Putting all your eggs in one basket

Here's a phrase I'd love Fred Shapiro of Freakonomics to parse, "putting all your eggs in one basket". I've used it to describe my decision to put my calendar all in one place - first on my Palm, and later my Blackberry. Not that the phrase is the best choice when you think about it.

I imagine the smart farmer's daughter would not want to risk transport of her entire investment in one basket. Better to split up her product in to smaller bundles, in the hope that most would make it to market in one piece.

But when it comes to calendars, I love my big basket. On my e-calendar, I can put in re-occurring events like birthdays without fear of skipping a year. When work life and home life complexified ten years ago, and I was living off my Outlook calendar and my Day Timer, I was missing personal appointments during work hours, and skipping work assignments during home hours. I could no longer operate off two books. Kind of like my financially challenged friend who tried to take charge of her finances by purchasing not one, but two beautifully bound cheque registers. You can imagine what happened next.

(Picture of the Saskatchewan Palm Pilot, borrowed from Ollie's London Pub Choice, olpc.ca)

When I got my first Palm, it was the new thing on the block. People wanted to know why I bothered switching. I would use the phrase, "put all my eggs in one basket", to describe that glorious master calendar that watched over all the events of my life.

"What happens if you lose your Palm?"

"No problem," I replied, "because of sycing, all I need to do is buy a new Palm, and may calendar is downloaded again." We'll cast a blind eye for a moment to the heartbreaking loss of an attractive asset, and the lurking fear that my password would be breached.

So perhaps one basket is not the best way to describe the joy of the mobile electronic calendar, because in the electronic world, there never is just one copy. There's my PDA, of course, and the mainframe for backup. The mainframe in turn is backed up regularly. Backups upon backups protecting my eggs.

I see the attractiveness of one basket in other places. My IT buddies tell me the mainframe is coming back (one big basket). Personal PC's become dumb terminals, or thin clients, logging up to one big beast. From a maintenance point of view, the IT guy's job just got a lot easier. Put everything in to his big basket, and watch that basket.

It happens in the world of bulk purchasing, too. The idea is that the corporation offers an exclusive contract. It is expected that vendors will be motivated to offer the best price in exchange for the big score. My dad offered this cautionary tale from the seventies. His company (Bell Canada) accepted an exclusive bid from a hotel for all their conferences in Montreal. They received a very competitive rate. Dad says the outcome was horrible. Having snagged exclusivity, the hotel was no longer interested in providing quality service. After all, they had captive customers. Besides, the hotel wasn't making that much on each individual sale.

So are we better off putting consolidating all our valuables? In the e-world at least, the risk is low. There are copies upon copies of our basket squirreled away in those mysterious places that backups go. For things like eggs and hotel rooms, though big, exculsive contracts might just get us egg on our face.

The Psychology of Waiting in Lines

A twitterer, Jess McMullen, twigged me on to a paper on this very topic. I am thrilled! The paper is by Don Norman, and I've also found a fine review by Bryan Hurran in his blog, "Social Graph Paper". Aside from the strong odor of mansweat from three male minds, the concepts are a sweet breath of - - - goodness - - - reality - - - looking - - - caring about the little things that make or break our day. It's more than just a line. It's where people gather and interact.

Invigorating Organizations

What happens when two great ideas collide? We could get a new element or a nuclear explosion. The two great ideas that came together for me was when I was considering the problem of invigorating an organization that is disempowered and hobbled by age and size.

I'm speaking generally, of course, of a pattern of any organization of a certain size that is old enough and battle worn enough to have lost it's way. Individual employees simply do not believe that or understand how they contribute to the whole. Leaders are flummoxed by the scope of problems, and are tempted to throw bandaids at them. Flying bandaids don't exactly inspire the staff, but the staff also have no voice to say so.

The revelation when considering the problem is a combination of ideas from Jim Diers and Malcolm Gladwell when they consider community. What if we were to view an organization as a collection of communities with assets that can be harnessed for the greater good?

Why assets?

Asset based assessment is based on the idea of energizing a community to contribute what it can, rather than pouring resources in to it's weaknesses. The first step to reform is to find out where our great assets are in the community and engage them. People are involved, rather than passive participants. I compare this to the traditional organizational assessment where it's weaknesses are identified. Any one of us could go home depressed if our weaknesses are exposed and analysed. Not to say that such assessments have no value. We do have to take stock once in a while. But the trick is that resolution is not based on what we don't have, but on what we do.

