growing changing learning creating

Creating the future by collaboration

2009-12-08T08:18:00.000-07:00

When we keep collaborating to a minimum, it has become clear to me that we create the future by default. The things we do to change what occurs fail to take effect. The momentum of the status quo seems overwhelming and unstoppable. Isolated change efforts are insignificant in the context of complex adaptive systems with vast interdependencies seeking continued stability.

The failure of ambitious change efforts, to create better futures, results in several dysfunctional cognitive dynamics:

Vicious cycles where unresolved conflicts tempt us to work against others and work without their insights, diverse outlooks and creative contributions.
Paranoid imaginations where we feel safer envisioning what can go wrong, can go from bad to worse and can blow up in our faces.
Relying on proven predictions about what always happens, never occurs and needs to be accepted as facts of life.
Escaping from this dreariness with inflated bubbles of optimism which get burst by encounters with unchanging reality.

From a systems view, these cognitive dynamics are closed circuits. They mere oscillate or go "round and round" ad infinitum. They give "recycling" a bad name as they reuse the same old experiences endlessly. They fuel over-consumption and excess materialism rather than sustainable lifestyles. The chart on the right shows how we talk to ourselves when the ways our minds are functioning are self-perpetuating, self replicating, self fulfilling and self justifying.

By defining the problem systemically like this, the switch to collaborative enterprises becomes easier. For starters we can catch ourselves falling into dysfunctional cognitive dynamics and choosing an opposite approach. Here's a brief look at how those turnarounds might occur:

Upon recognizing a vicious cycle, switching to virtuous cycles of working for others' interests and working with their resourcefulness to co-create a better future.
After identifying paranoia in each others' imaginations, switching to what-if questions that can together generate visionary scenarios of shared ambitions.
Rather than confirming tired predictions, entering possibility space together calls off predictions in favor of unknowns, mysteries, unforeseen possibilities and serendipitous occurrences.
In lieu of inflated bubbles, collaborators can "hold the tension of opposites" which combines pragmatism with innovations to come up with advances that function in better ways.

Working together makes all these turnarounds easier, more likely and more productive. The closed circuits get opened and the momentum of legacy dynamics gets broken. A better future emerges from the combined efforts and transformed cognitive dynamics.

Collaborating with the C level

2009-12-07T07:54:00.001-07:00

In hierarchies, the highest level includes the CEO, CFO, COO and often nowadays, the CMO, CIO and CLO. At first glance, the presence of such "high ranking officials" connotes the absence of a collaborative enterprise. Within corporate and bureaucratic hierarchies, the top level is often in conflict with lower ranking leadership, divisions and departments. The person in the position functions as a charismatic leader who's personality plays a large part in their impact. While subordinates manage up with servility, compliance and gratuitous respect, there is a notable neglect of power sharing. The underlings feel routinely threatened, unfairly criticized, viciously misunderstood and deliberately invalidated by the C level frames of reference. These enterprises pay a huge price for their lack of internal collaboration.

Within collaborative enterprises, a very different dynamic would get protected and nurtured. The C-level would graciously provide frames of reference used throughout the enterprise. The people in the "top positions" would facilitate others' exploration of those frames in their own contexts. The emphasis would be placed on the conversations in progress, rather than the people in the positions. The individuals would play roles of facilitative servant leaders rather than charismatic kingpins. The distribution and democratization of their "high ranking outlook" would empower the "rank and file" to act more responsibly, to take more initiative, to use better judgment, and to nip problems in the bud. "Collaborating with the C level" would get turned around to expect "the C level to collaborate with the collaborators". The structure of the enterprise could be flattened, eliminating layers of middle management, as top-down power became effectively decentralized.

Frames of reference can be used to respect someone's efforts, value their contribution to collective endeavors, define unfamiliar problems that result from ineffective conduct. Here's a brief look at how the C level could be embraced as frames of reference in use throughout a collaborative enterprise:

CEO: Chief Executive Officers admire alignment with the overall mission. People get valued for their emphasis on mission critical components which override non-essential distractions. Problems fall out of "losing sight of the mission" by dwelling on tactical maneuvers, unrelated tasks or meaningless obsessions.
CFO: Chief Financial Officers admire productive assets and cost-effective solutions. People get valued for realizing greater efficiencies and for "getting more bang for the buck". Problems result from wasteful spending, throwing money at problems and stockpiling "new toys and tools" that end up underutilized.
COO: Chief Operating Officers admire skills, tools and performance aids that get a job done right. People get valued for results they produce, solutions they formulate and changes they implement. Problems follow from "merely going through the motions", "spinning your wheels in a rut" or "looking busy for show".
CMO: Chief Marketing Officers admire efforts to protect and extend the brand. People get valued for creating exceptional customer experiences and resolving satisfaction issues promptly. Problems result from "over-promising and under-delivering", acting without the customer in mind or pushing what the customers don't need or want.
CIO: Chief Information Officers admire sharing information, resources and competencies. People get valued for curtailing duplicated efforts, mentoring proteges and revealing their expertise where it's needed. Problems fallout of hoarding knowledge, distancing oneself from colleagues and barging ahead at "reinventing the wheel".
CLO: Chief Learning Officers admire learning from setbacks, feedback and unexpected successes. People get valued for turning crises into lessons, extracting value from incidents and encouraging continual improvement. Problems follow on the heels of arrested development, closed minds and shortages of questions.

Each of the frames of reference set-up fruitful collaborations. They define new questions to ask, better possibilities to explore, different situations to look into and greater insights into the complexity of interdependent subsystems. The collaborative enterprise making daily use of these frames could easily outperform rivals on every metric of a balanced scorecard.

Forthcoming blog carnival

2009-12-01T13:30:00.002-07:00

Entreprise Collaborative recently announced a monthly series of blog carnivals dealing with facets of social learning and networked enterprises. This dovetails superbly with all those issues and active projects of mine I tied together yesterday. You can visit the Ecollab Blog Carnival web page to get the details on adding to the festivities yourself. Their first topic is one where I take a rogue approach: the future of the training department in the Collaborative Enterprise. The participating blog posts will get published on Saturday, December 12th and get announced on Twitter with the tag: #ecollab.

I view the training function as emergent from the complexity of interdependent relationships internal and external to the enterprise. The training function reflects the level of conflicts within the collaborative environment as well as the amount of turbulence disturbing the enterprise as a whole. How the training department functions depends, not only on the culture of P2P learning and collaboration, but on the nature of the market, product/service mix and size of the enterprise. There are usually many vectors within an organization that oppose the training function becoming more effective, responsive and techno-savvy. Collaboration may be given more lip service than actual implementations by those who need to make a show of keeping up with the changing times. The driving influences for the training function to "wise up" are often "low on the totem pole", external consultants or those visionaries out on the fringes of the organization where power and influence over the center are minimal. The switch to collaborative modes of learning often proves to be a disruptive innovation that the organization's immune response extinguishes in a big hurry.

I expect to explore all these issues in my contribution to the first of these intriguing blog carnivals on December 12th.

12/6/09 J'ai corrigé juste l'orthographe de l' « entreprise » de mot.

Collaboration comes and goes

2009-12-04T10:30:00.001-07:00

Our state of mind supports collaboration with others when we're feeling safe. We can feel safe when there is an absence of danger, threats and enemies. We can alternatively feel safe by ganging up together against opponents which then achieves "safety in numbers". I suspect the collaborations that emerge from feeling safe are not the same between these two conditions. When there is no danger present, it's likely we can get creative, compassionate, caring and capable of serving others' interests effectively. When we're establishing safety against others, it's more likely the collaboration would be more accurately described as collusion, conspiracy, conformity and cohesion. When we're anxiety-ridden, we lose our tolerance for deviance, our trust in others and our willingness to let go of preconceptions.

