Month: September 2010

Someone lent me the book The Ten Faces of Innovation that I mentioned in an earlier post. by Tom Kelley of Ideo. I've now started reading it.

What grabbed my attention immediately was the opening discussion about people who play the devil's advocate who Kelley says 'may be the biggest innovation killer in America today'. … 'every day thousands of great new ideas, concepts, and plans are nipped in the bud by devil's advocates'. He points out that these negative thinkers are 'toxic to the cause' of innovation.

Kelley's observations run counter to the view of the piece Ten Tips for Making Meetings Work by Michael H Smith he urges meeting leaders to:

Appoint a Devil's advocate. For each issue discussed, appoint and rotate the role of "devil's advocate". Many people will not speak out at meetings for fear of retribution, low group trust or just the fear of looking stupid. As a result "group think" becomes the norm and poor decisions result. By appointing a devil's advocate, you give official permission for raising differing views.

So what or who, exactly is the devil's advocate? Wikipedia explains as follows,

In common parlance, a devil's advocate is someone who, given a certain argument, takes a position he or she does not necessarily agree with, just for the sake of argument. In taking such position, the individual taking on the devil's advocate role seeks to engage others in an argumentative discussion process. The purpose of such process is typically to test the quality of the original argument and identify weaknesses in its structure, and to use such information to either improve or abandon the original, opposing position.

So is the role a negative one as Kelley suggests, or a positive one as Smith suggests? Of course the answer is not clear cut. The point of the role is to raise legitimate concerns about something so that they can be addressed before proceeding. That may have the result in turning people off the idea but it may not.

A different approach that has the same test function is to conduct a pre-mortem. Gary Klein tells you how to do this:

A premortem is the hypothetical opposite of a postmortem. A postmortem in a medical setting allows health professionals and the family to learn what caused a patient's death. Everyone benefits except, of course, the patient. A premortem in a business setting comes at the beginning of a project rather than the end, so that the project can be improved rather than autopsied. Unlike a typical critiquing session, in which project team members are asked what might go wrong, the premortem operates on the assumption that the patient has died, and so asks what did go wrong. The team members' task is to generate plausible reasons for the project's failure.

A typical premortem begins after the team has been briefed on the plan. The leader starts the exercise by informing everyone that the project has failed spectacularly. Over the next few minutes those in the room independently write down every reason they can think of for the failure – especially the kinds of things they ordinarily wouldn't mention as potential problems, for fear of being impolite. For example, in a session held at one Fortune 500-size company, an executive suggested that a billion-dollar environmental sustainability project had failed because interest waned when the CEO retired. Another pinned the failure on a dilution of the business case after a government agency revised its policies.

Next the leader asks each team member, starting with the project manager, to read one reason from his or her list; everyone states a different reason until all have been recorded. After the session is over, the project manager reviews the list, looking for ways to strengthen the plan.

I've conducted the pre-mortem exercise many times and people find it fun and useful. I've also used the role identification to surface issues but rather than using the Devil's Advocate I use a variety of roles – in the last meeting I facilitated, towards the end of the session when looking for 'next actions' I asked: What actions would a playwright take? What actions would a stage hand take? What actions would a producer take? – all theatre roles. (You wait for responses to each question before moving to the next role). The quality of the action list was much higher and more innovative than, I think, would have been produced by simply asking 'what actions do we take now'.

I just signed up for an email subscription to TechCrunch. Probably about 3 years later than most people. And I'm not sure of those signing up how many are currently doing so using email. Techcrunch offers 6 ways of subscribing – RSS, email, app for browser, twitter, facebook, and some google profile thing.

I chose email because I've deactivated my twitter and facebook accounts, I haven't got to grips with RSS, and I don't know anything about the Google profile thing – but I don't want to put everything in one Google basket: mail, search, desktop, etc is sufficient.

I heard in various places that email is passé and everyone who is anyone communicates in ways other than email. So by deactivating twitter and facebook I immediately became a nobody rather than a somebody.

Sidebar: Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank, by
Robert W. Fuller is a good read and a different take on the organizational caste system I mentioned in a previous post.

