Ed Batista

Cool Tools

I've been able to spend a little time recently digging into some social media tools to understand how they work as well as their potential value for someone like me, i.e. an executive coach and change management consultant with an abiding interest in technology.  So here's a quick rundown:

Utterz is an extremely user-friendly service that allows you to capture and publish audio, video, pictures and text.  The site essentially creates a link between your phone, your camera or your webcam and the web at large.  You can call Utterz and use your phone to record an interview, snap a picture while you're at it, and publish the audio and the video not only to your Utterz page but also to just about any other site you designate on the fly--the audio's captured immediately, and you simply text the photo to Utterz.  You can do the same with video, but if you're like me, A) your phone's OK for stills but terrible for video, and B) uploading video via your carrier sucks up too much time and bandwidth.  No problem--just use your laptop's webcam and send the stream directly to Utterz, or upload a previously recorded video file.  (You can also opt to send all your Utterz videos to your YouTube account simultaneously.)  I see Utterz as a way to turn any conversation into an interview you can share with colleagues AND as a personal podcast for friends and family (depending on where I choose to send the files.) Very cool and stone cold simple.  Many thanks to my old--well, let's say former--colleague Holly Ross for the inspiration.

Tumblr is sort of like Utterz but a bit more lightweight, which makes it both easier to use and slightly less useful--or, rather, useful in a different way.  It's another service that allows you to capture and publish links, text, and photos, and although it doesn't have built-in support for audio and video, it's really easy (especially via their Firefox bookmark button) to publish to your Tumblr page and to anyplace you can insert a little code.  I see it as a great way to share and promote links to articles, posts and photos that don't merit a full-on blog post but merit something more prominent than a del.icio.us tag.  Many thanks to Mark McGuinness for the (continued) inspiration--he's THE most tech-savvy executive coach I've met since I stopped working in technology to launch my coaching practice, and I learn something every time I stop by his site.

And now for something completely different: Don't Break the Chain is a fun site supposedly inspired by the motivational wisdom of Jerry Seinfeld, according to Brad Isaac:

[Seinfeld] told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.

He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. "After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain."

"Don't break the chain," he said again for emphasis.

True?  Who cares.  It's a great story that translates brilliantly into a free web service.  Your "Chain" account serves as the online equivalent of Seinfeld's big wall calendar, and you use it to "X" out days on which you accomplish your given task.  (The image above indicates that I've gone running three straight days--no mean feat this past year.)  You can create multiple calendars to track different goals, you can customize the display a bit, and if you want the world to help hold you accountable, you can copy-and-paste a little code to publish your calendar anywhere you'd like.

Twitter is a service that's clearly useful for many people..but not me--at least not right now.  If Utterz makes it easier to blog audio and video, and if Tumblr allows you to turn your tags into a mini-blog, then Twitter is a sort of micro-blog, allowing you to send out even more ephemeral messages (up to 140 characters) via your phone or the web to your personal Twitter network.  The How? isn't an issue here--if you've used IM or sent a text message, you know how to use Twitter, but the Why? (or Why not?, in my case) is more complex.  I signed up for a Twitter account months ago, but it's never seemed useful to me.  This is primarily because my work as an executive coach involves a lot of face-to-face interactions that can't be interrupted, and my time online (or text-accessible) is limited as a result.  But I'm also aware that I need a certain amount of distance between the world and myself in order to think, to focus, to stay grounded.  I understand the appeal of feeling more connected with the people in my network via a steady stream of Twitter updates, and I could see myself using Twitter if others on my team did as well, because although most of our work with clients and students is face-to-face, we often work from separate locations--but until that happens, I'm content to opt out.  (See Common Craft's typically well-done Twitter in Plain English if you'd like to learn more.)  UPDATE: One day later, John Unger posts a Twitter manifesto, describing how he uses it--and he notes that his initial response was "Why the hell would I want to do that?"  It didn't change my mind about Twitter's utility to me at the moment, but it did open my eyes to the creative ways people are adapting the service to meet their needs.  UPDATE 2: OK, I give--with Mark McGuinness weighing in as well, I'll see if Twitter can add value despite my unusual schedule.

Finally, even though the services rendered by Creative Commons are nothing like those described above (and even though I've been a CC user for years), my work on this post led me to realize that my CC license was out-of-date, and this seems like a good opportunity to point anyone unfamiliar with them in a helpful direction.  CC provides an alternative to copyright that allows people like me to share our writing, our photos, and any other type of content with the world under the restrictions of our choice.  For example, everything I post on this site is published under CC's "Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States" license, which means that you're free to copy, distribute and/or remix my work as long as you also 1) attribute it to me by linking to this site and 2) further distribute any remixed works under a similar license.  Almost all of the photos I use in my posts (including the one above) have been published under the same CC license as mine, and I'm both grateful for the right to access such highly creative work and hopeful that my contributions are as useful to someone else.

