Carman Pirie's Blog

Learning

A recent post by Chris referenced a remarkable quote from John Holt via Life Learning Magazine. Here it is:

Since we can’t know what knowledge will be needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned.

What could your organization also be if you embraced this?

The Chronicle Herald article on blogs

The Chronicle Herald ran a piece on the front of their business section on Saturday about blogs. My comments were included and here is the full text of my submission. As an aside, the paper saw fit to cut the Scoble piece... I guess they had trouble understanding how a blog can nourish a business from the inside out... surprise, surprise...

Anyway, here it is:

Blogs, at their core, represent the humanization of the web. As such, they demand authenticity. Blogs are a human-to-human medium, not a business-to-consumer channel. Businesses seeking to tap into the power of blogs must recognize this fundamental difference – successful blogs cannot be littered with filtered PR-speak. Bloggers must write in their own voice. They must be human.

Consequently, the power of blogs for business is most certainly not in serving up the same old web ads on your blogs of choice. It is only when businesses begin to view their markets as conversations that their real strength is revealed: blogs allow businesses to talk with their customers in a profoundly different and compelling way.

Robert Scoble’s popular blog, Scobleizer (scobleizer.wordpress.com), had a dramatic impact on his employer, Microsoft. Scoble’s open and honest dialogue about his employer – both good and bad – enabled a powerful conversation delivering key insights and thinking, from independent software developers and others, to those directly inside Microsoft.

Whether you’re looking for a bespoke suit (englishcut.com), a great bottle of wine (stormhoek.com), or a fantastic yacht (fenderkicker.typepad.com), great examples of business blogs abound. You will know them when you read them – they communicate with passion in a direct, genuine way that is unmistakably human.

Timing in design

This morning I will be starting the design of a 15-month program – suffice it to say that this will have been the largest design process I’ve undertaken. Then again, perhaps not. I say that because I head into this very aware that it is virtually impossible to design the entire program at once.

This is always an interesting phase in an engagement and one of the aspects of hosting that I love. This work understands at its very core that it requires time to reveal itself – allowing design to occur on the fly. As a host, you can try all you like to fast forward through design. The work just doesn’t accept that. It won’t feel right.

CHO’s would recognize that the days of 5-year business plans are well behind us. An overall guiding framework and attention to creating and holding the space for brilliance to emerge – that’s about all a CHO could hope for. The rest will come out over time.

Nice to have these thoughts entering the day.

On language and the Art of Hosting

My posting yesterday prompted an email from Chris expressing his interest in discussing further the concept of language as a barrier to the Art of Hosting’s propagation in business. Then, at a gathering last night, this issue surfaced again. The group assembled last night struggled with elitism and how language can either enhance or detract from an idea’s ability to spread. Interesting stuff.

In any event, I believe that as we move this work more into the realm of business, it is critical that we quite simply say what we mean, and mean what we say. While it is interesting to refer to the people surrounding the Art of Hosting as Mates and the Fellowship as Robert references in his thought provoking post, I just wonder what impact this has on the idea’s ability to spread. While I may enjoy Lord of the Rings, others may not. Is it critical that someone understand this reference in order to practice the Art of Hosting and bring it into being in their life and organization? No. At least I hope not.

At an Art of Hosting in December 2005, Toke made reference to using the Art of Hosting in a Six Sigma implementation. Immediately, my eyes lit up! Virtually nothing screams business rigor and hard-nosed business-think like Six Sigma. I thought to myself at the time – THIS is the kind of thing the business community needs to hear if we’re to move to a leadership level that reaches my vision of CHO’s.

In Circle Practice, we detail three practices that form the basis for Circle. One is “to tend to the well-being of the circle: remaining aware of the impact of our contributions”. I think the same ideal should guide our language in the Art of Hosting – we should simply remain aware of its impact.