Back to the death of email. On June 17 Fast Company had a piece discussing the end of email. It's a fun read because it says 'yes','no', 'maybe', and 'don't know' all in the space of about 800 words and three graphics with lines going in inconclusive directions. Here's one of the paragraphs:

To further complicate the situation, tech market research firm the Radicati Group released a report in April which estimated that social networks will grow at a remarkable pace in the next few years–but it also showed that worldwide email usership would balloon as well. "The number of worldwide email accounts is projected to increase from over 2.9 billion in 2010, to over 3.8 billion by 2014," the report said. "However, Social Networking currently represents the fastest growing communication technology among both consumers and business users, with over 2.1 billion accounts in 2010 which are projected to grow to over 3.6 billion accounts by 2014."

I signed up for TechCrunch because of an article that a colleague sent me. Location 2012: Death Of The Information Silos by Robert Scoble. It's a wonderful piece which for me felt as if I've been learning a foreign language in a remote location and I finally got to hear it spoken by natives in their home territory. I only understood about 3 in 10 words – getting flummoxed by Waze, Tungle.me, geofence, Glympse, Siri, Plancast, Blippy, Expensify, Loopt Star, PepsiLoot, CloudMade, Gowalla, Brightkite, Whrrl, simplegeo and OpenStreetMap. I did manage to recognize McDonald's and Harrah's but they're old world bricks, and I felt reasonably ok about Foursquare but that means I've still got a lot of learning to do to be able to converse with Scoble in his language should I ever meet him.

I enjoyed the read because last week I ran an exercise that didn't fling around website names but did try to get people to imagine what it would be like working in a radically different work environment – a similar approach to Scoble's. "Put yourself in this situation and see what it feels like". What came out of it was a mass of questions that need to be answered in order to get us to that new style of working. Like Scoble's observations many of the questions relate to the interoperability of organizational functions, systems, and processes, and require the will of people to get them to interact.

Scoble was somwhat optimistic on this saying

Some companies are trying to integrate these services, or provide infrastructure that makes integration possible as well.

Last week's Economist http://www.economist.com/node/16943579?Story_ID=16943579 had a leader, The Webs New Walls, and a briefing "A virtual counter-revolution" that were less optimistic noting, for example, that:

The trend to more closed systems is undeniable. Take Facebook, the web's biggest social network. The site is a fast-growing, semi-open platform with more than 500m registered users. Its American contingent spends on average more than six hours a month on the site and less than two on Google. Users have identities specific to Facebook and communicate mostly via internal messages. The firm has its own rules, covering, for instance, which third-party applications may run and how personal data are dealt with.

There seem to be many parallels between internet interoperability and the forces working for and against it, and organizational knowledge sharing and collaboration and the forces that work for and against it. Most organizations I work with want to break down silos. But as the internet experience is beginning to suggest it's a much more complex process than it might seem.

I've been working this week with a architecture company on redesigning office space. Hand in hand with the physical refurbishment of the building we are aiming to change the way people work and interact with each other. (I hesitate to use the words 'we are aiming to change the culture' but that is how others are describing it).

So I'm learning the new, to me, vocabulary of architecture, construction, engineering, and space planning. And working out, with that team how to use the physical space to shape the patterns of organizational life

Doing this work I've been recommended to read A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental Structure Series), by Christopher Alexander.

I've taken a look at this and read some sample pages. The authors suggest reading it hand in hand with their other book The Timeless Way of Building.

I haven't read either yet, but the person who recommended the Pattern Language one had some lovely phrases to describe it. He said that the book would help understand how people "sift themselves into work patterns", and "understand what lends itself to a social dynamic". In both cases he was talking in relation to the physical layout of the space.

What I have done is take a look at some other comments about the book, A Pattern Language. NPR's interview with him opens with the comment on the book

"In it, he argued for injecting personal, emotional and spiritual qualities into manmade structures, streets and cities. Alexander's book challenged the architectural establishment and derided much that's been built over the past century as "deadly."

Now, Alexander has issued the final volume of his four-volume tome, The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe, which expands on his basic question: how do we build places and structures that are filled with life? Theorizing that order is inherent in both nature and manmade spaces, Alexander attempts to define and understand the essence of a "living" structure.

