would lose for sure.

This is where a leader is going to find themselves today. We are going to see a new entrant demolish an old one using the new. We are going to see the proof of the value of the network. And then a brave leader of the old will have to take the plunge and go for the new themselves. 

Here she is. HMS Dreadnought of 1905/6. She is the embodiment of the new.

She has steam turbines and not reciprocating engines. She used coal but coal that was mixed with oil to give a higher burn. She was faster than any other capital ship in the world.

She had 10 12 inch guns in five turrets and had a barrage twice the weight of any other ship. 

She was designed to fight at a distance and she had to have first class engineers and gunners.

She could sink an entire opposing fleet of old ships.

This is what it is like to put the whole package together. 

Of course, Fisher met with massive opposition inside the leadership of the Navy. For in producing Dreadnought he hurt many of his peers who were completely invested in the old. But he also saved the navy. By being first, the RN stayed ahead of all others and kept its dominance until the end of WWI.

And CAWW? 

The hard work will be cultural design. Culture is created by having a set of habits. Learning a new culture then is like learning to fly. You can read every book under the sun, but in the end you have get into a cockpit with a person who is a pilot and learn new habits - many of which don't make any sense - from this person. Only when these habits are "Habitual" and so you don't have to think about them - do you know how to fly. And even then, you have other stages. No Navy pilot lands on the deck of a carrier without a series of new learnings under their belt. Learnings that are best learned from a person that has done all of this and is a personal master of the issue.

The old organization that embraces the new will not able to stop learning when they solo in a single engine Cessna. This is Navy flying.

In the third and last post of this series, I will make the case for why it is likely that you might find such instructors in CAWW and not in a conventional practice.

Part 3 is here

The Coming Cultural Revolution Part 1 of 3 - Why I joined Change Agents Worldwide

Many thanks to Susan Scrupksi who has kindly invited me to join Change Agents Worldwide - More on CAWW Here.

What does this mean to me and maybe even for you? The quick answer is that this is all about the great cultural transition from a machine context to a natural or networked one. The quick answer is that I think the time has come for the change to take place in a leading organization that will set the stage for everyone else. The quick answer is that such an organization will need the support of people who have made the change themselves and who embody and live this change.

The Tipping Point needs more weight to "Cross the Chasm". I and others cannot help on our own. I and others like me need the power of our own network to do this work.

The cells have to form a molecule!

So here are 2 stories that have helped me understand that now is the time and this is the work. But first, some context.

The Initial Phase of the Change Process is Done

My regular readers know that I am usually early on issues. For as long as I have been blogging - Since 2002 - I have been saying that our mechanistic way of seeing the world is taking us down a path to failure. I have been saying that a network model for life has a chance of offering us and our kids a future. I have been saying that the transition from the old the new is a step in our development as a species. 

These mad ravings are not so mad anymore. 

What seemed odd back in 2002 - 2010 is now more mainstream. Many of us, as individuals, have stepped out of the traditional organizations and out of the job world. This group is in the millions now.

The idea of networks is now widely understood. After all, most of us inhabit social networks now as our normal. This group is in the billions.

But most organizations remain bound by the old rules. The power systems all use the old models. Only a handful of organizations have made the move. Many organizations play with the new. They use the buzz words. They hire, at great expense, software vendors that offer collaborative tools. They hire, at great expense, A-list consulting firms to help them speed up their processes. But actually they are stuck. In spite of all the new social tools, in spite of all the change projects, they have not had a commensurate increase in productivity and innovation.

Why is this?

Individuals can change more quickly than institutions. Millions are ready. Billions are aware but institutions are stuck because of where they are in the change cycle.

What is the barrier? To make this kind of change, the old culture in the organization has to die. It is stuck because to make the change they have to give up the way they have always done things. A way that has been successful in the past. A way that those at the top made their careers on.  Put yourself in their shoes.

If you are an admiral in the navy that was based on sail, moving quickly to steam means that all who have made it on sail are marginal. If you are a surgeon before anesthetic, your career was made on speed. Why would adopting anesthesia help you? If you are a journalist who made your career in print, why would the web appeal?

We must not judge. 

This situation of "stuck" is why have I joined CAWW. I see that the time is right now to reach out to a few brave leaders of traditional organizations.

Why now and why them?

