In the old economy that still lingers you could buy “Attention”. A large advertising budget could force you into the minds of others. But we are becoming numb to this assault. Increasingly we only trust people that we know. “Attention” is shifting from the Institution with the budget to the “Person” with personal reputation or “Clout”.
This transition from the Institution to the Personal is surely one of the most paradigm shifting aspects of the time we live in?
“.. money now flows along with attention, or, to put this in more general terms, when there is a transition between economies, the old kind of wealth easily flows to the holders of the new. Thus, when the market-based, proto-industrial economy first began to replace the feudal system of Western Europe, in which the prime form of wealth was aristocratic lineage and inheritance of land, both the noble titles and the lands that went with them soon ended up disproportionately in the hands of those who were good at obtaining what was then the new kind of wealth, namely money.
With considerable ease, the rising merchant and industrialist class could buy old titles, induce governments to grant them brand new ones, or marry into the old impoverished gentry. The parallel today, again, is that possessors of today’s rising kind of wealth, which is attention, and whom we label stars of every sort, have an easy time getting money.
But now let me point out that the other way round doesn’t work nearly as easily. Contrary to what you are sometimes urged to believe, money cannot reliably buy attention. Suppose it did work that way. Then you could have been paid to sit here and listen closely even if I were to read you something as boring as the phone book or an unabridged dictionary. Presumably it wouldn’t even matter if I kept repeating the same few syllables over and over. If money could reliably buy attention, all I would have to do is pay you the required amount and you would keep listening carefully through all that, not falling asleep en masse, nor allowing your minds to wander. In truth, even if you had been paid a huge sum, this would be most difficult, and if you did it, it would be a testament more to your own deep sense of principle than to a general condition in which another roomful of similar people could be expected to do equally well.
Someone who wants your attention just can’t rely on paying you money to get it, but has to do more, has to be interesting, that is must offer you illusory attention, in just about the same amounts as they would if you had instead been paying money to listen to them — which by the way is closer to the case here. Money flows to attention, and much less well does attention flow to money.”
Attention that people will trust – about an idea, a product, a service, a politician, will come from “Trusted” people in your life and in your network.
Defining and measuring Personal Clout will therefore be very important in the future.
That is why I wanted to speak to the CEO of Klout,Joe Fernandez who very kindly spent time with me on the phone yesterday talking about “Attention” what it is now – how it builds from Robin Dunbar’s research. We also touched on how today’s kids may be having their brains rewired to be able to use a much larger network than was possible face to face.
Here are some of the ideas that we batted around:
It’s all about how you are as a person - Many newbies still think of Social Media as a big megaphone – they still shout out to the crowd – “look at me” aren’t I great!!!!” – But they most important aspect of the new world is what “Others say about you” and who those others are and how large your and their network is. To get their attention demands that you have something good to say and that you have also won their trust. This then is not easy environment. There can be no instant success.
It’s all about how you are related in network terms – This is why Klout have set up their algorithms to measure True Reach or the value of your content - Amplification Probability or how we you are related to the people in your network – how large and diverse is your network – do they find you interesting, safe, or a bore - and Network Influence or do you influence people with influence. This makes a lot of sense to me. I think that Klout is trying to get a handle on the playing field. I also liked it that Joe kept reminding me that they are at the start of a voyage of discovery. That they may be ahead of others but know that there is so much to discover.
The online world is likely larger than the personal world - Klout will fond out how much larger. The Dunbar numbers still operate in the personal world and for adults my age I think. But Joe made a case based on observation that he is seeing online Trusted Networks maxing out at about 500 (144 is the max Dunbar number) His own floats between 150 – 350 but he still relies on about 150. The really interesting point he made is that he is seeing a new world emerge with kids.
Kids have a new social reality – they never lose a friend! – When I was a boy, we moved a lot. So at every move to a new place, a new school etc, I lost touch with 98% of the then friends. Over time they faded from memory. But now, a kid moves or changes school and stays in touch with most of her friends. Even now as an adult, I am regaining touch with old friends long lost. Joe and I thought that decades of staying connected must have an effect on the wiring of the brain. After all print had that effect by making the left hand side more powerful. The brain is very plastic and can change very quickly as we see with say stroke victims. It is very likely that a child of 5 today who is a keen user of social media, will have a very different brain than I do when they are 25.
This new world is literally unfolding before us. Joe thinks that Klout now is about where Google was in 1997 – the key algorithms are in their infancy but are already able to tell us interesting things. Much more will be possible over time – especially when there is more data to observe.
But 2 things are clear to me – understanding how Clout works is core to the new economy. And that measuring Clout as Klout is doing is going to be very important.
Your reputation is your capital. You and not the institution will have the power.
