Digital Digressions

On Empowerment: 3 Key Principles

Many years ago, fresh out of school I joined a children's charity, working alternatively on youth empowerment, indicators for sustainable development, designing books written by and for kids on topics like human rights, the environment and in between all of that, doing fund-raising. It was great fun, running teams of volunteers from all over the world, burning the midnight oil, trying to send faxes to Sierra Leone in the 2 hour window when they had electricity, trying to decipher letters from kids in Africa wanting to start their own youth groups or persuading governments at the UN to give young people a voice and a say in running their future.

Those were the days. I suppose what makes it all the more surprising is that I was only 18 at the time. In retrospect this experience was something that really formed my belief in the importance of empowerment - what a difference it makes to motivation, to a sense of purpose, achievement, learning and understanding the deeper meaning to why you are doing something and how you are unique in the value you can add to something. Empowerment is not something you turn on or off like a light switch, it requires profound commitment and consistency to take root. Moreover, it requires an organisation to not just stand for some virtuous goals, but also be transparent, open and trusting in  sharing information and lastly, to have structures in place that allow for empowerment to happen, supported and coached by managers rather than suppressed by them.
So here are my three steps to 'be the change you want to see in the world' (Mahatma Gandhi):

1) GOALS and VALUES
Business people have struggled for years to try to work out the magic formula to taking their company to the next level and really breathing fire into the hearts of their employees, yet too often managers can't help meddling in everything and creating a command-and-control structure, where even the most ridiculous questions need to be referred to superiors. There is no greater sure-fire way to kill any potential empowerment in an organisation, than command-and-control management.

When managers begin to realise command-and-control doesn't work, it is time for the incentives approach, introducing competition between teams and before long, inadvertently creating a cut-throat atmosphere inside companies where everyone's busy running after the carrots, trying to subvert the system to qualify for bonuses and having lost sight completely of the bigger picture or indeed the fact that none of us are as smart as all of us. The incentives, although designed to encourage intrinsic motivation, end up subverting it.

So how to create intrinsic motivation? It's about making people identify with the goals. This requires some serious interpersonal skills and also some values or goals worth fighting for - profit isn't enough. Profit is what allows us to be here, but ultimately money is simply a means to an end - not an end in itself, so what does the company really stand for? It helps if the organizational goals are virtuous, or perceived as virtuous, in some way. Apple creates almost fanatic identification, almost entirely through a narrative that started with a single Superbowl ad in 1984: we are against totalitarianism. To achieve the goals it is about creating a cohesive, jelled team that feels like a family, so that people have a sense of loyalty and commitment to their coworkers. For this, they need to be able to unite behind some values people want to fight for - this is essential as to why people want to be empowered. If the goals are clear and the values are something people want to fight for, empowerment is simply a way to fight more efficiently!

2) INFORMATION
Lots of books keep dissecting the ins and outs of empowerment, what works, what doesn't, how much or how little is enough - but they miss the point that without information empowerment can become a destructive force rather than a positive one. Empowerment relies on having the accurate view out of the window, it feeds on trust and transparency in a company and if some are 'more worthy' than others to information, then people start hoarding it, because it is valuable and start communicating on a 'need-to-know' basis. When this happens forget empowerment. People want empowerment to better do what they perceive is right, if the information on what is right is actively deprived of them, people are very unlikely to expend energy to first fight for the information they need to do something and then have any energy left to carry on once they have the information. Chances are their motivation is gone and however lofty the values of the company, hypocrisy is what rules at the end of the day.

3) EMPOWERMENT
For empowerment to work you need both goals, values and information as mentioned before. This is assuming you have a talented and skilled work force. The freedom associated with empowerment can also mask the presence of people who aren't pulling their weight (see post on spotting corporate freeloaders)- their effect on the rest of the team being detrimental and should be dealt with swiftly and decisively. The longer people hang around who don't pull their weight, the longer it will take people around them to have their faith in management restored. It's hard to believe in the goals and values of the company if you don't believe in its management. The two go hand in hand and leaders need to be able to be the change they want to see in the world, leading by example.