To answer this I will offer two stories about big change. The first one today is about the settling of the American West. This will explain the Change Lifecycle. For all change has such a cycle and when we see it, we can stop judging and be more open to what we can all do to help. 

The second is about the story of the shift from sail to steam in the RN. This will explain the cultural final act of the change process. How and why do some at the top of the old system give it all up? The story gives support to the brave few who will do it.

The American West - The Cycle of Change

From 1880 to 1914 about 50 million people left their homes in Europe and came to America. They were inspired by a new story. They had learned that, in America, you could be who you wanted to be. All you had to do was to go there and work hard. This was the opposite of life in the old country where how you were born was your destiny. There was also "free land" in the west. No land was available back home. 

But this was also true in 1830. So why did so few go there then? This is our story about the change lifecycle or the Adoption Theory.

After the expedition of Lewis and Clark, a few weird men left all traces of civilization behind and began to explore what had been the Louisiana Purchase. Loosely called "Mountain Men", they loved the wildness of the new and they fitted in naturally to all aspects of the cultureof this land, including the culture of the native Americans that lived there.

Every major cultural change starts here.

I was was one of those weird "mountain men" back in the 1990's. In 1994, I gave up up my traditional "Civilized" life for the life of a freelancer. This was a time when few made that choice willingly. When blogging appeared in the late 1990's early 2000's I jumped in with both feet. It was as if I had found a home. I had now found a new culture to replace the void I had having left the old one.

At the time, most people still in the old culture thought people like me were mad. How could I make a living like this? What was I doing writing in public every day? How could I find friends all over the world? What was all this social thing?

This is what "Mountain Men" and the "Annie Oakley's" do. They find out how the new world works. They explore the trails. They find the best and the worst places. They establish a culture. And they tell stories that annoy many but excite some.

They are the "Innovators" in Adoption Theory. They have no pull with the people who really count but can inspire regular folks.

Innovators are defined by Rogers as "Innovators are daring, rash and risky. They are able to cope with a high level of uncertainty". Rogers says, "While an innovator may not be respected by the other members of a local system, the innovator plays an important role in the diffusion process; that of launching the new idea in the system by importing the innovation from outside of the system's boundaries. Thus the innovator plays a gate-keeping role in the flow of new ideas into a system."

This Innovator stage of the cycle has its time and the next phase begins with the early "Early Adopters".

These are always individuals and families. They tend not to be organizations. In the story of the west, these are the brave souls who go west on the wagon trains. They are the pathfinders. They take a lot of risk for no sure thing. 

Some of the ex Mountain Men get jobs guiding wagon trains west. Wagon trains that are made up of the next layer of adopters. These fit into the Early Adopter category.

Their going west is hard for them, but it is also hard for the west. Major things are lost as we see in this tragic painting. This next stage destroys much of the old culture. It also opens a wedge. For the powers back east now see the old culture of the west as a danger to the settlers. The Indians become the problem.

As more Early Adopters go west, the people with power in the East start to see the opportunity for themselves to make money serving this shift. They undertstand this pull that is attracting more and more people. They ask themselves how they can do well out of being party of this.

The Authority Leaders who make up this part of the Early Adopters are defined like this: Opinion leadership is an important aspect of the Early Adopter. They often serve as a role model for other people. They are more integrated into society than the innovators. "The early adopter is respected by his or her peers, and is the embodiment of successful, discrete use of new ideas. The early adopter knows that to continue to earn this esteem of colleagues and to maintain a central position in the communication networks of the system, he or she must make judicious innovation-decisions. The early adopter decreases uncertainty about a new idea by adopting it, and then conveying a subjective evaluation of the innovation to near-peers through interpersonal networks," Rogers said.

They build BIG TOOLS to make it easy for people to go west. They makes changes to policy to help the flow. This is the point where the Authority figures join the Early Adopters and start to build the bridge to enable the Early Majority to "Cross the Chasm".

Without this infrastrutucture, the "Chasm" cannot be crossed at scale. The journey to the West has to be made much easier than the wagon train. Here some of the old Mountain Men are hired as mappers. Many of the wagon train routes are used. But the power is now in the hands of the engineers and then in the marketers. They build more than a railway across the plains. 