Another reviewer of the book notes that

"The scope of the book is incredible. It sets out, in plain terms, to empower people to design, build and shape their own surroundings. It does this by creating a "pattern language", a kind of generative grammar with 253 patterns that can be used to make things. The patterns move from big town scale patterns (e.g. The Distribution of Towns, Magic of the City, Web of Shopping, Nine per Cent Parking), via medium building scale patterns (e.g. Wings of Light, Intimacy Gradient, Staircase as a Stage) to small construction scale patterns (e.g. Structure follows Social Spaces, Low Sill, Filtered Light, Different Chairs)."

So that book is now ordered -it's not available on Kindle.

Also this week I've been recommended The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization and have no need to actually buy this as the recommender lent me her copy. I just have to read it. On first glance it's got an interesting structure as each chapter is related to a role or persona e.g.The Hurdler, The Collaborator, the Cross-Pollinator who act as a perspective from which to view concepts of innovation. The fact that it is written by Thomas Kelley from IDEO, may make it more recommendable than if it had been authored by less of an industry celebrity, but I'll reserve judgment on that till I've actually read it.

Someone else recommended The Breakthrough Company: How Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers by Keith R. McFarland. I looked at this one on Amazon and was put off by the extraordinary bouncy meaningless language that tries to hook you in by being 'clever'. One chapter, for example, is titled "Enlisting Insultants", and another "Navigating the Business Bermuda Triangle". It will take some discipline on my part to actually take a look at the contents and not dismiss the book out of hand.

For me patterns of written language are strikingly important, I guess in a similar way that patterns of architectural language are important to Christopher Alexander.

What's the difference between an employee and a contractor employed by an organization to do work in that organization that no-one else is available or qualified to do?

In most organizations I have worked in the 'contractor' is a second class citizen, denied the rights and privileges of the 'employee' for example access to training programs, attendance at certain meetings, space to voice opinions, feedback on performance, and so on.

Why this is I am not sure, particularly since the contractor is, for the most part as committed to doing a good job for the organization as the employee (in many instance more committed than an employee because a contractor's status is that much more tenuous).

It seems to smack of a caste system that is not healthy for the organization. If it were a question of racial or gender 'second class' treatment of an employee it would not be tolerated. But the status of a contractor seems to foster an organizational attitude that such a person doesn't matter. This in spite of an organizational value set that typically includes words like 'respect' 'fairness', and 'valuing differences'.

Contractors are different from consultants who are afforded a certain respect (maybe because high fees seem to equate to organizational value). Contractors, on the other hand, do not get this respect but again I don't know why. What is the difference between a contractor and a consultant that gives rise to a different organizational treatment?

In an attempt to find out more on this I dug around the internet a bit. Some intriguing nuggets emerged. For example:

They are individuals from outside of the organization that perform services for the organization and are not subject to the various state and federal payroll withholding tax laws. Contractors and Consultants are more likely to be paid without a withholding and issued a federal tax form 1099 for any monies received. There are some 20 or so factors used by state and federal agencies, including the IRS, to determine which category, contractor — consultant — employee) an individual falls into.

There is some interesting guidance from UCSF Campus Procurement and Contracting "In a nutshell, Consultants provide advice, while Contractors "do" things." This website gives a useful table that further explains the distinctions between Contractor and Consultant:

OK so back to the question what's the difference between an employee and a contractor? Again it is an IRS distinction when considering independent contractors. However, the term 'contractor' is applied to people who are, in fact, employees but not of the organizations in which they are doing the work in. In this instance they are effectively 'leased out' by their actual employers for a period of time that may be defined or may be on a rolling contract. They may never visit their actual employer's site, and are effectively managed on a day to day basis by the leasing organization. This is not a comfortable spot to be in when trying to 'do' things in an organization that operates a caste system in which 'contractors' have a lower perceived status partly because they are thought to be taking jobs that should 'by right' go to an employee.

In my experience the finances of organizations are so muddled that it is quicker and easier to employ an ultimately more expensive contractor to do work than it is to hire an employee. This is mainly because the line items on the budget are different. Employees count as the dreaded 'headcount', while contractor spend comes out of some other pot of money and doesn't appear as headcount. Trying to get headcount is a virtually impossible task so why bother if you can get a contractor?