So how do you empower people:

1. Give people clear roles and responsibilities and the support/coaching they need to deliver things
2. Give people the authority they need to as many decisions as possible on their own
3. Have clear purpose, tasks, deliverables and time-lines
4. Have clear structure for performance review, based on achievements, not subjective judgement
5. Respect people for their know-how, give them a platform regardless of rank and recognise their achievements
6. Information should be free so communicate fully
7. Listen to people, expedite for them when necessary
8. Treat people as you would your friends, if you wouldn't behave like this to your friend, don't do it to your employee, team mate or boss either.

Some years ago my boss at the time was a real text-book case on how to prevent even the tiniest inkling of empowerment in his team. For me, it's probably one of the hardest thing I've ever had to go through - to be continuously reminded of the fact that the stuff you know you can do you can't and aren't allowed to do because you have a manager who thinks that by giving you space and room to get on with things, they are jeopardising their own role and rank. Many years of this treatment and continuous brainwashing I think anybody eventually starts believing what they are being told - ' no it is true, I cannot do anything without referring to my manager, he is the brains, I execute, simple as that'. I mean, this is hard for me to confess but I notice the effect on me only now when I'm no longer working for him. To be fair on the guy, he did improve, albeit slowly. Some things are just hard to forget and you never know whether they are genuinely a thing of the past, or whether they will crop up again later in another context.

Coolest Party Invite I've Seen in a Long Time!

This one I just had to share with you all - the coolest Halloween Party invite I've received in a long time. Get this - they actually handed out these bags with eyeballs in them, not just pictures... for obvious reasons I can only feature the photo of it here..Big shout out to the three nutty professors responsible for what will no doubt be a very cool party:  Brian Ellis, Tim Ainley and Dan Kruse!

Productivity Enhancer: Scrybe - Simply Unbelievable

Yes I know, not a post for a long time and my poor excuse of lots of travel and being so busy I haven't had a weekend to myself without work for the last two weeks will not cut the mustard. Once you have a blog you should write something. Simple as that. So until now I haven't had lots of useful things to say apart from gargling noises and looking like I need more sleep. On the upside my face is looking normal again after my Friday the 13th accident (which you can read about in the earlier post) and also I will be at home for at least the next two weeks without interruption - so I promise to write some more posts.

What caused my sudden return to the keyboard today is this most awesome application which proposes to solve all my troubles about being organised AND working on more than 10 things at once - both of whom are pre-requisites of my new role, but equally a source of continuous headache and a lasting challenge to any GTD application, a few of which I have put to the test previously on this blog.  Some I also liked a lot in the beginning, but their lack of a useful calendar and seamless integration with that oh so useful medium most digital applications shy away from, namely paper - make them fall into oblivion in the long run.

Along comes this amazing application called Scrybe - it has a very fluid calendar built in, which not only recognises time and dates when typed in normally (forget stupid pull down menus), but can also create calendars featuring several timezones simultaneously and fluidly moving between all of them. Recently I have been spending some time in the US and of course my clunky Outlook calendar has all my meetings occurring in the middle of the night, which has me permanently confused of what the correct time is - wonder no longer, put Scrybe to the test and watch all those troubles disappear. It also lets you print little pocket-sized versions of your calendar so you can have your latest to-do list with you in your pocket everywhere you go and scribble on it whenever you need.

Moreover, it has a great way of making task lists from any content you copy into it, by dragging a task onto a time and date, it automatically gets the time allocated to it, but what I love the most is the way Scrybe lets you browse the Internet and create Thought pages, a clip book of images, text and links you find and store those under their own topic rather than an eclectic mix of favourites lists with website links, but no way of ordering the information.

The beauty of it all is that it is all on-line - you don't have to install a thing and it also works offline. You make the changes you want and next time you are back on-line it syncs it all..check out all the functionality in the movie below. Aaah. Genius!

Friday the 13th

According to Wikipedia, A Friday occurring on the 13th day of any month is considered to be a day of bad luck in English and Portuguese-speaking cultures around the globe. Similar superstitions exist in some other traditions. In Greece and Spain, for example, Tuesday the 13th takes the same role. The fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskavedekatriaphobia, a specialised form of triskaidekaphobia, a phobia (fear) of the number thirteen.

