Review of 2005

The Coming Wars of Goodwill & Badwill (or just plain blind, or hyper-separated) Networks

My greatest learning of the year started in Xmas week in Delhi in 2004. At Global Reconciliation's Annual Gathering, I had presented my talk on the coming wars between goodwill and badwill networks , where 2 of the 4 people I admire most in India were chief guests and hosts. The person who in my book is most multicutured in the whole world of Km (linking Iran and Frace, China and Japan, UK and Canada all of whose languages he is fluent in) said Chris the number 1 goodwill war could be learning slavery. Audit what governments now fund and will not fund. Look at school curricula and the modes of learning that are permitted and not permitted. Look at all the measurements and what those numbers are constructed to condition (in the workplace investment in machines and the curring of peeople's deepest lifelong learning curves). Clearly then KM has become schizophrenic: there are people who still believe in Drucker's knowledge work or my father's learning network future histories, and there are people who claim to value that but use KM to adminsiter the opposite. I hope you know which side this blog is on. If you are, why not ask to co-edit it at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk. If you are not please go away there are plently of stages who will applaud you for every hundred learning slaves you chain.

The greatest investment stories we have been tracking using our 5 preneurial lens linkin to aSIN where people and communities are suddenly deciding there are contexts so important that the future is worth investing in, and those who stick with it for a generation get 100 times return because they co-create 1000 times with society. Making today's speculative analyst and city news reporter look like a pale and ghsotle scrooge-as if we needed to return to the worst of Dinkesian Time. Queen Elisabeth called it good in her Xmas message- Britons all through next year use every conversation space you can starting with the BBC or the city you commune in : is humanity turnin on itslef. Thorough the net start the same conversations with the Commonwealth or any deep diversity of people you can reach. No question that I am aware of has ever been so urgently or accurately raised by a monarch. Long Live the Queen might have some extra meaning at a few New Years Eve parties, and Long Live Canada (Solaroof open inventors network 1 2 began in Canada) and India 1 2 too for there is nowhere that has been cooperating with humanity's deepest needs for energy and water like some of your citizens

So this is an unsual end of year summary. Let's review some great webs to explore together or not the people at the centre of them would endorse my last paragrph; these people love contexts and whenever I get to meet them I know that learning would be in great hands if we could find them some microfinance

Thank you for your exciting mail . I will try to pick up on one a day from
others who replied but your areas of interest have been on my inquisitive
mind since he first chaired a sig for Knowledge Management of NGOs at the EU's
www.knowledgeboard.com, and gave it a southern hemisphere focus because of his love of Brazil.

I have always said (and will always say to my last
keyboard) that if a web intends to a big open networking region then its
humanity sig needs to be central and free; something all the largest web
communities of 2000-2005 I used to know have systemically abused because of
closed-minded bureaaucrats or greedy investors. Have seen this malaise ever
since my first 1973 job in computer learning networks, so by know I am quite
cross about it because its not the future of transparent networking that I
want my 8 year old to inherit from our generation. Mathematically, we (if we
read von neumann, einstein, gandhi, buckminster fuller, drucker or my dad etc
http://valuesystem.blogspot.com ) can be certain -give or take a blip in time-
there are less than 3 generations left for most of this earth if closed
defeats open and short-term greed defeats long-run sustainable growth for all
http://exponentials.blogspot.com

Fortunately open is quite a simple solution in idea even if hard to practice
when timekeepers pollute your daily bread. Give me the names of the 5 people you trust most for the humanity and what a pyramid of mailing we could start, but be sure you bet everything you believe in for humanity with whomever you select. Before we can play learn or action, we need space opened by conflict resolution facilitators of hi-trust, and love of deep context

Far away from whatever KM has so often become as some abortion of connecting human spirits in favour of investing in machines, I started in computer assisted learning in 1973, so all I can believe is that we should all be openly co-mentoring each other.
These 2 bookmarks of what I believe knowledge work needs provide a start:
http://www.valuetrue.com/home/glossary.cfm?letter=n
http://futureoflondon.blogspot.com/2005_12_01_futureoflondon_archive.html

Whilst co-exploring, I am particularly interested whilst I think of you &
Brazil and global developing villages in seeing whether theer are connections
between 3 areas:

www.cedus.nl which I will go web explore but send me anything else on this I
should read

http://trustmicrofinance.blogspot.com which puts all the links I have found so
far to network openly in this area

social hubs and Jams- the very best Southern Hemisphere hub so far discovered
by me is in Rio at www.catcomm.org ,where I have got to know the founder's
mission and network abilities

the very best jam is www.habitatjam.com - the technology used in this 72 hour
event looked awful but for example all in one web it collated 100 countries
views of the conflicted system that city slums are, so within 3 days a web of
deep multicultural info was co-created unlike any other and it will be used as
input into summer's vancouver meeting of experts in urban conflicts/design


