Rob's Thoughts

The New Reality of Engagement - Stories that Drive Action

"Leaders strive to change the way that other people think, feel and act". 

Alan Deutschman - Walk the Walk

Why should we measure story in a new way?  Because using story well is our great chance in public media to be the leaders of our time. To help Americans take back their power to control their lives and their communities. 

How do we do this? 

Deep change is all about a change in the collective story. It is a change in the way that people, think, feel and act.

• First of of all, there is the the appearance of a new and way-out idea that violates the status quo - such as say Local Food - the 100 mile diet. The idea itself is tested by the immune system of the wider community. Often a breakthrough is accelerated by a good book - for Food: The Omnivore's Dilemma. For the Environment: An Inconvenient Truth. In 1776, "Americans" are stirred by a way out new idea that a people did not need a King. No book but a document, the Declaration of Independence, filled with ideas that were not self evident at the time, energized people to defeat the greatest world power of the time. They made the idea of democracy real. This is how all new paradigm stories start.
  

• Then comes isolated action. People take the ideas and start to do things with the idea - this phase is crucial in a new paradigm. Others have to see that the idea can work and that they too can be part of it. Coming to America itself was part of this. The early settlers had to prove that new new idea of America where there was no King and where everyman had his own destiny in his hands could be achieved. It was their early stories of fulfillment and struggle that proved this 

• Then comes collective action. With enough individual stories, the system Tips and the Mainstream accept the Story. In the period 1865-1912 over 50 million grabbed hold of the story of the American Dream and left everything and everyone and came to America. The Mainstream came to America. Their story becomes the American Story.

This is the trajectory of "story" that we have to get behind.

To do this we have to be able to measure story in a new way.

Summary: Followed by a more detailed explanation.

Situation:  We are living in a time of a major shift in culture. The world is so connected, and hence now so complex, that our simple Industrial Institutions can no longer help people. (Katrina - Mortgage Crisis, Healthcare etc)  As our Industrial Institutions fail to cope and to help people, we are seeing a new model for coping where people are connecting to each other to find networked and personal solutions to problems. 

This new model is the antithesis of the model that it may replace. Clear signs of what this new model are all over the place.

But for now, it is only the Innovators and the Early Adopters who accept it. We see the Local Food Movement, Slow Money, Local Resiliency all growing. But while these new stories are now visible they are not yet mainstream.  

If the new story could be aggregated and given momentum, the shift will take place sooner. 

Mission: To do this a new 'Way-Out" story of self help, of community power and of networks has to become accepted as THE story. 

This is a Paradigm Shift. The shift from Institution to Community is as big a change as the Copernican Shift. History reminds us that paradigm shifts of this nature are not accepted by simply telling the facts. Vis many in newspapers today!

To connect, we have to design an approach to story that can get through the natural resistance. Only a particular kind of story can do this. This style of story is the antithesis of how media tells stories today.

To help make the shift, we have to return to a personal POV. The story has to be designed to reach into the heart of people and has then got to motivate them to act.  

But the stories on their own are not powerful enough. A million stories about local food or Home schooling on YouTube or on blogs are still fringe. 

To put power behind the story. To get beyond the Innovators and Early Adopters to the Early Majority, these stories have to have an institutional sponsor that the Early Majority Trust. (Luther had the support of his Prince and the North German Princes). The Colonists had the support of France.

Public Media Stations are the German Princes of our Reformation - they are our Lafayette.

We can lend our megaphone and our trust to these stories. 

Our role is to aggregate enough of these stories and make them accessible to a lot of people. If we do this then the Early Majority will accept them. Once they do, America will be changed. 

Execution: To bridge the "Chasm" from Innovators and Early Adopters to Early Majority we have to create a critical mass of story from our stations. To do this we have to add our trust and our power to aggregate the right kind of stories. 

These stories have to obey the rules of those that can cross a Paradigm. We know what these rules are:

• There has to be an overarching context - why is the current system not working and why the new will work and have utility

• The story has to be told from a personal POV by someone I can personally relate to who uses an authentic voice

• The story has to lead me to help that I can use 

• The story has to have a trusted source 

• The story has to lead to taking action that is in my power 

  You can see that this is radically different from the traditional POV of Media today where:

• The assumed context is that the answers are in the hands of the institutions and not in the hands of people

• That the POV is from a "detached" observer who is above the situation and outside the story who speaks in an institutional voice

• The solution is always to get more money or resources for the institution in question or to apply power - none of which is in the power of the person

• The Source is owned by commercial or political interests who increasingly use spin 

• The person is left helpless and alienated - This feels like Tiananmen. They fight for democracy, we watch, they die, we change the channel. A Tweet this week on Iran and on the conventional news coverage there

We have all been raised in the latter model and know no other. Some intuitively know and use the new model. But making the shift to using the new model as a default, demands constant assistance. 

