Teblog

Values-based messaging tackles the green gulf

Abraham Maslow's 'Hierarchy of Needs' was one of the first models that helped me make sense of life and our individual journeys through it. That was in 1975. Little did I know that an even better understanding, from Dr Clare W Graves, had been published just the year before. In its new 'Cracking the Green Code' report, Ecoalign applied Dr Graves' research to what it calls 'the green gap' - the gulf that exists between stated beliefs and environmental actions. Fortunately, the theory is more useful than that, because it can be applied in any situation where mental resistance is high and desired behaviour is low.
All manner of people and institutions are banging the green drum in the hope that they'll induce mass behavioural change. But it's not working very well. "Al Gore", the Ecoalign report says, "did a terrific job of demonstrating the horrible hell that humans will create..." but goes on to say, "Unfortunately, he spent far less time creating an inspired, credible, vision for our collective future."
Somehow the green issue has to be turned around so that, according to the report, "it occurs to target audiences as an exciting opportunity to further their own pre-existing life goals and aspirations'. And this is where Dr Graves comes in. He spent 40 years researching, then mapping, the human psyche in a way that still makes sense even as our behaviours evolve. He identified eight levels of thinking that operate in the world today. At the moment, in North America, four of these levels predominate. They are: Absolutistic, Individualistic, Humanistic and Systemic. A fifth, Holistic, is currently emerging. By understanding each of these, you understand the majority of the developed world. The others are included in the Ecoalign report.
Here's an overview of the four mentioned:

Absolutistic (20% of US)
Life theme: Sacrifice self now to receive future reward
Core values: Discipline, authority and purpose
Goal: Find peace and meaning in this world by denying impulses and upholding moral laws
Perception-shaping metaphor: Life is a test
Key messaging tactic: Call to duty

Individualistic (30% of US)
Life theme: Express self for what self desires, but in a calculated fashion so as to avoid bringing down the wrath of important others
Core values: Accomplishment, power, profit
Goal: Achieve success and influence in this life by strategically manipulating desired outcomes
Perception-shaping metaphor: Life is a game. The world is a machine.
Key messaging tactic: Call to action

Humanistic (30% of US)
Life theme: Sacrifice self now in order to gain acceptance now
Core values: Equality, honesty, relatedness
Goal: To find happiness in this life, in this moment, by relating deeply to other humans
Perception-shaping metaphor: Humans are a family
Key messaging tactic: Call to imagine. Call to compassion.

Systemic (10-15% of US)
Life theme: Express self for what self desires and others need, but never at the expense of others, and in a manner that all life can continue to exist
Core values: Integrity, competence, sustainability
Goal: To restore vitality and balance to a world torn asunder
Perception-shaping metaphor: Life is a system
Key messaging tactic: Call to innovate. Call to service.

From the above, you can no doubt start to slot people you know, or know of, into the different categories. It's little wonder, then, that blanket exhortations don't get us very far. Whatever we're trying to push, whether it's green IT, social computing or electric cars, we need to be able to segment our audience effectively and appeal to the appropriate inner drivers.
The report goes on to explain how it tested the theories by mapping expected values of a group of individuals against actual values by showing them some utility industry video vignettes. While this is unlikely to be central to readers of this blog, it does serve to set the research into a real world context.
But a lot of the report is about the 'what' you need to do, rather than the 'how'. But then this is probably what Ecoalign and the report's author, John Marshall Roberts, are on this earth for: to help with that bit. This in no way diminishes the insights it gives to the ways in which the people around us might be thinking and to how we might adjust our approaches to better match their internal realities.

If you're interested, this blog post by Christopher C. Cowan and Natasha Todorovic throws more light on the works of Graves and Maslow

Salesforce/Twitter: genuine help or fake sincerity?

Interesting that Marc Benioff (boss of Salesforce.com) should choose to announce the addition of Twitter to its Service Cloud on Monday. Why? Because it won't be available until the summer. Part of me suspects that the reason was simply because Twitter is a very hot topic today and it might be tepid by June. The official reason, I think, is that the deal with Twitter had just been inked.

The news might have passed me by had we (Freeform Dynamics) not received an official announcement from the company. The covering letter said, "...enabling companies to search, monitor and join conversations taking place on Twitter..." Without being a Salesforce.com expert, I was worried that a whole bunch of sales types or, worse, machines would start trying to insert themselves into Twitter conversations.

In fact, the pitch is somewhat more genuine than that. It suggests that organisations can monitor Twitter (a free addition to the $995/month 'Service Cloud' which already provides access to a number of online services such as Google Search and FaceBook) for mentions and, when they relate to problems, do something about them. That something will end up as either a comment to the Tweeter with a link to a solution to their problem or, if lots of people have the same problem, a general announcement-type Tweet. (Or maybe a bunch of direct messages - I don't know if the Service Cloud can do that. Nothing, apart from the tedium, to stop the help desk people doing it though.)