I was at a Media conference last week. A Journalism Prof dissed Twitter all night long. How could anyone cover a story in 140 characters? In the last 2 months in Canada we have had a regulatory fight - in essence the web is being seen as another entertainment channel where the most important part of the equation is how much we should all pay for watching movies.
I think that this idea - that the social web is trivial and just about fun is wrong and dangerous. I think that its true importance has to be put on the table politically.
Japan nails this issue for me.
Once again, as a huge story breaks, many of us have found that Social Media has given us a better sense of the event than the traditional news POV.
Big news just cannot get at the scope of such an event or touch its immediacy.
Some like the BBC and Al Jazeera are finding a good way of covering such a story - which is to act as an aggregator. They make it easy - you got their their site - I use Livestation as a portal.
Some like NPR are finding out that their one man news platform - Andy Carvin - who is personally aggregating offers a good view as well. Andy and his readers tend to use Tweetdeck
So what are the lessons for the rest of us?
If you are in media - curating and aggregating is the way that breaking news will be covered. So what does that imply? It implies a new model for news. At the centre aggregation and then context setting. For you no longer have to do a 90 second view of an event. You can cover the event 24/7 as see what pattern emerges - while you do this - as the pattern becomes visible - you add context. We can start to get out of the sound bite perspective. This will also cost you a lot less to do and improve your coverage. This works on all scales. If you were my local paper or my local CBC station on tiny PEI - population 140,000 - you could offer a massive range of stories - from ALL the sport every game on the Island - to a breaking weather event this way. Maybe for less money than the current system that can only cover 20 stories a day. The same is true for world news as we are finding out now. news will get better and better the more we go down this road. We will all be more informed and we will indeed all become part of the story. I was riveted by a Skype interview from the BBC in London with a woman stuck in her apartment in Tokyo - what was going on was represented in the most human and direct way. I was there. Old news is trivial when compared with this!
If you are in the crisis business - In spite of all the mess in Japan now - imagine how much harder the rescue efforts would be without social media? With good aggregation and intelligent filters it will be possible to get a handle on what is going on in a much better way. Again this works at all scales. Back to my little place PEI. We have been having very bad weather and road conditions recently. The mainstream media are starting to do a good job at aggregating the reports of the citizens. The result is that we all know so much more and in real time. We will all get through bad times better. I bet that in the years to come much of the story will be about how social media saved many lives.
If you are in a crisis - Imagine being in a badly hit place in Japan and not having a working cell phone versus having one - Could be life and death for you. Imagine if you are at your office in Tokyo and your family are on the coast. How are you going to find out if they are OK? I recall in the early days of Social Media looking for my lost daughter among the pictures of the dead - she was OK thank God! so look ahead and think about how your access to thew web is governed now. Will many people be excluded because they cannot afford to pay? Will the system be too vulnerable to survive a big problem? Is the system only about the needs of the IP's or is there a larger context here?
If you have a service or a product to sell - How can you not use this avenue for listening and responding. Gone are the days where you could wait for formal research. Gone are the days when you asked the questions. Now you listen and you see the patterns. Tools like Darwin help a lot here. Will you be held hostage too by the IPs? Will the IP's be able to levy any kind of tax they want on your business? Can they exclude you?
The biggest lesson then for me is that the web and social media are not just toys where I watch movies, hear songs or play games. The web and social media is now the most important part of any society's social infrastructure.
This implies that it cannot be regulated as merely another entertainment channel. It has profound public value that has to be put first.
Societies that have a healthy and widely used and easily accessed web and social media system - will be better informed and more resilient in the shocks that are inevitable in our future.
The private interests of all have to be subsumed to the public good.
On the surface the attack on Pub Media is based on the idea that the state should not be in the broadcasting business and that this is especially true if the broadcaster is aligned to one point of view.
There is a point to this. Imagine my fellow Pub Media fans if Fox was to now get government funding - you too might go nuts!
But I think that the reason for this attack now is deeper than that.
And I think that the attack is based on the most human of responses. When something new and true and so dangerous arrives on the scene - we laugh at it. But as the new and the true and so the threat to the status quo gets its feet, the power people in the status quo get an insight.
They can tell at a cellular level that this new thing could be their doom. And their response?
Please let me explain what I think that THEY see and why THEY have started the Inquisition to root out Pub Media.
In the last 5 years, Public Radio and Public TV have started to find a new role for themselves and it is this new role that scares THEM.
This role of course is a Public Service Media organization that gives people who have no voice a voice in the issues that concern them.
CPB is funding a number of experiments that are having results in this key area of informing more than the news cycle and giving people a say. None of this is done in commercial media.
All of this is largely web based - so the stations are also learning how to expand their horizon beyond the "air" and broadcasting.