The ups and downs of business cycles impact the state of mind of nearly everyone within an enterprise. Anytime the economy, market, rivals or internal mismanagement poses some danger, a collaborative enterprise under siege could easily regress to collusion, conspiracy, conformity and cohesion. This would fail to protect the brand, win back customers, or attract essential talent when hiring again. The loss of genuine collaboration could put an enterprise into a downward spiral without the resourcefulness to pull itself out.

This outlook on collaboration gives me a picture of a socio-technical system. The state of mind that gets creative, compassionate, caring and capable of serving others' interests effectively is the system's core technology. The system crashes when these collaborative dynamics get disrupted by external turbulence. The failure to buffer the core and respond capably to the turbulence exposes deep flaws in the system design. Besides the obvious failures in the industry segment, customers' perceptions and job market, internal failures would multiply. I would expect to see:

a loss of sustaining innovations, extensions of successful products and upgrades of services
an inability to learn from what's occurring, get the message in all this feedback and change directions
a series of leadership failures, bad decisions and flawed policy changes
an excess of committee meetings, upbeat conferences and enforcement of positive attitudes

When collaboration is protected by a viable socio-technical system, this spiral of potential setbacks gets averted. The potential disaster gets foreseen and forestalled. The state of mind which supports genuine collaboration gets regarded as the "goose that lays the golden eggs". Leadership acts quickly to create safety, provide buffers from turbulence, protect essentials with added resources and nurture the collaborations that then come about.

Two ways to be strong

2009-12-03T13:35:00.001-07:00

When people are strongly opposed to collaborations for any of the reasons I explored yesterday, they only have one way to be strong. One way I've facilitated others' migration to effective collaborations gives them a second way to be strong. I simply tell them my version of an old Rudyard Kipling story about a stick in the mud. Here's how it goes:

Once there was a stick in the mud on the banks of a gently flowing stream. In it's vicinity were numerous tall blades of grass rooted in the same mud. Obviously the stick was much stronger than any wimpy blade of grass. The stick expected to come out the winner in any test of strength, size or endurance.

Later that day, a cloud burst filled the stream with a torrent of water that came raging along to where the stick was stuck in the mud. The water overflowed the banks of the stream and submerged everything nearby. The force of the water broke the stick in two and carried what remained downstream. The blades of grass yielded to the flow while remaining rooted in the mud. When the water subsided and the sunshine returned, the blades of grass stood upright again. As they waved in the breeze and deepened their roots, they each grew a little stronger too.

When we're proud of being strong, we have no idea our strength is rigid, brittle and vulnerable to getting broken. We assume we have nothing to lose by getting even stronger in the only way there is to be strong. We become more confident, determined and convicted in our self righteous stance. We become a stick in the mud.

Once we've been broken, we find a different strength within. We realize we're not totally destroyed by having our confidence shattered, pride humbled and superiority knocked down a peg or two. We stop trying to become stronger and let go of our ambitions to win contests of strength. We discover the rooted strength that blades of grass teach us to emulate. We let go of our rigid stance and yield to others validity, dignity and value. We give ourselves the same new-found respect regardless of comparisons to others. We transform our mind to be suitable for collaborating.

P2P learning ties in with everything

2009-11-30T13:24:00.000-07:00

This morning my internal cognitive network has a "small world" feel to it. There are very few degrees of separation between the nodes in my cognitive network. It's clear to me I have tons to share with you in the coming months but I don't know where to begin. That may be due to the fact that robust networks don't have a beginning.

Over the extended holiday weekend, I captured a lot of inspirations for how peer-to-peer (P2P) learning could occur. After taking time out to prepare "baked yams and apples in a sherry butter sauce" for 20 friends and relations, I got to explore how P2P learning ties into so many other possibilities I'm exploring. Each of these explorations seem like hubs enjoying power law scalability. The well connected nodes are becoming increasingly connected to each other and vast arrays of other ideas, books and bloggers.

P2P learning functions superbly within one of the disruptive innovations I've proposed will impact higher education in the near future. It appears to alleviate many of the adversities playing into the chronic 50% college dropout rate. P2P learning provides wonderful preparation for contributing to P2P production, property and governance practices that Michel Bauwens and many others are advancing. P2P learning also prepares people to function in a "world without Wall Street" that David Korten defines in his latest book, which I read last week, Agenda for a New Economy. P2P learning appears to be compliant with John Medina's Brain Rules which exposed the counter productive cognitive impacts of classroom and curriculum based learning. P2P learning is highly congruent with all I've written about as PLE 2.0 that combines DIY with DIT (do it together) serendipitous learning.

P2P learning links to another major cognitive hub I have not yet written about here: conflicts with and within collaborative networks. P2P learning functions as a collaboration that is vulnerable to external turbulence and internal dissensions. Formulating response capabilities to "buffer the core technologies of collaboration" serves many other purposes. It shows promise for resolving emotional baggage that individual collaborators bring to the interactions. It makes the collaborative networks more resilient, sustainable and supportive of disruptive diversity. It transforms a single-minded endeavor into a total solution which is much more likely to scale into widespread adoption.

P2P learning also solves some technical issues I've been wrestling with while preparing a business plan entry for the contest at the University of Pennsylvania. It reframes the business model as a support system for curiosity and creativity. It defines the value proposition as something that gets crowd sourced, rather than delivered with a factory model of production. It sets up the startup to launch "off radar" of rival incumbents by not serving the consumers of what could be called "anti-P2P learning". It defines the challenge of making P2P learning seem very appealing, accessible and easy to adopt by refining the "customer experience design".

Ecologies of opposition to collaboration

2009-12-02T12:17:00.000-07:00

Many of my favorite life experiences have involved collaboration. I enjoy many fond memories of working together on architectural projects, theater productions, management consulting interventions, convention exhibit displays, video shoots, software development projects and corporate training designs. I naively assumed everyone would favor collaboration over working in isolation. I realized that collaboration was an acquired taste of mine, given decades of getting graded in school for my individual efforts. But I assumed that the rewards of collaboration would become obvious to everyone exposed to the possibility.

Throughout those collaborations I enjoyed personally and facilitated for my clients, I noticed some people were better at the interactive, mutually-dependent processes than others. Some people appeared to be driven by high needs to be right, in control and more powerful than the rest of us. They seemed more easily threatened, disconcerted and put off by those of us collaborating effectively. Often there would be no attempt to transform them into effective collaborators or collaborate with their misgivings. Instead they got labeled as "prima donnas", "ego maniacs", "power trippers" or "control freaks". We didn't collaborate with them on what to label them. They were 'them" and we were "us" who were pointing fingers at "them" as if acting like team players was not an option for us or them. We got to be right rather than effective.

Since then, I learned a lot more psychology, cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics. Over the past year in the U.S., the news has been filled with oppositions to collaboration during the presidential campaign, financial bailouts and debates over health care reform. My view of those situations is now much more systemic, complex and ecological. Here are four anti-patterns I see inter-relating the collaborators and their less collaborative cohorts .