We have to make the implicit knowledge of how to do this explicit so that the knowledge can spread more quickly.

The tool that we are working on provides this support.

• It presents to the programmer an ideal checklist/template that enables those in production to design an offering that has the best chance of breaking through the natural resistance

•  It enables the people reacting to the offering to learn how to "see" in this new way too 

• It enables the station to see the landscape of how their audience is reacting - they can see shifts in support and resistance by mindset, by place and through time. They can make adjustments and react appropriately. The station can track holistic progress 

• More than looking at any one story, it shows more importantly how the collective story is progressing. For the Tipping Point comes from the collective 

• It enables stations to show their funders progress in meeting the demands of the mission. More than simply measuring how many listeners and viewers we have - we measure our impact upon them

In short, the beta tool shapes the DNA of the right kind of story. Enabling us to design story and our broader work to be powerfully engaging. It enables us to test how well we are doing individually as a station and as a system. It offers us a "Map" of how each story affects people and communities. It shows movement in beliefs and acceptance. True change.

It maps out our plans, our design, our work, the response, our redesign, our work, the response and the overall progress to crossing the Chasm

How would we do this? 

• The beta tool is ready for testing so that we can see how the inputs work and how the outputs work

• Recommend that KETC, Ideastream and one or more other Early Adopter stations (the same pattern applies to the media world as well as we are finding in the Facing the Mortgage Crisis Work) use 5 - 10 of their employees to test a variety of existing stories. This will show us how it works and we will get back the output plus a consultation on what it all means. We will have seen how the beta works 

• Resolve further unknowns and any issues with the design team - determine with the design team the pricing and terms for a wider use. Collectively come up with a strategy for adoption

• Offer out our experience with the tool to the stations in the Early Adopter group for a real test - bring in CPB to see how this might help My Source  and whoever else may be interested. I will also be offering this to the Provincal Government here on PEI who are looking for a tool to help them "Listen" better to the people - government could find this very helpful

More Details

Here is more detail to put more flesh on these ideas. Please have a look at this short story and see how different this is from the normal POV of Media.

 

 

This story represents what we will come to understand about "Engagement". It is different from a traditional news story in the following ways:

• The narrator is not a journalist - who is separate and who stands above the situation - the journalist has subsumed herself and has become a facilitator to enable a citizen to get his voice out to the larger public
• The narrator, protagonist, is a member of the public who is directly affected by his situation 
• He is showing us what is going on with his community. What is happening there is changing our view of the problem - many of us think that this problem is confined to other people than the middle class. His authority is his authenticity. We don't need editors and fact checkers to "know" that he is showing us his truth.  
• He can pull this off because he is using his authentic human voice - all humans have an acute bullshit detector and can spot inauthenticity easily. The traditional journalism voice is not "Human" it is institutional and disengaged. It is hard to know if a journalist is telling the truth because he stands outside the story. 
• With an authentic voice, he can connect to the human heart not just to the brain. It is in the human heart that Engagement resides. Engagement is not found in the brain or the intellect 
• The power of this connection is amplified by the sponsor of this story - WDET - a public station that has both its own Trust and also a big megaphone - once again the journalist/editor now is acting as a facilitator
• Finally what makes this story compellingly engaging is that it leads to action that is in the control and capability of any of us. We too can take action to help people in our community in the same way that this community is acting. 

As you can see this list makes up a  set of criteria that offers a revolution in how we tell stories in the media. This design, more than using social media tools per se, offers us the opportunity to make the connection to the American Public that will help them heal the nation and will get their support for us.

This is the context for a system of measurement of the power of story to engage and to connect.

As the connections spread, people are returning to an older American Story - of communities fixing their own problems.

We can find all sorts of new stories that presage this larger movement to local control.

The Local Food Movement. The Local Money Movement. The Local Energy Movement. The Resiliency Movement. Groups are working together to help each other cope with diabetes, cancer, smoking, obesity. 

