The Intern Diaries: Week Three

Another amazing week with the Super Six.  Watching them become a subculture is fascinating.  They work intensely on their own, then pair off, then they cluster.  They draw each other in and something wonderful happens.  You can see the attachments as if they were drawn in the air above their heads.  And because they are all so very Coherent (such a special quality, we have begun to capitalize it,) this crazy entrepreneurial world we inhabit doesn’t faze them, even when we are approaching warp speed.

After only two weeks, during which the first five were oriented, given assignments, put through our standard four hour consultant/agent training, and let loose, we asked them to present their projects at our weekly management meeting.  (Our sixth, only being with us for two days operated the technology – they integrated her into their subculture right away!)  And present they did, PowerPoints and all.

So what did I learn from them this week?

Most of the time, Role trumps age and experience.

In plain English, who you are is more important than what you’ve done.  Yes, I did know that in the intellectual sense.  But it never ceases to amaze me, and amazement is the substrate within which you get new appreciation.  You no longer just know.  You *know*.

When Visions Meet

Do you remember those sped-up photos of cells dividing and multiplying until they reach the point where they change direction and something new and different emerges?

It’s like that with visions.  When two visions come very close, when they are mergeable in some way, if they are fed the energy of both sources they too become something new – a living, breathing organism of some sort.  Whether that is one being or an enterprise involving thousands of individual organisms acting together is less important than the mechanism: two original, pure visions, each dedicated to bettering the world in some way. coming together in an ecosystem that supports the human spirit, producing revolutionary progress that benefits the far off future.

I think sometimes when it is about to happen, one or both visions are overcome with the fear that they will be engulfed or destroyed by the other and the natural drive to merge them fails.  The trick is not to erect walls to keep fears out but to make them visible for what they are: the hobgoblins we keep alive with our distracted energy.

I’ve just started working on one – I think of it as a VisionMeld – and will keep you posted on my progress.

You Can’t Change Change

Someone asked me today to write about managing change.  I know it’s a popular topic but when he said it, it sounded so absurd to me.  Manage change?  The very nature of change is that it’s unpredictable.  I think what he really was asking was about how you manage your *reaction* to change: what you do when change happens, rather than maintain the illusion that you actually change the direction of the change.

So here’s my advice:

First, give up the illusion that you control the changes in the universe, or even your little corner of it.  All you can control is your reaction to it.  React with fear and it will feel like you’re in the middle of an ocean with huge waves of change crashing over you.  Keep paddling toward home, toward the vision and values that guide you, and keep your eyes on their beacon.  Things will calm down and yesterday’s change will be today’s acceptable reality.

Second, admit you are not the center of the universe any more.  Yes you were, at least in your mother’s eyes, for a few brief moments shortly after your birth.  But humans are social animals and we are all in it together.  Change doesn’t affect you and no one else.  Take comfort in that and reach out to other people.  They are your lifeboat in the maelstrom.

Third, listen to a political slogan on occasion.  With thanks to Barack Obama, get some of that “change we need.”  Because we need change.  Without change there is no innovation, no technology no new toys.  Think of the goodies it brings if you can’t embrace it because it’s the incontrovertable evidence of a life well lived.

A Pipeline of Dreams

I passed a van with a Career Builder sign on it while walking home from my chiropractor a little while ago.  The sign said something like “Dreams have low ROI.”  I guess that’s true if you have a career path that you walk on alone.

My sales and marketing guys taught me to think in terms of a pipeline.  It’s moving things through the pipeline that creates value, they say.  I realized that was what the Career Builder sign was missing.  It’s really dreams that are flying loose, that aren’t part of a pipeline, that have low ROI.

I have a pipeline of dreams.  One just move a little closer to reality.  it took Jessica, the Vision Mover (and programmer extraordinaire) to understand it enough to say, of course we can do that.  And Heather, the Conductor (and amazing database whiz) to say, I’ve got just the program for that.  And Dr. Jack, the Curator (and resident Wizard) to unlock the doors to the vault of wisdom I want our users to have access to.  Now I know it is truly a dream moving down the pipeline.

Is the M&A Boom Over?

That’s the question McKinsey poses in today’s McKinsey Quarterly.  Certainly investors have realized that while mashups may make for interesting webtoys, the model doesn’t work when what you’re trying to do is integrate the people in two organizations.

If you’re in M&A and you haven’t tried using Role-Based Assessment™ at www.Tools4Entrepreneurs.com prior to investing, you’re missing the value this disruptive innovation in human capital measurement can bring to your decisionmaking.

And, whether boom or bust, isn’t it really just about making better decisions than the next guy?

Is HR looking for a seat at the wrong table?

We’re on a quick road-trip vacation so I’m rereading Clayton Christensen’s classic The Innovator’s Dilemma while Barry drives and thinking about how it applies to the business of HR.  Mostly I’m wondering why HR is so enamored of competency models.

Competency models focus on what the company needs to satisfy existing customers, not what’s needed to defend against disruptive innovations.   Companies that haven’t figured it out are probably offering HR a seat at the competency table.  What are the companies who are planning for their own disruptive innovations doing, I wonder?

Dan Pink, who described our future as a Free Agent Nation, has talked about the employee of the future in terms that don’t include traditional competencies.  He predicts that many of the competencies of today will be offshored to India as their population ramps up to meet our corporate needs.

I wonder, will HR’s seat be offshored too?