The "Bridge" goes all the way back to the old world. Immigrants are actively recruited. Steam ships and lines focus on their needs. Ellis Island is built to process their arrival. All of this combines to bring millions to the new world. Much of the work is about engineering and marketing. It is not about the old culture of the west and it is not about why the people come. It is about the supporting infrastructure. 

But, why the people come is still the old story. They come to find a better life where they can be what they can be. Underpinning all of this movement of millions of people is culture.

There is coming a moment when the tension between the old and the new will become so great that some organizations will make the real change, and when they do, all those that do not will face oblivion. 

The issue will be culture.

This is why I have joined CAWW.

It is itself a network and is not an organization that uses engineering as its model. It is a tribe. It is inhabited by people who are like me. It is a home for ex "Mountain Men" and "Annie Oakleys". 

My hope and the hope of my colleagues is that we can act as the cultural guides to those that wish to "Go West" too. Our credential is not that we have read the book, or can spout the dogma, but that we live there in this new place. We are the change.

I have also joined because I think that each of us are weak when we are only on our own. Several dear friends are in CAWW. We have known each other for many years. But now I think it is better that we get together more formally. The work is too large for just a single person.

The really hard work is about to begin. The hard work is about the culture. The new organizational social tools are here. Most people now use social tools as individuals. But society and organizations remain locked in to the machine culture. So the new tools get us nowhere.

But soon, one or two major players are going to have a leader that will know that they have to go for it. And when they do, they will need to have the best advice and support. For they will risk it all.

In my next post, on the RN, we will see what this means. We will see how one man, risked it all and won.

But as a teaser I ask you to look at this picture of HMS Inflexible (Don't you love the name!). This was the pride of the RN in the 1870's. It looks modern. But it isn't. It represents the challenge that traditional organizations have with only using engineering as their way ahead.

Here is HMS Inflexible. It's first Captain was Jackie Fisher - whom we will meet in the next post when he was First Lord of the Admiralty. It is what a large organization is like that uses all the new tools but in the old way.

And here is the revolution, HMS Dreadnought. This is what it like when the new tools and the new culture are aligned.

 More in my next post.

Part 2 is here.

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A Backgrounder on the PEI Pension situation - the Figures do not add up

There is no easy fix to PEI' s Public Sector Pension woes. Ethics, good will, trust in the end has nothing to do with the problem. The problem is structural and faces all governments and all citizens. In this short post I will show you the structural issues in play so that you can see what the real problem is. In part II, I will offer up some structural ideas about what might work.

I comment on this not just because I care and that this is important but because I also was once a manager of large pools of money and was also the policy person responsible for a pension fund much larger than PEI's.

This image shows the core problem. There are not enough tax payers to pay for the pensions in the future. For the first time in history, PEI, and all western states, have a population distribution that has more older people than young. On PEI this is more extreme than in many places.

PEI's Public Pension was never properly funded. In the early years, it relied on the pyramid on the left, which had lost of taxpayers in the base to pay for much of the few pensions. This is not a unique position, many pensions did this. All such schemes are in trouble. This is the fundamental flaw.

Issue #1 there is not the time or the money to fund the pension properly.

When last seen the unfunded liability was more than $400 million. To put this in perspective that is about 50% of the total PEI annual tax revenues. The issue that faces all Islanders now is time and risk. Many pensioners will be retired in the next 5 years. Most in the next 10 years. The Province said that it could afford to pay $20 million a year to close the gap. The math does not add up. The gap cannot be closed in time.

That then leaves the issue #2 of risk. There is not the time to take more risk as the pension has to be paying out now to many pensioners.

The fund managers cannot place the funds in assets that carry too much risk. The massive loss in 2008 suggests that the Province was already pushing the managers to be more aggressive than they should have been. The losses from 2008 were much larger than they should have been if the portfolio had had a more conservative policy. An additional risk now is that the Province will again push the managers to take a more risky position. The fundementals for the market are weaker today than they were in 2008. This is not a time to take more risk.

 Issue #3, can PEI raise taxes?

 As this graph shows, the answer is no to this. And it's worse.

Most of the talented young Islanders have had to leave PEI as there is not enough work. So not only does PEI have too few young but the best have to leave. Worse, many return when they are old!

There is simply not the tax base to call on to make up the difference. Unfortunately I have not shown you all the bad news that makes this worse. And here it is. The "Elephant" in the room.