Taken as a whole, they represent the emergence of a networked society that is intensely connected locally. The New America may be the Old America Redux:

An America that is a network of networked and resilient communities.

As more and more stories like this are promoted properly there will be a Tipping Point. Americans will start to take back decisions about what is important for them - Healthcare, Education, Employment, Credit, Food - into their own hands.

So how does this work?

Much of what we know now is the new model, but our knowledge is Implicit. We don't even know what we know so it is hard to spread - look at our struggles with many stations.

We also don't know how to show our funders the real progress that we are making to make St Louis better. Without being able to tell our own story well we will not get the financial support we need.

Each story enters a Sense Making System

Then what it means is extracted

Many perspectives can be used to make sense of the story

The story can then be plotted collectively and dynamically - we can see who, where and progress

We can see the larger regional or national view

We can see our progress to the Tipping Point!

Whose Tool is this and Where does it come from?

StoryGarden is a web-based system for gathering and analyzing qualitative information about values and attitudes held by a community of people. Contributors are asked to submit anecdotes to a website, then answer a short set of questions that indicate the significance of the anecdotes to help identify emergent themes and sort them into meaningful collections. This process is particularly valuable for the development of action plans. 

Collaboration Among Leading Initiatives 

The StoryGarden system stems from a collaboration of designers of software processes and analysts from social development organizations who are interested in community wellness.

Software

Cognitive Edge Sensemaker TM

CE Sensemaker provides the underlying theory, rigorous methodology and computer-based tools for the analysis of anecdotes and survey questions.

The processes being used by StoryGarden are based on methods and processes conceived by Dave Snowden, co-founding director of IBM's Center for Organizational Complexity. The processes have been further developed by Snowden in his UK-based company, Cognitive Edge, which is providing software and consulting services to StoryGarden.

Social Organizations

International Institute for Sustainable Development

IISD is an internationally recognized not-for-profit policy research institute dedicated to implementation of effective policies by government and business that are simultaneously beneficial to the global economy, the global environment and to social well-being.

IISD is providing consulting services regarding data gathering, analysis and reporting undertaken by StoryGarden.

Other Organizations and Individuals

StoryGarden is in discussion with a number of other organizations interested in the wellbeing of communities.  Although no agreements are in place with these organizations, StoryGarden is receiving valuable input from:

• Community Well-Being Index (CWI) – a pan-Canadian initiative led by Roy Romanow for community sustainability and development measurement
• Several United Way organizations in Canada
• A number of professors at Simon Fraser University and British Columbia Institute of Technology.

Development Team

Deepak Sahasrabudhe, Project Lead

• well experienced in developing complex projects involving creative and technical personnel and processes, including 22 broadcast TV series, several advanced websites, books, videos and multi-media learning systems.
• 4 TV series Deepak has produced have been presented on PBS through APT
• been honoured with over 60 international awards for TV programs he has produced.
• knowledgeable of  the semantic computing community and its processes.
• certified Practitioner by Cognitive Edge
• founder or co-founder of 5 successful media related businesses 

Jon Husband, Consultant – Social Networking, software design

• a recognized expert on social media, knowledge-based organizations and large-scale organizational change
• author of a book titled “Making Knowledge Work – the arrival of Web 2.0” published by the ARK Group (UK).
• created the concept of "wirearchy" and writes several blogs about social media and Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0
• is an active speaker in Canada and internationally about the Web’s growing impact on enterprises and society.
• was Senior Principal in the Hay Group’s London, UK office from the mid 80’s to the mid ‘90’s (now a Vancouver based consultant)
• co-founded a leading Web 2.0 software company, and
• delivers workshops about wirearchy for clients such as Athabasca University's Executive MBA program, and the Banff Centre's Leading Innovation program.
• certified Practitioner by Cognitive Edge

Innovation - Found on the edge - MindTV Philadelphia

One thing I know is true - real innovation - the disruptive idea that shatters the old system - can only happen at the edge.

So this spring when I got a call from Howard Blumenthal, CEO of MindTV, in Philadelphia, my instincts told me that this was a very very important call.

No TV station is more on the edge than MindTV.

It is not a PBS affiliate. It broadcasts a stream of 5 minute shows mainly made by the public.  It is both on air and on the web.Its staff is very young - with 2 honorable exceptions. There is no union. The staff have their own voice in a way that I have never seen anywhere before in media or ANY other place of work. It was not only a novel TV station - it was a novel organization. It was what a 2.0 organization would be like. 2.0 inside and outside. How on the edge could that be?