As it happens, this day occurred yesterday and for all those who missed out on having an accident of some sort this year, can brace themselves for two new opportunities next year: namely Friday the 13th in April 2007 and Friday the 13th in July 2007. Strangely, there is evidence to suggest that Friday the 13th is actually unlucky. Psychologists, according to Wikipedia, have found that some people are especially likely to have accidents or fall ill on Friday the 13th. This has been attributed to such people feeling a heightened state of anxiety on that day (see nocebo effect). The Stress Management Centre and Phobia Institute in Asheville, North Carolina estimates that in the United States alone, $800 or $900 million is lost in business each Friday the 13th because people will not fly or do business they would normally do. [1]

Of course, I refuse to believe in such superstition so in the spirit of Carpe Diem (yesterday being a beautiful day and being a cyclist, beautiful days are gifts from above that need to be greeted with effusive enthusiasm) I jumped on my recently acquired road-bike and headed off to the park. It is of course particularly poignant that the only other time when I caught myself thinking aloud what a perfect day it is for cycling and what a wonderful sport cycling is, also resulted in a  similar disaster as yesterday: falling off. This time of course in the spirit of Buddhistic appreciation for all things living, I swerved violently to try to avoid squirrel darting out from the bushes, but the poor squirrel got target fixation and kept heading at me so I pulled the breaks (far too strongly of course) and next thing I know, I'm in mid air and much like a cartoon character, realising I will soon be on the ground again, my face first. Bang! Landed partly on my head and on my shoulder, clanged my teeth shut with such force couple of teeth got new biting surfaces.. but my cycling helmet saved my life. Of course, to add insult to injury at this point the squirrel had stopped by the side of the road and must have found the scene in front of him an amusing one, cyclist sprawled out on pavement with bicycle ricocheting off into bushes..

Only then of course did I think of the fact that it was Friday the 13th and this was predictable in the minds of all those who firmly believe this is the prime unlucky day of the year. For me, I think my capacity to rejoice in the pleasures of riding by telling myself how perfect everything is must be a literal 'truth or dare' to the little anti-cycling devil that keeps tabs on me, a temptation too great to resist, so hence my capacity to fall off every time I think that thought. Lesson learnt: muse over joy of pursuing your hobby AFTER finishing doing it for the day. Otherwise...

Hidden Talents: Are You a Connector?

Somebody came to me the other day and told me they had been told to speak to me, because of my uncanny talent of connecting people and forging links between people with problems and people with solutions. This has me dumbstruck for a few seconds as I had never thought of myself as such. Nor is this a skill people often quote in either job adverts, or even on their CVs, but I have come to realise it is an essential skill particularly when working in big organisations.

Surely enough, after listening for a moment to this person's account of their skills, abilities and interests I could recommend about 5 people to speak to, whose problems would either be solved by speaking to this person in front of me, or who could advice on steps going forward. I did this without even thinking about it, because again, it is not something I'm conscious of. Someone listening in pointed this out to me later on and I've tried to think more deeply about this to try and explain what is happening.

1. Are you curious and interested in people?
Are you fascinated by people, how they tackle the challenges ahead of them, the problems they come across, how people relate to one another and so on? Someone told me recently I do a lot of active listening, again something I wasn't aware of, but this is an essential skill in being able to get to the heart of the matter as people invariably, often even subconsciously, tell you more openly about what's on their mind if they feel you are truly listening and interested in what they have to say, rather than having that look on your face, which suggests that you are actually right now only thinking about what you will say to this person as soon as they have stopped talking. This is essential in getting people to open up, but also to trust you and the truth is: you can't fake it. If you really couldn't care less, no amount of acting will convince the person in front of you otherwise and you will never get to the bottom of things.

2. Are you open-minded?
This goes hand in hand with the previous point. I'm not saying you have to be entirely happy-go-lucky without a care in the world of what's happening or where life is taking you, but that you are able to put those ambitions and single-minded drive to one side and not let them cloud your judgement or prevent you from seeing opportunities in front of you or even other people. Many problems or indeed situations can only be solved by a very lateral view of the context where the problem exists and only if you are open minded are you able to see those links and connections. It is an interesting phenomenon and essentially it is about a fluidity of being able to switch from your point of view to another person's point of view, look at things from their perspective and maybe even a few more people's perspectives, but essentially being comfortable doing it without a fear of loss of self. I suppose a pre-requisite is self-confidence and an intrinsic understanding of yourself, so you can do it without feeling threatened or even worry that you will lose your own perspective by looking at things from another person's. But being open-minded enough to be able to do it, means you will also see things you probably hadn't seen when just looking at things from your own view and those are the opportunities, which are golden.