Abandoning stability
The introduction of collaboration can form a vicious cycle in contexts of well established isolated efforts. Collaboration can be a change that is opposed to the status quo. Proponents of change and stability get locked into a power struggle over who gets to be right. There is no way both can be part of the solution or essential to keeping things in balance. Advocates of stability and the status quo experience change as threatening to their comfort zone of familiar routines and reliable predictions. Their need for lots of stability gets heightened by the evidence of others trying to make them wrong, destabilize their familiar situations and frame them as incompetent.

Changing the rules
Collaboration can revise the unwritten rules of the game being played in ways that give advantage to the presumed losers. It's assumed this is a zero sum game that is dividing a fixed pie where the winner takes all. There no possibility of win/win outcomes, a non-zero expansion of possibilities or sharing the victory to keep the game going infinitely. Letting the enemy win before the game even begins -- defeats the competitive spirit of those opposed to collaboration. The value of playing the game gets dismantled if the usual victors value those who are supposed to get conquered, subdued and humiliated. The need to put down the collaborators and keep them in their place gets heightened whenever they get the upper hand and change the rules of the game in their favor.

Losing touch with reality
Reliance on collaboration can appear as a delusional construct that lacks realism. Collaboration can put the "decidedly" incompetent and inferior slackers in a position to dominate the competent and superior performers. There's no question that someone ends up on top of the others. The realistic appraisal gets turned upside down. The presumed facts about who really knows their stuff and who actually gets results gets upended. There appears to be no advantage to "letting the inmates run the asylum" or "putting the children in charge of the adults". An endless argument about facts, appraisals of performance and realism gets escalated as the reliance on collaboration appears increasingly delusional.

Asking for trouble
The adoption of collaborative approaches may appear to open a can of worms. Efforts are being made to keep a lid on the chaos, impose some order on the confusion and keep crises to a minimum. There are only safeguards against irrational hysterics, passionate troublemakers and high maintenance characters. There are no patterns in use for calming the furious, reassuring the compatriots or restoring the combined resourcefulness. The lid is either on or it flies off. Collaboration apparently does nothing to silence, squelch, dismiss, downplay or steer clear of eruptions. The crazier things get, the more it appears collaboration has to be counteracted to maintain a semblance of order.

In every one of these anti-patterns, the collaborators "get into it" with those opposed to collaboration. The underlying perceptions, fears and cycles do not get addressed. Exploration of the anti-pattern itself gets avoided. Work on the migration from the anti-pattern to an effective, resilient pattern gets deferred. Living with the problem appears preferable to co-creating a solution.

Freedom from too much information

2009-11-24T11:06:00.000-07:00

The abundance of free content gave me another idea for a possible scarcity to spawn a freemium business model. What if the abundance of free content gets old? What if we begin to experience the negative side of all that abundance? What if we begin to throw up red flags when we're feeling overwhelmed by the abundance like:

I didn't ask for this information!
This is too much information!
I'm not ready for all this content!
This comes at a bad time for me!

To throw up red flags like this is a healthy sign. We are exhibiting a sense of an independent self with healthy boundaries from recurring abuse. We've disentangled ourselves from entrapments that fail to honor, respect and value us. We are standing up for what represents who we intend to be and how we want to relate to the world. We are acting on choices found within rather than reacting with fear, guilt or obligatory limitations to what gets imposed on us.

Within this possibility, freedom from "too much information" is a new scarcity created by the abundance of content. The abundance is easy to come by, the freedom from it is not. It's no problem to drink from the fire hose. It's a big problem to shut it off or distance ourselves from getting blasted.

Within this possibility, the abundance of content is free. It then will be worth some added expense to:

get information only when we request it
get the right amount of information for our immediate purposes
get the content when we're ready for it
get to postpone receiving or inventory content for later use when the timing is right

This business model would then function as a disruptive innovation for enterprises that:
deliver content on it's own broadcasting schedule in formats that cannot be time-shifted
publish content in bound volumes that cannot be searched, tagged or bookmarked
aggregate large quantities of digital resources that do not support searches for personal uses
push too much content onto audiences that wanted "just a little for now"

The goal posts would then be moved. The game would be changed to providing answers to questions, responses to requests and possibilities to generate further questions. Free content would remain free, but freedom from it's timing, excesses and lack of selection options would be costly.

Free answers - costly questions

2009-11-23T08:52:00.000-07:00

When we're formulating a "freemium" business model, we need to become well travelled along the boundary between abundance and scarcity. Any new abundance creates new scarcities while rendering previous scarcities as obsolete, contrived or controlling. The new abundance also heightens our appreciation of the potential value, benefits and uses of a new scarcity. We recognize how some of the new scarcity is cheap, over-priced or useless.

This morning I've been exploring how "quality questions" might become the new scarcity amidst the abundance of free content, answers, finds, resources and solutions. It initially occurred to me that there are plenty of cheap questions, throwaway questions and unrewarding questions. We don't need "consumer education" to recognize questions that create value while satisfying our love our mysteries, adventures and ongoing explorations.

I then realized that most of my best questions have dawned on me in the midst of intense thought processes. Questions seem to arise like emergent outcomes of complex adaptive systems. When I'm describing this process I say things like:

Reflecting on all those recent developments that I'm seeing suddenly gave me a new question to explore.
Changing my point of view revealed a new question I was not previously considering.
Making use of that new concept raised a whole new set of questions for me to get answered.
Comparing these alternatives uncovered many deeper questions to ponder.

When I'm saying things like this, I'm expressing a profound appreciation for quality questions. I regard them as relatively scarce compared to the abundance of further explorations. I value them as gifts, treasures and gems. The value of these questions seems genuine to me, not artificial, contrived or hyped. I'm using the questions to support processes that I trust while get me where I want to go.

I then entertained a new question: could the right kind of question change our minds? I thought of several different ways to ask the question:

How can challenging questions open closed minds that have adopted a stance of "no further questions your Honor"?
How could an insightful question shatter long-held assumptions which have denied the reality of the situation?
How can penetrating questions revise reasoning that has relied on "either/or" binary explanations?
How could several disturbing questions transform a draining vicious cycle into an energizing virtuous cycle?

I then noticed how I was framing valuable questions as challenging, insightful, penetrating and disturbing. I was setting myself up to appreciate scarce questions, discriminate between different qualities of questions, and regard the right questions for the job as inherently useful. By seeking valued outcomes from my use of questions, I was both open to benefiting from the abundance of answers and guarded against cheap, throwaway and unrewarding questions.

This seems to me like the start of a freemium business model that works with "content wanting to be free".

Forecasting the flip

2009-11-20T11:12:00.000-07:00

Another way to assess the likelihood of scaling an innovation eluded my searching yesterday. This morning I found it in Chapter Four of the book: Disrupting Class - How disruptive innovation will change the way the world learns by Clayton Christensen, Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson. In the words of the authors:

It turns out there is a way to forecast the flip. ... one must plot on the vertical axis the ratio of market shares held by the new, divided by the old (if each has 50 percent, this ratio will be 1.0). Second, the vertical axis needs to be arrayed on a logarithmic scale—so that .0001, .001, .01, .1, 1.0, and 10.0 are all equidistant. When plotted in this way, the data always fall on a straight line. If the first four or five points do not lie in a line, it is a signal that there is no compelling driver for substitution. But the line is always straight if a disruption is occurring. Sometimes the line slopes upward steeply, and sometimes it is more gradual. The reason the line is straight is that the mathematics "linearizes" the S‑curve. When the substitution pace is plotted in this way, one can tell what the slope of the line is even when the new approach accounts for only 2 to 3 percent of the total. That makes it easy to extend the line into the future to get a sense of when the innovation will account for 25 percent,50 percent, and 90 percent of the total. We call this line a "substitution curve." (pages 97-98)

The compelling driver for "the innovation replacing the incumbent" is evident in the early market share data. Scaling of the innovation is simply the accumulation of the ongoing logarithmic increases. The S curve flips from "curving up" to "bending over". That turning point has been compared to "taking swings at beach balls where you can't miss", "getting caught up in a tornado" and "hitting the first bowling pin that knocks over all the others".

