workplace culture

Book Review: Where Good Ideas Come From

January 24, 2012 by Rosa Say

You probably knew a book review was coming when I went all “you MUST read” on you, didn’t you.

I’m giving myself a Goodreads challenge again, and this was book 5 for me this month. I tend to read more early in the year, and my challenge is to read books more consistently. The Kindle Daily Deal helps immensely, for it constantly adds to the queue in an easily affordable way. So many books, so little time…

Where Good Ideas Come From

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson (Goodreads Links)
Link to Amazon.com: Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation

My Goodreads rating: 5 of 5 stars

In a word, exceptional.

I greatly appreciate authors like Johnson who are ‘slow hunch’ cultivators, thorough researchers, and articulate explainers.

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation is a focused celebration of the phrase “hindsight is 20/20.” The scientific history of innovation is curated to support Johnson’s thesis, which is his answer to this question: What kind of environment creates good ideas?

There is another, more subtle question which lurks throughout the book as well: Are you open to sharing your ideas before they’ve fully formed? (…for here are the reasons why.) From his Introduction:

“The poet and the engineer (and the coral reef) may seem a million miles apart in their particular forms of expertise, but when they bring good ideas into the world, similar patterns of development and collaboration shape that process. If there is a single maxim that runs through this book’s arguments, it is that we are often better served by connecting ideas than we are by protecting them. Like the free market itself, the case for restricting the flow of innovation has long been buttressed by appeals to the “natural” order of things. But the truth is, when one looks at innovation in nature and in culture, environments that build walls around good ideas tend to be less innovative in the long run than more open-ended environments. Good ideas may not want to be free, but they do want to connect, fuse, recombine. They want to reinvent themselves by crossing conceptual borders. They want to complete each other as much as they want to compete.”

He then proceeds to cover 7 different qualities he’s discerned about the nature of ideas, with very meaty chapters on each, all illustrated by the scientific stories of innovation:

Ch 1 — The Adjacent Possible (I have shared Johnson’s definition before, within this blog post: An Aloha Business for 2012)
Ch 2 — Liquid Networks
Ch 3 — The Slow Hunch
Ch 4 — Serendipity
Ch 5 — Error
Ch 6 — Exaptation
Ch 7 — Platforms

After reading each one, you can’t help but put the book aside for a moment, and ask yourself, “where do I sit with this, given my own habits?” and, “how must I further shape the environment my ideas will percolate in?”

Johnson’s book is the perfect candidate for the workplace book club. Two reasons immediately came to mind:

1. It is hugely conducive to company adaptation, and would be a marvelous trigger for in depth, “what about us?” discussion on a number of different questions which are kin to his central one [What kind of environment creates good ideas?]”¨

— Who is our Darwin in this company? (or a number of others he profiles)
— What are the important stories of our own scientific, or innovative history? How were they sequential stories and not singular events?
— Where are the different rooms of our ‘adjacent possible,’ and who, among our own people, are already working in them?
— We say mistakes are cool, and that we have to ‘fail forward’ in our experimentation, but how well do we actually understand error? Have we built on any errors?
”¨” and so forth.

2. It will add to your Language of Intention in culture-building. I love books like these, which teach you new words or phrases, and then treat you like the like-minded insider you become as those words and phrases get built upon in each successive chapter and proposition. Your own vocabulary becomes enriched.

For someone like me, strong proponent of aligning our values, Johnson’s exceptionally well written book is a good reminder about the wealth of possibility that diversity contributes to the healthy and inventive mindset. He hasn’t changed my mind about value alignment, and how necessary it is to culture-building; he zooms me forward. Okay, you have a healthy, MWA-infused culture. Now what will it take to innovate and grow?

Johnson takes his time with his book’s concluding remarks (more stories!) introducing a final filtering concept he calls “the fourth quadrant” to help us better sit with our own conclusions about what we’ve learned. I’m not one of those cynics he need worry about, but I appreciated his patience and attempt to be so open-minded and thorough. I think Johnson was very smart in including his environmental exploration with a “what if” treatise on governmental systems; it’s an arena where cultural innovation is chronically necessary, and any reformation efforts will be complex, and will take time, keeping Johnson’s book relevant for years to come.