PEI's health costs are a product of poverty, lack of control and an aging population. The all in cost of health care has risen as a percentage of PEI's own tax revenues excluding the Feds from 53% in 2000 to 78% in 2010 (Figures taken for CIHI and from the PEI Budget) By 2015, the health care costs will exceed the PEI core tax revenues. Because the growth is exponential, they will double the tax revenues by 2020.

There are 2 main drivers for this. The first is that PEI has more old than young. The second is that PEI has more chronic illness than most places. 

These poor statistics do not show that Islanders over 60 will be 60% likely to have Type 2 Diabetes.

It's depressing isn't it? 

There is no easy way out of this and there is no way that the money itself can be re arranged. It's way too late for that. One thing is for sure, what was promised to Pensioners will have to be pulled back from. PEI, and many provinces, cities and nations are all caught in the same jam. Pensions will have to be cut. I am not recommending this, I am simply stating a fact of life. There is not the money to pay them as promised.

So is there a way out?

I think that there is  but it has to work on the fundamentals and not the figures. I will post at more length in a few days. But here are the highlights.

We have to work on the fundamentals. PEI has to have more young people living on PEI who can do the work and so pay taxes. To keep our young here and to attract more to the Island demands an employment strategy. This cannot be a traditional one of trying to attract employers to open a call centre or a plant. 

PEI has to attract many young families to PEI to be part of the new food revolution that is tied into the health revolution. PEI itself has to lead in the health revolution too.

I will make the case that we are seeing a revolution in health and in food that will create a huge demand for Real Food. This can only be grown in small operations. PEI has a great start here and also has, relative to Ontario and Quebec, cheap land. We are already seeing a new kind of "Back to the Land" movement that is based on this new kind of food system. PEI is a long the way to identifying good food with PEI.

These people will not come here to get jobs but to own a small business. They too are fed up with being squeezed out of life in the big cities and want a real life. I will explain this more later. 

To stop the health care costs from consuming all PEI's resources, PEI has to apply the principles of the new health revolution to itself. My regular readers will know what I am talking about. Bottom line most chronic illness can be prevented and also cured by better diet and some changes to how we live. It may be possible to reduce PEI's health costs back to pre 2000 levels in 10 years.

Making a big push in the food system needed to do this adds to the value. But I get ahead of myself.

Bottom line PEI has to

• Have 10,000 more young families here by 2020
• Have most Islanders eating real food as a matter of course
• Have a health coaching system set up to facilitate this difficult shift in culture

If PEI can do this, then maybe most of the pensions can be saved and PEI will move ahead to being a have province.

 

 

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In Pain? Lost? Confused? The "Call" - Please hear it

I write today for some people I know that are, at this very moment, standing on the edge. All their lives to now have been based on working hard to be a success. But now the Call is so loud that they cannot double up on their past efforts. They have given their all and then some. 

I offer a message of hope. There is another life. The feeling of being lost is merely the first step to finding this other and better life. The feeling of being lost is the key to the early part of the Hero's Journey.  

Image Credit

Dante opens the Inferno with the classic lines:

In the middle road of my life

I awoke in a dark wood

Where the true way was wholly lost

This is not an easy path. For when it is completed, the old Rob, or the old you, the you that was defined by "success" or "failure" in the old world, has to die. No wonder you may have refused the Call before. 

The Call gets refused until it cannot. Like surgery in the pre anesthetic era, there comes a time when the pain of the operation is better than the pain of the bladder stone.I was so confused that I had a nervous breakdown. I could not see how I could give up the life that I had devoted myself too with such effort. Others I know have suffered physical health breakdowns. Others have lost their spouse and kids. Some die.

Is this where you are now?

Please don't worry. All that you will really lose by accepting the Call is the illusion.

In his wonderful book, the Heart Aroused, the poet, David Whyte,  shows the illusion.

"Becoming aware of this after a lifetime of accepting success as the ultimate healing balm, as something that will give you protection is, declares Dante, like waking in a dark wood. He begins by admitting that the human mind never sees success as "here", but always ahead down the road. He says that the day that you have your desk finally cleared will never arrive. That the level of safety that you are aiming for on the corporate ladder is an illusion. He says that the child you have at home for whom you are making many sacrifices, will be grown and gone by the time you struggle back from the traffic. ....

When you awake you will be lost because you will meet a stranger. And that stranger is you!