Will your innovation scale?

2009-11-19T11:42:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I was thrilled to discover, via LinkedIn, the announcement of a competition for business plans in the education space. So much of what I've explored in this blog could be restated as a business plan. I spent most of yesterday contemplating how I could reformulate my writings about disrupting higher ed into a scalable solution to the college dropout problem. The First Annual Milken-PennGSE Education Business Plan Competition defines it's parameters as:

Educational entrepreneurship business plans should outline the problem they address, offer a solution, and discuss scaling possibilities for bringing the proposed innovation to additional settings ...... In evaluating business plan submissions, our judges will consider the importance of the educational problem, the creativity and feasibility of the proposed solution, and the potential for widespread impact.

This morning I did a Google search of "scaling innovations" to refine my thinking about the third parameter in the competition. While I found an abundance of content that addresses the scaling of innovations in education, none of it aligned with the model in my mind about scaling. Most of it sought to get incumbents to disrupt themselves, as if educators are being asked to pull the rug out from under their own feet Thus I'm feeling compelled to spell out how I answer the question: "Will my innovation scale up into widespread use?"

Innovations have a chance of scaling if they are "off the radar of the incumbents". This may occur by serving non-consumers of the market leaders, offering lower cost alternatives down market or appearing too weird to pose any obvious threat to those incumbents. Innovations are imperiled by competing directly with, stealing customers from or generating negative press for the incumbents with the resources to annihilate the innovation.
Innovations may scale if they evolve into a total solution. They they offer a "package deal" that handles lots more issues besides the innovation itself. Innovations will not take off if they cannot answer the misgivings and exploratory questions of potential customers.
Innovations are likely to scale if the inventors have "let go of their baby". The process of developing a viable innovation is deeply immersive and intensely engaging. The design issues demand so much attention, the inventors assume "everyone will want this". The innovation only gains widespread adoption when it serves other perspectives, functions in other contexts and solve other problems besides the inventor's original conception.
Innovations improve their chances of scaling when they rebound from the dip (Godin), chasm (Moore) or hype cycle (Gartner). The second launch then appeals to pragmatists who want to use the innovation as a tool, shortcut or solution to their particular situation. They are relying on it's reputation and will spread the word if it works for them. Otherwise, innovations lose out when once the thrill is gone, the early adopters have gotten bored with it and the high churn press coverage has moved on to the next new thing.

When all four of these issues get handled by the ways of bringing the innovation to market, the odds are in its favor to scale to widespread adoption. Each neglected issue weakens the chances significantly. Failing all four concerns reduces the possibility of scaling to nil.

Formulating a total solution

2009-11-17T13:36:00.000-07:00

When we've developed an innovative product or service, the marketplace may not want it yet, understand it on their own terms or see any use for it in their personal contexts. They may be asking:

What good is this to me?
Why should I want to acquire this?
How can I be the judge of the quality of this?
Why should I trust what the sales pitch says about this?

Those adventurous types that buy something before the herd has a clue that it exists, may be disappointed with their purchase of the innovative product or service. It may not work as promised, not function in the way they had hoped, or took more effort than they expected. Those early adopters may be asking:

Why wasn't I told about these disadvantages and difficulties before I bought this?
How could I be so gullible, unsuspecting and naive to fall for this?
What was I thinking when I found this offer to be appealing?
Why was I so impulsive as to leap before I looked?

Once the innovation gets debugged and refined, some of that buyer's remorse will vanish. Once the disconnects between marketing and actual functionality get cleaned up, more customers will be satisfied with their purchases. Then there will be a new crowd of customers who want to do more with the innovation, who wonder how to get the most out of it and who are considering ways to apply the innovation in other situations. These pragmatists may be asking:

Where else can this be applied?
How else can this be made to function for me?
What can this do when applied to some of my other problems?
Why does the innovation limit itself to those prescribed applications?

All three sets of questions are opportunities to formulate a total solution for the customers. The original innovation gets contained in a larger package. The potential buyers with problems encounter the total solution that says to them: "bring it on, we get this all the time". The potential buyers experience "customer service before the sale". They're then sold on how they were treated, served and respected by the total solution. Their trust in the innovation is deepened by how they got their questions answered, misgivings resolved and remorse prevented. The established customers get service after the sale. They become "brand hijackers" who spread the word of the "great innovation they've been using". They get into the spirit of how they we're treated as they serve their strong and weak social network links with answers to their questions. The total solution takes on a life of its own.

Inducing realizations

2009-11-16T09:41:00.002-07:00

When we're presenting, authoring, teaching or designing instruction, we're relying on a field-tested theory about learning. We may assume that the only things coming to the minds of the learner are from us. We may otherwise assume we're competing with many other things that come to their minds besides what we're presenting.

When we assume we're in control of what comes to learners' minds, we're inclined to think that we can make learning happen. We've simplified our world view to include so few variables that we're overconfident about our role in the complex interdependencies. We presume to educate by delivering to, imposing on, coercing the internal processes and manipulating the outcomes from the minds of the learners.

When we assume the learners' minds are out of our control, we're open to the possibility that learning happens emergently. We've complicated our world view to include complex adaptive systems, ecological models and adaptive outcomes. We've gained a different perspective on our role in the system. We're one more pea in the pod, bozo on the bus or drop in the bucket. We presume to educate when we do what it takes for learning to happen on it's own and to come about naturally. We stop trying to make learning happen and then let it happen by trusting the complex processes involved in the minds of the learners. For the past two decades, I've been calling this approach "inducing realizations".

One way to induce realizations in the minds of the learners is to contrast two approaches. For instance, I've just compared "making learning happen" with "letting learning happen". This breaks up the assumption that there is only one way to function, react or decide about how to proceed. It "voices a choice" that may not been previously considered. It may induce added complexity to educators' cognitive networks which routinely respond to situations which call for presentations or instructional designs. It implies that more will come to their minds than what I've just put into it by reading this. I'm assuming readers will come to your own realizations about the significance, uses and value of this choice within their personal contexts. They'll make up their mind as they're so inclined. Perhaps some learning will happen.

Leveraging your empathy for the learners

2009-11-12T08:21:00.001-07:00

When we already know the material we're going to present, our minds become free to know the learners. We can spend time understanding them in ways they understand themselves. We can prepare to speak their minds and picture them in ways that induce more learning. This cultivated ability to empathize with the learners can be leveraged into more effective instructional designs, learner experiences and disruptive value propositions.

When I've spent time "learning the learners", here's some of what I've discovered:

There's a range of different expectations about what I will do for them, with them and in spite of them. Some are cynical and expecting the worst. Others are optimistic and trusting me to provide exceptional value.
There are lurking fears about who this may get off to a great start but end up disappointing them. Some are afraid this will be over the heads, moving too fast to keep up or too basic to be of any use.
There are those who want to be told the facts, methods and guiding principles. Others want to understand why this approach makes sense, how it compares to others and when it's not applicable.
Some learners assume classroom experiences are done to get the grade and nothing else. Others expect to apply what they learn in other classes and then later in life. Some organize their efforts to prepare for the test while the others prepare to enrich their understanding.

