Ho! What have we here?

"So very round and sharp - to me 'tis mighty clear this wonder of an elephant is very like a spear!"

For me in this study, the tusk represents the dimension of competition and rivalry in the community. Whatever the cooperative opportunities, it is likely that many people are very aware of the competition between them for resources. Some communication is no doubt affected by this if it exists in this particular community. The 5th blind man has got the business end of the elephant.

The side

In American poet John Godfrey Saxe's poem about the blind men and the elephant, the first man happens to fall against its side, and declares that an elephant is very like a wall. This elephant's wall represents the solidity of the body of the community. How open or closed is the community? How clear are its boundaries and definitions? What is the role of communication in both establishing and understanding this?

The tail

Well, we're getting around this animal now. For me the tail represents the end point or outcome of the study. What will the result be for those who want to collaborate? As our elephant wanders off into the distance, what will our last view be? And will it have been worth it?

Watch where you step.

The trunk

The trunk of my elephant represents the purposes of the communication. Since I am looking at collaboration, I will be looking for the intentions, objectives and motivation to find collaborative opportunities. In any community such as this, there will be some who actively search for connections, and those who are more passive. I want to be able to distinguish between these motivations and behaviours when understanding the communication within the community.

The ears

The first part of my elephant I wish to understand is its ears. How does the community listen? Or more accurately, how do people in the community listen to each other?

They have many opportunities: journals and other publications; conferences and workshops; e-mail and list servers, discussion groups and bulletin boards; telephones, telephone conferencing and video conferencing; web-based systems of content management, instant messaging, and project management. And of course talking to each other face to face in pairs or larger groups.

I plan to invite people to capture their communications within their community, particularly those that relate to collaboration - working together in some way. And I also want them to tell me how they think they communicate, and see if is the same as or different from what actually happens.

The data should reveal communications activity across a range of media and opportunities; and I plan to follow the activity over one or two years if possible, as collaborative purposes change, to see if communication changes too.

My first blind man will be listening.

Understanding elephants

Have you heard the story of the blind men and the elephant? I don't plan to relate it, others have done a grand job already. Please take a moment to read it if you don't know it.

It came to mind when I was reading some papers for a research project I'm working on. I plan to study a community of scientists, (amongst other activities) and I have been looking for previous work and methods. It seems that there are many methods. One thing the people I'm reading agree on is that even while revealing something, each method excludes more than it reveals. While some arguements will no doubt continue on which is the best method, and other researchers plan to continue to apply their prefered method regardless of its limitations, I plan to ask seven (no mistake) blind men to tell me how this community communicates. That's the way I hope to understand my elephant.

Working together

The Internet is changing our lives. Lives are changing the Internet. So far so good.

Cheap travel to other places is changing our lives. Our lives are changing the places cheap travel takes us to.

How are these two phenomena working together in changing our lives?

One example is the dispersed but growing band of people able to create a balanced life-style for themselves and their families by distance working and cheap travel. I count myself amongst this happy band.

Another example is the growing number of examples of international, often global, collaborations within and across the fields business, leisure and research. I am working with a group of people scattered across the globe, developing a project to study one small community.

I recognise that some of these lives and collaborations are entirely virtual or on-line. But I am more interested in the way the Internet, (and other means of communication) can be combined with really meeting people to enhance our lives in the round; life, work, leisure, family and community.

We plan to set up a field study, observing a collaborative community in action across all the means of communication they use, from one to one meetings through seminars and telephone, to on-line content management tools. The fields of ethnography as well as computer science are reference points.

Has anyone done this before?

Inspirational books and applying what we know

There seems to be no shortage of inspirational books to be found. More hit the shelves every week. But I have a couple of favourites from not so recent times that I thought I'd share with you.

The first is Head First by Tony Buzan. I like the style and the popular science approach with some great examples and everyday accessible things to do.

The second is Unlimited Power by Anthony Robbins. I found this a compelling read and have been back to it many times.

There is so much that we already know and has been already written that can help personal success that I wonder how much new stuff is: a) new; and b) going to help me. I reckon that if I just applied 1% of what I already know, it would keep me going for many lifetimes.

That doesn't mean I don't think I have anything to learn; far from it. I do mean that learning is as much doing as reading the latest big (or little) thing. It is not hard to engage with the information, learning, wisdom guidance, people etc. etc. out there. What's harder is finding and living with the focused energy and commitment that generates meaning when it meets up with all that stuff. Whatever I really look for I will find; the key is the looking, searching, questing, journey, whatever ...

Keeping up with the Robbinses can be distracting...

Leadership lies and the survival instinct

One aspect of leadership that has always fascinated me is the need for judiscious expression of the truth. I've been reminded of this in reading Hitler and Churchill: Secrets of Leadership by Andrew Roberts.

There is a passage where Roberts describes Churchill's response to Dunkirk. Churchill offered the British people hope on the most tenuous of possibilities (at that time) that America would join the allies. Roberts says that the "crucial point was that if the British people were being gulled, all but a tiny minority of them actually wanted to be." Let's call this the leadership lie of my title. For people to follow a leader, lies are not enough. People must be willing to swallow them. Why did they do so in this case? Because the only alternative, admitting defeat and seeking peace with Hitler was a completely unacceptable option. So, in order to survive, people are willing to submit to a will strong enough to convince them, with judiscious lies if necessary, of the possibility of success.

A recent, (OK not very recent) post by Kathy Sierra talks about this in a more modern context. Here, she talks about how tricking our brain into using its preshistoric survival instinct strengths can be fascinatingly effective at motivating and increasing effectiveness. This is not a new idea, but it's a good one. I've heard it expressed as 'If only we would do to succeed what we will do to survive...' This can be a very effective approach, but it has scary applications too.

Well, powerfully express a threat, and then the people will accept a strong willed leader offering them a barely credible course of action. Does this take you where it took me?