There are 12 stations involved and the point is to find out how best to do this - to become a rich centre of information outside the news cycle that can be both local and a national resource. Where the public can find the best information and the best conversation about things that concern them. AND SO be truly informed and SO have a real say.
The new is full of music labels complaining. Not only about piracy but of the tight grip just a few large outlets have on what gets played and the costs of getting air. Well guess which media outlet gives the Indie labels the best opportunity for air at the least cost? NPR Music!Here is how the Hollywood Reporter ran this story. This idea came directly out of the work done back in 2005/6 by all the stations to find a starting point for offering the music audience a place based on their taste and their time rather than simply playing what the station wanted. The music audience and the musician's interests are well served here. Both sides win. This does not happen on commercial media where the interests of the station those that own it rule.
CPB has also backed TV stations like KETC in St Louis who have been exploring how to put the public onto TV and how to offer the public a safe place to have the conversations that are otherwise impossible in America today.
Now known as the Nine Network for Public Media, KETC has a media school, the Nine Academy, that is turning out hundreds of citizen videographers,. Giving the people the tools to have a voice of their own.
In 2009 KETC hosted a national project involving more than 30 markets worst hit by the housing crisis to learn how each local TV and Radio stations could work together to offer people help that they could trust. In each market the stations worked to bring together w ide ranges of resources into local networks of trusted help. This is all but impossible for a commercial station.
In 2010 KETC has been experimenting in how to host a year long "Conversation" about an explosive topic that normally collapses into rhetoric - Immigration. Most of the content is local and much of it made by grads of KETC's school. KETC is learning how to offer people a civil place to hod string views and how to switch the power from the station to the people. Impossible for a commercial station.
This year KETC is co managing a project that will also be nation and is highly controversial - On how we might improve our schools.
What THEY fear the most is that this kind of new role for Public Radio and TV may end up with
You being better informed - you will have escaped the sound bite world and in music the play list that THEY want
You will be better engaged - because you will have the real opportunity to have your voice heard and you will have learned the skills to do this well
You and your local community will have more power to change things
THIS is what THEY fear.
We may feel that we could and should have made more progress - but THEY can see it.
They care not about Morning Edition, Car Talk or Masterpiece Theatre.
They do care that you may become more informed and more empowered. Public Media is on track to pull this of and so must be stopped.
I don't see this as a Left or Right Issue. It is do you want to be part of the solution or be passive?
Harold nails this for me. I have been struggling to understand the blockage that keeps so many from understanding.
Might it be that we are so used to dealing with "problems" that have known and rational "answers"? That is what school is. "Robert" 2 x 2 what is the answer?" This is how we learned what a "Problem" was. We also knew that there was a Known answer or a Known Algorithm that would produce the answer, We also knew that the best people knew the answers and the algorithms. They were at the top of the class and now are at the top of the organizations. They "Know".
But as we all explore the shift from machine to network, we may know the theory but actually how this plays out in practice cannot be known in advance. Just as Columbus could "Know" that if he sailed west he would find land but he could not know when or what it would be like or how to get there in detail.
Columbus had to explore and feel his way there.
Crossing America in 1805 was to truly explore. Off go Lewis and Clark into the truly unknown and unknowable. They could only explore and use trial and error. They did know that the Pacific was west, as Columbus knew that some kind of land was west. But that was all. They did know to take the "right" people with them. They selected the best back woods men. They also had a special person - "Sacagawea". She was an Indian woman with a baby.
What did she bring? They knew that they would be in Indian country all the way. She had two powerful things to add to the strength of the party. She knew many languages and the culture - she could connect the explorers to the locals and vice versa.
But maybe even more important, she was a woman and she had a baby.
This sent out a signal to the system that this party was NOT a war party. For without that, even if they had had a male Indian who could be the cultural connector, they would have all been killed before the meeting!
So what do traditional organizations need to "cross the chasm"?
I think that they need to stop thinking that is is a problem that can be resolved by finding a known answer. That the top person can know.
The top person can give herself a break. She cannot know but she can fund the expedition as Queen Isabella did.
So there is the theory - here are some examples from recent history that I know a lot about because I have lived them.
When I worked with NPR back in 2005 the question was "How will social media affect us and what should we do?"
The great thing then was that No One could know the answer to that question. And if by chance one of us did, no one else would just accept that answer.
So what we did was to set up a process of discovery where it was agreed at the outset that no one knew.
We then set off, nearly 1,000 people, on a number of test journeys where groups "Played" with creating stories about what the future might be.
After 6 months a number of pictures of the future emerged that were consistent. All that you now see as being normal for the new media was nailed by these people back in 2006. It was all novel then and no one had done any of this. But this 1,000 people had invented the key principles and had invented stories about how this all worked in the day to day lives of people. They had discovered the world of social media as it might apply to radio.