When we understand these kinds of variables, there are two ways to mention them to the learners. One way belittles them by saying "I know what you're thinking" and implying "How could you be so stupid?". The other opens their closed minds by saying "Some of you share these concerns" and implying "You want to get the most out of this investment you're making". The first approach is manipulative and attempts to control the learners. The second approach is empathetic and relates respectfully with the learners.

This same contrast occurs in the formulation of disruptive value propositions, innovative educations products and new business models. The first lacks empathy for the learners and pushes the product in their faces. The attempts to deliver the product backfire. The other leverages the empathy for the learners and creates demand for them to inquire into, explore further and realize for themselves the value in this offering. The effects on the learners are enduring, mutually beneficial and significant.

Disrupting the value proposition

2009-11-11T15:13:00.000-07:00

Whenever a significant new technology comes along, it's human nature to overreact. Andy Kessler tells some wonderful anecdotes about the furor over steam, electric, gasoline and nuclear power sources in his book How We Got Here. We act like the technology will be disruptive of the previous mode of existence. There's lots of evidence that we're currently immersed in that overreaction to the technologies of online learning. It's not wrong to think there will be sweeping changes associated with online access, searchable archived content, immersive digital environments and free tools for self expression. It's wrong to think the technologies will drive the change.

The two disruptive business models for higher education I've proposed are not defined by online learning. Both the service based and peer based learning could be enhanced by online experiences. Yet both were generated by the kinds of subsequent employment the graduates will find and the kinds of learning best suited toward those objectives. They revise the "strategy canvas" in search of "blue ocean market space" as Kim and Mauborgne advised us to pursue in Blue Ocean Strategy. These models also seek out "bowling alley" niches for Crossing the Chasm (Geoffrey Moore). They also demonstrate Mastering the Hype Cycle (Fenn & Raskino) by rebounding after the overreaction fizzles out.

I've become convinced that Clayton Christensen's model of disruptive innovation gets it right. The technology is not itself disruptive. The new value proposition made easier with the technology moves the goal posts. There are non-consumers of existing business models who can be served by something new that is good enough for starters. There are jobs they are getting done with difficulty or not getting done at all with the current offerings. The disruptive value proposition helps them get their jobs done at last or done faster, better and/or cheaper. The value is experienced "in the eyes of the beholder", not the eyes of the technologists, inventors or promoters. The new business model delivers that intangible value. It uses tangible products, services and technologies as a means toward the end of delivering that intangible value.

To come up with disruptive value propositions, we need to think of the end user in their own contexts. We need to empathize with their plight, feel their pain and walk in their moccasins. When we see the jobs they are trying to get done, the tools become useful in their context. We see how to best apply them without overreacting to the obvious benefits of the new technology. We change our orientation so that we're "selling holes, not electric drills".

Making college affordable

2009-11-09T09:55:00.001-07:00

As Karl Kapp recently explored in The Higher Education Bubble Continues to Grow, most colleges are mimicking Wall Street's flawed strategy of self-serving financial schemes. Colleges cannot slow the runaway inflation which results in soaring costs, declining value and under-served students. These colleges are conforming to a single contaminated business model, much like the health care providers that Clayton Christensen has analyzed. The "significant" differences between colleges amount to mere superficial variations in course offerings, campus activities and financial aid resources. The financial crisis is shared by nearly all institutions of higher education. As I recently explored on my other blog, the reasons the costs are soaring out of sight are not even on their radars.

I expect four different business models will emerge from the widespread collapse of over-priced academic institutions. Each constitutes an exit strategy from the stampede headed for the precipice. Two exits develop sustaining innovations which maintain the use of college campuses and classroom contacts with students. The other two introduce disruptive innovations which change the game of "getting a college education". All four innovations make college more affordable while redefining and differentiating their value propositions. Each new business model will need to "circle its wagons" to defend itself against contamination by the other three innovations.

Academic credentials providers
Only one of the four new business models will continue to offer degrees and transcripts from accredited institutions. This exit strategy is the least affordable alternative, though cost reductions can be achieved. This sustaining innovation only serves the sciences, engineering programs and technical disciplines. This model views undergraduate education as a certification process for grad school. The credentials earned remain within academia. Every student is required to progress through the same obstacle courses, get over the same hurdles and exhibit the same competencies. The factory model for the production of uniform outputs can be better utilized to make the educational and matriculation processes more efficient and cost effective. Presentations by pricey faculty members can be archived for download as the open courseware movement has already initiated. Personal contact with undergrad students can be handled by low cost grad students who are "learning by teaching". The faculty will continue to be devoted to academic research, publishing and grant seeking. Much of the students' testing and lab work will migrate into game environments where learners proceed at their own pace, self-remediating flaws in their perception, understanding or execution. Cost savings will also be realized by the elimination of the "cruise ship" amenities and their accompanying layers of bureaucracy.

College experience providers
One other business model will sustain the use of college classrooms and campuses. It does not credential the advancement to grad school or support academic research. It values the quality of teaching and relating to students over subject matter expertise. It provides the enrollment with high quality college experiences and utilizes liberal arts and humanities curricula toward that end. It serves those college students looking to mature, separate from their family systems, find themselves, and/or get experience with mating -- while living on campus. It expects there will be no connection between what students study in college and their subsequent employment. There is no need for grades or other academic credentials. The subject matter gets used to cultivate their ability to critique, problem solve, change frames of reference, perceive subtleties and express themselves. The instructors function as mentors, coaches, guides and sounding boards for the students' personal development. There remains a parallel staff of RA's, counselors, activity sponsors etc. for the rich variety of "student life" offerings. Cost savings are realized by the elimination of academic tenure, committees, research, libraries and administration. This labor model can be delivered entirely by part time "adjuncts" who exude a passion for teaching and cultivating individual students. These faculty members will write recommendation letters for the students they know very well upon graduation and job seeking. These students will have also assembled portfolios, verified by faculty members -- that reveal abilities that could contribute to an employer's objectives.

Service learning providers
The first of the two disruptive innovations utilizes a service learning paradigm. This business model serves those going into service careers. The process of apprenticeship, on-the-job training and action learning cultivates the needed skills and awareness. This "game-changer" will evacuate most community college and 4-year classrooms that pretend to prepare students to serve others by listening to lectures and taking tests on textbooks. It delivers hands-on practice for subsequent work that will involves hands-on practices. While academia discredits this innovation as inferior "vocational training" or "trade school", it redefines quality in "unacademic ways". Much like business recruiting and promotion efforts, this model relies on role play, in-basket and other "immersion in simulated situations" to qualify individuals. It's not what they say they know, but rather how effectively they "walk the talk" that counts. This model will deliver students who can get the job done, handle the responsibility effectively and respond to unfamiliar situations impressively. This innovation will frame academia as merely preparing students to be hypocrites who only "talk the talk" and look good on paper. Cost savings will be realized by the elimination of classrooms, campuses, textbooks and the academic administration.