Rather than scapegoat contractors a different (better?) tack would be to change the organizational accounting system to make it easier to employ people on flexible contracts and thus avoid the need for contractors. An alternative approach would be to value everyone for the skills and expertise they bring to the organization and behave in a respectful, fair, and equal way toward them without making distinctions on their employment status.

The UK's Sunday Times, September 5, published an extract from my new book, Organisation Culture: Getting it Right. Here's what they printed (from Chapter 8):

Book Extract: Keep up with your company
Can culture be learnt? Naomi Stanford asks this question in an edited extract from her book, Organisation Culture

More than 40 years ago Edgar Schein of MIT Sloan School of Management made the point that the process of learning about an organisation "is so ubiquitous and we go through it so often during our total career, that it is all too easy to overlook it".

He continued with the observation that "there are constant resocialisation pressures" and these have an impact on the whole workforce. The pressures relate partly to the changes in society, partly to the flow of people into and out of an organisation, and partly to organisational decisions and choices.
This means that to function effectively within an organisation, all those who belong to it have to learn the culture and adapt as it changes. This is not surprising as culture develops through the interaction of people making sense of their world. To learn the culture well enough to fit in and get on, individuals have to demonstrate certain attributes. The most important are:

• A commitment to develop links with others through the establishment of networks, coalitions and friendships;

• Strong motivation and the skills to learn what is needed;
• Astute situational awareness and responsiveness, which require insight, subtlety, intuition and an informed perspective;
• The possession of values that match those of the organisation;
• An ability to align personal knowledge, experience, values and sense of importance with the organisation's values, goals and plans.

Organisation Culture (Profile Books) is available post-free for £10.99 from The Sunday Times Bookshop on 0845 271 2134 or thesundaytimes.co.uk/bookshop

Received wisdom suggests that today's workforce includes workers from four generations. A wave of generational research has classified these as Veterans (sometimes referred to as Traditionals, Matures or the silent generation), Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y (also known as Millennial), and generalized the characteristics of each generation. While the range of years used to define each group varies slightly depending on the source, a 2008 Conference Board report Shifting the focus: Updating your work-life approach to integrate employee engagement and talent management, May 2008 summarizes each generation as follows:

Veterans: born 1933-1945: Comprise 6% of US workforce: Characteristics: Work, work, work-and I'll work even more if you ask me.

Baby Boomers: born 1946-1964: Comprise 39% of US workforce. Characteristics: Place heavy emphasis on work and climbing the corporate ladder. Work is an anchor in their lives.

Generation X: born 1965-1976: Comprise 23% of US workforce: Characteristics:Work hard, but concerned about having a life outside of work.

Generation Y (Millennials): born 1977-1991: Comprise 28% of US workforce: Characteristics: Think they can work any time and any place. Believe they should be evaluated on the work produced, not on how, when, or where it got done. Want frequent and candid performance feedback.

In the workplace meeting the employment expectations of the generations often translates into:

a) Flexible working, with appropriate compensation, roles, and benefits, to accommodate the needs of different lifestyles, responsibilities, and age groups. For example, ASDA (a UK supermarket group) in a move to find a permanent solution to the perennial problem of recruiting and losing seasonal workers, ASDA created 10,000 new permanent positions for people looking to work as little as ten weeks of the year. The "Seasonal Squad" recruits are permanent ASDA employees but with a contract to work an annual, rather than weekly, number of hours. The jobs are designed to cover the busy times of the year like Christmas, Easter and the summer school holidays.

b) Education on working with generational differences. For example, Deloitte's Next Generation Initiatives is a case in point. In early 2006, the first in a series of in-house educational brochures about generational changes in the workplace, filled with think-tank research was circulated. In 2008 came the distribution of "Decoding Generational Differences: Fact, fiction … or should we just get back to work?" This specifically addresses working with Millennials.

c) Exploiting technologies to meet different working patterns and expectations e.g. virtual team working, working across time zones, working at home, technology know-how, and so on. New technologies are revolutionizing the way work can be done and is driving the 'consumerisation of IT' – that is the convergence of corporate and consumer technology Kendall Whitehouse, senior director of IT at Wharton, notes "that employees often perform personal tasks – like watching the latest popular video on YouTube or shopping at Amazon.com – at work and they frequently complete corporate tasks at home on their own time. Because those work-home lines have blurred, employees have an increasing say over what technologies they use. "

Whether or not you believe the generational differences arguments, and I am skeptical on these, it seems evident that work patterns are changing at least in the more mature markets. I wonder if there's a similar generational distinction in emerging markets – and if changing work patterns are attributed to this.

