Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Exercise

The Eyes of Jane Elliott

"In 1968, Jane Elliott was an elementary-school teacher in her all-White hometown of Riceville, Iowa. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been a 'hero of the month' in Elliott's fourth-grade class, because Elliott believed that 'what he was doing was right for all of us, not just for Blacks.' When King was shot, her students wanted to know why their 'hero' had been killed. Elliott took the opportunity to discuss race with her students.

......

Elliott decided to administer a racial reality check. She divided the class into two groups: the brown eyes and the blue eyes. Anyone not fitting these categories, such as those with green or hazel eyes, was an outsider, not actively participating in the exercise. Elliott told her children that brown-eyed people were superior to blue-eyed, due to the amount of the color-causing-chemical, melanin, in their blood.

She said that blue-eyed people were stupid and lazy and not to be trusted. To ensure that the eye color differentiation could be made quickly, Elliott passed out strips of cloth that fastened at the neck as collars. The brown eyes gleefully affixed the cloth-made shackles on their blue-eyed counterparts.

Elliott withdrew her blue-eyed students' basic classroom rights, such as drinking directly from the water fountain or taking a second helping at lunch. Brown-eyed kids, on the other hand, received preferential treatment. In addition to being permitted to boss around the blues, the browns were given an extended recess".

What happened - read the article ...

Horrifying in 1968 - and still a great exercise to use today.

Pay It Forward ... a social network?

Pay It Forward Foundation

Just been watching "Pay it Forward" with the family - powerful stuff, and well acted / directed (Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, Haley Joel Osment).

What does the author (Catherine Ryan Hyde) say?

"Pay It Forward is a book, but it's also an idea. It's an action plan within a work of fiction. But does it have to be fiction? We're hoping not. In fact, since the book was released in January of 2000, a real-life social movement has emerged, not just in the U.S. but worldwide. What began as a work of fiction has already become much more.

Reuben St. Clair, the teacher protagonist of the book Pay It Forward, starts a movement with this voluntary, extra-credit assignment: THINK OF AN IDEA FOR WORLD CHANGE, AND PUT IT INTO ACTION.

Trevor, the 12-year-old hero of Pay It Forward, thinks of quite an idea. He describes it to his mother and teacher this way: 'You see, I do something real good for three people. And then when they ask how they can pay it back, I say they have to Pay It Forward. To three more people. Each. So nine people get helped. Then those people have to do twenty-seven.' He turned on the calculator, punched in a few numbers. 'Then it sort of spreads out, see. To eighty-one. Then two hundred forty-three. Then seven hundred twenty-nine. Then two thousand, one hundred eighty-seven. See how big it gets?'"

Wow! Social Networks with a purpose?

Seth Godin - Nouns and verbs

From Seth's Blog ....

Seth always has a way to provoke us on things we take for granted.

"Nouns and verbs

I had two great seminars in my office this week. Not only do cool people show up, but it pushes me to think hard about new ways to talk about things that work.

• Today, we talked about nouns and verbs
• Investments are a noun. Investing is a verb
• Paint is a noun. Painting is a verb
• A gift is a noun. Shopping for or giving one is a verb.

People care much more about verbs than nouns. They care about things that move, that are happening, that change. They care about experiences and events and the way things make us feel.

Nouns just sit there, inanimate lumps. Verbs are about wants and desires and wishes.

• Is your website a noun or a verb?
• What about your management style or the services you offer?

A few years ago, the rage was to turn products into services. Then it was to turn services into products.

I think the next big thing is to turn nouns into verbs."

Politics and Trust

The UK election campaign and "trust"... here's a little item from the UK General Election campaign, as reported in the Economist.

"There is a problem in focusing on the issue of personal trust in the prime minister. According to a YouGov poll for Sky News, 62% say they do not trust Mr Blair. But 66% say they do not trust Mr Howard. That makes turning the election into a referendum on Mr Blair and his slipperiness difficult."

