Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
There’s Power in Connecting. Yet Most of us Remain Spectators.
The Stakes are Higher to Trigger Action
It’s easy to get all optimistic about how social media can changes things. That’s where Clay Shirky was when he wrote Here Comes Everybody. He cited (among many examples) how people organized using social media to demanded accountability from the Catholic Church hierarchy as the priest sexual abuse scandal opened (turns out the 60’s were to blame, and the church is all beyond that now, thank you. Somebody bought some great research!). Shirky’s book carried an optimistic tone that continually wondered at what was possible when we start connecting.
And many of us are training ourselves to read reviews of products before we buy. The thinking is that the opinion of several people we don’t know is more accurate than product advertising issued by the marketer. So smart marketers are learning to plant negative reviews along with positive.
And, of course, we’re watching people organize in Iran, Tunisia, Egypt and Syria to oust the corrupt leaders. So it’s just one small step to thinking about the awesome power we have when we connect: power to overthrow decades old monarchs, power to hold authority accountable, power to see through marketing hype.
But Groundswell by Li and Bernoff helps cool that optimism to a more realistic pitch. Their Social Technographic Profile lets you pick a demographic and get a hint of how they interact with social media. And what you’ll see is that most people are spectators, independent of demographic profile. Most of us watch. From the sidelines. Which surprises no one: take any organization and you’ll find most people watching.
The lesson is not to despair of our tendency to be spectators. The lesson is to find and create an irresistible magnetic pull around the things that are most important.
The stakes are much higher for getting and retaining attention.
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New Medtronic CEO: Neutron Jack or Charming Nerd?
The World Needs Another Earl Bakken
Before he was a Six-Sigma Savior, Jack Welch was Neutron Jack. Before Omar Ishrak becomes CEO of Medtronic, he was a disciple of Jack Welch and the GE religion. But the Star Tribune quotes industry sources as saying Mr. Ishrak is “…charismatic…and able to embrace, change or direct culture.”
When I was an employee of Medtronic, and even later when I served as a consultant, these were the very characteristics many remembered about Medtronic founder Earl Bakken. For many years Bakken’s signature caring, geeky optimism fueled the organization—long before the company was populated with neophyte Ivy-league MBAs and their outsized ambitions. Employees coming into contact with Bakken were uniformly energized by his caring, compassion and passion for healing.
In a very real sense, Bakken was the pacemaker of the organization.
Let’s hope Mr. Ishrak can pick up Bakken’s pace and energize the talented folks at Medtronic.
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Aliens Sit at This End of the Bus
let's explore depth together
Hope on the Other Side of Doubt
If you’ve ever been made to feel like the alien, the other or the stranger, Anna Scott’s response in Patrol magazine (Life as a Leaver) will add fuel to your alienation/otherness/strangeness. Ms. Scott was responding in turn to an article in Christianity Today (The Leavers: Young Doubters Exit the Church). After dealing with the article’s pointing toward moral compromise, among other things, as the reason for leaving the church, the bulk of her argument is a cry to recognize difference. And not just recognize difference and set it aside, but to recognize and incorporate. To set a place at the table for those who would help re-imagine what it means to be a Christian and to be together—not just for the same old male faces that show up when the hierarchical-authority bell is rung. To set a place for women to lead, for instance. Or for divorced folks to be full-fledged participants rather than living with what many evangelical churches treats as an unforgivable sin. Or even just to cultivate listening to the folks in the pew.
She wrote from the perspective of a person immersed in faith—a “real” believer, as one might say. But the difficulties of life changed how she saw things. Ms. Scott’s article is worth reading, as is the original Drew Dyck article.
My point in highlighting this discussion is to say I resonate with her argument. The plight of young skeptics is more than skin deep. It is more than a matter of an easily dismissed people who are “morally compromised” and/or utterly self-focused. My point is that of agreement with Ms. Scott that the “world is complicated, unpredictable, volatile and tragic” and that the church needs to be immersed in many conversations that bring to light some of the mystery of this ancient faith, conversations that honor the shades of gray that disappeared during recent decades when we smugly thought we knew everything.
There is actually another entire category of “old skeptics.” Real believers who have been immersed in the system for decades and now sit idly by for many of the same reasons: the complicated, unpredictable, volatile and tragic world did a number on them, but the depths of their pain and experience have no place in the current sanitized conversations and full-throttle programs.
Conversations with skeptics could be very productive, because they could begin to unearth the concrete hope that can sustain real people living in a complicated world.
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Listentalk Chapter 5 Synopsis: Could Prayer be a Model for Listentalk?
Deep Stuff Happens With This Connection
The Word became flesh and dwelt among them. And while Jesus had a priority of walking and talking with the people, he also had a habit of stealing away for focused bouts of conversation with God. Why pray, since Jesus was/is God? Is there something about the human condition that invites conversation with God? And is there something in prayer that connects us as we live in this human condition? There is talk in prayer—clearly. Experienced praying people say listening comes after the talk. Those who have gone far in prayer say tell of listening coming before talk and even replacing talk.
Prayer is a model of communication because of the intent and listening that motivates and surrounds the practice. Speech-act theory, when combined with this notion of communication with the God of the Universe, suggests insights into the nature of the performatives uttered by the praying person—performatives like no other communication. Prayer becomes an engine behind listening-rhetoric (“pursuing the truth behind our differences”) with the possibility for permanently altering individual lives, states and nations. All because of the connection with the Eternal. And as people pray together, profound, inexplicable connections grow. The result is that a praying people may also be a people profoundly open to the work God is accomplishing in the world—and a people profoundly connected to God and to each other.
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Open Your Pie Hole: #1 in the Dummy’s Guide to Conversation
Talking can feel like a leap.
Do you remember the conversations that changed your life?
Decades ago a guy gave a talk at our church. This guy had made a career change from working as a medical device executive to becoming a leader in the denomination. In a quick conversation after his speech, I mentioned my interest in the medical device industry. He gave me a name to call. I called the guy that week and caught him at a generous moment—despite being an executive himself he spent 30 minutes telling me what he loved about the industry, the company and how helping people provided meaning for his workday. Then he gave me Dave’s name, said I should call Dave and drop his name.
I did that.
Dave turned out to be the best boss on the planet.
The conversation followed by the conversation followed by the conversation turned into decades of writing for the medical device industry, starting with Medtronic. The point of the story is that conversations can take us places we might have wanted to go to but had no idea how do get there. Of course, conversations don’t always work like that, but it happens more often than we might realize. In fact, I think simple conversations change our life every single day. That’s my premise as I write “Listentalk: How simple conversations change your life every day.”
Those conversations start with the courage to share what is going on inside—sometimes deep inside. Using words. Out loud.
Can you remember a life-changing conversation? Tell me.
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History Mash
Lance Strate points to this wonderful satire of scientists from the future discovering and mashing together a history of the Beatles. Inspired!
conversation is an engine 