My weekly email from Science Daily arrived a few days ago. (Science Daily is daily but I get a weekly roll-up of the research posted). I always find it fascinating and this week's was no exception. What caught my eye was a piece titled "Long Term Use of Oral Bisphosphonates May Double Risk of Esophageal Cancer, Study Finds". It caught my eye because only six lines further down was another piece, this one titled "Drugs Used to Treat Osteoporosis [oral bisphosphonates] Not Linked With Higher Risk of Esophageal Cancer". I looked at both carefully in case they were different cuts on the same piece of research. The answer to that is no they weren't – at least as far as I could tell.

What this reinforced for me was that research presented as fact must always be carefully scrutinized. These two pieces of research seemed to reach very different conclusions. Note that I'm guessing here because I don't know how the research was conducted in either case. I'm just going by the headlines and the synopsis given in the two reports. What if both pieces were run in mainstream media – what are readers supposed to think? A likely question would be "Should I stop taking oral bisphosphonates?" The answer could be yes or no depending on which research report you were reading.

I felt a similar uneasiness when I was invited to complete a McKinsey survey on women in business. On completion I received one of their articles on the topic: "A business case for women" . The survey asked me for my views on a number of issues, for example this question:

Over the past five years, which specific measures, if any, has your company undertaken to recruit, retain, promote, and develop women?
(Select all that apply)


Programs to encourage female networking and role models

Visible monitoring by the CEO and the executive team of the progress in gender diversity programs

Support programs and facilities to help reconcile work and family life (e.g., childcare, spouse relocation)

Inclusion of gender diversity indicators in executives' performance reviews
Assessing indicators of the company's performance in hiring, retaining, promoting, and developing women

Systematic requirement that at least one female candidate be in each promotion pool

Gender-specific hiring goals and programs

Options for flexible working conditions (e.g., part-time programs) and/or locations (e.g., telecommuting)

Encouragement or mandates for senior executives to mentor junior women

Gender quotas in hiring, retaining, promoting, or developing women

Skill-building programs aimed specifically at women

Programs to smooth transitions before, during, and after parental leaves

Performance evaluation systems that neutralize the impact of parental leaves and/or flexible work arrangements

Other, please specify:

No specific measures

Now, I answered this in good faith but suppose I hadn't and had just randomly checked boxes? Who would be to know? What difference would it make to the solemn research report that is compiled from the completed surveys? Do the researchers build in a certain amount of flex for rogue answerers? What proportion of rogue answerers would be needed to make any research report invalid? Does a write up of a survey like this have any believability whatsoever?

I don't know the answers to any of these questions. But it does make me skeptical about the process. I'd like, at the very least, to see a note that a certain proportion of respondents will be contacted to get some qualitative input to the quantitative survey. The survey doesn't require respondents, or even invite them to, give contact information. But I'm guessing that some tracking mechanism enables McKinsey to see who in their database has responded.

Like the oral bisphosphonates reports research can find, or be interpreted to find, very different results. Making readers aware of the potential lack of validity, or limitations, of the claims would be helpful. These usually appear in academic research reports but often fail to make their way into popular write-ups of them.

I've been working with a business unit on redesigning their space. What is harder to get across is the notion that space redesign impacts other elements of the organizational system. In looking for ideas on how to guide the leaders into thinking about their unit as a system I dug out these five rules of thumb from my book on organization design:

1 Design when there is a compelling reason

Without a compelling reason to design it will be very difficult to get people behind any initiative and engaged in it. Business jargon talks about 'the burning platform' needed to drive major change. Part of a decision to design rests on making a very strong, strategic, widely accepted business case for it – based on the operating context. If there is no business case for design or redesign it is not going to work.