I thought, wrongly, that most would then rush off and enact them. But this did not happen. Fear still held many back.
But ALL now had a common picture of what was important. A picture that ALL had co created. So while fear may have stopped many from changing, no one doubted the principles of what they had discovered.
The results? There is no doubt in my mind that, while NPR may now have the political fight of its life on its hands, it knows better than any other traditional media organization how to use Social Media. It has also delivered on them as no other media organization has.
Why? In the project we included over 250 NPR staff so the sense of having discovered the truth was well spread. Most of the key facilitators for the project were the senior executives and members of the board too - so there was no need to "sell" up or down. The majority of NPR had done the exploring themselves and could trust their own experience.
The other organization that has really "got it" is KETC - Now the Nine Network for Social Media - Jack Galmiche, the President was an active player in the NPR project and when he got his new job running KETC in St Louis, he also had the experience of creating the future and so the courage to go for it in TV.
KETC has been through many voyages of discovery. All the staff now have experienced the new. Many are now highly adept. They have discovered this for themselves. No one taught them!
KETC is now the acknowledged leader in the use if social media to augment TV.
KETC is now also a viral infector of the public system.
As KETC trail-blazes, it has worked with other stations. In the Facing the Mortgage Crisis project with about 60 across the nation. They too "experienced the new". The best of them then went for it too and now a critical mass of stations have enough practical exploration under their belt to go for it.
They are about to launch a new nation wide project that will cause the infection to spread further.
I think that this idea of a voyage of discovery is much more helpful that the idea of problem solving.
So selfishly how do you do this? Is there a book or a formula? Is there a snappy consultant who will show you how to do this?
No, I think that what has been shown to work best is to hire a "Sacawagea".
The issue is culture and fear of the unknown. There are no snappy answers. As John Seely Brown says in Harolds post - you have to "Marinate" in the situation.
So if you want to be successful, please think of hiring someone who knows the other native people out there and the new culture. Who is a native of the world that you aspire to go to. Who is less of a guide than a trusted friend. Who you can talk to quietly in the evening around the fire and have her hear you out. Someone who risks as much as you do on the journey - or even more than you. Someone who is safe and who helps you feel safe as you take risks.
Social business is about a shift in how we do work, moving from hierarchies to networks. The highest value work today is the more complex stuff, or the type of work that cannot be automated or outsourced. It’s work that requires creativity and passion. Doing complex work in networks means that information, knowledge and power no longer flow up and down. They flow in all directions. As John Seely Brown said, you can only understand complex systems by marinating in them. This requires social learning. Complex work is not linear. Social business is giving up centralized control and harnessing the power of networks. It is as radical as was Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management in 1911.
The potential of social business is organizational survival. Enterprises must be able to share knowledge quicker than before. This requires a shift toward something like a starfish framework that not only allows for independent action but also distributes knowledge through all the parts. Social learning is how organizational knowledge gets distributed. Social businesses can learn quicker.
The main barriers to social business are cultural. People in charge of most organizations today got there by doing things the traditional way of the MBA mindset. They feel they do not need to change and few are willing to give up power and authority, even if it is for the good of the organization.
I have been talking a lot recently about our diet and the need to have a fit to our human design. John raises the other side of the coin. Do you fit your human social design?
It's a great example of how a thoughtful person may curate material from many sources and weave a powerful answer to a great question. As you read this piece a clear picture emerges about how evolution has designed us to be social - social in a particular way. A reason why solitary confinement is such a terrible experience for us.
We are primates!
Here is how he ends this epic search:
Looking more deeply at the invisible forces that link one human being to another helps us see something even more profound: our brains and bodies are designed to function in aggregates, not in isolation. That is the essence of an obligatory gregarious species. The attempt to function in denial of our need for others…violates our design specifications. The effects on health are warning signs, similar to the “Check Engine” light that comes on in today’s cars with their comptuerised sensors. But social connection is not just a lubricant that like motor oil, prevents overheating and wear.
Social connection is a fundamental part of the human operating and organising system itself.
What is becoming clear is the cost of not being fitted socially. The result of a poor fit is endless stress. That in turn means that many of us are in the fight or flight mode all the time. That produces Cortisol. And Cortisol if present enough attacks our immune system.
This can kill you.
This slide needs a little explanation. Dr Sir Michael Marmot investigated the British Civil Service over a 25 year period. The Whitehall Study. What he found is that there is a distinct gradient for death of heart disease. (CHD) The Admin folks are the senior execs. The people lowest in the hierarchy with the least amount of say (Think touch) who are ordered around - died 5 times more often than the folks on the far left.
