A Cool Tool: Prezi

Last week I gave a 10-minute presentation on what I've been doing at the Brody School of Medicine. Rather than the usual ppt slides, I used Prezi, an online tool.

BSOM Story on Prezi

IFVP 2010 - Day 2

IFVP Conference 2010 - Day 1

Scribing The Practical Futurist

In May I served as the graphic recorder for the 50th Anniversary Forum of the Triangle J Council of Governments, titled "Creative Possibilities: Regional Solutions." One of the featured speakers was Michael Rogers, aka The Practical Futurist. I had the privilege of getting to know him over dinner the night before, which is a real plus in terms of getting mentally ready to graphically record a presentation. As I'm now working on campus with a scenarios project, I was struck by one of his statements in particular: "The future might surprise us, but it should never dumbfound us."

CPSI 2010

Buffalo.
Innovation = implementing something new. Creativity = novelty that is useful. Creative thinking = connecting previously unconnected thoughts.
The more different kinds of things you put into one (side of the) brain, the more connections the other brain will make.
Entrepreneurial ventures for non-profits.
Nothing works without a focus on person-team-organizational enterprise.
Make companies better by making people better.
Those getting traction are those who explore how to improve their processes to benefit people, and how to really develop their own people.
Integrinators.
For creativity to happen we must search for the value in new ideas.
POINt:

• Pluses
• Opportunities, positive potential
• Issues (they come out best as questions)
• New thinking

The rite of passage for innovation teams.
The importance of being 12.
Fear - death = thrill.
Stay hungry, stay foolish.
Deliver more than what was paid for.
Simple questions are the most powerful.
Applied creativity is a process, and CPS is a model.
Creativity = knowledge x ideas x selection.
Rocks can hear.
Innovation: the implementation of an idea that improves someone's life and brings meaning to someone's life.
Find a way and train everyone.
Inspiration and possibility thinking are absolute musts.
Innovation relies on varied talent.
Stale ideas = stale group.
Resonance; it flows when there is consistency with values.
Explore your vision and use it to guide your way.

Thoughts on Sustainable Change

The leadership in a distinguished organization seeks to advance a large-scale change initiative. Among the foods for thought presented is John Kotter’s “The Eight Step Process for Successful Change.” The first step: “Create a sense of urgency. Help others see the need for change and the importance of acting immediately.”

For a couple of years I co-led the Step III workshop of the Planning Institute of the Society for College and University Planning, and Kotter’s book Leading Change was part of our framework. We occasionally debated the nature of the sense of urgency – does it stem from threats or from aspirations? My own reading of Kotter was that he saw a need to represent a negative force and stimulate our survival instincts.

My path subsequently wound through Peter Senge’s Fifth Discipline and the Society for Organizational Learning. Systems thinking would show that using a negative urgency to stimulate change will make that change unsustainable. If the idea is to engender preferred behavior to eliminate a threat – perceived or otherwise - the lifespan of that behavior is in doubt once the threat is eliminated. The best examples are in colleges and universities. There the preferred stimulus for change is a deficit-orientation, generally arising from assessment. In spite of growing attention to the process, things remain as described by a friend in the Center for Creative Leadership: “It’s easier to move a cemetery than to change a university.”

In the Step III workshop we also used Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. One of the stories we did not discuss was a tragic example of how our focus narrows in the face of a threat. It can be argued that if the change needed is adaptive as opposed to merely technical – changing the way we think as opposed to just changing what we do – it is imperative that we widen our focus. According to Barbara Fredrickson’s work our focus widens and narrows as the positivity of our situation varies. A widening of focus is not only critical to our receptiveness toward new ideas, but it also drives an essential component of long term success: our creativity.

So, in what ways might a positive sense of urgency arise? It can begin with a question as simple as “What do we want more of?” It’s a simple phrase that holds the past, the present and the future together interactively, and it sets up a series of dialogues that engage the entire system. Once the usual conversations begin to change, the leadership can breathe normally in the confidence that things are on their way.

Thinking Through Positivity

I’m fully invested now in Appreciative Inquiry and the broader spectrum of strengths-based and positive approaches. Still, sometimes it’s a challenge for me to explain the rationale to others without that song coming up way in the back of my mind: Keep on the sunny side, always on the….. There’s far more to it than that. I’m also beginning to think that the power of a positive orientation is not as much of a secret as it sometimes seems.

The fundamental example for me is the artist. Michelangelo was not problem-solving when he made the Pieta; there was a lot more going on. When Picasso painted Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon, I doubt that it was because an accreditation agency identified a deficit of Cubism in the art world.

I see other signs. Recently a finance manager noted that if a company has numerous business units, and some are making money and others are losing money, you should not immediately invest in the weak ones. Invest in the strong ones and raise the worth of the whole much faster. In a recent New York Times article Dr. Tachi Yamada talked about the value in finding the positive attributes in analyses and people, and spending your time on those as opposed to just the shortfalls. In the book Born to Run, they point out that species evolve according to what they’re good at. In Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation Kees Van Der Heijden points out that tomorrow’s core competencies come from today’s.

Sometimes when I feel like flying really low, I’ll claim that “No organization ever advanced itself by focusing on its deficiencies.” I have not a shred of evidence for such bombast, but I really do believe it. At the same time, one mustn’t paint with too wide a brush. As pointed out in Metaphors in Mind there are times when it’s appropriate to pull a few weeds.

I also believe that a positive approach ultimately entails really hard work. It’s really easy to call out what we don’t want, but have you ever found it hard to say what you do want? It can be a little tougher. And when we find our strengths, our abilities when at our best, that knowledge brings with it an obligation to always strive for that level. It’s not work for weenies, but our future depends on it.