Best of new years to you. I wonder if I should plan a quick trip over to
Netherlands to reconnect with a few people knowledgeboard has banned me from
conversing with within their walls. This year I spend about 60% in Washington
DC about 30% in London about 10% in revolutionary projects -we having a 30th
year birthday parts at http://entrepreneurialrevolution.blogspot.com , and I
will go to any open spaces that want me to share that sort of learning curve
with them. Meanwhile our book on the exponentials of human*social*intellectual
(they need connecting and conflict ahead auditing for their flows to be worth
anything in the future) capital should be written up Alan Mitchell by next year

cheers
chris

Paraphrasing Peter Drucker, you never know anything until you have tried teaching it let alone teaching as you and a team practice

Whilst I (as a student of maths of value multiplication such as the system exponentials of economics) have grounded this by spending my adult life researching trust and how people play at learning when given trust's time and space, it was only recently that I spent a year moderating conversations on the connections between knowledge , trust, and energising other emotional intelligences. Don't know how to sum that up in one post but here's a first go:

The value word somewhat confuses me when you conect it with organisational learning studies of emotional (trust, flow, intelligence, literacy, energy, current or currency etc)
To explore more deeply, you could google any of those pairs - eg value*emotional literacy or value*emotional intelligence value*trust trust*flow Then if you love Human KM (1) you might want to map human relations system (singular of plural) or human relationship system (singular of plural) or human relationships network or something that buxxes me like collaboration knowledge city


You also have our sig on Km and Emotional Intelligences, aborted from its editors at about 3 years young but still currently viewable at http://www.knowledgeboard.com/community/zones/sig/kmei.html

To communicate with Americans as needs be: What summary is useful in a David Letterman late night show format? I'll only attempt 5 conversation opening soundbites on why emotional intelligence is always more valuable than any numbers your thinking measures or that mesaure what you are permitted to think.

5 Though many people including myself feel trust is most central flow of valuation, I still have a hankering to always keep in minds eye the gods of community: faith, hope and love. Love is clearly what sustains context, community, mutual care, respect acrosscreed, race etc. I suspect faith and hope have deeper ancient meanings on life time competences and conflict resolutions than their sometimes diluted implications today. Perhaps love gravitates the contexts we choose to map systems of human relationships around and thereby explains what future exponentials compound around quality and sustaining transparency at boundaries between collaboration systems.

4 So why in the name of simplicity does Trust seem to be closest to value multiplcation. If the organisation of a context loses all trust, it will through time be pulled down, valueless. Andersen's addiction billions of business value + 0 societal value = billions didn't know society's lost trust would zeroise it because in a connecting system times over-rules plus (billions*0=0); tells you something that is sorely missing if all you measure performance by is tangibles.

3 The Dalai Lama engages emotionless economists with an argument that by not studying where fear lies in a community; their depressions also degrade any organisation's humanity. I think fear is used to control. Courage is needed to change, innovate, pass through conflict which is the greatestcommunal innovation of all if you believe open space facilitators. I am quite clear from personal discussions in 34 countries that most of the so-called Muslim-West strife circulates from fear caused by compounding economics of externalities so those who least understand a risk like that erected in Bhopal also get the most to suffer from it. That is a terrifying act of globalism because the compound consequences we all gettrapped in. Courage probably has openness too- been reading aboutmissionary work done by likes of David Livingstone. Odd how much of that still needs to be resurrected now (at least the Salvation army tells mesoon as leading team trainer in HIV affected communities around Africa)

2 I do like to love joy. It is the positive virus to unite us all. It turns up in deep flow. In fact, there is a measure developed by one of Peter Drucker's colleagues of how much of a lifetime is being used productively. By this measure that percentage of time being used to deepen experience of what you can most make a difference to is the most logical measure of compound personal productivity we are likely to come up with. It fits nicely with getting on exponential learning curves, which I believe we do when we are still growing with our time. It also fits this extraordinary comment onwhether we really understand the strategic juice made by Alfonso Lingis,and which a conference in Delhi is being congregated on in 2007; becauseIndian's view of community up economics is sustainably and diversely different from that controlled by those Bigs in the West who prefer to rule over diversity. "One always sees things in joy. Itseems to me that there is a very fundamental kind of existentialdecision we make: do we believe our joy or do we believe our neutralstates? In the latter case, the move is always one of prudence - not tomake decisions in a time of enthusiasm when one is carried away, butrather to wait until everything cools down. I think one of the mostimportant things there is - I would almost say one could make this akind of maxim for life - is to always make decisions in a state of joy.One should believe one's joy more than one's prudence, or any cautiousor fearful state of mind". - Alphonso Lingis."