Photo by Paul Schultz.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Reading List

I was recently asked by a colleague to recommend some books on executive coaching, and the process of drawing up that list got me thinking about all the books that have had a major impact on my professional development.  This list isn't exhaustive--and by focusing on books per se it omits many articles, papers and chapters that have had an even greater impact than some of these books--but it hits many of the high points.  I may return later to add items or make comments or to sub-divide the list into categories, but at the moment I find that an alphabetized list strikes a nice balance between order and (seeming) chaos:

The Answer to How is Yes: Acting on What Matters, Peter Block

Authentic Happiness, Martin Seligman

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell

Changing for Good, James Prohaska et al

The Cluetrain Manifesto, Christopher Locke et al

The Coaching Manager: Developing Top Talent in Business, James Hunt and Joseph Weintraub

Co-Active Coaching, Laura Whitworth et al

Comfortable with Uncertainty, Pema Chödrön

The Consolations of Philosophy, Alain de Botton

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Kerry Patterson et al

Exuberance: The Passion for Life, Kay Redfield Jamison

Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time, Susan Scott

The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Peter Senge

The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, Peter Senge et al

Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used, Peter Block

The Flawless Consulting Fieldbook and Companion, Peter Block et al

Getting Things Done, David Allen

Harvard Business Review On Managing Yourself

Harvard Business Review On Women in Business

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini

The Inner Game of Work, Tim Gallwey

Management Challenges for the 21st Century, Peter Drucker

The Masterful Coaching Fieldbook, Robert Hargrove

Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

More Than a Motorcycle: The Leadership Journey at Harley-Davidson, Rich Teerlink and Lee Ozley

The Neurotic Behavior of Organizations, Uri Merry and George Isaac Brown

The No Asshole Rule, Bob Sutton

The Organizational Behavior Reader, Joyce Osland et al

Power Up: Transforming Organizations Through Shared Leadership, David Bradford and Allan Cohen

Reading Book for Human Relations Training, Alfred Cooke et al

Start Where You Are, Pema Chödrön

Status Anxiety, Alain de Botton

The Substance of Style, Virginia Postrel

Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes, William Bridges

What Should I Do with My Life?, Po Bronson

When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chödrön

Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes (free download), Andy Goodman

Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?, Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones

The World According to Peter Drucker, Jack Beatty

Work Matters: Women Talk About Their Jobs and Their Lives, Sara Friedman

Working with Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman

Photo by joguldi.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Experiential Learning Cycles

According to Roger Greenaway, an experiential learning cycle is "a structured learning sequence which is guided by a cyclical model."  The concept comes up regularly in my work involving leadership and interpersonal skills development at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and is a central component of our "Leadership Labs," a series of experiential learning activities that are now part of the school's mandatory core curriculum.

The primary model we use is a 4-stage cycle derived from David Kolb's learning styles model: Act, Reflect, Conceptualize, Apply.

ACT: Do something--anything, in fact.  Run a meeting, give a presentation, have a difficult conversation.  (One of the most valuable aspects of this model is the way in which it allows us to turn every experience into a learning opportunity.  The challenge, of course, is that we rarely complete the cycle and leave most potential learning untapped.)

REFLECT: Look back on your experience and assess the results.  Determine what happened, what went well and what didn't.

CONCEPTUALIZE: Make sense of your experience.  Seek to understand why things turned out as they did.  Draw some conclusions and make some hypotheses.

APPLY: Put those hypotheses to the test.  Don't simply re-act.  Instead, have a conscious plan to do things differently to be more effective.  And begin the cycle again.   

My colleague Andrea Corney has noted the parallels between the experiential learning cycle as we typically define it (based on Kolb's work), and Roger Greenaway's Active Reviewing Cycle and Chris Argyris and David Schon's work on Theories of Action.  These models aren't identical, but they're similar enough that they can be overlaid on a 4-stage cycle.  I found Andrea's sketch so helpful that I turned it into the graphic below (here's a larger version, and here's a 2-slide PowerPoint file.)

But the value of these models isn't in their conceptual elegance--it's in their ability to help you be more effective in the world.  Applying them shouldn't be a time-consuming or difficult process, and in some cases it may involve nothing more than a few moments of thought after an experience and prior to its repetition.  In other cases, you may want to use more formal methods to complete the cycle, such as keeping a journal, or holding feedback sessions with colleagues--whatever works best for you.  The point is to recognize how much can be learned from our every experience and interaction, and to begin to capture more of that learning on a consistent basis.