Why community?

What does an organization have in common with a community, and why would we engage communities rather than, say, indivitual change champions or consultants? Organizations have a lot in common with communities. It is a collection of people with common (sometimes) interests, gathered at a place and time. Gladwell and Diers point out that communities can be nurturing places that allow people to be great. In his book "Outliers", Gladwell shows how apparently "self made men" and women were given a great boost by the environment they were raised in. Communities make a great contribution towards individual health and development. Revitalized communities attract.

We need consultants, too. Sometimes we need those kind outsiders to gently point out what we already know. But anyone who has worked on a project with a change champion or with a consultant will know; reporting or consulting on the problem, and coming up with a list of recommendations, is only the very start of the show. We still have an organization to engage. And they haven't been invited to the party yet. All they've seen so far is flying bandaids, and how do they know that this time it will be any different? How do we engage every person in the organization towards positive change?

What does community do better?

When I heard Jim Diers speak this week, he gave a handy list of what communities do better.

• Care for the earth


• Power to prevent crime


• Care for one another


• Demand justice

How could this translate to an organizational community? Well, right off I could see that energized groups of staff would be great at:

• Implementing green solutions in the workplace


• Increase compliance with internal checks and balances (reduce white collar fraud)


• Care for one another (more positive interactions with the public)


• Alert their leadership to weaknesses within (before, say, it gets public)

I am reminded also of the principles of Kaizen, where individuals are engaged to make small, incremental changes in areas they can control, and leadership is engaged to promote the large scale innovations that will help the organization leap forward. Middle management, as usual, are in the middle, helping both groups stay engaged.

Ideal Size and Bumping Places

A spin-off idea from all this is in the engaging and implementing of such an idea. What is the ideal size of an organization or community so that individuals are engaged? In Gladwell's book, Tipping Point, he suggests the ideal size is 200 people. Jim Diers says the ideal size of a community is about 6,000 people. Any bigger, and people are not engaged. Within that community, however, there must be gathering places, or bumping places, where we see the same faces and meet the same people on a regular basis. It's this sense that we are part of a larger community that helps people be engaged rather than be a faceless sojurner.

I'm running out of time but not ideas. I must pick up this thought and expand on it. Where, in a large organization, can the communities of practice bump in to each other and engage? I don't know about you, but the idea of energizing a large organization, as Diers did so effectively in the city of Seattle, inspires me. I think we've got a new element here. Not an explosion. And certainly not flying bandaids.

Civility and Humanity

I've just finished Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin. If you are unfamiliar with the book, Griffin modified his skin color to walk as a Negro in the deep south in 1959. He journalled his experience, and his deeply moving account is described in this book. What struck me is the dehumanizing effect of withholding simple civilities like a smile, a hand-shake, eating together, cautions (watch your step), and looking a man in the eye.

Withholding economic opportunities also, no matter how politely rebuffed, oppresses ambition. I once witnessed a native couple walking hand in hand, initially hopeful, making their way down a row of apartment buildings displaying vacant signs. When I exited my building a couple hours later, they were walking dejectedly, less hopeful than the start. How many times must a person face rejection - or worse, the "hate face" as described in Griffin's book - before he gives up and believes the lie? I am reminded again of Gladwell's comments on meaningful work. Griffin also describes in detail how the persecutor demeans himself by stooping to cruel behavior. To deny another his humanity is to diminish your own.

An afterword in the book describes the violent upheaval a scant decade afterwards, in the race riots of the late sixties. Mr. Griffin describes the pattern of oppression and explosion, as whites heeded rumor rather than the blacks in their on community and in the white community's reaction to a phantom threat, sparked the black communities in their midst. In the subtext is a suggestion that a lot of this could have been avoided with simple communication. In helping the black man, ask him. Provide an atmosphere where he will be honored and heard.

I can't help thinking in the general neglect, the failure to offer simple courtesy, and the polite refusal to allow a sub-group access to good housing and good jobs, that we as Canadians continue to do a disservice to our native communities. I overheard Shawn Atleo, head of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) that it is the First Nations responsibility for instance, to develop a response to the H1N1 virus. I think he is talking about upending the paternalistic response to "the problem" (As Griffin speaks of in his book), and allowing this community to speak for itself and take care of itself.