I admit to feeling personally challenged by this book still, wondering if I understood everything, and if I took it all in completely — there is so much covered! This will therefore be a book I gladly read again (and now, not later) moving it from a 1st read appetizer and overview to a more complete meal I can savor. A certain degree of reading restraint is called for; I want to read this again before picking up any other non-fiction book.

I’d decided that my reading of Where Good Ideas Come From was long overdue because I’ve been a fan of Johnson’s blog, and reading it is a good way to get a preview of what you’ll read in his book. You can be assured the book will be better, for his blog posts are his own “slow hunches,” made public to simmer and cook with some early feedback.

View all my book reviews on Goodreads

Why Goodreads? They have become an App Smart choice for me, for I want to return to more book reading, and have set a goal to read at least 24 books this year. Read more about the Goodreads mission here, and let’s connect there if you decide to try it too! You can also follow them on Twitter.

Previous review done for Talking Story: The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

Use this link if you prefer to read my book reviews here on Talking Story.

“My parents don’t know that I know”

October 7, 2011 by Rosa Say

This is what scares me about current struggles in our world today:
It was posted on We are the 99%:

“My name is Allison, I’m a 13 year old 8th grader. I only get a few hours of sleep at night, but I don’t tell my parents because they don’t need to know that I need sleeping pills. I’ve been showing symptoms of Schizophrenia but we can’t afford for me to go see a doctor about it. My parents get really scared when they have to pay the morage because it really cuts down on our money. I’ve stopped eating alot so there’s more food for everyone else. My parents don’t know that I know we’re the 99%.”

The up side, is that when I get scared I just work harder, but with better focus on why I bother in the first place.

The Managers’ Kuleana

Those who have heard me speak know I make this point as often as I can about Kuleana, our profound responsibility as managers:

If the children of your employees believe that working imprisons their parents and makes them grumpy people, it’s your fault. Hold yourself accountable for that, and fix it. Those children are going to grow up, and be our workforce one day: What attitude do we want them to bring to the workplace with them?

I do what I do, and with the passion I have for it, because I was an exception to the rule and I know it. I was one of the truly lucky ones, not just lucky in the way Allison describes it above. What my parents illustrated for me, was that work was what they made it, and making it great was entirely possible. They did this in spite of the bosses they had, and they partnered with my teachers in demonstrating it for me.

Well, I wanted to be a boss; I wanted to be a manager. I knew we could do better, and be better, and support parents like mine. This, is essentially how Managing with Aloha came to be: My dream, is that all managers become the teaching boss my dad never had, but taught me was possible.

Here’s the drill in life:

Everyone has to work.
We work our way up what Maslow called our hierarchy of needs: We work for our basic sustenance to start, but hopefully we will progress, reach higher, and work our way through the other levels; through a sense of belonging, through self-esteem, and toward the stuff of self-actualization which makes legacy possible.

Jobs are what we have to do in the economic machine of society.
Work can be what we get to do in an inspired life (what we call the value of Ho‘ohana).

We managers shape working culture.
Managing with Aloha is a way we do that, and do it well. I believe it’s the best way, because to manage with the values rooted in Aloha, is to manage with your own humanity.
For what’s a culture? It’s a group of people with a common set of values and beliefs.

To “shape working culture” is to create an environment in the workplace which is ‘good’ in every definition of the word.
Good is healthy, and good begets more good.

The workplace environment is a contagion. It infects and thereby affects everything connected to it through the people within it: It affects their homes and their families, it affects the quality of their play and the rest in their sleep. It affects people individually and on a very personal level, and it thereby affects entire communities and their attitudes, whether that be their despair, or their sense of hope.

Understand “the drill” and understand it well.
Then, understand this:

Alaka‘i Managers help the human race

You don’t get to be a manager, and a truly great person, unless that is who you choose to be.
You don’t get to be a manager, and a truly great person, unless you work on it intentionally every single day.
You don’t get to be a manager, and a truly great person, unless you accept personal accountability for The Manager’s Kuleana, and can look into a child’s face and feel Pono, your rightness in our world.

