“We can only move into the future together with confidence if
each person has told their truth about the past and present.” quoted from ”How to Change The World - Lessons for Entrepreneurs From Activists” by Adam Kahane. http://goo.gl/5VCqA
Jolly Joseph's Blog
I had transferred some of my older posts to the company blog: http://kernox.com/blog
That was done with the idea that I would only continue to write blogs on Kernox site. But I found that there were several things that I wanted to note down, which were not fitting into the company blog objectives. Hence I have come back here and revived my personal blog.
This is a place for ruminations, work-in-progress stuff, capturing bits and pieces of ideas as they fly in and around my neuron jungle, and for acknowledging the great things that people share on the web.
Determination is a great virtue. But sometimes a dose of imagination offers better alternatives. — JJ
Review of “The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion” by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison; Basic Books, 2010.
In the epilogue to the “Power of Pull” the authors write: “As we make our passion our profession, we begin to see that our potential is far greater than we previously believed.” This is a liberating message that runs as a leitmotif throughout the book.
In the Introduction, the authors write: “If we are going to succeed in this rapidly changing world, we face two challenges: making sense of the changes around us, and making progress in this increasingly unfamiliar world. …. This book takes on both challenges–it is our goal to help you make sense and to help you make progress.” The authors further clarify their purpose behind this book in the epilogue: “Our hope, though, is that by exploring the power of pull and providing a high-level road map for all of us as we seek to navigate the difficult journey from the world of push to the world of pull, we can enable our readers to overcome the fear by helping them to understand the real opportunities that lie ahead for those of us who master these techniques.” The book achieves its stated objectives. The book gives a high-level road map and deals with some techniques for moving from the world of push to the world of pull. It also tells us what opportunities lie ahead when we make this difficult, but necessary, transition.
According to the authors, Pull is about pursuing our passion; finding others who share our passion, but bring in different perspectives; and creating conditions, which increase our likelihood of meeting such people. Creating such conditions may be termed as “shaping serendipity”. This is an important insight gained from the book: “serendipity can be shaped, at least within limits.” We can shape serendipity by bringing paying attention to the three elements–environments, practices and preparedness. Being open to serendipitous encounters involves “deep listening” and relationship-building skills.
Another key message repeated throughout the book is about the importance of shifting our focus from “knowledge stocks” to “knowledge flows”. The authors have dealt with this idea in no uncertain terms: “In this second wave, the sources of economic value move from stocks of knowledge to flows of new knowledge. Tacit knowledge becomes more valuable than explicit knowledge as the edge transforms the core.”
To clarify what the authors mean by the second wave, let us look at the three waves they talk about. The first wave of the Big Shift was the development of powerful and affordable infrastructure for computing and communication. The second wave is what the authors call the shift from knowledge stocks to knowledge flows. The third wave is the transformation of institutions as a result of the first two. The impact of the first wave is apparent to all of us. What we need to really grasp now is the importance of shifting attention from knowledge stocks to knowledge flows.
Further on, the authors write: “Many analysts have noted the increasing importance of intangible assets in business, but people often think about these assets in static form–for example, stocks of knowledge, established brands, and existing relationships.” What is more important in the emerging paradigm is to continuously refresh these assets by collaborating with others, not only within organizations, but increasingly across organizational boundaries. That has important implications for the way think about knowledge management and information systems.
Some of my reflections on reading the book are summarized below:
1. What would be the functions of the institution in the emerging world order, particularly in the light of the Big Shift that the authors talk about? May be, organizations would transform themselves as platforms for individuals to connect and collaborate with others, amplifying individual efforts and helping them to pursue their passion. Would organizations leaders have the courage, conviction and humility to put the pursuit of individual passion at the center of the organization’s purpose? Would they, and particularly the investors, be able to tolerate the uncertainty that goes with such a radical change?
2. How should HR policies and practices be shaped in a world in which individual differences and being on the edge are valued? Would HR have the courage to question the assumptions behind current assessment and appraisal systems that are designed to compare employees with one another, and unwittingly encourage knowledge stocks rather than knowledge flows?
3. How will organizational quality initiatives and process models evolve as the emphasis shifts from knowledge stocks to knowledge flows? What would be role for standardization of processes in the service industry?
4. Knowledge management would become the art of facilitating connections and collaborations among people around relevant problems, rather than efforts to lock down knowledge in repositories. Information systems would build in greater capabilities for people to quickly access and collaborate with others over information available in near real-time through multiple channels including the mobile.
5. Training & Development systems, with annual TRA and training calendar is essentially based on a push paradigm. Even just-in-time learning through sophisticated e-learning systems is only an extension of the same paradigm. In the increasingly dynamic environment, such a “basket of programs” and “configurable packages with learning objects” can at best be a supplement to practices that facilitate faster and more relevant learning on the job. What would these new practices be?
Overall, the book has served the purpose of prodding me to explore further in the areas of management and leadership. I am sure you would gather your own insights and questions by reading this valuable book, and so I would recommend this book. But be prepared to spend some time going through it with patience. Greater attention to the editorial process and honest criticism from a few more of their collaborators could have helped the authors to improve on clarity and simplicity of expression, thereby making the central messages stand out more powerfully.
<< This review was originally posted on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1LL51FDR5SAIT/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm >>
Excerpts from my review of Joel Kurtzman’s book, “Common Purpose: How Great Leaders Get Organizations to Achieve the Extraordinary”
The byline for “Common Purpose” by Joel Kurtzman reads “How Great Leaders Get Organizations to Achieve the Extraordinary”. The book does justice to this claim. It tells us how great leaders get organizations comprising ordinary people to do extraordinary things and achieve excellence. The crux of it is captured in the title itself – they get people to share a common purpose, in which everyone can find meaning and joy.
