Month: November 2010

Day 2 of the Organization Development program raised a lot more questions from the participants. The deep interest in the topic from the group members is fantastic, and really caused me to think more about the content of the program. Three questions I thought might merit a whole session in any revised version were:

How do you get OD work as an internal consultant? Oddly, this question was raised by a colleague of mine a couple of weeks ago. What the questioner wanted to know was should he wait for line managers to call him because they had a problem or opportunity that they thought he could help them with, or should he go out into the organization and actively search for work. And if the latter how do you do this?

My tack has always been to go out and search for work within the organization myself on the basis that if I find work, and do a good job, then others will hear about this and I will eventually get called on. And, in the course of events, this has been what happens. Opening this up to general discussion we talked about the skills of marketing, and selling OD services within and organization and the type of knowledge you'd have to have to be convincing and credible.

Oddly marketing skills are not one of the competences commonly associated with internal OD consultants. The CIPD HR Profession Map does not mention them, although they are mentioned in the OD Network's list of competences as follows:

MARKETING
An effective organization development (OD) practitioner can . . .
1. Be aware of systems wanting to change
2. Be known to those needing you
3. Match skills with potential client profile
4. Convey qualifications in a credible manner
5. Quickly grasp the nature of the system
6. Determine appropriate decision makers
7. Determine appropriate processes

The next thing the group came up with as a necessary competence was a deep knowledge of the business: its operating context, the pressures and constraints it faces, the opportunities it could seize, and so on. It's unfortunate that many OD consultants lack this business savvy coming typically from a background in HR, learning and development, or social sciences. But in this case the CIPD's HR Profession Map is clear that this is a required competence, whereas the OD Network's list is silent on business savvy.

So the CIPD tells us that an OD consultant must:

Know how the organisation makes money, how it is structured, who its competitors and customers are and how the teams work together to optimise performance, and is conversant with the range of products and services provided by the organisation.

Have a good understanding of the organisation's strategy, performance goals and drivers, and understands the sector in which the organisation operates and the market factors that impact performance, including customers, competitors, and so on.

Have a deep understanding of the organisation's strategy, performance goals and drivers and understands the sector in which the organisation operates and the market factors that impact performance, including customers, competitors, globalisation, demographics, and so on.

Understand and speak the 'language of the business'

Realizing these two skills – marketing and business savvy – are essential to developing credibility, participants wanted to know how to develop them. I remember years ago when I worked at Prudential going on a sales course (I won't go into the sales v marketing discussion) – one that the Prudential sales force took – and learning a lot from that. So taking a course is one option. Discussing this with the group one of them came up with an action to get herself seconded to a sales team for a three month period so she learn what it was all about.

A related question to "How do you get work?" was "How do you sell the concepts and practical value of organization development to skeptical line managers?" This question is one that is hard to answer and even when you think you know how to do it can be a hard sell (even with good selling skills!) as OD work is very rarely measured or evaluated in ways that make business sense, or that are expressed in return on investment terms. Any pitch that doesn't include some reference to financial reward is likely to fall on deaf ears as this example, I came across later in the day from the REEB Mobility Marketing Playbook illustrates

Corporate real estate says to BU Manager

1.We will redesign your floor plan to create new collaborative synergies!
2. We'll cater our approach to your needs!
3. We'll help you relax constraining policies on who works where and when!
4. You'll enjoy better talent attraction and retention among the new generation of workers!

BU Manager hears
Your workspace will be disrupted by a serious remodeling effort.
2. We'll disguise our one-size-fits-all model.
3. We're going to introduce anarchy into your employee management.
4. We're going to install a couple of football tables and some funky lamps.

So two things to consider putting into any revamped Organization Development program, which might mean cutting out something that's currently in there. I've got time to think about this as the next program isn't till sometime next year.

Today was day one of a two-day training program on organization development (OD) that I'm facilitating in Shanghai. There are thirty-five participants in the room all with varying levels of skills and knowledge about organization development and also varying English language proficiencies. I find it a difficult call to design these because I have to make a number of decisions related to the following questions:

How much content should be theory and how much practice?
Participants want case studies, tools, and practical tips, and at the same time they want to know why definitions of OD have a 'science' bent, for example:

"Organization development is a system-wide application of behavioral science knowledge to the planned development and reinforcement of organizational strategies, structures, and processes for improving an organization's effectiveness." Cummings, T.G, and Worley, C.G. (2005)

And having seen a definition like this, they want to know what a 'system' is. Both these queries relate to some theories of organization development. Then there's the question of the various lenses through which organizations can be viewed. One of my favorite books on this is Images of Organization, by Gareth Morgan, with his discussions of organizations as machines, organisms, brains, psychic prisons, political systems, cultures, as flux and transformation, as instruments of domination, but that's not really a practitioner guide, more an academic treatise. And anyway, I wonder if the time is right for a different set of images of organization given the numbers of new business models and the advances in technology since Morgan first wrote the book.