UPDATE: Andrea reminds me of an even simpler version of the experiential learning cycle that essentially underlies the more complex ones above (here's a larger version of the graphic below):

Ground Rules for Meetings

What makes a meeting successful?  A team I'm a member of kicked off a project a few weeks ago, and before the first meeting the team leader asked everyone to come with two "ground rules" that would govern how we work together.

I've been through similar exercises before, but I was struck by the usefulness of this particular list, which I've reproduced below.  I've fleshed it out a bit to make it more self-explanatory, but this is basically what we came up with:

GROUND RULES

• Be clear about how decisions will be made.
• If one person (particularly the team leader) owns a decision, make that clear from the outset.
• If the group is going to make the decision, specify the process to be used (consensus, majority, etc.)
  
• Use good brainstorming practices; specifically, don't criticize suggestions when we're in idea-generating mode.
• Begin each meeting by checking in.
• End each meeting by reviewing what went well and what could have been done better (and don't allow other work to bump this review off the agenda.)
• Rotate facilitating and note-taking roles.
• Raise any concerns as thoroughly as possible.  If a discussion has to be taken offline, update the rest of the team at the next meeting.
• Everyone's free to challenge the productivity of the meeting.
• Distinguish clearly between "thinking" mode and "doing" mode.
• Two key words to bear in mind: "realistic" and "sustainable."
• Load-balancing is encouraged, and we'll revise assignments as needed.
• Bring your calendar with you so we can schedule future meetings efficiently.

Unfortunately, conflicts with other projects have kept some us--particularly myself--from attending many of this group's meetings!  But the culture we established at the outset with these ground rules seems to have helped the group stay focused and productive despite the disruptions.

Photo by Michael Sypniewski of the Asbury Park Press, from A Day at Bangs Avenue School.

Checking In: Start Meetings by Listening More

I often work in groups that begin each meeting by "checking in," i.e. having each member talk briefly about how they're feeling, or what they're thinking about, or what they hope to accomplish that day.

I find value in this process, but up until now I've looked at it primarily from perspective of the speaker.  From this point of view, the purpose of checking in is that each member of the group gets a chance to speak their piece, and the total of what's said sets a tone for the meeting that reflects everyone's state of mind.

I've recently come to feel that this process is equally (if not more) important from the perspective of the listeners.  From this point of view, the purpose of checking in isn't so much that it gives everyone a chance to speak, but that it also compels everyone to listen carefully to everyone else, right at the outset.  This gets the group in a listening mode and sets a tone for the meeting that makes subsequent discussions more productive and less stressful.

The Dip: Seth Godin on Strategic Quitting

From Seth Godin's The Dip:

Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations.  Reactive quitting and serial quitting are the bane of those that strive (and fail) to get what they want.  And most people do just that.  They quit when it's painful and stick when they can't be bothered to quit...

Strategic quitting is a conscious decision you make based on the choices available to you.  If you realize you're at a dead end compared with what you could be investing in, quitting is not only a reasonable choice, it's a smart one...

Coping is what people do when they try to muddle through... The problem with coping is that it never leads to exceptional performance... All coping does is waste your time and misdirect your energy.  If the best you can do is cope, you're better off quitting.  Quitting is better than coping because quitting frees you up to excel at something else...

Quit the wrong stuff.  Stick with the right stuff.  Have the guts to do one or the other.

In my experience most of us are overcommitted, spreading ourselves too thin, and failing to deliver excellence where it really counts.  We're coping, when we should be quitting.  I hear an echo of Peter Drucker in Godin's message:

One should waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence.  It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.

The implicit corollary to Drucker's message (which Godin picks up and makes explicit) is that only excellence matters.  Improving from incompetence to mediocrity is worse than useless, because time and effort expended in those areas are being stolen from areas where excellence is within our grasp.

I find it liberating to start thinking along these lines, not only in my professional life but also in my personal life.  Where can I deliver excellence?  Where should I expect excellence in return?   And how can I focus my time and energy to make this as likely as possible?

This allows me to do some strategic quitting--or even better, not to start misguided efforts in the first place--and substantially increase the return on my personal investments.  And even when I can't quit outright, I'm better able to set boundaries that put projects and activities in perspective and prevent them from hogging resources (most significantly, my finite time and energy) that they don't deserve.

Photo by alexdecarvalho.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Top Posts

Here are a few posts from recent years (updated March 2008) that continue to resonate with me.  Topics include executive coaching, personal and professional development, leadership, management, motivation, organizational culture, and the process of change.  I'll update this list as time passes, but you can always find any post using the search boxes below my Contact Info in the left-hand sidebar.