2 Develop options to before deciding on design
Scenarios or simulations can help to develop options. Mapping the workflow and identifying the impact the context and circumstances have on it give clues on whether design is necessary or whether some other interventions will be effective. Storytelling is another powerful technique to develop thinking on whether a new design is really necessary: ask people to tell stories about the work itself, about the nature of the work how to do it better, and whether to do it at all.

Using a range of methods helps decide at a tactical level whether organisation design work makes sense or whether the issues can be addressed by other approaches (for example technical skills training).

3 Choose the right time to design
Design work is undertaken in a dynamic environment in which the organization, like a gyroscope, needs to be kept both stable and moving. Choosing the right time to intentionally design is a matter of judgment. However, for organisational change to be successful it is necessary to:

• establish a sense of urgency (the 'burning platform' previously mentioned)
• form what John Kotter calls a powerful 'guiding coalition': that is a group of people with enough power and influence to lead the organisation through the design
• create a picture of the redesigned organisation in vivid terms that people will recognise and want to be part of (or can decide not to be part of – in this case plan to help them exit gracefully).

4 Look for clues that things are out of alignment
Assuming that there are frequent and regular measures of business results look for clues that things are out of alignment. In Gore's case they already know that when unit size gets to more than 150 people issues arise, innovation is lost, and associates stop seeing the whole picture. Organisation blog sites are a good source of clues about organizational misalignment, as are the types of rumors or gossip flows that circulate as people talk with each other.

Lack of current alignment is a good signal for design work. On the other hand if things are aligned then there is usually no reason to initiate design work. (It is resource intensive and disruptive even when going well).

5 Stay alert to the future
That said, identifying that things are currently aligned is not a cause for complacency. The context is constantly shifting and this requires an alert, continuous, and well executed environmental scanning. Organisations must live with the possibility that they will have to do design work at any point, so should take steps to build a culture where change, innovation, and forward thinking are welcomed. Gore's current situation speaks to this point

But a $1.6 billion company can't run on hope. Gore's next big challenge is to keep up its double-digit growth rate even as it gets bigger. As Gore grows from nearly 7,000 employees to 14,000 and then 21,000, it must continue to invent ways to protect its people from the harsh outside elements, even as it lets their big and creative ideas breathe — and prosper. That means venturing into the hazards of the greater world, where Gore might find it difficult to safeguard its unusual [innovative] culture. It means teaming up with giants like GM, the quintessential hierarchical organisation. It means expanding overseas to tap new markets and new sources of talent.

Gore has been a successful business since 1958. Even so, would it be safe to bet that the company is consciously considering how it should be designed for continuing and future success?

"Emerging" is a word that's I'm hearing a lot right now (emerging leaders, emerging change, emerging strategy, emerging markets, etc) and one that I'm not sure about – this uncertaining is has been highlighted by having just come from a conversation centered on "emerging technologies". It left me wondering – What is 'emerging'? What are these technologies? What, if any are the connections between the various emergings – for example, do more emerging technologies come from emerging markets than from mature markets?

Going back to basics, 'emerging' means "to come forth into view or notice, as from concealment or obscurity" so when yesterday, I was discussing "emerging markets" I meant markets that were coming into view i.e. people were beginning to take notice of them for various reasons. And like the 'emerging markets' there are 'emerging technologies' i.e. those ones that are beginning to hit the mainstream and become noticed.

MIT's Technology Review lists 10 for 2010 and links to the ones showcased in previous years. The ones listed for 2010 are:

1. Real time search
2. Social TV
3. Mobile 3-D
4. Green concrete
5. Engineered stem cells
6. Implantable electronics
7. Solar fuel
8. Dual action antibodies
9. Cloud programming
10. Light-trapping photovoltaics

Out of curiosity I looked at the ones listed for 2001:

Brain-Machine Interface | Flexible Transitors | Data Mining | Digital Rights Management | Biometrics | Natural Language Processing | Microphotonics | Untangling Code | Robot Design | Microfluidics

Unfortunately I wasn't expert enough to gauge how many of these 2001 ten have 'emerged', how many are still 'emerging' and how many have sunk without trace. Also it begs the question of how long can something be judged as 'emerging' – robot design, for example, must be something that is continually emerging at least at this stage in the robot game. And if this is the case why doesn't it remain on the list? Or is there a scale of emergence – something can only be on the emerging list if it is at a certain point on an undefined maturity curve?