The insights that the book gives are very valuable for leaders and aspiring leaders at all levels. It tells how the regime of command and control needs to be replaced with the culture of collaboration. Talking about ‘The New Rules of Employment’ in Chapter Two, Kurtzman says, “People have a need to be heard, to be respected, and to control their space. Great leaders–common purpose leaders–grant them their space, give them their trust, allow them responsibility, and present them with opportunities and resources to do their jobs. But great leaders also hold people accountable. In other words, great leaders treat the people they work with as adults, which the current employment compact supports.” I think this short paragraph itself is worth a thousand pages on leadership. What more is there about great leadership? Respecting people’s needs for space and freedom, trusting them as adults, ensuring that they have opportunities, resources and skills to do a great job, and holding them accountable for results.
Full review is available on http://www.amazon.com/review/RNBHBCS46N453/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
Commentary on “The Power of Pull” by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison; Published by Basic Books, 2010.
Page 11: Quote begins: < It used to be that we could rely on “stocks”of knowledge – what we know at any point in time – but these stocks are diminishing in value more rapidly than ever before. …. In more stable times, we could sit back and relax once we had learned something valuable, secure that we could generate value from that knowledge for an indefinite period. Not anymore. To succeed now, we have to continually refresh our stocks of knowledge by participating in relevant “flows”of knowledge – interactions that create knowledge or transfer it across individuals. > Quote ends.
What is the significance of this observation for our approach to education and training? Perhaps we must make a conscious effort to give much more emphasis on collaboration skills. The current paradigm of education limits the opportunities for collaboration, with only an occasional team project or sports activity giving such opportunities. For almost the entire four years of engineering education at the undergraduate level, a student goes about studying one subject after another to pass exams. The good student is expected to listen to lectures, read textbooks, submit assignments (mostly individual assignments) and reproduce what he knows in a series of examinations. They are all tests of “knowledge stocks”. Hardly anyone bothers about the process of knowing, which is valuable for a lifetime.
Could we have a paradigm, where collaboration skills are given at least as much importance as individual knowledge stocks? What would be the challenges in moving towards such a paradigm?
Perhaps, the paradigm shift is difficult because we are all conditioned to believe that one succeeds only through individual merit. And we believe that a series of exams or assessments is the best way to measure such individual merit. The belief is further reinforced by corporate cultures that boast about meritocracy. Meritocracy often becomes a euphemism for rat-race. Thus, it is hard for us to un-condition ourselves and start looking at the possibility of success through collective merit. But this is an alternative worth considering and experimenting with.
It would be great if exams at schools and colleges changed from “teachers asking questions to students” to “students asking questions to teachers.”
If the students are able to ask relevant questions, that would be an indicator of their learning. To be able to ask good questions, it is not enough for the students to be intelligent; they should have applied their intelligence to the subject of study. They should have spent some time really understanding the subject.
In this system of examination, each student would be given the opportunity to ask a fixed number of questions, say, 10 questions. Certain guidelines would be given to define the broad boundaries of the topics being examined.
For each questioning opportunity, the student would be graded on a scale of zero to thee, based on the following guidelines:
Zero mark – No question asked using the opportunity.
One mark – Question can be answered by merely reproducing content given in the prescribed textbooks.
Two marks – Question can be answered by critically examining the content given in the prescribed textbooks.
Three marks — Question can be answered by extending (going beyond) the content given in the prescribed textbooks, along with a critical examination of the same.
Here are two photograph that I clicked some time back.
Symmetry in Nature
How Nature writes her poetry:
Symmetry in Nature - finer details
Teacher: Where does the Sun rise?
Student: In the west.
Teacher: Good! Now tell me, how many days make a year?
Student: Less than a day.
Teacher: Very good!
The teacher was happy and the student was happy.
Funny? Not all! For a student on the planet Venus, these answers are right.
*Venus rotates in the direction opposite to the Earth’s rotation, and so the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east. Since Venus rotates very slowly, a day on Venus takes 243 Earth-days. It completes its orbit around the Sun in 224 Earth-days, thus making the Venusian year less than a Venusian day!
Lesson: Know the context before you arrive at conclusions.
*Facts about Venus noted from ‘Why Venus Spins the Wrong Way’ an article by Harald Franzen in Scientific American, June 15, 2001. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-venus-spins-the-wrong
From an article by Melinda Gates:
“Never before has this country had such an opportunity to remake the way we teach young people. One reason I am so optimistic about these developments is because, after decades of diffuse reform efforts, they all zero in on the most important ingredient of a great education: effective teachers. The key to helping students learn is making sure that every child has an effective teacher every single year.”
Title of article: Education reform, one classroom at a time
By Melinda French Gates
Source: The Washington Post, February 19, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/18/AR2010021802919.html
My reflections:
Anyone who has a child in school realizes the importance of focusing on great teachers. I have two kids going to a small school at Trivandrum. Luckily, they love their school and teachers. But they have a long way to go to complete their schooling, and I hope they will continue to get good teachers.
It is nice to see that there is a renewed understanding about the importance of getting the priorities right in educational reforms. Some signs are there in India too, but it is still too dim. We really need to focus on the teachers. Teaching, after all, is a process of interaction between human beings.