All sounds pretty reasonable, right? Back there in Salesforce.com land, the client organisation will have a whacking great database of customers, prospects, queries and answers. Each can be clothed instantly with relevant Tweet threads. I quite often appeal for help online. If someone were to help me, and I said "hooray, it worked!" or similar, then this thread would be collected for future reference by support staff. A bit cheeky perhaps, but quite understandable. It expands the company's own knowledge base at little extra cost.

Getting a bit more sinister, it would be possible for a sales person with access to the Service Cloud to hoover up personal information about a prospect before making a call. ("Sorry to hear about your recent illness. How are you feeling now?") These things aren't impossible today, but because it's built right into the Salesforce system, it is actually quite powerful. A tremendous aid to fake sincerity.

And this is the point, isn't it? If the service is used for the genuine benefit of the customer, then people will welcome it. If, however, it's used to exploit the Tweeting public, then the backlash will be swift and unstoppable.

But who will the backlash be aimed at? Twitter for allowing access? The Salesforce customer for abusing the system? Or Salesforce itself for providing the Service Cloud?"

Any thoughts on that, Twitter?

Sidestep formal structures for effective change

Many companies like to think they understand all about business processes and change management. They spend fortunes on consultancy, design, structures, processes, training, roll out and management, then wonder why they don't get the results they expected. So they have another go...

Well, maybe things aren't quite that bad, but I bet you can think of plenty of examples of 'change initiatives' that just don't get the buy-in of the grass-roots people who are supposed to implement them. Part of the problem is that they quite often try to appeal to reason. They use PowerPoints with lots of bullet points to try to hook the intellect and forget the emotional dimension. Maybe they think there's no room for emotion in their business.

But why do people go to work generally? Especially so-called 'white collar' workers. It's for the satisfaction of doing a job well and for recognition and this doesn't just mean in the pay packet. Not a good motivator at the best of times.

Part of the problem is that we've become accustomed to treating business as a mechanistic process. And a predictable one at that. Do this, force it through these process pipes, and consistent results will pop out the other end. In truth, many of the most important business processes are chaotic. Think of sales and marketing, for example. Untidy real life gets in the way. Reality has little to do with the org chart and formal processes and much more to do with endless workarounds and informal communications.

Yes, of course some processes or workflows do what they're supposed to. Regulations have to be followed and suchlike. But these are a bit like the unconscious processes of the human body. We can walk down the street while we pump blood, breathe and digest our food. But our attention is on the interesting conversation with the person walking with us.

So it is in business, the interesting stuff and the stuff that is likely to do the business most good in the future is probably the stuff that lies outside the fundamental formal systems of the organisation.

Leandro Herrero has written a most interesting book on how organisations can bring about change by acknowledging that all is not what it seems in the body corporate. He alights on the fact that, alongside the 'organigramme', lives a communication network in which all employees and business partners participate to a greater or lesser degree. Some people are highly connected, others only slightly. These are the strong ties and weak ties beloved of social network analysts. His book is called Viral Change.

It investigates how these social networks can be put to work to bring about transformational change in double quick time - months rather than years - and without any of the complexity of traditional change programmes. Apart from the acknowledgement and exploitation of social networks, the book is heavy on behavioural psychology. In fact, for anyone interested, it contains a 16-page PhD psychology course, which is then summarised in a couple of pages at the end of the chapter.

As someone who's spent several years deep in the social network world and a further thirty plus years as a behavioural psychology advocate, the book resonated rather well with me. But the point that Herrero makes is that behaviour can be observed. It is unequivocal. Bring about behavioural change and the culture will change as a consequence. And you don't need more than five defined behaviour changes to bring about massive transformation. The trick is, of course, in finding and defining those which are most appropriate.

Diving off slightly to one side for a second, why did the iPod catch on the way it did? Apart from it being a neat piece of kit, don't you think the white headphones and leads had something to do with it? People were curious, they enquired, they copied, it became a fashion. But Steve Jobs didn't directed this take up to the nth degree. Apple seeded opinion formers and influencers and let the network do the rest. So why should influence spread any differently in organisations?

Why not seed the movers and shakers - the people who are well connected and, therefore almost certainly respected too - with what needs to be achieved and let them start infecting their closest connections. Then as they and their behaviour change, others will notice and, if they respect or admire the folks who are adopting new ways, they will copy too. Especially if adoption is periodically recognised or reinforced, to use the vernacular. Before you know it, you have an epidemic on your hands and change has permeated. It becomes the norm.

Of course, this is a gross simplification of a 400-page book. But the book does strip away a lot of nonsense associated with traditional expensive and long-winded change management programmes. And, yes, the author is undoubtedly pushing the services of his company, The Chalfont Project. You won't agree with many of the things he suggests, but then you're probably not expected to. If he infects you with the fundamental principles, it's up to you to figure out how to make it work in your world.