On that pyramid, that hierarchy of human needs, I see rightness above Sense of Belonging and before you get to Self-Actualization: Rightness is personal, and it’s right there where Maslow put Self-Esteem.

We may have a long way to go before we get to Sense of Belonging for everyone.
We continue to work our way there, knowing we have to: Quitting, or opting out, are not included in our viable options.

However Sense of Belonging doesn’t cut it; it’s not enough.
Just ask Allison.

Calling all Managers: We need you

October 6, 2011 by Rosa Say

We hear a lot about the jobs we need, and guess what? Management of those jobs, and of the quality of work they involve, the future they shape, and the people they grow, isn’t going away. If anything, we need thoughtful, intentional and purposeful management more than ever.

Steve Jobs for instance. (1955-2011) Jobs had vision, to be sure (I’ve been clipping a few tributes on my Tumblr, and commenting on them there), but he was also a manager. Current counts have the number of Apple employees at nearly fifty thousand. Add to their work-in-progress the success stories of their alumni who have graduated; grown to now Ho‘ohana on their own.

You may not be an innovator of marvels as things, but you can be an innovator of marvels in people. Managers create culture.

We need managers who can passionately speak into their certainty and confidence that “people are our greatest asset” — managers who will then go about proving it. That means we need more Alaka‘i managers — those who manage with Aloha, because they believe in people as much as they do; they love seeing others thrive.

Trending: In jobs, and in skills

I have mentioned economist Richard Florida a few times lately, and have recommended his book to you. Here is an excerpt from The Great Reset connected to jobs: His chapter 16 is titled, “Good Job Machine” and it was my favorite one, for while he doesn’t say so directly, he makes a clear cut case for why managers are needed today, and of how ripe the opportunity for evolution in the role of the manager.

“There are two kinds of jobs that are growing: higher-paying knowledge, professional, and creative jobs (everything from high-tech engineers and software developers to managers and doctors to graphic designers and entertainment lawyers) and lower-paying routine jobs in the service economy (food service workers, nurses’ aides, janitors, home health care workers, and the like). Over the past three decades, the U.S. economy has added 28 million routine service jobs and 23 million knowledge, professional, and creative jobs, compared to just 1 million in manufacturing. Routine service jobs now compose the single biggest area of employment: 45 percent of jobs, 60 million in all. Creative jobs account for 31 percent, and working-class jobs for 23 percent.”

Florida wrote those words early in 2010, but he goes on to explain why “these trends will only become more pronounced over the coming decade or so” because “both service and creative jobs have been much more resilient in the face of the economic crisis.”

Update: Florida has just published his current findings in this article for Atlantic Cities:
The Creative Class is Alive, written in response to others who fear otherwise.

“Much more resilient” does not necessarily mean of optimal quality, and we’ve much work to do in the job evolution ahead of us. Employers constantly complain that the basic skills they now look for are largely MIA in our workforce. We managers know that much of what people need to learn for their best productivity will be learned on the job; not in school, and not at home (I was lucky). What that means of course, is that managers are, and will always be the teachers of the work skills needed. As Florida writes;

“The old manufacturing economy honed physical skills such as lifting and manual dexterity. But two sets of skills matter more now: analytical skills, such as pattern recognition and problem solving, and social intelligence skills, such as the situational sensitivity and persuasiveness required for team building and mobilization.”

He concludes that, “we need to spend less time and effort bailing out and stimulating the old economy, and a lot more building on the new.” That recognition, that proof, that we can build on the new, and create a future we see, may be Steve Job’s greatest legacy, for it required imagination and raw guts.

However you phrase and illustrate the trends of our working future, basic human needs remain clear to me: no one thrives in mindless or mind-numbing work. Whether they be analytical, socially intelligent, or even physically focused, skills-mastery depends on the emotional health of the learner, and learners need visions they can aspire to. We all need to know, “If I learn these skills, how will I apply them so they’re most relevant?” We human beings are dynamos: We all want to improve and innovate, tapping into our full capacity, and growing in ways we haven’t fully imagined yet, but inherently know are possible.