1 The coming wars of goodwill and badwill networks will determine what globaliaation does to nature and yiour chuldren and mine. All positive emotional flows are correlated and attract each other; as do negative energies (I personally reserve some as in between - eg anger wakes me up to try to do something though (I don't want it to turnviciously into hate). Transparency, truth, fairness seem to beinfrastructural needs that underpin human systems as far as I can see. Mathematically they map intangibles valuation and strategic implementation as well as we'll ever need.http://intangibles-valuation.blogspot.com/ A map gives me confidence (and helps 360 degrees co-mentoring networks) that I am an equal participant with all who knowledge share its accuracyand that seek to ensure there are no professional silos or hidden agendas: (it supports visualization of networking connections, as well as simplifying all actions). A community or organisation without a see-through map is unlikely to systemically sustain context wherever that needs life.

Remembering John Diebold

INTRAPRENEURING: WHY YOU DON'T HAVE TO LEAVE THE CORPORATION TO BECOME AN ENTREPRENEUR.

Resource: Malaysia Institute of Management

DISCOVERING "THE DREAMERS WHO DO"

Why would anyone choose to be an intrapreneur if he or she could become an entrepreneur just as well?

I first asked myself this question in 1978 during a seminar at Bob Schwartz's School for Entrepreneurs in Tarrytown, New York. Of the four great opportunities for entrepreneurs that Bob mentioned, one seemed a contradiction in terms and the paradox attracted me. Quoting his friend, Norman Macrae, who in 1976 had written in the London Economist that "successful big corporations should devolve into becoming 'confederations of entrepreneurs,'" Bob suggested that-if anyone could figure out how to make it work-the opportunities awaiting entrepreneurs inside large corporations could be tremendous.

The idea was jarring: The independent entrepreneur and the "organization man" seemed irreconcilable opposites, at least until Bob exploded some of the myths about the personalities and motivations of entrepreneurs. This new perspective gave me the first clue as to how established firms might make a place for what I came to call "intrapreneurs." From the standpoint of a company, the benefits of having intrapreneurs are obvious: Intrapreneurs introduce and produce new products, processes, and services, which in turn enable the company as a whole to grow and profit.

But back then it was less clear to me exactly how to design a system and culture within a large organization that would allow a place for someone like the entrepreneur.

"The Coming Entrepreneurial Revolution: a survey," The Economist, Dee. 25, 1976, p. 42. Norman says he dreamed up the idea with his friend, John Diebold, at John's Institute of Public Poliey Studies. Needless to say, the resources of a large corporation can be attractive to a would-be innovator. Corporations can provide manufacturing facilities, networks of supportive suppliers, a depth of proprietary technology, all kinds of personnel resources, and marketing clout. Such advantages, however, are often offset by bureaucratic systems that inhibit intrapreneuring. These inhibitions are compounded by the popular image of the entrepreneur as a money-hungry empire builder, a personality antithetical to the culture of the big company.

But this image was among the myths Bob's school challenged. I learned, to my surprise, that the primary motivation for most entrepreneurs is not the acquisition of wealth. Many do become wealthy, but they do so almost by accident in the course of pursuing some vision of what their customers, and the rest of the world, might need or want. Since their ventures must be financially successful if they are to satisfy their customers' needs, money becomes an important way to measure progress-but in and of itself, it is rarely the purpose of the venture.

Entrepreneur Howard Vollum, cofounder of Tektronix, explains that when he started out he had no idea the company would become large; much less the largest employer in Portland. "I would have been quite satisfied with a small company," he said. "I wanted to provide the tools needed by those of us who were coming home from World War II. We discovered we could not go back to what we were doing before the war. We were hooked on electronics, but the tools we had to work with were antiquated. In the beginning I just wanted to build the best oscilloscopes in the world."

Indeed, entrepreneurs are primarily motivated to satisfy a personal need for achievement, usually by bringing the world new products and services that are meaningful to themselves as well as to the market. Understanding this, I realized that the entrepreneur's commitment to action and drive to introduce new products rapidly was precisely what laree orzanizations need. I was heartened by the fact that the primary goal for most entrepreneurs is not the acquisition of great personal wealth, for I saw little opportunity for accord should the entrepreneur within the corporation require the same multimillion-dollar payoffs an independent entrepreneur might receive upon launching a successful new business. Given this insight, the corporation's challenge to attract, motivate, and retain intrapreneurs appeared a solvable problem: Rewards for intrapreneurs would have to include something more directly related to intrapreneurial needs, in addition to salary and bonuses. I learned through conversations with dozens of new entrepreneurs that most leave corporations not primarily because they find their pay and benefits insufficient but because they feel frustrated in their attempts to innovate. They need empowerment to act as much as they need material compensation.