The slide also shows that all the risk factors that we normally associate with heart disease play only a small part in this increase in deaths. Most of the bar shows "unexplained".
Marmot's life work is revealing that social isolation and inequality has a huge impact on our health.
So have a look at John's piece and see how you check out. How connected are you?
Here is the best short piece I have seen on this process.
He is trying to ski by thinking. He is thinking so hard that he cannot "hear" the hill or his body. He is thinking so much that he might miss a fallen skier or a tree - for he is thinking so hard that he cannot see. His fear also causes him to miss the key risk and control factor. Fearing falling or going too fast, he leans back instead of down the hill.
He is thinking so much that he cannot have a conversation with his own body or with the world that surrounds him.
He is thinking so much that he gets exhausted very quickly because he is fighting himself, the hill and the universe. And just thinking so hard uses up so much energy.
He is not having a "Deep Conversation". He is relying on his rational mind to guide him in a novel and complex situation. This is what most of us do at work and in our personal lives.
The most important conversation that we need to have is within ourselves. This is the core lesson of having Deeper Conversation. That to have a deeper conversation with others and with the univers, we must be able to have such a conversation inside us. This is the topic of this our last of 4 parts of my 4 part series that synthesizes a longer series of talks I have had with the brilliant Johnnie Moore. (Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3)
It's the classic psych drama. We have got so used to giving our rational mind primacy that we allow it to fill our consciousness with its chatter and worries. Mothers worry about what the book says about their kids. Managers seek control. You wake up in the middle of the night consumed by a fear and if you can surpress it, find another one right behind it. At school this part of our mind is the only part that counts.
Yes the new skier has to "know" the theory of skiing - well maybe not... Adults have a huge problem learning to ski - I did at 40 - but kids know no theory. Their rational mind has not yet taken over. No one told them the theory of walking or language, they just got on with it and did what FELT right.
Kids use their full range of channels. They listen to their body and they feel their way into novelty. They learn to walk and to talk and to stand upright. They learn so much before they go to school!
But we adults, who know better because we have been to school, wait to be told by a higher authority. In this universe, all the other parts of our mind are closed down and the Ego is given precedence.
So how do we get the rest of our mind back. How do we tune into all the channels in our body so that we can feel the hill or our way though a novel and a complex situation? For as all adult ski learners know, we have had this ability whacked out of us at school and at work.
Johnnie reminded me that it's all about habits. We have lost the habits that help us access this power to use our whole mind, so it helps to set up new habits to bring the whole mind back and to put the Ego into his place - a minor character!
Sit as often as you can in a circle. This brings the field into its best quality. Access the Field.
Before you get down to business check in as to how you all are. This might be how you feel - what you are feeling about the task at hand in your body. This type of sharing brings up the common humanity of you all. The leader may be feeling anxious in her stomach about the result. Hearing this, we can all relax more. Any good consultant has such a go around at the beginning of a meeting so that the Field can be awaked. I know to many this may sound very new age - but my question to you is do you want to ski like me or like my son?
Surely no one wants to ski like me? That is what is at stake here. Real results - getting all the wisdom from all the minds into play and in getting more cohesion in the team are what is at stake here.
Beware of "Action" as a demanded result.
You know what has happened here don't you? Trying too hard leads to a failure and then to bad feelings and then a habit of trying too hard and so on. The point of good sex is not the erection but the communication and the shared love. Bringing your rational mind into the bedroom is a disaster. So it is in meetings.
The key result is to have the team both together and open. Then the "Whole Mind of the Team is brought into play. THEN you can start to see your way through the paradoxes that make up any complex situation.
Let me give you 2 examples - one a corporate one that Johhnie and I worked on with NPR and 300 stations and the other a new problem that confronts me and all of us in middle age.
This was the complex problem that we used to have a Deeper Conversation inside NPR where all the senior management, the board and over 200 staff participated along with the leadership of 300 stations. At the outset NO ONE could know the answer. That is the definition of a Complex problem - the answer cannot be predicted rationally it can only emerge as a result of lots of trial and error. What we did was to set up many many meetings where the groups "Played" with this problem - we in effect set up a process of iteration that could enable answers over time to emerge.
The challenge was this - We assumed, now rightly, that in 2009, the web would be ubiquitous. NPR and the Stations were then in 2005 at a high point with their listeners on terrestrial radio but at ground zero with the web. How were they going to grow the web side and not lose the listeners? How was NPR to do this and not lose the stations? What were the stations going to do? For one thing was clear, and that was by 2009, the world would be very different.
To set up the larger field where all could participate - we used "Play". I have found that if you think of complex problems that might involve you losing your current power in role, the job of protecting your status quo is paramount. This is why when we ask the Usual Suspects to think of the future of their field, say health, they act to preserve the status quo. They cannot go beyond this. A rational role based discusion about novelty has to fail. For our ego will force us to lean back and try and protect what we know and our current power.