When you do awake, you are rousing a different part you, a barely experienced life that lies at your core. Having forgotten this central soul experience, you do not recognize where you are. To that part of you that loved your sleep (in the Matrix), it feels as if it is waking in the dark. It appears to be lost."

No wonder you will feel lost. I had no idea who Rob was. I knew Robert. But Rob? He had disappeared maybe when I was 6. He or she is the best friend you will ever have he and she will love you like no other. This whom I found.

You know who you really are. Reach out to him or to her. Trust him or her. He or she will take you home.

Campbell says this better than I can.

....... we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the heropath. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the centre of our existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world."

**********************************

".....The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. "Live," Nietzsche says, "as though the day were here." It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal - carries the cross of the redeemer - not in the bright moments of his tribes's great victories, but in the silence of his personal despair."

 The Hero of a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell, 1949

 Now the real adventure of your life begins. 

 

 

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What is it to "Do" in an energetic world versus a kinetic one - Why Networks are Different

This is dynamite. Powerful stuff. But it is mechanical. It works by expanding. It uses mechanical force. To have a bigger bang, you need to compress it and add more. Bigger is better. The more compression, or control, the better.

Its energy is Newtonian. It is kinetic. It uses direct force. This is also how most human organizations work. When we say "Let's do something" we mean do something Kinetic. Our current organizations operate cause and effect levers. They make things or products in carefully engineered processes. They direct operations from the top. They even communicate and so market by using kinetic force. We are bombarded by messages. Above all they control.

This kinetic metaphor applies to each of us as individuals. We are all separate. Unhappy spouses blame the faults of their partners. "If only HE would change!" Sick people look to their doctor for help and refuse to think about their own part in health. Teachers talk at us and confine the curriculum. We measure kinetic outcomes.

To a limited degree this kinetic view works. It works for simple and complicated things. But it is not very effective when applied to complex or complicated issues. Such as people! 

Also this Kinetic view of power means that most people have none. Bigger is better.

If we want real power for each of us as a person, we have to go beyond the kinetic. 

This is an atomic explosion. It creates kinetic energy but is based on a very different context. The power comes from releasing the inherent energy contained inside an atom. It is really about tapping into the energy of the universe. This is the type of energy that will be used in the best design networks. 

This is how I see the new power of people inside a network.

Here are some examples. Many of my regular readers know that in the last 4 years, I have transformed my own body and health. This process began at first by my meeting Euan Semple after an absence of a year or so when I was struck by how he had done the same. If Euan, who I liked and respected could do this, maybe I could? At the same time I met an old friend John Lahey who had done the same. Now I was being influenced by two people that I trusted. Then a third friend introduced me to Michael Rose, one of the world's leading evolutionary biologists. He showed me what I had  to do and why.

None of this is kinetic. Without their supprt, I could not have tried this. I would not have taken in the new information without the trust. Without my wife Robin supporting me, I could not have done this. Without my own body giving me feedback, I could not have done this. 

In turn, my actions to align my inner self to my evolutionary design has lead to me having an influence on others. I sell nothing. I wait. We talk. They act or they don't. It's all about trust and readiness. I do nothing kinetic. Those that are ready are attracted to my story. 

I now see that I am also part of a network of other people who are making the same changes to themselves. This network is coming together. As we find others, our sense of trust and confidence grows. At some time, not far in the future, there will be a critical mass and then there will be "criticality". This powerful movement will attract enough other people into the network to challenge the system. They will challenge it not kinetically by trying to attack it or to change it, but will instead ignore it.

Instead they will help each other. Help each other change inside. Help each other find the new science. Help each other bring to life a new food system. Yes there is lots of kinetic work here, but the energy that drives all of this is social. It comes from releasing the power of the human spirit.

In finding our own power we attract others. 

This social energy will change the world. 

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Why our institutions cannot cope - Machines Don't do Complexity

Bureaucracies, or how we organize large organizations, have a kinetic culture. If we can accept that the world we live in today is truly complex, then we see why our linear, kinetic, machine-modeled institutions struggle to make sense of it. 

Dave Snowden's Cynefin model shows us why. A machine organization is designed to be at its root simple. It is kinetic. Being kinetic, it is based on the idea of direct linkages and so of cause and effect. That is why they spend so much effort on control. Most banks spend more than 40% of their costs on their control system. They are designed to operate in a simple or in a complicated world. 

