Critt Jarvis

There’ll be dancing…

Follow the Outernext Road

Clarifying the mention of a very early startup in my last post, I’m working with a core group of folks to create an open social platform at Outernext.com engaging communities in culture and technology. That may be a bit vague, but here’s what I mean by that.

Illustratively, culture constrains the advance of technology, and technology reciprocates by informing culture. Curious minds are asking questions: What follows, emerges from that two-way street of interaction? Who’s transforming, and what’s being tranformed? And, how’s that working for you?

The rules of engagement are changing, transforming the roles of engagement. Are you engaging?

Open is as open does

Keying thought

Friend, advisor, Mark Safranski knows, better than anyone, my passion for the “portals, platforms and rule sets” which enable strategic conversations — conversations transformative to the structure of organizations in emerging markets. Keenly aware how strategic approach provides the requisite constraints and affordances of structure, Charlene Li cautions the traditional way of doing business, “You simply can’t “Six Sigma” your way into new markets”.

Setting initial conditions

Invited into a new startup, I’m heeding Charlene’s caution, using the framework she provides in Open Leadership to develop a mindful strategic approach. For now, I’ll refer to the startup as Open Social Engagement Strategy. As soon as we’ve worked out our tactical transparency, I’ll mention our startup by name, trademark ;)

Roles before rules

The operational realities of getting things done are constrained by time and responsibility. Who does what, and when, and for how long?

Then we can ask, “Who needs to be in the conversation?”

Next post: The Roles of Engagement

. . . Sandman

In Shifting Sands, Perhaps a Sandbox

Poets, paupers, kings, and pawns

ladder of engagement… pyramid of engagement… posting recipes, ingredients (a.k.a strategic data)

Out of the frying pan, into the sandbox

Okay… inside joke… won’t do it again. I’ve been in complex adaptive systems grok-mode since 1998. From a variety of early adopter, early collaborator venues, I’ve been learning how to consider the potential scope of technological advances and how we might better anticipate their cultural, commercial and policy implications: You know, humanity’s transformation and the emerging new rule sets.

I’m in a very early startup stage with a group of kindred spirits who, likewise, recognize technology is now evolving faster than people’s understanding of all its ramifications, and believe, as well, that each of us would benefit from open dialog about this social transformation.

The grande dame of organizational leadership: Margaret Wheatley

In the summer of 1998, I participated in a week long seminar with Meg Wheatley, exploring complex system failures, and New Science Organizational Development. Two take aways: 1) Organizations don’t change, but rather people do. 2) Meet people at the level of their identity.

My thinking forever shifted.

Transformation requires open leadership

There’s a book for that, @Charlene Li’s Open Leadership, How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead. I read the Advance Reading Copy over the weekend. That “very early startup stage” I mentioned? I’m using material directly from the text– especially audits and assessments–to guide the call for critical inputs to our open strategy. I’ll blog more about this as the week goes by. Shifting, in progress ;)

A new strategy of engagement emerges

As Meg said, “Meet people at the level of their identity.” Though some men “worry more that the world of web 2.0 — and what comes after — will distract, not add, from the skill of leaders, make them more, rather than less, remote,” following optimistic women might shift your point of view :)

Though I’ve used Twitter several years, and for many different reasons, I’m now developing a more mindful strategic approach. Let’s call it my Open Social Engagement Strategy. And, let’s use the framework, language, and supporting data supplied by Beth, Charlene, and Marta.

Engaging women, you know?

and that pesky half empty glass

Whoops! Baby in the bathwater!

James A. Champy wonders that thought at HBR’s, Imagining the Future of Leadership.

But I worry more that the world of web 2.0 — and what comes after — will distract, not add, from the skill of leaders, make them more, rather than less, remote.
…
Real leadership requires relationships and personal engagement. Nothing I see in technology has yet to replace these qualities. I believe that technology will enable new business models, but not “new leadership”.

Champy writes, “I recently heard a retired general, a veteran of the Vietnam conflict, quoted as saying the only way he knew what was really happening was to be with his troops in the jungle.” That may have been true at that time. However, today a general on the front line, physically, in that moment, may sense the tactical environment; But if she’s to be a thought leader in military geostrategy, who as SecDef will call the shots, she’ll need more data than a cellphone and CCN can supply.

The present state of global connectivity, technologically so, is, in my opinion, the requisite condition for the emergence of a new cultural synthesis. As David Orban, Chairman, Humanity+, advises, “human civilization depends on our ability to manage its increasing complexity.” We live, now and tomorrow, in a world of interdependence. In this Age of Analytics, leadership will call for sophisticated information technology and communications.

Real leadership requires relationships and personal engagement. Indeed it does. And real leadership has the affirmative burden to imagine technology, in the enabling sense, furthering global social connectedness.