What aspects of OD should I concentrate on? There are many possibilities on this:
In the two days available should I look at the OD practitioner's role, skills, competences, and what a typical day in the life of an OD consultant is like. Indeed, is there a typical day, and is there a distinction between being a 'OD practitioner' and an 'OD consultant'.

Alternatively we could cover the role of OD in an organization compared with the role of HR, and where OD should 'sit' and who should 'own' it, all hot potatoes.

Another possibility is to consider various OD methods and approaches, both soft and hard e.g. appreciative inquiry, action research, Future Search, World Café, lean techniques, and process improvements.

What level shall I pitch at? The UK's Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, in its HR Profession Map conveniently considers four bands of OD practitioner. Should I make some assumptions about the participants' levels of skills and knowledge? Even with pre course questionnaires this is a tricky one. Some of the participants here are senior HR Directors tasked with introducing OD into their organizations – OD being in the early stages of appearance in Chinese companies. They may not ultimately be involved in OD interventions but managing people who are. Equally there are usually people in the group who may be relatively junior in the organization and are wondering whether and how to make OD their career path.

How much should I cover the future of OD? Given that it's a relatively new concept in China, I wonder how much I should be talking about how OD is practiced in well established predominantly western multinationals, and how much I should be encouraging discussion and thought about how it could develop as a very different discipline in emerging market companies, and what roles the people participating in the Shanghai program could take in giving OD a radically different look. But then I wonder how I would do this given my western experience, assumptions, knowledge, and perspectives. (I guess I could treat it as an OD intervention itself). It seems plausible that if emerging markets can leapfrog for example from virtually no telecoms to massive cell phone use without having the legacies of wired phone systems, then they could leapfrog traditional theories and methods about how to effectively develop organizations. (And, indeed, I think that would be healthy). The HR Profession map does not, for example, mention OD practitioners needing competencies in triple bottom line, sustainability, social media, or virtual organizations – all aspects that I think they need proficiency in.

So as I wonder about today I'm starting to think if and how I would design the program differently next time. I'd like to involve today's participants in shaping something that provided a real challenge to current thinking on OD but at the same time built their confidence and skills in their current roles as OD consultants – which is what most of them are looking for.

One of the rules of thumb for change agents is 'never work uphill'. I mentioned this to someone who I was talking with last week who in a general conversation said how upset she was that there was massive change going on in her department, no-one at her level knew what was going on, rumor was rife, and when she'd asked her manager what the story was she'd been told that it was not a discussable topic with people below a certain grade.

She did not know that I had several conversations with the head of her department during the summer. What he wanted to do was change the way the physical space was used in order to accommodate a large team of people (80) coming to work on a long-term project, and to establish a physical and on-line library for shared documents and materials. When I told her she asked why I hadn't been able to do something to make the Department Head's approach more effective.

At the time his plan was to do this without commandeering more space than he had, although this was an option but would incur costs. When I first talked to him he was enthusiastic about the possibilities of encouraging people to work differently, to telework more, to share space, and to give up having their own copies of things when they could access them from a physical and an on-line library.

My suggestions to him included involving all the staff – about 200 – in helping decide how the space should be used, how they would work differently, and what would make a smooth transition to doing this. I volunteered to run some lunchtime sessions to start an engagement and communication process. Following these first few meetings nothing happened from his side to start down this path in terms of dates, or agreement with the outline I sent for the sessions. So then I suggested coming to his all-staff meeting the first week of September to give an overview of the upcoming change and the participation process. He agreed to this, only to cancel the day before, saying they now had too much on the agenda.

At that point I sent him an email saying that alarm bells were ringing for me, and if he continued down the path of changing things without involving the staff he would be likely to have disastrous results. He didn't reply to this. And invoking the rule of 'never work uphill'. I moved on to other things.