This used to work because they were born in an environment when the world was smaller and so less connected. They inhabited a local space where it was possible to approximate a simple, or at worst, a complicated space. That is why they worked 50 years ago.

But now, even the individual lives in a global space and so do all institutions. Such a global space is by definition complex and sometimes chaotic. This all about how the individual gets empowered by being connected. This connectivity has accelerated since 1985 with the advent of the web and the mobile phone. The connectivity of the individual is growing exponentially. But this is not how our institutions are organized. This personal connectivity and all that it means is an anathema to institutions. Being kinetic they are designed to work top down and to keep the masses silent. They are designed to deliver the benefits to the owners and not to the servants and certainly not to the "customers" who are objects subject to the power of the kinetic tool. 

So as the institutions themselves grow in their end game they clash with how life is lived and clash with the real needs of employees and those that seek to be served. 

This is why they enforce a one size fits all curriculum. This is why they have to find a pill that is aimed at one part of one pathway. This is why they have to react to crime and not prevent it. This why they have to kill people to make them free. If they let go, they know they will die. They look at the newspaper and at the music industry and see their own death. They are upping the stakes for all dissent. They have no choice.

The more they seek control, the more the dissonance.

Our current response to this dissonance is blame. We think that the leaders are stupid, venal and weak. Now all this may also be true but it does not get us anywhere. Because, if you were that leader, you would be captured by the system too.

Blame here is a waste of energy. Reform is a waste of energy. 

This issue is not a moral one. It is about a design that has outlived its utility. A machine is always a machine. All machines work kinetically.

The real issue is about evolution. 

We have to design new institutions that are well adapted to the world that we now live in. This means that the new have to be based on natural networks. They have to be able to do the things that Dave talks about here. 

 

Many hope that our institutions can learn from Dave. I don't see how any organization that is based on a values system that is simple can. But a new organization, based largely on a network, can use all the quadrants when needed,

This is why my only hope for us is to stop trying to reform the old and get busy creating the new.

 

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Why I think that PEI will lead the Food Revolution

PEI is near the Tipping Point where a new system breaks out. For many years the farmer's market was where the Granola fold met. It was a club of the converted. It was the Innovators who are this group. Innovators are:

Innovators are daring, rash and risky. They are able to cope with a high level of uncertainty. Rogers says, "While an innovator may not be respected by the other members of a local system, the innovator plays an important role in the diffusion process; that of launching the new idea in the system by importing the innovation from outside of the system's boundaries. Thus the innovator plays a gate-keeping role in the flow of new ideas into a system."

My dear friend Raymond Loo was such a patient Innovator.

But now it has moved up the curve. Farmer's Markets all over North America are booming into the next level of acceptance. They are growing at 17% a year. Now the next stage of people, the Early Adopters are moving in.

Opinion leadership is an important aspect of the Early Adopter. They often serve as a role model for other people. They are more integrated into society than the innovators. "The early adopter is respected by his or her peers, and is the embodiment of successful, discrete use of new ideas. The early adopter knows that to continue to earn this esteem of colleagues and to maintain a central position in the communication networks of the system, he or she must make judicious innovation-decisions. The early adopter decreases uncertainty about a new idea by adopting it, and then conveying a subjective evaluation of the innovation to near-peers through interpersonal networks," Rogers said.

This part of the Adoption Cycle is all about gaining credibility and in building infrastructure.  It starts with more supply.

Such as people like Amy and Verena of Heart Bet Organics  They find that they can buy good land that is relatively cheap compared to Ontario or close to Montreal. Low capital cost and a good market have been the key to people like them setting up shop. They also use a very innovative model of super high ntensity greenhousing that allows them to produce and sell for 10 months of the year.

It starts with new kinds of relationships that drive credit. Such as Raymond's Indiegogo campaign and all those that use CSA such as Jen and Derek. And who also use small acres and greenhouses.

It starts with new distribution such as Aaron Koleszar who delivers to your door. Or the Riverview Market and others like that that offer a regular supply of real food.

It starts importantly with Chefs. On PEI Chefs have made local food their trade mark. Started by Chef Michael Smith, now most chefs on PEI lead the way. They are a key taste shifter - they are the ideal Early Adopter with credibility.