So we made this exploration into a game. I won't go into the details but to say that to wrestle with complex problems demands that you give up your role. Back to kids again - they learn all the vital lessons of life via play.
The results come through emergence which comes from trial and error. In complex situations you CANNOT know the answer up front. It is impossible. Remembering this is very helpful. No senior NPOR person presumed to know. All were equals in ignorance. This opened up the field. At the end of each session, each group had to put on a play - they had to express what they thought the future would be - and you know they were right - they found it.
Does this work? Each of the many independent sessions came to this conclusion - that the power of choice of what to listen too had to shift to the listener. Now we all know this right? No we only know this as lip service. You have to have wrestled with this and seen the alternatives and felt that this is true to accept it. We all "Know" that we have to lean DOWN the hill to get control - BUT this is not what we do as learners for though we know it to be true - we CAN"T do it - it is too scary and too counter our old reality.
Does this work? Well what media organization is best equipped for dealing with he online world right now? I would say NPR. So what was the result of our work with NPR? It was not the plan that came out of the process. It was that 300 people in NPR had wrestled with the problem and had felt their way into the future, so that when a new leader arrived with the mandate and the attitude to go for it, there was a mass aha! Not the normal resistance that you get when a big change is dropped in the organization from on high.
Meetings that start with a demand for action and results - are often code for a desire to lean up the hill. Let's stay in the rut where I can control what is going on because I feel safe there. When you demand results or action - what do you mean? Most of the time it means a focus on the minutiae - like the skier focusing on thinking his way into the turn - forcing himself to turn rather that letting the hill and his body do it all for him. When we work on the surface we force the whole team into this posture. It is our fear that keeps us from skiing. It is the fear that stops many still in radio and the media from allowing the gravity of the Hill of the New Web to help them get a new control.
The ongoing result that all teams need in complex times is to be so comfortable with each other that they play intuitively like a basketball team on fire. Look at this player - he is not thinking - he KNOWS where the pass will go. We have to really know each other. We have to bring our Whole Mind into play.
If you work on the key result being a well functioning team, THEY will do the heavy work. The real ACTION is to get the team using all their whole mind as individuals and as a team. Like a good skier, there is no time to "Think" on the court. You have to be able to sense what is going on.
So let's extend this a bit and look at an issue that affects us all - our health. My task - to find a question that engages anyone. From a personal point of view.
Here is one for me and for you that I hope illustrates this principle. I am looking at the health costs for PEI. An important question but very abstract and with many people with hard views. So how to use a question to break the logjam? This is my starting question that only invites each of us as people into the realm of the question. I start as Johnnie suggest with a question that gets us to react by feeling it out.
See the red line. That is how men on PEI age and deteriorate. The average age of death is 75. But by 65 the average man is in such bad health as to be helpless and dependent. From this stage more than half his lifetime cost to the health system will be spent. These are real data points.
Now see the black line. This is my goal for my own life. Aging as we know it is not natural. The black line is the natural aging process. In nature aging hits a threshold and then the deterioration stops - if you make 85 and are fit and not demented you will likely stay the same until you die - and that might be 95 - 100 - or 105. You will die - but you wont deteriorate more. There is a ton of evidence and work behind this - just trust on this right now there are books and books to be written and I can only point this out to you in this post.
The research suggests that I and you can push this point of stability back to 55 or 60 - my current age. I can be at choice. I can choose to change nothing and I will get ill and degrade. Or I can choose to change my life and have a good chance that I will die healthy and a contributor. Now I can choose either one - newspapers chose degradation - but it is a choice.
But choosing life is not enough. Knowing where to go is not enough. Like NPR I have to find out how to live differently. I will have to learn how to change the habits of a lifetime. This is hard.
How hard? This involves my giving up modern food. All processed food as a start. All grains and all dairy too. It means that I have instead to eat what people did in our hunter gatherer period. I also have to do many other things to get a better fit with my deep biology. Sleep more. Be outside more. Walk more. Have a mission in life that is bigger than me and so on - I will be posting tons on this later.
So here is the point. I know this. You can know it too. You know that when you ski you must lean down the hill. But knowing and doing are 2 different things. Changing the habits of a lifetime is very very very hard. Doing something that NONE of your peers are doing is as hard. This is the landscape of real change - being out of step with the mainstream - not knowing what to do - being pulled back all the time by your old habits.
Like Beowulf and Grendel - you have to have the energy to kill the old inner you.
But if you have asked the right question, we can wrestle with it. You can feel enough to kill off the old you who will fight to keep you stuck.