When entrepreneurs succeed in independent businesses, they earn much more than wealth and prestige; they earn the freedom to act. The capital earned in the ventures empowers entrepreneurs to take risk, adopt a larger time frame in which to try new ideas, and pay for their own mistakes without having to justify them to a boss.

Corporate entrepreneurs, despite prior successes, have no capital of their own to start other ventures. Officially, they must begin from zero by persuading management that their new ideas are promising. Unlike successful independent entrepreneurs, they are not free to guide their next ventures by their own intuitive judgments; they still have to justify every move. They have difficulty taking the long view because they never know whether their projects will be capriciously killed. How different this is from successful entrepreneurs who have capital of their own and thus can do as they choose.

Intrapreneurs' inability to use the earnings from one success to fund the next is among the greatest barriers to intrapreneuring. It is however a poor reason not to be an intrapreneur at least once, because success as an intrapreneur gives you the experience and track record to more easily succeed as an entrepreneur. Failing to empower successful intrapreneurs prevents corporations from benefiting from their seasoned innovators, who leave or become ineffective.

We know for certain that the entrepreneurial personality is to some degree intolerant of authority, and this makes it hard for intrapreneurs to beg for permission. I have seen intrapreneurs grow frustrated as they watched the corporation earning millions from their last business ventures while they remained unable to launch their next. What was needed if intrapreneurs were to remain inside the corporation, I concluded, was something that would function like capital does for the entrepreneur.

What I devised was a new system of rewards including "intracapital," a fund set aside by the corporation for use by a specific intrapreneur to start new businesses on behalf of the corporation. Originally, the purpose of the intracapital system was to reward past success with a tangible kind of freedom in the form of seed money for future ventures.

I then spent several weeks imagining how such a system might work. In the fall of 1978, four weeks after Bob Schwartz issued his challenge, I outlined the basic principles of such a system and coined the word "intrapreneur." Within three months I had sold my manufacturing firm and begun studying the intrapreneur and intvapreneuring in depth. At the time I was proud of the system I had created, but Bob and I agreed that corporations were not ready for it. That was just before the Japanese competitive scare hit, and American management was still too set in its ways to consider changing. Yet I knew the time would come for intrapreneurs.

To prepare for that time, I went to work for a new product consulting firm to see how new products and new services were handled in many different firms. I found myself bringing good ideas to firms that already had enough. Their real problem was that their intrapreneurs were prevented from implementing the ideas they already had, so bringing in more ideas solved the wrong problem. I decided again to dedicate myself to helping companies lower the barriers to implementing their people's own ideas by finding ways to encourage and empower the army of frustrated intrapreneurs which was their greatest resource for innovation.

Since deciding to work full time removing the barriers to new ideas within large corporations, I have divided my time among three tasks:

Helping audit and improve the environment for intrapreneurs in companies such as AT&T, Du Pont, 3M, Martin Marietta, and Xerox. (None of the specific information in this book comes from my studies of these companies as a consultant. I have taken the basic principles gathered from in-depth studies, and found examples of these principles in other firms.)

Making case studies in order to better understand the care and feeding of intrapreneurs everywhere.

Speaking to anyone who will listen about what I have learned.

After I agreed to write about intrapreneuring, it turned out that the publisher and I had different books in mind. They had expected one on how to succeed as an intrapreneur despite the system. I had hoped to explain how managers could create an environment supportive of innovation and intrapreneuring.

This book addresses both subjects, because understanding the basic barriers to intrapreneuring is useful both to would-be intrapreneurs and to their managers. In fact, most of the book is devoted to explaining how corporations and intrapreneurs interact, not to prescribing what to do about it.

Even when I direct my words specifically to intrapreneurs or to managers, I want the other group to listen in. By addressing intrapreneuring from both points of view, I hope to raise the level of dialogue about innovation and to make intrapreneurs, managers, and their organizations more effective. Right now, our society honors entrepreneurs, senior executives and inventors, but rarely intrapreneurs. If big companies want to quicken the pace of innovation and be cost effective at it, they must honor and empower intrapreneurs. Through this book, I hope to encourage and point the way for both intrapreneurs and those managers who want to help them flourish.