For even more credibility, we see the Culinary Institute. Boot Camps and local sourcing add their weight.

This has lead to the government coming up behind and helping with all sorts of promotions - Fall Flavours, Shellfish Festival, Porkoctoberfest, Hamburgers etc. PEI's main tourist appeal now is food.

The Beef and the Pork industry are there. They now see that what they have to sell is QUALITY. 

All that is left to take PEI to the edge is now for the government to make sourcing local food the key to all the institutions that it supports. That means UPEI, the Manors and Hospitals. It is madness that the worst food you get today is while a patient in hospital. In other places this trend is well under way. At Dalhousie, more than 40% of the food serrved to students is local. It is possible. The Culinary are close to this level. It's a matter of will.

Once this is done, then the supporting systems needed to take this into the Early Majority will be in place.

So all of this is bubbling up and leading us to the edge of the Tipping Point. What will tip PEI over? What will get the Early Majority convinced. These people are:

The early majority adopts new ideas just before the average member of a system. The early majority is the most numerous adopter categories, making up one-third of the members of a system. Rogers says, "The early majority may deliberate for some time before completely adopting a new idea. Their innovation-decision period is relatively longer than that of the innovator and the early adopter. They follow with deliberate willingness in adopting innovations, but seldom lead."

I think 4 factors.

The new understanding about health. Over the last 5 years more and more people have started to get the information that they need to take charge of their own health. Central to this is the new knowledge about what foods are good and not good for us. Highly processed food is rapidly being seen as the cause of the epidemic of chronic illness. In 5 years this knowledge will be well into the Early Majority. The Health care system already know this and will start to push hard on diet and lifestyle. They do not have the money to give us pills that don't work.

Long term structural unemployment. The old jobs are not coming back. What will people do for work? Some are going back to the land, where most people worked 100 years ago. They are going back not as subsistence hippies but as "New Farmers".  They will be pasturing animals, using greenhouses, using permaculture. They will finance using their community. They will train the next layer. They will seek low cost land and a ready market.

PEI has the least expensive good farmland close to a ready market. Where else can you get 100 acres and a house for less than $100,000? You don't need this either. 15 acres and a farm house is all you need. You cannot get this in Ontario or Quebec. I am seeing couples in their mid thirties giving up their urban lfe and looking for places such as PEI to make a new life. If we pay attention to this trend, we can also make a difference to PEI's skewed population.

Much of the rest of Agricultural Canada is tied into the old grain model. PEI does not make grain is central plank. This keeps land prices too high for people that wish to be the new farmers. It also holds the whole system back. This reluctance will give PEI an export market.

Pastured flesh is the first big opportunity. The Grass fed beef market is exploding.This is what the new pasture system will be like. 

Please join me at the McPhail on Saturday 26th at 6 for 7pm and get into the details of how this will work.

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Back on PEI - Giving a talk at MacPhail Saturday Oct 26 at 6pm

I am very excited to be back soon on my beloved PEI.

I will be giving this years George McRobie Lecture at the MacPhail Homestead on Saturday night Oct 26 at 6pm.

The evening begins at 6 pm with a reception and cash bar, followed by the lecture at 7 pm.

The title of my talk will be, “Food & Health; the PEI Opportunity.” 

I have become convinced that the connection between health and food, that some see now, will become THE key idea over the next 30 years and will drive not only a change in how and what we eat but of course in how we grow food. In time I think that this may lead to PEI becoming a HAVE province.

In my talk I will:

• Explain the connection between food and the epidemic of chronic illness that not only affects PEI but of course the world today
• We will see why those of you who on PEI are growing food in a new/old way will be the key suppliers of what will become a massive demand for genuine quality
• We will see why such an approach to growing food can only scale using a network of small producers
• We will see how chefs and restaurants on PEI and elsewhere are the key bridge between the old and the new system
• We will see how large institutions such as universities will add positive pressure to the shift and expand the infrastructure needed to get into the mainstream
• We will look at the opportunity for PEI to create a full employment economy and a much healthier society

This lecture series is named in honour of Dr. George McRobie, Patron for The Homestead Farm, the new sustainable agriculture entity operating at the Homestead. George McRobie has long been one of the world’s leading proponents of sustainable agriculture and appropriate small-scale technology.

Register in advance by phoning 902-651-2789, or [email protected].

 

 

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