The Influence Pyramid (February 2008)
"[I]t integrates...a...sense of personal empowerment...with...[an] awareness of our interpersonal impact and the concepts...that underlay contemporary 'theories of influence.'"

Energy vs. Intensity (February 2008)
"[U]nderstanding the subtle difference between [energy and intensity] can help us be more aware of the choices we're making and allow us to tailor our approach to a given interaction...."

Experiential Learning Cycles (October 2007)
"The point is to recognize how much can be learned from our every experience and interaction, and to begin to capture more of that learning on a consistent basis."

Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good People (September 2007)
"Why do so many well-meaning people give such bad presentations?  Last year Andy Goodman and Cause Communications sought to answer that question..."

Ground Rules for Meetings (September 2007)
"What makes a meeting successful? ...{T]he culture we established at the outset with these ground rules seems to have helped the group stay focused and productive despite the disruptions."

Successful Debriefing: Ask, Don't Tell (September 2007)
"To get people to talk in clear, readily understandable and quotable language, you have to ask really simple questions that can have the effect of making you look uninformed at best and foolish at worst."

Bill George on Teaching Leadership (August 2007)
"The hardest thing we have to do is see ourselves as others see us.  And do you gain that self-awareness?  Some people think they have it, but they've never really tested themselves, and that is crucial."

T-Groups, Feedback and Double-Loop Learning (March 2007)
"How effective are your interactions with others?  What behaviors enhance your effectiveness, and what behaviors undermine your effectiveness?"

T-Groups, Trust, Leadership and Management (February 2007)
"Why are personal issues relevant in a professional setting?   How do our internal dynamics shape our external effectiveness as leaders and managers?"

The Problem with Positive Feedback (February 2007)
"[T]oo much praise will eventually have the same effect as no praise at all.  But by uncoupling the feedback from any goals other than rewarding the recipient, you'll increase its value as a motivator."

The Value of Soft Startups (January 2007)
"[S]pouses are much more likely to resolve difficult conversations successfully when they use a soft startup, and I'm inclined to believe that the same is true in most of our professional relationships as well."

Double-Loop Learning and Executive Coaching (December 2006)
"When we begin a double-loop learning process, everything comes to a full stop while we ask such challenging questions as 'Why do we do this task this way?' and 'Why do we do this task at all?' '"

Agreement vs. Alignment (October 2006)
"Agreement = Everyone gets their first choice (difficult and time-consuming to obtain.) Alignment = Everyone can fully support the choice that is made (much easier to obtain.)"

The Inner Game of Work: Who Are You Working For? (September 2006)
"We need to listen to our inner voice and work freely for ourselves without simply giving in to indulgent whims.  And we need to be of service and to create value for others without simply responding to external demands."

Finding Professional Fulfillment (July 2006)
"What makes a job satisfying?  What constitutes fulfillment?  What factors have to be balanced to achieve it?"

Johnny Cash on Doing it Your Way (June 2006)
"It doesn't matter to me that I only know three or four chords... I just believe that when it all comes together it's the right way for me to do it."

Organizational Development: Is Humanism Overrated? (June 2006)
"A better understanding of how our brains function will allow organizations to embrace change and tackle new initiatives much more effectively.  But I wouldn't throw the humanistic baby out with the bathwater just yet."

Pfeffer and Sutton on Leadership (May 2006)
"We tend to assign more credit and blame to leaders than...they actually deserve... But...leadership can make a difference, and Pfeffer and Sutton have a short checklist to help leaders be as effective as possible."

Matt Doherty: Live and Learn? (February 2006)
"There's more to leadership than command authority, and Matt Doherty's experience during and since his time at UNC suggests three big take-aways for the rest of us..."

Peter Drucker on Managing Oneself (November 2005)
"Most people...do not really know where they belong until they are well past their mid-twenties.  By that time, however, they should know the answers to the three questions: What are my strengths?  How do I perform?  and, What are my values?"

Sage Cohen and Peter Drucker on Rapture and Excellence

Where do you focus your energy and attention?  Do you struggle to overcome obstacles and tackle problems, or do you ignore them instead, go with what's working, and capitalize on that success?

My friend Sage Cohen recently wrote about training herself to take the latter approach, and it reminded me of one of my favorite pieces of wisdom from Peter Drucker.