3. Are you generous with your time, thoughts and ideas?
I often see people holding back on compliments, connections or even ideas - not wanting to share them with friends, colleagues or even relative strangers, because of..well, I can only call it jealousy or a fear that giving away too much means they will get ahead of you in some way. This is a very small-minded approach, because people often forget that being generous with advice, ideas, contacts whatever is about sharing good karma, that is something you will be remembered for and the word will travel in the most unusual of ways to come back to support you later, whereas small-minded pettiness will only do one thing: make sure your time was completely wasted.

Also many conflicts exist because people focus in on one thing which really annoys them about another person, and soon cannot see the forest for the trees in the sense that all the other skills or abilities or good sides of people go unnoticed, because that one irritating thing. In the past I have spent a lot of time listening to people complain about one another, but again from very single-minded points of view and myself in turn, having spent time explaining the sides of the person that are not so bad or indeed have even gone unnoticed. A lot of conflicts can simply be solved by encouraging people to identify good qualities in the people they have difficulties with and doing the same with the person causing the conflict and subsequently watching a change in behaviour as both parties suddenly snap out of a locked situation, because they become aware of the mutual respect created by both recognising each others' qualities. Not rocket science but again, easily forgotten. And by the way - there is no such thing as a perfect human being so no point trying to pretend you are one. Instead approach the world with appreciation and respect and you yourself will experience the same towards you.

4. Do you like surprises?
I'm frequently delighted by the connections I'm able to think up and the ideas that come from that and by sharing them, the true surprise comes from what happens thereafter. Helping people by listening to them, giving some unbiased advice, introducing them to other people, you name it - those are good things to be doing, because you yourself feel good having done them, but equally positive surprises come your way, things that you never planned or even predicted, but things that could only have happened as a result of you initial kind effort. I love surprises.

5. Does solving problems give you a buzz?
Problems can exist on many levels: practical, social, psychological or a combination of all three. Some people can only deal with practical problems and shy away from problems that people have, others like to listen to people and their troubles, but don't want to their hands dirty in anything practical and again others like to think of all the answers themselves. Problem-solving is a combination of being practical, understanding that you can't possibly have all the answers yourself, being creative and lateral in your approach of who you need to speak to and also being creative in thinking of alternatives. You either view solving problems as a delightful challenge or you are daunted by them. Many problems can indeed be daunting, but do they paralyse you or do you just stare at them for a while and then start chipping away determinedly until you get to the heart of the matter? That is also the test of your effectiveness as a connector, because your creativity in approaching a problem will take you to talk to a lot of people, investigate different options and ultimately the buzz of solving the problem will make you want to solve another one soon.

6. Are you humble?
Humility is a great thing - humility means you can talk to anyone, regardless of rank and connect with them. Humility means you respect the person in front of you, not because they might be someone very important, but because they are human. We are all human, and being respectful to one another means we eliminate so many of the friction points that cause connections to be lost, and the reasons people often hesitate to help, because they worry their kindness will be abused. If you are humble, those concerns don't even enter people's minds, regardless of your rank.

How Can Your Rights be Protected by Giving Them Up?

One thing which has puzzled me ever since the world started a war on a noun (terror), is the argument of how we need to protect our 'freedom' (civil liberties) by making some sacrifices (give up our human rights). How can you protect something you are willing to give up - surely once you give it up there isn't anything left protecting?

The horror of the 20th century tyrannies were the ones that helped catalyse international treaties such as the Convention on Human Rights, as these democracies had witnessed the desecration of a principle that they had accepted as the foundation of their civilisation. The tyrannies were fascist states that claimed to know 'what's best for the people', encouraged people to turn each other in and spent considerable effort on spying on their own citizens and in some cases eliminating parts of the population that were in some degree or other deemed 'unwanted'.