Peer learning providers
The other of the two disruptive innovations utilizes a peer learning paradigm. This business model serves those going into professions that initiate projects, work with clients, collaborate with colleagues and create new solutions together. Learning from interactions with peers cultivates the core skill sets for collaborating. Getting an education from peers provides of sense of getting along with others more easily, gaining trust in others, getting others to feel understood and getting common ground established at the beginning. Learners get accustomed to making a difference by listening, appreciating differences and relying on others. They will become clear about the value they offer others and many other dimensions of "entrepreneurial literacy". They will get a sense of "how and why it pays to know this" which will set them up to prosper in the world of free lancing on call and working with virtual teams. These educations can emerge from mutual investments in sweat equity. Very little, if any, money will change hands -- much like the transition from the Wall Street to Main Street playbook of the next generation global economy. The cost savings, compared to other three business models is staggering, like the growing abundance of free online content and freemium offerings that are disrupting newspapers, radio/ television broadcasters and conventional advertisers.

Disrupted college advising
At the center of these four exit strategies will be a new space. Instead of admissions advisers and college recruiters, we will find the likes of optometrists or travel agents for each seeker of a higher education. Students will come to get the equivalent of a new eyeglass prescription or a travel itinerary. They'll get help sorting out all these options to arrive that the best personal fit. Those that show signs of continuing dependency on authority figures, expert content and formal instruction -- will favor the sustaining innovations. Those revealing confidence, independence and self-direction will favor the disruptive alternatives. Those with no idea what they want to study will find the "college experience" emphasis will serve them best. Those with their sights set on grad school will favor the academic model that continues to issue diplomas and grade transcripts. Those who are inclined to make the same difference in different people's lives everyday will be advised to explore the service learning model. Those who expect to co-create new solutions with varieties of projects, collaborators and clientele will favor the peer learning model.

Prereqs to peer production of comprehension

2009-07-20T08:16:00.001-06:00

The peer production of advanced levels of comprehension is a significant change from going to school. For peer production to become resilient and sustainable, the production designs need to accommodate these significant changes. Here are the particular changes I'm currently considering:

Democratizing diagnostic protocols: When learning is not happening, peers need to respond to the situation. With pragmatic comprehension to troubleshoot the malfunction, remedial or re-conceptualized efforts can follow. Apparent successes with restoring learning will elicit more personal confessions about breakdowns in learning and generate more requests for a diagnostic appraisal of individual problems. A shift will occur from feeling inadequate to feeding confident about changing approaches when learning is not happening.

Explicit framework for producing comprehension: When we take comprehension for granted, we lose the ability to admire progress, celebrate accomplishments and encourage particular production efforts. Achieving comprehension takes a back seat to the measurement system of scores and grades. An explicit framework for the identifying levels and changes in comprehension will upgrade peer-2-peer interactions to become supportive of each individual and encouraging of personal progress.

Letting go of legacy practices: Relying on past experiences with "getting educated" could tragically disrupt the peer production of advanced levels of comprehension. Members of production cohorts will need to regard this approach as an new adventure. Peer production is a game changer with different rules to play by. This transition involves peers leaving their comfort zones, abandoning familiar success routines and changing long-standing habits.

Production system redesigns: The "peer production of advanced levels of comprehension" applies a different metaphor from familiar stories about cramming, regurgitating and getting grades. Participants in peer collaborations need to perceive the production system and make changes to that system when it's not working. Peer sourced upgrades to the production system will not only make it more resilient, but will spawn deeper commitment, motivations and initiatives to keep the peer production alive and well.

I'll explore each of these further during this week.

Four kinds of comprehension

2009-07-17T09:25:00.000-06:00

This morning I've been pondering the possibility of comprehension getting produced by peer-2-peer dynamics. I'm foreseeing wonderful possibilities in collaborative approaches that reduce the expert content to being a mere catalyst. I'll write more about all that in the near term. When I'm exploring different ways to cultivate comprehension, I rely on a framework of four kinds which call for four different production strategies. Here's a brief look at that framework:

Academic comprehension can be machine graded. The complexity of any deeper or more useful comprehension gets reduced to one right answer on multiple choice questions. Academic comprehension grasps definitions, categories and conceptual abstractions. It avoids those messy gray areas where categorical precision breaks down. Materials designed to cultivate academic comprehension include textbooks, visual aids. study guides and lectures.
Commercial comprehension can be demonstrated by personal conduct. The skill, method, technique or routine gets comprehended by doing it repeatedly. Comprehension yields reliability, self-correction and consistency. It pays to know how to do these things the right way to comply with an employer's policies, job descriptions, work flows and best practices. Experiences designed to cultivate commercial comprehension include imitation of an exemplar, practice drills and games to be played by the rules.
Pragmatic comprehension can be demonstrated by successfully troubleshooting a malfunction. The diagnostic protocols, analytical frameworks and predictive models get comprehended by applying them to many varied situations with feedback about the outcomes. Pragmatic comprehension is intended to effect the situation getting understood. The comprehension may resolve, alleviate, de-escalate, redirect, liberate, transform or eliminate the situation. Experiences designed to cultivate pragmatic comprehension include scenarios, immersive role plays and internships.
Paradoxical comprehension can be demonstrated by knowing when to forego this comprehension. The understanding of the comprehension in context realizes how to keep it in balance with other concerns, time it's application, disrupt excessive pursuits and apply it judiciously. Paradoxical comprehension grasps a whole understanding of it's categorical opposite, reversed application and larger set for which it is a subset. A paradoxical comprehension may show how to get the result by doing nothing and how to solve the problem by making it worse. Experiences designed to cultivate paradoxical comprehension include contradictory valid arguments to resolve and recursive phenomena to explain.

Democratizing diagnostic protocols

2009-07-21T07:37:00.000-06:00

The peer 2 peer (P2P) production of advanced levels of comprehension eliminates a vast variety of breakdowns in learning processes. Problems generated by the classroom delivery of expert content, anonymity in large gatherings, boring textbooks, flawed instructional designs, objective grading pressures, and mass produced comprehension -- don't happen when peers collaborate effectively. Diagnosing what's gone wrong in when working together is potentially much simpler than figuring out why learning is not happening in conventional settings. It's relatively easy to democratize diagnostic protocols so the peers are equipped to solve their own comprehension problems.

Here are some of the patterns for every peer to red flag when they get identified:

Inadvertent consolidation of power: Collaborations thrive on the distribution of power, the disaggregation of control and the dissemination of personal discretion. Peer production of comprehension can breakdown when power, control and discretion become concentrated in a few individuals. Power naturally gravitates to those in a gathering who get perceived as exceptionally competent, articulate, outgoing, resourceful or popular. Power can also be grabbed by those who are exceptionally ambitious, controlling, domineering or intolerant of others. Resilience and sustainability can be restored by expecting the few "power-trippers" to empower their peers and delegate their confiscated control with commensurate authority to then make changes on their own.
Depletion of intrinsic rewards: Contributing to collaborative outcomes can be deeply significant, satisfying and self sustaining. The more we give in a personally meaningful way, the more we want to give. Our altruism repays itself with enhanced self concepts for relating effectively to others, self respect for trusting one's own judgment and self confidence for expressing oneself amidst potential critics. This vast payback from contributing to peer production can be eroded by time pressures, personal anxieties, guilt trips, blaming, and other forms of toxic interactions. The efforts then feel heartless, like merely going through the motions or keeping an empty commitment. Intrinsic rewards get restored by cleaning up the toxicity.
Covert rewards for disengagement: Shared expectations can emerge to hold back, to "wait and see" or to keep involvement to a minimum. Those that meet these expectations then get rewarded with inclusion, validation and tribal identity. This occurs when a subset of the gathering takes off with early successes while the others feel left behind or labeled as losers. It also occurs when the initial challenges are too difficult for everyone to realize an early success which spawns personal misgivings and collective cynicism. It sometimes occurs when the challenge is too easy or too irrelevant to count as a significant accomplishment. Engagement can be restored by starting over and creating early successes for everyone involved.
Activation of emotional baggage: Particular interactions during P2P collaborations can push individual hot buttons. It suddenly seems like old times, previous losses, or familiar dangers. People overreact, lash out, flip their lid and misdirect their anger. When others take the outbursts too personally, a meltdown can occur. Damage control gets introduced with a play-by-play commentary that covers what happened, what reactions got provoked, and what that reveals about the baggage that got activated. As everyone gains competence at making play-by-play observations, individual outbursts more often remain contained and observed with detachment.
Shortchanging fair exchanges: Most of us have experiences with "class participation","team projects" and exercises completed in groups. These practices usually create no expectations of justice among peers. Giving to the group, team or class is expected without any concept of mutual fairness. P2P production of comprehension balances requesting with contributing to others requests and self valuation with valuing others. The production of comprehension can break down when participants feel exploited, abused or depleted by others who fall short of reciprocating. This is an emotional consideration, not a question of formal accounting. When people feel that justice has been restored and they're getting treated fairly, the problem has been alleviated.