The book is a useful catalyst to exploiting the power of social networking and behavioural psychology to accelerate needed change in organisations.

If you're happy to provide your details you can download a free eight page overview of the approach from Herrero's website.

Even if this piece has irritated you, I think it's worth a look. You never know what you might be missing.

Link: How green is your vendor?

Date: 2 Nov 2007

Audience: IT Professionals

Link: How are your suppliers' green credentials?

Writer: David Tebbutt

Where: Computing

Date: 2 Nov 2007

Audience: IT Professionals

Link: How are your suppliers' green credentials?

Writer: David Tebbutt

Where: Computing

Project management nightmare

Still emptying the house in preparation for the move. It's odd what you stumble across.

I'm no artist, as you can see, but I drew this at a particularly frustrating time in my career. It cut through the complexity of the work and hit right at the cause of my dissatisfaction. Within weeks of articulating my feelings in this way, I'd started to plan my escape. (It was 1979 and I ended up at Personal Computer World.)

The participants in the picture are: in the middle, with his hands in the air, the team leader from a third party software house. His company had been chosen by my company, the hardware (and project management) supplier, to write some software for our mutual client.

The guy on the left is the client's project manager who thought his job was to make ever more unreasonable demands. He's the one turning the screw on the team leader. I'm the silly sod with his arms and legs outstretched trying to prevent the vice closing on the team leader. I'd been warning the client to stop pressuring because a) it was unproductive and b) I genuinely feared for the team leader's sanity.

Sadly, the pressure didn't stop and the team leader did, indeed, crack up. He was found gibbering to his radio.

I've never drawn a picture like it since. I guess because I've never been in such an impasse again. Thank goodness.

What Mindset Are You?

Yesterday, Guy Kawasaki provided a bunch of links relating to Professor Carol Dweck and her book: Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. A nice graphic by Nigel Holmes brings it all together.

I've collapsed the key points into this grid:

Reading through, I could see myself at different stages of my life. Fortunately, I have moved from the blue list to the green list to a large extent, but I can still feel elements of the blue tugging at my thinking. If you know me, you can probably see more blue than I'm prepared to admit to.

As the majority of my contacts these days are involved in social media one way or another, they all tend to operate in the green side of the grid. We may never get rich but, by heck, I bet we enjoy life more.

Over at Guy's post you can see a (slightly out-of-synch) four-minute video of the professor explaining the impact of blue and green mindsets on the way students work. It's revealing stuff.

Was Wired WaggEd?

Once upon a time a PR firm accidentally sent a British journalist the profile it held on him. It started "This guy's a lush." Oh dear.

Well it's happened again, more or less. This time it's Wired contributing editor Fred Vogelstein who has been accidentally (or maybe not!) sent briefing notes from Waggener Edstrom prior to interviews with Microsoft executives.

Although it contains a short briefing on the journalist, it is mostly a backgrounder and 'game plan' for the Microsoft executives for a feature on its "video blogging initiative, Channel 9, and its overall campaign to embrace corporate transparency". From this perspective, it's an excellent insight to how thoroughly Microsoft is briefed for interviews with influential publications.

If you've ever wondered about how to brief and steer your executives, it's worth a read. Scale your approach to the importance of the publication otherwise you'll end up paying PRs a fortune in bloated briefings.

I can't help wondering whether Waggener Edstrom deliberately copied the information to the journalist. He and the PR know the game. Both know that preparation on both sides is key. So why not be transparent and pretend to reveal all? Then, with the journalist suitably off guard, send a second, confidential briefing to the executives that takes them deeper into the journalist's psyche and the interview strategy.

The journalist would have a great resource to get him up to speed in the areas that Microsoft wants to talk about. Result: a fast start and an implied boundary to the conversation.

But, regardless of whether the leak was deliberate or accidental, any self-respecting journalist would still find ways to throws interviewees on the back foot and not let it change their approach in the slightest.

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A PDF of the memo

Waggener Edstrom president Frank Shaw comments on the fuss.

Fred Vogelstein blogs his perspective.

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Antony Brewerton: On branding the library

Found myself speaking at Re-imagining the Library the other day, sponsored by CILIP and Talis. The audience was a mix of public, corporate and academic librarians and the speakers were charged with sparking off some fresh thinking. None did this better than Antony Brewerton, head of academic support at the University of Warwick. Previously, he was at Oxford Brookes University and before that at the University of Reading.

Anyway, his presentation was excellent. The others I saw (I had to nip out, unexpectedly, for a couple of hours to take a briefing for some urgent writing work) were very good but if there was a prize for best presentation he'd have won it. He was intelligent, articulate and amusing on the tough subject, for librarians, of branding.