So I booked my flight and flew down to see Howard and his team.

So what did I find? How to make TV, the Gutenberg of our time.

You don't believe me? Please invest 5 minutes in this film .

Did you get it? I found it compelling. A beautifully crafted story. Here is a heartfelt comment on IMDB. Made by a real pro - right? No - made by a regular citizen, Leontyne Anglin, whose passion is the topic but who had never made a film before.

The impact of Gutenberg's technology in the 1500's was to give people a voice. If video and TV is the main means of communication today then the "New TV" has to give people a voice. This is surely more than uploading to YouTube or a station adding comments or some citizen video/audio.  To have a voice, you need the skill and the art of telling a story. Merely pointing and shooting does not make you a film maker. When you have the ability to tell a story well - then you need the space in a trusted place - so that your early work has an audience who trust what they will see.

This is what happens at MindTV.

Key to how MindTV works is its offer to help the public learn how to be real film story tellers. It's core membership have joined a tribe of film makers with something to say. Then it gives the story teller a place on its Trusted Space.

How does MindTV do this?

First of all it has a production staff that is itself drawn from the public and not from the priesthood. It has attracted such a staff by its culture and by its intern system. While many stations regard interns as more trouble than they are worth, MindTV has made coping with many interns a norm. As such, the keen are fed into the system and the cream come to the top. The Cream become the DI's of the Boot Camp system.

Secondly, it has a transformational training system modeled on and called Boot Camp. Transformational in that a citizen comes in at one end and by the time she has made her film, she is a true film maker.

Leontyne went to a Boot Camp. A one day very intensive course on film/story making. She was a cynic - how could she make a film? But she and two others took up the challenge. MindTV offers its film makers all they need to make a film - the gear and most importantly, the coaching of the DI's.

The result is a real story. Leontyne is a new person. She is film and story literate. She has a new power in the most powerful medium of our age.

She is not an anomaly.

Here is a short documentary film made by an intern. It's broadcast standard in every way - a strong story line and intricate editing combining old and new footage. The person who made this film is a film maker. MindTV is creating a core of accomplished story/film makers in Philly who can help their community as story tellers. In time, with MindTV's support, Philly can have a cadre of the new literate working for the betterment of their city. It does not take much to imagine what they could do.

The incentive that MindTV offers its "students" and interns is that not only will they gain the skills that they will need for our time, but that the work will be showcased on TV and the Web by a Trusted Brand.

All artists want their work to have an audience. TV is 1.0 but it offers a reward like no other. "Hey Mom my film is on TV!" So MindTV is expanding its reach to other markets. It is building a national alliance in most of the key markets of the US - details here. The bigger the audience, the more the impact.

So what next?

It is no secret that all the public stations in Pennsylvania are under pressure with the Governor planning to cut all funding. MindTV is the most vulnerable being so far from the mainstream. This a reason for my post today. MindTv is not the full answer but it has most of the DNA for the full answer and so I felt compelled to tell its story now.

What can we all learn from this?

• Set up a new organization to do this - The station culture is key. MindTV is a 2.0 Culture. Here is how it sees itself. These are no words on a page. With 30 plus years in the field of culture - this is no bull - what they say is how they are. So you cannot change all your station culture to be like this. I also now that to be true. So what can you do? Clay Christenson is clear - set up a separate organization to hose this aspect of the new - your transformational organization. I know of several stations that are thinkign along these lines. You cannot make  this shift inside the old

• The Goal Is Self Relience - The goal is to transform your city to be self reliant - to do that you have to be able to tell the collective story of how people are doing just that in your city. To do that you need to have real story tellers and you have to give their stories the added value of your brand. Create a "school" for the new literacy. Bring in the people as interns. Bring in the young. Use your digital channels and the web as the "channel"

• Get strength and power by connecting Connect to the institutions organizations in your city who need this kind of help - use your story tellers to give them a voice. Connect with other stations across America and the world - learn how to do this from each other. Increase the power of the collective story

The voice from the edge is where true innovation exists. MindTV is such a voice. It's role is to give voice to the voice of the edge.

We will not get through the turbulence of our times by relying on the status quo in any part of our lives. So I do my bit to tell the story of Howard and his band of sisters and brothers at MindTV.

Bless them all.