When any peer has red flagged one of these patterns, a timeout needs to be called as soon as possible. A different process gets launched from the process of producing comprehension. Each member has this power to "stop the production line" and switch the gathering into problem solving mode. It has become each individual's right and duty to call the shared effort on these malfunctions. The democratic dynamics of the peer production processes get strengthened when any diagnostic protocols get invoked and explored.

Letting go of legacy practices

2009-07-23T07:38:00.000-06:00

The first few times we succeed at anything we've tried to do for the first time, we regard it as an accomplishment. We've gained confidence in our new ability. We update our self concept of what we're good for and who we think we are. We realize we can face some different challenges with this new resource.

Once the thrill is gone, we begin to take this success for granted. We rely on it to be there when we need it and are not disappointed when it proves to be reliable. We assume it's good to go without a bunch of preparation or caution to pick a good time for it. We have formed a new habit. We've gone from "thinking about it to do it" to "doing it without thinking".

Without realizing it, we've opted to cling to this success routine as the right thing to do without question. We've become ingrained with a legacy practice. We have no choice in the matter. This is who we think we are. Our identity is contaminated with this success. We cannot stop being ourselves. We cannot back off, back down or admit we're wrong.

We've trapped in that pattern of "nothing fails like a proven success". The feedback that it's not working does not show up on our radar. The indications get quickly dismissed that we've been wrong all this time or our habit is too much of a good thing. We cannot conceive of doing it less or not at all.

Everyone of us who has been socialized by classroom educations carries a big inventory of legacy practices. Most of these habits sabotage any peer production of advanced levels of comprehension. These legacy practices work just fine with the superficial production of academic comprehension ("one right answer" and "doing what the textbook says is correct"). We feel justified by academic successes to "keep up the good work" and continue thinking we've got it right. We're trapped in single loop learning that cannot question our underlying assumptions or our epistemology for knowing how we know what we know. We're fixated on right answers, good grades, approval from authority figures, dependency on expert advice and pride in passive learning.

Making the switch to the peer production of advanced levels of comprehension involves letting go oft these legacy practices. The first step is to look for this pattern I've just explained. The following phase occurs most easily in a space that's safe from mockery, shame and rejection. It involves humbling realizations, confessions of fixations and admissions of error. That is nearly impossible when we're afraid, getting pressured or taking the heat for our habitual successes. However, when we can "see the error of our ways", we can let go of our trusted legacy practices and find new ways to handle current situations.

Co-producing comprehension

2009-07-22T09:51:00.000-06:00

Each of us has too much experience producing comprehension in isolation. We reach our own conclusions among others doing the same. The co-production of comprehension will seem inconceivable, infeasible and far-fetched to many experienced learners. Here's a few of the attributes of successful co-productions:

Shared interests in deepening a particular comprehension: Learners all have experiences sharing interests with others in getting good grades, getting through an ordeal, getting out of requirements and getting to advance to the next phase. When deeper comprehension is successfully co-produced, there are shared interests in the subject matter, it's uses, varied viewpoints about it and much more. Where this is impossible in physical gatherings, online connectivity makes it possible to find others with these particular shared interests.
Transparent disclosures: Formal instruction breeds learners who are acculturated to covering up ignorance, denying mistakes and making pretenses of competence. It appears self-defeating to be transparent when pressured to conform. When deeper comprehension is successfully co-produced, it makes sense to reveal one's own actual condition. Admitting what is understood, what remains confusing, what appears useless, and what personal experiences relates to this -- all cultivate trust, respect and bonding.
Making requests of others: When we're getting instructed without being in control of the timing, topic, approach or relevance, we feel powerless. We try to make things happen by eliciting sympathy from others. We create problems with our motivation, attention, retention and comprehension to get others to stop forcing us to learn. When deeper comprehension is successfully co-produced, we stop seeking sympathy. We switch into problem solving mode and ask for help in finding solutions to obstacles as we deepen our comprehension. We see others as problems solvers who will easily understand where we're coming from when we request their help.
Responding promptly to others' requests: When we're getting mismanaged, overworked, underutilized and exposed to lots of toxicity, we become unresponsive. We're wary of getting taken advantage and experienced with people who "take a mile when we give an inch". When deeper comprehension is successfully co-produced, we want to respond quickly to others' requests of us. We see how it pays intangibly to give to others when their request in specific and. Their transparency has built up social capital that facilitates our responsiveness.
Utilizing the available diversity: When getting railroaded into the same understanding, diversity among the learners is a problem, distraction, setback or disruption in the uniform progress. The situation pressures the participants to think alike, suppress their differences and conform to expectations. When deeper comprehension is successfully co-produced, the diversity among learners is essential, inherently valuable and cultivated by every participant. The deeper comprehension depends on differing outlooks, connections and uses for it. Each gets treasured for bring a treasure of uniqueness to the co-production.
Phased development of deeper comprehension: When content is being delivered, it's too common that the instruction takes off without everyone on board, gets ahead of many and lets most fall behind. The pacing and depth cannot accommodate the variety of participants. When deeper comprehension is successfully co-produced, each has a map or game board that lays out the terrain to be explored and integrated. It becomes obvious when an exploration is taking on too much, getting ahead of oneself or avoiding the next challenge. Each can support the others in moving forward in stages without imposing uniform progress on everyone.
Contributing useful labor: When an instructor appears to be "going through the motions", offering useless information, or defying what makes content actionable, we learn by example to do the same. Our labor in groups is equally unproductive, heartless and useless. When deeper comprehension is successfully co-produced, each participant contributes highly useful work. Their efforts get appreciated in ways where they see how to be even more valuable and responsive. A virtuous cycle gets created with the transparency, requests, responsiveness and gratitude. This continues to energize and focus each contributors efforts.

The successful co-production of deeper comprehension is a radical change from conventional instruction. It involves these highly evolved ways to inter-relate and depend on each other. It comes from a place of significant compassion and creativity that indicates the absence of fear. It calls for us to evolve our consciousness to join in so much harmony and mutual benefit.

Hacking a production system

2009-07-24T08:53:00.000-06:00

Systems for producing comprehension are too often taken for granted. It's assumed the authority figures know what they're doing. It's accepted that deeper levels of comprehension are unavailable for some good reason. The learners figure they are at fault when they lose motivation, interest and commitment to the pursuit of deeper comprehension.