A further part of the discussion on emerging technologies was the question of government policies related to these. Hmm – if it's an emerging technology does it require a fully fledged policy or an emerging policy? At what stage in emergence does a technology require a policy, and more importantly why does it? There may not be much point in developing a highly engineered policy for a technology that doesn't go anywhere. How easy is it to judge which technology is going to require a government policy or is it possible to have a kind of blanket emerging technologies policy? If so what would it cover?

I looked at the Technology Policy Institute website this seems to deal in discrete technology areas that have recognizably emerged e.g. broadband, internet governance rather than a blanket policy. This makes it easier to formulate a policy around them because they're more understood. However, the danger of thinking this way is that in setting a policy it potentially stymies the continuing emergence of that particular technology. Policies tend to hamper innovation.

So where this whole discussion got me was to a point of thinking about tests of emerging technologies, when they pass reach a certain test score then a policy might be worth considering. Tests could be on the lines of questions:

Is this technology potentially damaging or harmful from what we can see now e.g. engineered stem cells
Is this technology likely to cause conflict between nations e.g. digital rights management
Is this technology likely to result in interoperability issues e.g. mobile 3D
Etc.

Where the technology had a 'yes' score of x then a policy should be considered (but only if there is a compelling and well understood/accepted rationale for the policy).

So no concluding thought beyond look for clues about when and why considering a technology policy for a particular technology might or might not be prudent whether a blanket 'emerging technologies' policy might be worth further thought.

Someone just asked me about organization development in emerging markets. Is it the same as in more mature markets? What are the differences? Are new models of organization development emerging from the emerging markets? I thought these were a bunch of interesting questions – particularly since I am facilitating some organization development programs in China. The person asking me wanted me to write a technical report on this topic specifically as it related to retail banking (in emerging markets).

So there's a challenge. First of all I only had a hazy idea of what constituted an 'emerging market'. A bit of digging around suggested that there are different numbers depending on who you're asking. The listings of the World Bank, The FTSE Group, Dow Jones, and Economist all have some countries in common and some different and the numbers of countries on each range from 21 – 35. So that makes it difficult to begin with. Beyond that the World Bank and The FTSE Group strata their listings. The FTSE Group, for example "distinguishes between Advanced and Secondary Emerging markets on the basis of their national income and the development of their market infrastructure. The Advanced Emerging markets are classified as such because they are Upper Middle Income GNI countries with advanced market infrastructures or High Income GNI countries with lesser developed market infrastructures."

Second there's the whole question of what OD is. I've just submitted an article for publication called 'What's the Matter with OD?' I suggest three things are the matter with it – there's no standard, accepted definition. There is no unifying, underpinning theory. And there is no way of consistently and reliably evaluating any OD 'intervention'. So from taking these three together one gets the impression that OD is a phantom – it's not something that lends itself to easy comparison in different markets (or even the same market).

So how would I tackle a piece about OD in emerging markets? Well there are several possibilities. What I'm interested in knowing before I make any commitment to writing a piece of this complexity is who is the target audience, and why would they want to read such a report. So I'm looking through my contacts lists to find people I have met in that precise sector. (Retail banks in emerging markets) to find out if they would be interested in learning more on the topic.

Meanwhile, in a timely way, I also received this week an invitation to speak at a conference in South Africa (one of the emerging markets on all lists but an "advanced emerging market" on the FTSE Group list.) It's from Amabhubesi Conferencing who is holding an Organization Design and Development Summit in November 2010. The Summit is scheduled to take place on 24 & 25 November and will be held at Sothern Sun Grayston Hotel, Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa. The organizers are expecting delegates from the public and private sectors from a range of countries including South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zambia. And they note that "Sometimes we do get delegates from as far as Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria."

So, it looks to me as if I might be persuaded to write this report. I'm reminding myself of the phrase I like. "When I see what I do, I'll know what I want", or the variation of it "When I hear what I say, I'll know what I think".