Now, what is trust - isn't it a positive rather than a lack of negatives?

Frank Barrett - Jazz Improvisation

I was lucky enough to share a glass of wine with Frank last week, although unlucky to miss his performance (you may know he is a professional jazz musician as well as an AI / Organizational expert). In “Creativity and Improvisation in Jazz and Organizations: Implications for Organizational Learning,” a 1998 article, he notes that the following features of jazz improv are helpful to us org design mortals ...

• Interrupt habits
• Embrace errors as a source of learning
• Allow maximum flexibility through minimal structures
• Continually negotiate toward dynamic synchronicity
• Rely on retrospective sense making
• Be a member of a Community of Practice
• Alternate between soloing and supporting

Now, I know how to interrupt, and I have to face a lot of my own (and other people's errors). But it seems to me that "alternating between soloing and supporting" may be the real magic. And being a "member of a community of practice" is a pretty close second. Check out Etienne Wenger....

Perhaps that is why Frank and I talked also about the legendary Cream (who are briefly reuniting at the Albert Hall next week - and we failed to get tickets!). Can you remember the 60's?

Genghis Khan

Just finished watching a one hour documentary on Genghis from the BBC. Well produced, and quite riveting. Did a good job on explaining Genghis' superb generalship (no, I do not approve of his violent methods, but you can't help but admire his strategic thinking ...), but only really hinted (I guess because of the time allowed) at the "civilian" infrastructure he put in place to hold the empire together. Would have been worth two hours of filming!

I quite like the "guide to management" Jennifer Quinn of the BBC wrote alongside the program.

• Profit share
• Hate office politics
• Run a meritocracy
• Embrace change
• Think ahead

Nothing new under the sun?

Business Week: "Blogs Will Change Your Business"

"Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up...or catch you later

Monday 9:30 a.m. It's time for a frank talk. And no, it can't wait. We know, we know: Most of you are sick to death of blogs. Don't even want to hear about these millions of online journals that link together into a vast network. And yes, there's plenty out there not to like. Self-obsession, politics of hate, and the same hunger for fame that has people lining up to trade punches on The Jerry Springer Show. Name just about anything that's sick in our society today, and it's on parade in the blogs. On lots of them, even the writing stinks....

Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they're simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they're going to shake up just about every business -- including yours."

Read more ....

Globalization

We are doing some work on Global organization design .... so I thought I'd post the "intro" thoughts I am using ...

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Globalization is mainly a positive force and it is now almost irresistible. Still, there are 101 defi­nitions of Globalization, and most of them are “economics based” around “open markets in a borderless world”. We believe these views are too narrow as other social threads should be included.

• Democratization of political process
• Rule of law, transparency & good governance
• Social development twinned with economic development
• Global information flows -not only possible but are demanded by all

We thus prefer to characterize Globalization as an intense engagement in both economic openness and social openness. In this regard, our research suggests that any successful business Globalization effort will have the following baseline characteristics.

Values in action: Enterprises need clear and well communicated ­guideposts. They must be seen to have the same values in action all over the world.

Common Ground: We all have more in common than we have differ­ences. We must respect diversity, and see that home is where we are not where we came from.

Technology: Enterprises must use highest common denominator technology – to give the best delivery of benefits. Customers all over the world are continually increasing their expectations of what products and services do – and in the fastest growing markets (such as China and India) consumers are “leapfrogging” over traditional technologies. For example, China now has the world’s biggest mobile phone user base.

Innovation: Global businesses innovate through “loose – tight” decentralization – with clear common goals, whilst also accepting ideas from everywhere.

Success Models: It is necessary to build and expand data based success models - but then these must constantly improve and retrofit the learning. The subtlety is in defining what is “globally common” and what is “locally different”. But in that regard …

80:20 Rule: This rule is alive and well -20% of the effort gets 80% of the results - but the 20% could be critical! And 80% of what customers want is the same all over the world.