Somehow today's discussion has become to resemble this behaviour once again - but this time championed by 'democratically elected' governments, behaving like fascist regimes, claiming it is all for the good of the people. I can't remember voting to kill or jail people for their political opinions, torture them for information, deport aliens who may be innocent to countries where they might be tortured and killed or for that matter use evidence in court obtained through torture by another government? No, but this is what is happening, right here, right now 2006 Anno Domini and somehow it has become OK to take a democratic mandate (the people elected us) to mean that 'people want us to behave like fascists'.. and by the way - 'it must be right since we are a democracy'.

Ronald Dworkin of the Financial Times (09/10/2006) makes an excellent point when he says "The politicians say that the dangers to security are too great to continue to respect established rights. Is the danger really so great? Religious fanatics bent on murder are not the only enemies of society. We face serial killers, drug dealers, muggers, industrial polluters, train operators who skimp on safety and white collar criminals who destroy lives. It is unclear that the dangers these people pose to our security is any less than the danger if terrorism. But no one advocates jailing suspected pension fund embezzlers for 90 days without charge while their hard drives are scoured for encrypted evidence."

Shimon Peres recently made a striking point when he said that the war on terrorism is more like fighting crime than it is about fighting a war - the solutions to crime are more about eliminating the opportunities for crime and taking away the reasons to commit crime rather than wiping out an entire population, some of who may be at one point inclined to commit a crime. Personally, I just hope the world would wake up to all this BS and stop sticking its head in the sand while we continue down the path of desecrating those precious rights that are the cornerstones of the society we so avidly defend. If there aren't any human rights left, what are we defending? Our right to oppress?

Top 25 Video Sharing Sites

Having become a Youtube regular almost a little bit too soon, I decided to do a little investigation into what other sites are out there and how they rank in terms of the traffic they receive. They are ranked using Alexa traffic ratings as of October 03, 2006. Alexa traffic ratings are imperfect in several ways and measure page views not video views, but they do provide a good estimate for ranking purposes. Ranking numbers after each entry are for all sites on the web. (i.e. YouTube is the 10th most popular of all sites on the web, not video sharing sites.)

There are a several very popular video sharing sites that Alexa does not break out for ranking because they are sub-domains of larger sites. These include Yahoo Video, Goggle Video, MySpace, and AOL Uncut. All of these sites would rank high in the Top 30. Interestingly, Youtube leads the pack although I have seen reports recently of Google surpassing Youtube as the most popular video sharing site. This I cannot verify using the Alexa information, but could very well be. Given this amount of traffic it must cost Youtube about 1 million dollars a month to finance the bandwith required to service all the views, a considerable achievement for a company which still only employs around 60 people. Youtube claims to finance their activities solely through advertising, but that is still a tall order.. anyway - my musings aside, here's the list:

#1 www.youtube.com (Alexa Ranking #10)

#2 www.grouper.friendster.com (Alexa Ranking #40)

#3 www.photobucket.com (Alexa Ranking #73)

#4 www.metacafe.com (Alexa Ranking #141)

#5 www.break.com (Alexa Ranking #318)

#6 www.dailymotion.com (Alexa Ranking #709)

#7 www.ifilm.com (Alexa Ranking #1,062)

#8 www.bolt.com (Alexa Ranking #1,260)

#9 www.putfile.com (Alexa Ranking #1,294)

#10 www.vidilife.com (Alexa Ranking #1,813)

#11 www.buzznet.com (Alexa Ranking #1,960)

#12 www.grouper.com (Alexa Ranking #2,762)

#13 www.revver.com (Alexa Ranking #3,084)

#14 www.vsocial.com (Alexa Ranking #3,808)

#15 www.guba.com (Alexa Ranking #4,022)

#16 www.veoh.com (Alexa Ranking #4,041)

#17 www.yikers.com (Alexa Ranking #6,308)

#18 www.maniatv.com (Alexa Ranking #7,932)

#19 www.addictingclips.com (Alexa Ranking #8,352)

#20 www.vimeo.com (Alexa Ranking #9,043)

#21 Phanfare (Alexa Ranking #10,910)

#22 vMix (Alexa Ranking #15,252)

#23 CastPost (Alexa Ranking #15,376)

#24 Jumpcut (Alexa Ranking #19,689)

#25 Clipshack (Alexa Ranking #25,874)