Thought is not enough. You must have emotional power that comes from how you feel about a situation. Here is my feeling test about my health that is raised by the Question I posed.
Do I want to become feeble at 65? What will this mean to my family? No I don't want that - I would feel as if I betrayed them because I know what I know now - that had the choice and chose pizza over them
Can I afford to be feeble? I worry about my savings and if I will have enough - can I afford to be feeble? I don't have the money and I doubt the state will have it either - I will be fucked if I stay as I am.
How do I feel now? How do I look? How capable am I now? Would I like to feel, look and be better soon? Of course I want to look and feel beter - I have noticed how weak and inflexible I am and wish I was fitter.
I know I am weak of will and that changing all these things will be hard - so what feedback and what support can I tap into to help me? I know I cannot do this on my own? In the few times I have made other major changes, it was the support I had that made all the difference - I know that I am weak!
Are there good tips that I can use to help me? I need reinforcement to get over the early hump - I know that other people's experience will help me
I have a rational argument but my feeling argument has more power over my behaviour - The Rational is the Volts - the Feeling is the Amps. It's the Feedback that encourages us and shows us the path:
I have lost 15 pounds and most importantly my 6 months pregnant belly is nearly flat - this is very reinforcing
I am never hungry - and the signal that I get when I am full kicks in immediately - that helps me not overeat.
When I fall off the wagon and have bread and cheese I feel like shit - not guilty I l feel bloated and sick
I look forward to my walks with the dogs - I want to do it more than they do now - it helps me think and do better work too
My wife is completely onside and my friends who have not seen me in some time comment on how well I am - important people are encouraging me
So I could not have a plan from the question but the question gets at the heart of the matter FOR ME.
We all have to feel our way into change. The mind is not enough. The body has to power us into the new. We have to be able to hear what our body says. We have to be like kids again and play our way into the future.
So what is the biggest lesson of all?
We come back to Johnnie's key lesson. We have to calm the mind so that we can hear the rest of the conversation in our body. Our mind can show the way but the getting there is all bout the rest of us. This goes for teams too. If we can create enough personal trust we can access the Whole Mind of the group. THEN we can win any game set for us.
Your work and mine is to put him in his place - shut him up - so that we can hear the full you and me.
I have been waiting for the true Killer App for Social Media – not an “App” per se but a use for Social Media that would change our world for the better.
In the last few weeks I have been thinking a lot about health. Not Healthcare but our Health and how to get good health and how to keep it WITHOUT THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM. How to take charge of our lives enough so that we don’t get ill. I think that Social Media might be a large part of a revolution in Health. Where we take charge of being healthy.
The challenge is to live better in spite of the barriers that prevent us from doing that.
Barriers???
I know I should eat differently. I know I should take more exercise. You do too! So why don’t we live better and so enjoy better health? The issue is surely not information. We all know we should eat and live better. The challenge is that we cannot seem to make the changes. Why can’t we?
I think that the answer is that how we live – eat, work, exercise etc – are habits – deep habits that are very powerfully supported by our culture. So changing any of these on our own is almost impossible.
Being exhorted to eat more veggies or to walk more simply does not seem to work. But – I am wondering….
Might Social Media be a major tool for good in helping us change deep rooted habits like these that are so bad for us?
Let me remind you then of how AA works on one of the hardest habits of all such as Alcohol. Then let’s see how Social Media might enable many of us to replicate this process more widely. Sadly, many in my family were alcoholics so I have more experience here than I would like to have.
Exhortation does not work – No alcoholic that I have ever met, and I know a lot, has ever responded to pleas “Please stop dad this is killing you and us!” or to the doctor’s demand “If you don’t stop, you will die”. No matter how desperate the family beg or no matter how much information the doctor provides - Exhortation does not work. So it is no wonder that decades of pleading to stop eating junk food and to take more exercise has failed.
1.0 is all about Exhortation. It uses the “Expert” or the “Morally Superior” POV. It tells you that you are “bad”. Your normal reaction is to push back. There can be no empathy from the expert. So the message cannot be heard. So most of the money spent on this kind of messaging is a waste. In fact it may even be counter productive.
Self realization is the only first step – The journey home that has any chance of succeeding starts within a person. My late father in law driving back from the hospital, has to refuse the drink at lunch in the diner because HE chooses at that moment that HE is going to take charge.
But this lonely single act of revolt is made in a powerful context that has to be overcome. He is surrounded by alcohol. It is in his home so long as others there drink. Billions are spent in advertising to tempt him. It is easy to get. His friends want him to drink with them. THIS is where in AA, the social part kicks in and offers him the only chance of taking on all the cultural pressure to start drinking again.