__________________

On another note, I stumbled across this article while investigating online acquisition of queue. Guess what? Other people took it before me. At queue.ca, a Canadian IT company, they speak about Customer Relation Management (CRM). Like most things, it's not the tool that makes the company, but the application. Guess what? Just like community interactions, a company will also be much more successful if it listens to it's customers, and is willing to make changes to their process in order to make it better.

The technical issues with CRM are not unlike those of any software development project. First, objectives and specifications must be well defined and documented. Tools and technology must be selected based on relevant criteria (features, cost, etc…). Implementation milestones are then set according to business timelines and availability of resources. A significant testing phase is recommended to ensure functionality, so problems can be corrected on schedule. Final delivery of the application should also be accompanied by a maintenance plan for regular housekeeping issues (backups, synchronization with remote locations, database maintenance, etc…). E-CRM is not EASY by Alex Lee, 2002 http://www.queue.ca/publications.aspx

Efficiency 101

Today I make notes for myself and you are along for the ride. I'm drowning in work. I've been in this place before, so I know what to do. Some of us think we're busy but it's because we're running fast. But are we being effective; are we doing the things that really matter? Busy busy is running to get the important things done. I'm in that second place.

I am compelled to dust off those techniques I know that work, use them to their potential, then wave the white flag. If I've done all I can and I still can't keep up, I gotta let people know.

What works?

• Do what matters. Absorb the principles of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey.
• Use my time well. Self-diagnose my weak areas and learn new techniques. I've about incorporated all the techniques in Leave the Office Earlier: The Productivity Pro Shows You How to Do More in Less Time...and Feel Great About It by Laura Stack. Her diagnostic quizzes are great.
• I have just been twigged to the Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen, which intrigues me to learn more
• Also worth investigating are techniques to avoid inbox overload. Thanks Paulflevy On managing email http://bit.ly/xIKxx for twigging me to this article. The goal is http://inboxzero.com/ and 43 folders.

Well, off to it, then. I have my marching orders.

P.S. Found another one on my google foraging expedition. Email: The Variable Reinforcement Machine

I'm going to try this: http://www.gtdagenda.com/page.php?p=next

Random Act of Kindness

I witnessed a random act of kindness the other day, and seeing it turned a bunch of assumptions on their heads. While another couple helped out a young girl, my husband and I watched from a block away, laughing at her predicament.

What had happened is that she backed up too fast, throwing one back tire over a curb. She was very lucky she did not twist the frame. But now, how was she to ease the car forward back over the curb without doing damage to her frame or her suspension? I watched an older couple approach and with some pointing and waving of arms, the man took the wheel of the car. The older woman took a position at the side of the car to keep an eye on the action and to motion if he were to gun it or to take her easy.

I imagined the man as her father, and imagined the girl's loss of driving privileges that night. I laughed.

He did a commendable job easing the car forward, first with the tire blanced on the curb, back end of the car pointing jauntily in the air. Then, with infinite care, he eased the car forward and back to the ground.

I shuddered at the thought of the rear back scraping against the curb.

Then, to my surprise, it was all over and there was hand shaking all around. The couple continued on to the store, and the girl drove away. My assumptions, turned on their heads, was that the couple knew the girl. They did not. These were strangers who took the time to help a young woman in distress. And hubby and I had the opportunity to watch an act of kindness in private. Kudos to the couple who took the time to help. I imagine the young woman felt a little bit better about humanity that day.

What' Wrong with Webmaster?

Webmaster, another word that emprisons. Even the way the word rolls from the tongue. Web-master. The word brings to mind wizards or black belt instructors. "Grasshopper, you have much to learn." The imagery is of complexity, mystery, exclusivity.

In older organizations, web content is managed and posted by this one person. In any process, one assigned person equates to a bottleneck. Bottleneck imagery is pretty easy to figure out too. There's a whole bunch more content to post than one person can handle. You end up with good content put in a holding pattern as it is reviewed and converted to the new format.

As the web has evolved, it becomes the "source of truth" and the first place that the web savvy look for their information. For organizations that are controlled by a webmaster, however, it may be the last place that is updated.

There's software, however, that can distribute the job to the content authors, such as Red Dot of Open Text. Even more open are wikis, where content, moderated, may be opened up to the web. Some of my peers sneer at wikis, having read the articles in conventional media where a wiki page was temporarily spammed with false content. Here's a list of some of the biggest wiki blunders. I think these examples should not overshadow the huge step forward that open content has blessed this planet with. We now have 77,000 contributors to the biggest encyclopedia ever. Even bigger is the reader community - 48 million.