Communities: This is a trend with ever more far reaching consequences - communi­ties of interest springing up on every issue. These communities are appearing in every industry, business, culture & ethnic group - all facilitated by today’s network capabilities. We see the increasing desire to create deep com­munities as a positive - mixing Local & Global culture and interests.

Global - Local Paradox: Yet, these two threads also mean that we face a “Global – Local paradox”. Just as things are getting more Global - and people are generally bene­fiting from the effects of Globalization – so the desire for local communities gets stronger. So Enterprises need to be able to reflect and act on this paradox.

Relationships: In the West, we tend to view the value of a business as the sum of its transactions. Stakeholders are respected but also are measured in shareholder value. In Asia the value of a business is the sum of its relationships. Effort is applied to building strong relationships with customers, suppliers, employees, investors and even competitors. Globalization means we must know how to take the positives from both, without falling into either set of negatives.

BBC NEWS "Parties focusing on world poverty"

"Helping the world's poor is the main parties' focus as the election campaign changes tack to mark World Poverty Day.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are both expected to highlight Labour's plans to push for an international agreement on tackling HIV, TB and malaria. Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy will say action on HIV/Aids is 'disgracefully slow' and the UK has a duty to help."

Well, all I can say is that I hope they can make a difference, and not just during the run up to an election. See the Making Poverty History site ...

BBC NEWS "Sir John Mills: A very English actor"

"John Mills was a very English actor, who made his name in a string of patriotic war films.

Sir John won his only Oscar in 1971 for Ryan's Daughter. He played officers and other ranks with equal aplomb, crossing class barriers with an ease rare for actors of his generation, who were usually typecast as one or the other.

In one of his earliest wartime films, In Which We Serve (made in 1942), he played the cocky Able Seaman Shorty Blake. In one of his finest, Tunes of Glory (made in 1960) he played a neurotic colonel cracking up, as one critic put it, as if from 'the strain of too many stiff upper lips'. "

Why did I post this? Well, because I like so many people admired his skill and professionalism. But, second, because his ability to play the range of leadership roles that he did opens up the question of "leadership as performance". Leaders are on stage all of the time - although of course unlike actors these leaders are working with their followers towards some specific end state. I am reminded of the work of David Boje here.

Coincidence

By coincidence, I spent some time talking by phone with Karen Stephenson this evening, and the conversation turned to the concept of the purpose of networks. As Karen said - "synchronicity?"

Outbreaks ....

On the other side of my interests, I was contacted recently by the Alan Guttmacher Institute. They were considering using a picture I took in Malawi in 2002 as part of a new report they are doing. which aims to expose the "sugar daddy" culture in parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

I was in Malawi trying to learn more about the spread of HIV/Aids, with Save the Children - which brings me straight back to the subject of Networks.

Last week we were pleased to republish an article by Duncan Watts called "Outbreak" on LeaderValues. I find Duncan's comment that "One reason that HIV managed to spread globally, breaking out of its core population of gay men, prostitutes, and intravenous drug users, was due to a general perception that it couldn't" incredibly appropriate in all kinds of situations.

The purpose of networks

I was with a client this week who was dealing with the creation of networks - in a community of practice sense. The network ideas they had looked good, yet there were a couple of missing parts which we worked on together.

First, unlike the internet (a now classic "scale free" network) which really has no intrinsic purpose, networks inside businesses are meant to achieve something - better communication, more ideas, faster action etc. So knowing what the purpose is will likely change the way the network is conceptualized.

Second, it is my belief that business networks must also focus on actionability in the way the linkages are designed between members - something new should happen, whether it is to build more learning or better results. And this will require easy searchability so members of the network can understand what others are up to, and how they can find existing knowlege in the network.

Getting started on my Blog

Well, I guess I needed to do this. There is so much going on in the world of leadership and organizations, that it seems a good way to try to keep up is to blog. My website (www.leader-values.com) gets a lot of articles sent from people who are exploring all aspects of leadership, so adding a blog seems like a good way to extend the conversation in "real time".