-Gifford Pinchot III January 1985


BOOKS RESOURCE
Malaysian Institute Of Management
Kuala Lumpur, Petaling Jaya, Pulau Pinang, Johor Bahru and Miri

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New York Times :John Diebold, 79, a Visionary of the Computer Age, Dies


By JENNIFER BAYOT
Published: December 27, 2005
John Diebold, a visionary thinker whose early and persistent promotion of computers and other far-reaching innovations helped shape industrial development in America and beyond, died yesterday at his home in Bedford Hills, N.Y. He was 79.

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John Diebold in the early 1980's.
The cause was esophageal cancer, said his nephew, also named John Diebold.

Mr. Diebold, who held degrees in business and engineering, was an evangelist of the future. In 1952, at a time when computers weighed five tons, his book "Automation" described how programmable devices could change the day-to-day operations of all kinds of businesses. Even the book's title was novel: it introduced the modern-day meaning of a term that had previously applied only to the mechanical handling of automobile parts at the Ford Motor Company.

Mr. Diebold (pronounced DEE-bold) made a career of recognizing relevant advances in technology and explaining them to the likes of A.T. & T., Boeing, Xerox and I.B.M. Through books, speeches and his international consulting firm, Mr. Diebold persuaded major corporations to automate their assembly lines, store their records electronically and install interoffice computer networks.

In 1961 he and his firm, the Diebold Group, designed an electronic network to link account records at the Bowery Savings Bank in New York. Rather than being updated after hours, the records immediately reflected both deposits and withdrawals and were available to any teller. Customers could then bank at any branch and at any window.

Soon other New York banks hired the Diebold Group to help them install such systems, which cost more than keeping paper records but quickly became vital for modern banking.

Another data network eliminated much of Baylor University Hospital's paperwork in departments like accounting, inventory, payroll and purchasing. More important to Mr. Diebold, the system made medical records and statistics available to researchers in electronic form, permitting studies that were otherwise too daunting. The American Hospital Association embraced the project, and hundreds of other institutions created data systems modeled on it.

"Today's machines, even more than the devices of the industrial revolution, are creating a whole new environment for mankind and a whole new way of life," he told The New York Times in 1965. "Today's machines deal with the very core of human society - with information and its communication and use."

Many of his most ambitious proposals seemed to lead nowhere, but they often planted ideas that came to fruition years or even decades later. In 1968, 10 years before interstate ATM networks, he advised several Chase Manhattan Bank executives of the costs and benefits of a national system for electronic funds transfer. His audience included Paul Volcker, the future Federal Reserve chairman. What is more, innovations that he presented to newspaper executives in 1963, including an "input keyboard" and "editing consoles" to replace typewriters and carbon paper, became widespread only in the 1980's.

"John Diebold's credentials as a prophet of high technology are impeccable," wrote Robert Lekachman, the economist, in a 1984 book review of one of Mr. Diebold's 12 books, including nine volumes of his speeches and scholarly articles.

Mr. Diebold came to believe that computers and other information technologies could reshape society, and he guided dozens of municipalities and foreign countries in using them to manage the budget (Venezuela), to compile government data (Indonesia) and to streamline public services like fire protection (Savannah, Ga.) and the distribution of welfare (California).

He envisioned a utopia built on technological progress, complete with cars that diagnose their own problems and refrigerators that know to order groceries. He described his greatest hopes in 1987 in a series of published letters to his daughter Emma, then 2. By 2010, he wrote, defensive technologies will render nuclear weapons powerless and human tissue farms will grow replacement organs, while AIDS and heart disease will all but disappear.

In addition to Emma, who lives in Bedford Hills, Mr. Diebold is survived by his wife, Vanessa; a daughter, Joan, of Quincy, Mass.; and a son, John, of Bedford Hills. His marriage to the former Doris Hackett ended in divorce.

John Theurer Diebold (he later dropped the middle name) was born on June 8, 1926, in Weehawken, N.J., and received a bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College and a master's degree from Harvard Business School.

He also had an engineering degree, and became interested in automation after observing the mechanized antiaircraft controls on a ship doing convoy duty in World War II.

In addition to the Diebold Group, he started John Diebold Inc., an investment firm, in 1967. It financed such ventures as a computer leasing company and a well-known manufacturer of polling machines.

After selling the Diebold Group in 1991 to Daimler-Benz, Mr. Diebold focused on the Diebold Institute for Public Policy Studies, a research group he founded in 1968 to promote broad, technology-based reforms.

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Who else should KM people remember before they call themselves gurus? Your nominations welcome at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk :
1= Peter Drucker, Mahatma Gandhi