First, from Sage's The Mind Whisperer:

In the past, my pattern was to find the one or two things that weren't working in my life and focus obsessively on fixing them. This was a reasonably effective strategy for a time, because I'm a pretty good fixer.  But then, thanks to [input from friends], I have stumbled upon a far more revolutionary approach, which is to not engage at all with what's not working; instead, live in rapture with what is working. And in case there's anyone out there who's not yet a believer, I'm here to report from the other side that rapture is a far more enjoyable experience than the have-not frame of mind. I don't know how or why this works, but I have lived through enough repetitions now to know that the not-working stuff simply unwrinkles itself in the background when I refuse to feed it with my upset.

And from Drucker's Managing Oneself:

[W]aste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence.  Concentration should be on areas of high competence and high skill.  It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.  And yet most people--especially most teachers and most organizations--concentrate on making an incompetent person into a low mediocrity.  The energy and resources--and time--should go instead into making a competent person into a star performer.

I'm struck by the parallel emphasis on harnessing energy and maximizing success by avoiding problems and building on strengths.  I know that some obstacles must be overcome and some problems can't be ignored, but far too often  we hamstring ourselves by trying "to improve from incompetence to mediocrity" when instead we could "live in rapture with what is working."

I link above to the reprint of Drucker's article, which is $6 from HBR, but for an additional $7 you can get his 1999 book Management Challenges for the 21st Century, which includes "Managing Oneself" in addition to five other essays on topics such as "Information Challenges" and "Knowledge-Worker Productivity."

Conflict Modes and Managerial Styles

How do you deal with conflict? Most of us have a "natural" conflict resolution style that corresponds with one of the five modes identified by Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann--see the graph below.  (Here's a larger version of the graph, or just click on the image itself.  You can also download a 3-slide PowerPoint file, 53 KB.)

If your natural style becomes a default option, you're going to find it difficult (if not impossible) to resolve certain conflicts, because some styles are poorly suited to certain situations. All of the Thomas-Kilmann modes can be used effectively in the right context, and it's important to develop the ability to choose the mode that best fits the situation and to increase our level of comfort with alternative styles.

This framework forms the basis of a popular assessment tool offered by CPP, commonly referred to as the Thomas-Kilmann Instrument or TKI.  (CPP also publishes the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.)

Ron Kraybill has developed an alternative to the TKI, the Kraybill Conflict Styles Inventory.  Kraybill's version uses a Likert scale rather than forced-choice questions employed in the TKI, and it provides answers for what Kraybill calls "calm" and "storm" conditions, noting that our styles may change under stress.  Kraybill also offers a version that distinguishes between "individualistic" and "collectivistic" cultures.

It's worth noting that the TKI and Kraybill's version are built on the Managerial Style Grid, developed by Jane Mouton and Robert Blake in the 1960's. (Here's a larger version of the graph below.) Mouton and Blake's work is carried on by Grid International, which provides leadership development and organizational culture consulting services.

Thanks to my colleague Andrea Corney for a great introduction to the TKI.  For more on conflict resolution and the TKI, see the following:

• Ralph Kilmann
• Conflict Resolution, from MindTools
• Conflict Management: the Five Conflict Styles, by Bonnie Burrell at MIT's Collaboration Toolbox

Hit Parade: Top Posts from the Past Year

Here are a few posts from 2005-06 that continue to resonate with me.  Topics include coaching, motivation, professional development, leadership, organizational culture, and the process of change.  I'll update this list as time passes, but you can always find any post using the search boxes to the left. 

Peter Drucker on Managing Oneself (November 2005)
"Most people...do not really know where they belong until they are well past their mid-twenties.  By that time, however, they should know the answers to the three questions: What are my strengths?  How do I perform?  and, What are my values?"

Matt Doherty: Live and Learn? (February 2006)
"There's more to leadership than command authority, and Matt Doherty's experience during and since his time at UNC suggests three big take-aways for the rest of us..."

Pfeffer and Sutton on Leadership (May 2006)
"We tend to assign more credit and blame to leaders than...they actually deserve... But...leadership can make a difference, and Pfeffer and Sutton have a short checklist to help leaders be as effective as possible."

Organizational Development: Is Humanism Overrated? (June 2006)
"A better understanding of how our brains function will allow organizations to embrace change and tackle new initiatives much more effectively.  But I wouldn't throw the humanistic baby out with the bathwater just yet."

Johnny Cash on Doing it Your Way (June 2006)
"It doesn't matter to me that I only know three or four chords... I just believe that when it all comes together it's the right way for me to do it."

Finding Professional Fulfillment (July 2006)
"What makes a job satisfying?  What constitutes fulfillment?  What factors have to be balanced to achieve it?"

The Inner Game of Work: Who Are You Working For? (September 2006)
"We need to listen to our inner voice and work freely for ourselves without simply giving in to indulgent whims.  And we need to be of service and to create value for others without simply responding to external demands."