Isn’t this true for food and exercise? Industrial food is everywhere. Getting and making different food is very hard. This weekend, I went to a party of my old university friends. One a cancer survivor has to eat very differently from the norm. It takes great presence to do this socially when all the others are pulling you to where they are. Have you not asked a recovering alcoholic friend just to take one drink with you? You want him to fit in with YOU. Some act of friendship that is!
Only a social network of true peers can help – A true peer is a person who has sunk as low as you. So he is a person who cannot and will not judge you. THIS is the “Trusted Space” that all of us need to be safe enough to try something scary. And changing a life long habit is scary. It is scary because, as awful as your old state is – it IS you. The way you eat, drink and live defines you. It is your IDENTITY. So to change this – again no matter how bad it may be – means that the OLD you has to die. Worse. You cannot know what the new you will be. This is the Agony and the Crucifixion without the certainty of any Resurrection.
In this process, you have to confess to your peers what you are – a frail person. Not something in the 1.0 world that any of us wants to do. For in the 1.0 world – we know everything don’t we? In the 1.0 world we are the experts. But in the 2.0 world of AA, we are all sinners and the fallen. This is what makes the community SAFE. And so enables us all to grow.
In the AA world, this connection to safety is very focused. One or two people that have made the journey will become attached to you. These Sponsors are the people that you can call when you fail or are at the edge. For in this world, all know that you will fail and that this can be OK – provided you get the help you need to get back. Only another failed person can love you enough to help.
In the AA world this connection is also very broad. My maternal uncle could and did travel all over and always find a chapter of AA where he could plug in and not only get the support he needed but also offer it.
AA is a global network that was created long before the web and social media – but it has a structure that we can all learn from.
At first you get but then you give – Obviously for the newbie, AA is primarily a source of support. But over time, its real power is that it is a place where you can give. It is by giving that you are made stronger and where you find in yourself compassion. It is these people that “run” the network and give it its life.
Such a network is a place where we become larger than ourselves. Such a transformation brings great healing and vitality back to each one of us. It is when we can love again that we start to find our true health both in the spirit and in the body.
Your new Network/Tribe transcend your old one that may still seek your downfall - Who are your real friends? Many family members of addicts actually are co-dependent and wish the old you back. They will work assiduously to sabotage you. If you were the failure, they might have been the saint or the victim. Now if you are OK – who are they now? Their identity is also bound up in your addiction or your independence.
True love is acceptance bound up by compassion that can only come from shared suffering. Our families and friends are often bound up in the Greek Drama of our lives and play roles with us that don’t work anymore when we are different. They, even more than the powerful marketing and structural messages of the larger society, tempt us back. Making our membership and participation in our new Tribe even more essential. It is a life-long tug of war. At my uncle’s death it was two AA friends that sat alone with him as he died. Faithful to each other to the end.
Have I helped you see the power of the system to keep us from breaking with it and the power of the right kind of community to detach from mit?
If I am onto something, then the way home to a genuinely healthier life, might go like this.
Some of us that now know that we have to live better and differently from how we and all of us live today, will get together in person and online and we will start with:
How we have failed to pull this off before – we start with our failures not our successes
How we commit to each other to do better
How we are doing – tell stories now of how we overcame temptation – telling stories of how we were helped or how we helped – we teach and learn from each other the pragmatic steps of how to create new habits and how to avoid the barriers set up by our loved ones and by society
We seek to find others like us in other places – so that we can get the support and offer our stories in the end globally. We build a true network with all the help that a 2.0 world can offer.
What might happen? If we genuinely live better we will become less frail, less ill and less dependent. For we are all getting older. I visited my 82 year old mother in her nursing home yesterday. I and other children vow not to go there – but this vow is an empty one unless you and I have a viable strategy to stay well. Many worry about the cost of drugs and healthcare as they get older. But only this new way of living will keep you from the doctor’s prescription pad. Many worry how we will afford to pay individually and collectively for healthcare as more than 50% of the nation is over 60 – only by living better can we avoid bankrupting ourselves and the state.
I think that our only chance of making “Prevention” a reality is to use the principles of AA and Networks to provide us with the support to make the changes that have to make and cannot without help.
Well this is a huge topic with so much more than this simple opening – what do you think? What other chance do we have? Have you experienced something like this?
Most of us have video camera's now. Few of us can tell a good story on Video. If we are to have a great source of community, we have to help people get really good at video story telling. Hence The Nine Academy.
What's wrong with this skier? 
Sit as often as you can in a circle. This brings the field into its best quality. 
You know what has happened here don't you? Trying too hard leads to a failure and then to bad feelings and then a habit of trying too hard and so on. The point of good sex is not the erection but the communication and the shared love. Bringing your rational mind into the bedroom is a disaster. So it is in meetings.
The
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