To give a flavour of the man, he decided to take the theme of 'inspiration'. He looked at pennies dropping, Rodin's Thinker, a light bulb (incandescent, naughty boy), but while good, he felt there was something better. Then he thought of Newton and the famous apple.

Well, and this shows the calibre of the man, Antony couldn't have any old apple, it had to be special.

He spent hours in greengrocery shops studying the goods. Eventually, he found the perfect apple. Then he needed the right light for the photography. He found it outside on a bright day. But then the pesky apple, while it had all the right colours, didn't reflect the light properly. So he took it indoors and gave it the Johnson's Wax treatment. Back outside, he placed it on a large sheet of white card and finally got his shot.

Sadly, I can only find a monochrome picture but, as soon as I find a colour one, I'll put it here.

You can already see what a fine apple it is and how magnificently it's been polished.

And the caption was:

Brilliant. So simple. Addresses the undergraduates' second most important issue (after beer). Or do I mean third?

He cited Theodore Levitt who said, "Purchasing agents don't buy 1/4 inch drills; they buy 1/4 inch holes."

So true. And so easy to forget.

Thanks Antony.

Don't be shy, promote yourself

I have a friend who is darned smart and darned modest. He wonders why people don't realise how good he is and rush to engage him. After all, he writes the odd blog and fires off the odd email to people who he finds interesting and who, therefore, should be interested in his work.

And they are. They see him as bright, and are happy to take his feedback, probably thinking they're dealing with an enthusiastic amateur. Or, God forbid, a tech groupie. The result is that his goodwill is frequently abused. People take a lot from him but give little in return. Yet he has valuable skills to offer and certainly plenty of enthusiasm.

I tell him he should push himself a bit more. When people ask him about himself, forget the self-effacing modesty and articulate clearly and simply what parts of his world are likely to be of interest to the listener.

He finds this incredibly difficult. It's probably a culture thing as much as anything. Over this side of the pond, we're not taught to be assertive, even in a pleasant way. We get hot under the collar and tongue-tied and, in the case of many techies, embarrassingly modest. "I do a bit of blogging and software testing" might mean, "I'm an A-list blogger and I am a freelance software evaluator for major research organisations." You'd never know it.

We give no glimpse of why someone should be interested.

After my friend told me of another lost opportunity, I suggested he sit down quietly and work out what value he can offer other people, then try and articulate that into a workable sentence. It doesn't need to be a life story, just enough to catch the interest of the other person.

Then, when he meets people in future, he can ask them about themselves. (This is always a good conversation starter, even if they kick off by asking about you. I've found you can ignore that, and they go spouting off about themselves. Eventually they remember their manners and say, "but you didn't answer my question.") By then he has gained the knowledge he needs to adjust his own opener to suit the listener.

He's not comfortable with any of the above. Ideally, he wants to be retained for his skills but doesn't want to take this next step. In frustration, I cobbled together a picture and said, "if you were at a party, which person would you prefer to speak to? You're like the one on the left."

Here's an adaptation of the picture but, as you will realise, I've changed the sex to protect the innocent:

At a party, say, which one would you prefer to talk to?

It seemed to ram home the point. My friend is going to take stock. Hooray.

When Second Life anonymity bumps into reality

I signed up for Second Life in June last year and, thanks to a pair of poorly performing computers, didn't take it far because I was too irritated by the process.

I cranked up the performance of both machines and really got stuck in over the Christmas period, first of all meandering around as someone who looked like a fitter version of me. Then I wanted to be less threatening (big, bearded, old) etc, so I changed sex and made myself look like a modest young woman.

This was all fine, apart from when I was being propositioned, until I started chatting with someone while I was lounging in an armchair on the stage at Cisco's amphitheatre. He walked up to the stage and we exchanged pleasantries. Then it turned out we were both into social computing, both providing services to Cisco and he mentioned that his web address was in his profile. I clicked and it turned out we had met in real life.

What if the conversation had taken a different tack?

What if he'd propositioned me?

How would that have made me feel?

Worse, how would it have made him feel?

Obviously I can head that sort of behaviour off at the pass, but it does trouble me deeply that I - someone who is normally open and honest - had actually created a situation through my deceptive appearance where people could be lured into behaviours they would certainly not adopt had they known who was behind the avatar.

Yet, my non-threatening appearance encourages friendly conversation and leads to insights that I might not arrive at were I to say, up front, "Hi, I'm really a male journalist". Until the meeting with someone I knew, I was fairly relaxed about my pose. And, it has to be said, having fun. After that meeting, the deceptive aspect bothered me a lot.

I am researching Second Life to discover whether it has a practical business value. Maybe, after this stage of my participation, I'll revert to the real me.

But you can be sure that other people in Second Life are setting out to deceive quite deliberately.

Anyone want to share their thoughts on the issue?