Where will these job skills come from? Who will teach them? Who will encourage us as we further innovate? We need more Alaka‘i managers today because we need their coaching and support.

The current Occupy Wall Street movement? It is part of the trending in us: In me, in you, in all of us.

As I see it, managerial jobs of worth are the jobs of merit which must grow most of all. As we have called it before, it is The Reconstructed, Rejuvenated, Newly Respected, and Never Underestimated Role of the Manager.

Are you up to the challenge?

Postscript: This was posting #5 in a conversation about jobs this month:

Soundbite of the day (October 07, 2011 at 06:28am):
The message of #OWS [Occupy Wall Street] is not “Here’s is our 9-point plan.” The message of #OWS is “This is not a livable compromise.” — Clay Shirky

Managers Create Culture

August 25, 2011 by Rosa Say

Me saying I’m a workplace culture coach is just another way of saying I coach managers. Plain and simple (and complicated and messy) managers create the culture which exists in every workplace. Every other variable is just more noise or window-dressing. Our challenge, is that the vast majority of workplaces aren’t set up so managers can spin their magic.

I had to share these snippets with you from an article written for the Morning News by Jonathan Gourlay, for he makes the case in a much more entertaining way as he shares his true-story experience working at Borders Bookstore. The tagline penned by the Morning News introduces his essay with this summary:

As Borders liquidates its merchandise, a former employee of store #21 looks back at a glorious workplace—of quirky managers, Borders gypsies, the odyssey to stack more than Hobby/Collectibles—and the moment when salvation seemed at hand to save the chain.

Do read the entire essay when you can: The Day Borders Got the Wobblies

For now, here are the snippets grabbed about those “quirky managers.”

Image Credit: Lauren Tamaki

“Neil, our manager, calls me over the intercom with a “Jonathan, please dial 42.” This is his code for “nothing is happening, but I’m saving you from a rude customer.” It is also his nod to The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. “42” is the answer to the ultimate question of how to escape the clutches of a horny old man.”

“Neil is the guy who brings the quirky mid-’90s vibe to this bookstore. Neil lets homeless men sleep in the big reading chair in two-hour shifts. Neil encourages my co-worker Dan to play guitar in the cafÃ© even if his songs are all about how New York City is a boat sailing away with his ex-girlfriends. Neil allows me to dress the front of the store with Marvin Bell’s The Book of the Dead Man, a difficult book of poetry purchased by exactly zero customers. (One thing Borders does well is track its inventory.) Neil wears unlaced hiking boots in the summertime. His hair is dark and long. His daily uniform is a Nirvana T-shirt underneath a suit jacket. When mentally disturbed customers spread feces on the walls of the bathroom, Neil cleans it himself. Neil says they don’t pay us enough for that duty. Everybody loves Neil.”

* * *

“For Borders, which first opened in 1971, the end began when it was sold to K-Mart in 1992. By the time I got there, three years later, only a few of the stalwart Borders believers remained to try to change the store from within. Within a few months of my arrival, Neil gave up and retired to play in his band, The Human Rays. I don’t know if the band was real or Neil just thought it was amusing to retire and join The Human Rays. His friendly management style didn’t jibe with the new owners.

Neil’s replacement was a guy named Doug. Doug had the personality of a pair of brown corduroy pants. We all hated Doug. We hated him because he was not Neil. Underneath that hatred was a hatred of what Doug represented: corporate masters and the loss of our own identity. With Neil we labored under the impression that we were cool. Under Doug we just labored.

We were all called, one by one, to Doug’s basement office where he asked unanswerable questions like:

“What can I do to make things better at the store?”

It was like trying to explain to plain yogurt what it’s like to be strawbana flavored. Poor Doug was an immigrant from the land of Blue Light Specials. He was now in charge of a funky bookstore where most of the workers held advanced degrees in esoteric subjects like Marxist Geography and Women’s Studies. How could we tell him that his very presence made us feel bad about ourselves? Not because of anything that he did but because of the fundamental essence of who he was. He was a boss, plain and simple.”

Extra points: After you read the complete essay, do read the comments, where other former employees and managers weigh in.