Let's take the example of comprehending ink cartridges. An academic comprehension could thoroughly grasp WHAT an ink cartridge is. That may include:

what cartridges are not ink cartridges (toner, ribbon, etc)
what cartridge is the right one to insert in a particular printer
what to look for on a the box/catalog listing to verify the correct cartridge before buying
what cartridges do when we're printing out a document
what steps to take when replacing a cartridge

If the system for producing comprehension goes no further than an academic comprehension, there will be no comprehension of:

how to connect the cables, install the software drivers and operate the printer
how to be sure not to break the printer when removing and inserting cartridges
how to interpret the signs that the cartridge needs to be primed again or replaced

This commercial level comprehension can get responsibilities handled, get jobs done, and get results. It pays to know this level. When a system for producing comprehension does not yield this level, it can be hacked. The peers can interfere with the imposed limitation. They can get printers to practice on, and give each other feedback on attempts to use the printers. Together they can get good at changing ink cartridges at the right time with the right model.

This level of comprehension falls short of the pragmatic level. The system can be hacked again to enable "qualified printer operators" to troubleshoot problems with printing out documents. By immersion in actual or simulated malfunctions, it will become understood how to diagnose problems, question possible causes, explore different subsystems, challenge convenient assumptions and rule out "false positives". Once again the peer production can liberate the commercial level of comprehension with hacks to mess around with breakdowns.

It's even possible to take comprehension to the deepest level of paradox. Then it will become possible to sense the best time to change a cartridge, when printing out is becoming excessive, and what to bring into balance beyond the fixated use of printers.

Entering possibility space

2009-11-06T16:12:00.002-07:00

Most people on the planet are outside of possibility space. They have yet to awaken from dreaming up what they are convinced is realistic. They are missing out on all the freedom that is to be found in possibility space. I'll call where they are at "captivity space" to contrast their experiences with possibility space.

In captivity space, we act as if it's been said "Behold, I make all things old". We already know how familiar most things are and what they mean to us. The majority of our experiences are the "same old same old". We live inside our habits, routines and predictable occurrences with no way out. We pretend to value this much repetition while feeling trapped, bored and starved for stimulation. In possibility space, "all things are new". We know to not already know, to wonder instead and to be fascinated with the mystery we're beholding. Nothing has happened before in exactly this way, sequence or detail. There is so much to be in awe of like a newborn with sparkling eyes of wonder. By liberating ourselves from too much familiarity, we are free to explore and enjoy the freshness of this day.

In captivity space, we also act as if it's been said "All things are not even slightly possible". We argue for our limitations and favor chronic problems. We get stuck, stagnant or stalemated because the needed changes are not possible according to what we already know too well. We assume there's nothing new that could come along. In possibility space, "All things are possible". If it's conceivable, it's doable or possibly emergent from self organizing complexity. It's not a question of "can I?" but rather numerous questions of "how can I?". Because it's assumed to be possible, it becomes fascinating to explore how it can be done.

In captivity space, we want to do something that's never been done before. We expect to be completely original to escape the oppressive repetition. We're disappointed when we discover our thing appears to be derivative, it's actually been done before, or it looks like an unintentional copy. Mortality and time seem very real. We have one life to live and thus want to make spectacular progress with these elusive, breakthrough productions. In possibility space, everything has been done before. We can get messages from the so-called future to stay on the path of recreating our latest copycat production. Neither time or mortality is real, but experiencing them is very real. We're free to live as if we're really experiencing convincing illusions.

In captivity space, we take things literally. The familiar is familiar and the unfamiliar is unfamiliar. There's no two ways about what is simply the facts. It's comforting to be objective, analytical and precise. In possibility space, we take things paradoxically. Everything offers a both/and combination of perceptions. What seems objectively real is also illusory, purely subjective and dreamlike. The familiar is delightfully unfamiliar as well as predictably familiar. The unfamiliar exhibits patterns that can make it seem familiar while remaining mysterious. The amount of fascination, appreciation and creativity soars in possibility space.

To enter possibility space, it helps to say to ourselves "I don't know what this is or what this means". It's helpful to play around with "what-if questions" instead of thinking about what is, what has to be and what always happens. It helps to ask ourselves "where's the freedom in this? and allow for experiencing a dramatic change of perspective. It may even help to be still and innocently observe the immediate surroundings as if there is no time like the present to bask in the wonder of now.

Why it's so difficult to awaken

2009-11-05T13:45:00.002-07:00

As you're reading this, it probably seems like it is really happening that you're reading this. Now that you're to the next sentence, there is some continuity with reading the first sentence that gives you some historical perspective. With that ongoing stream of experiences and more of the same by the time you're reading this third sentence, your mind will predict that there will be more reading here much like what has already occurred. All this seems very realistic. You are really doing this reading of these words that are really here to be read. There's no indication that you are dreaming and thus, there's nothing to awaken from. With such powerful experiences of what is happening, what has already happened and what's going to happen, there's little room for doubt or suspicions regarding the reality of this.

As if that was not enough to keep things seeming real, there's the meaning this has for you. At some level this proves that you were right. It confirms what you've been expecting and intending previously. You feel justified in regarding this as real. It vindicates your convictions that it has to be this way, to take this time and to occur where you are. It substantiates your familiarity with how difficult/easy this is, what does not/does happen after doing this, and what remains the same/changes as a result.

With this preponderance of evidence of real occurrences and experiences, we assume it's not a dream to awaken from. We're convinced:

We are not muggles dismissing the possibility of magical transformations this instant.
We are not hobbits hanging out in the Shire where the usual things continue to happen
We are not inside the Matrix taking those artificial constructs to be real.
We are not Alice staying on the familiar side of the looking glass.
We are not trapped in a London nursery only pretending Never Never Land is real.
We are not confused about what is real and what is an illusion

If the truth be known, you are dreaming. This is not really happening. The time that has passed along with the seeming continuity between prior incidents is all an illusion. The particular place you're at only appears real. The meaning this has for you provides a wonderful story, with you as the main character, without sticking to the facts about how it got dreamed up by you and us together.

Rethinking nodes in networks

2009-11-03T08:53:00.002-07:00

When we're making a study of a network or formulating an explanation for outcomes produced by a network, we need things to examine. We are prone to make a "thingy" of nothing or of an ongoing processing. Alfred North Whitehead coined the term "misplaced concreteness" to separate his "process philosoph" from all the scientific studies that had made things of processes in order to study them objectively.

In the Prince of Networks, Graham Harman characterized Whitehead as the grandfather of Bruno Latour's Actor Network Theory. Latour takes exception to scientific explanations that add a false dimension to their descriptions of networks. He expects explanations to emerge from sufficient complexity of descriptions, rather than conforming the data to established explanations. He treasures Whitehead's investigative principle of "beginning and ending with wonder".

As I've pondered how all this might support our rethinking the concreteness of nodes in a network, I've made a lot of associations to the possibility of nodeless networks. If there's nothing there where connections come together, we have to wonder what the intersection is about. The connections would meet with wonder and explore what it's about. There could be no "misplaced concreteness" in a absence of nodes.

What could occur at "connections over nothing" is significant learning. The unknowns could come to the forefront of the experience. The exploration of combined questions, possibilities, hypotheses, and contrasting descriptions could replace the so-called "learning" of information through network connections. The takeaways from the encounters could enrich each exploration and better articulate the intersection.

This is a reversal of preexisting nodes forming new connections. This proposes preexisting connections resulting in emergent nodes. The coming together is the constant process. The resulting nodes come and go. The process begins and ends with wonder.