So, I was not surprised to hear that things were not going well. Learning more about what was going on I saw a catalogue of failure centered around belief that leaders make the right choices, that engaging staff in decision making is not necessary, and that people will do what leaders tell them to do.

This brought to mind an article I read years ago in the Harvard Business Review Reaching and Changing Frontline Employees, by T. J. Larkin and Sandar Larkin. It's a bit dated now (no mention of social media) but the messages are enduring. In it they say:

Not communicating to employees during major organizational change is the worst mistake a company can make. Consider the conclusions from three important studies on communication during mergers and acquisitions: In periods of high stress and uncertainty, people fill communication voids with rumors; rumors end up attributing the worst possible motives to those in control; and communication lowers employees' stress and anxiety even when the news is bad. In other words, uncertainty is more painful than bad news.

The authors go on to talk about

"the astonishing speed with which rumors spread in large companies. But how? Who schedules the rumor meetings? Without temps and overtime, how do employees find time to pass on the rumor? Who prints the rumors onto overhead transparencies? And where are the trainers providing supervisors with refresher courses in rumor-communication skills?

The truth is there, but we refuse to see it. Corporate videos, publications, and meetings don't move information through companies; they inhibit it. The most effective way to communicate is informally, face-to-face, one-on-one. The problem with rumors is their inaccuracy. That is why face-to-face communication must be grounded in fact and in print. But understand this about rumors: The transmission method is perfect."

So when I walked up to the department and happened to bump into the head I asked him how things were going. His terse response was 'they could be better'. When I suggested that we could discuss taking some remedial action now he said that 'it's all happening this week'.

My choices in this situation? Three things come immediately to mind:

1. Invoke the lesson 'never work uphill'
2. Work with the person I was talking with and see if she can influence from an insider – albeit not a senior management – position
3. Offer to come back in three months and see what everyone has learned from the exercise.

Other suggestions would be welcome.

POST SCRIPT: The day after posting this I heard that the head of department had cancelled this week's scheduled whole department staff meeting.

Yesterday was my day for thinking about space andorganizational performance. First, I listened to a webinar hosted by the Real Estate Executive Board. It was called the Headquarter Relocation Strategy Playbook and billed as:

"Another addition to REEB's collection of playbooks; this teleconference lays out a road map on the best way to tackle a headquarter relocation. Filled with case studies, actionable tools, and time-saving templates, this playbook should be your first stop when creating your own internal strategy."

Did it live up to the billing? I thought it was worth the hour spent on it, although the presenter galloped through the ten steps and 70 slides without a pause – skipping over several 'in the interests of time'. However, the material is available and my question after the webinar was answered within the hour.

The message of the webinar was that Corporate Read Estate (CRE) has long been associated with 'facilities' and the price per square foot of property, but in the playbook Richard Evans, Director, Worldwide Real Estate, GlaxoSmithKline plc is quoted as saying

"Now, we have the opportunity to help the business determine its strategic direction. The challenge is developing the right framework to engage the business on the right considerations."

And it was refreshing to see and hear throughout the webinar stakeholder maps, engagement and communication strategies, and change management techniques along with several good case studies and pointers towards further information on the topic of space planning and business performance

Later in the day I was sent a presentation on a similar topic "Workforce & Workspace Sustainability" in which the presenter made the point that

"Real Estate plays a key role in the performance relationship between how buildings work and work performance."

He went on to say that

The foundation of this is the information utility, or the next generation building information network. In addition to the plumbing, piping, and wiring in your building, we now add a single, secure, common collaboration and communications platform to the fabric of a building. Not much unlike the other utilities, we lay the groundwork to design and install systems that will interact with and communicate over this one IP network. A single, secure communications and collaboration platform helps to make the user more productive while intensifying the use of your real estate. By converging and providing among other technologies, high speed internet, telephony, visitor management (remote receptionist), audio and video conferencing, web-conferencing, rich media, and digital signage, one can support collaboration and productivity of the workforce and users of the building."

This interaction between physical building and present/mobile workforce members is possible because the newer 'pipework' and other techonologies are converging to make the way space is used an integral part of delivery of the business strategy.

Cisco is one of the leaders in this field – both itself practicing what it preaches, and pioneering in the arena of work space and work performance strategies. Fast Company reported in February 2010 that Cisco had been appointed to become:

New Songdo's exclusive supplier of digital plumbing. More than simply installing routers and switches — or even something so banal as citywide Wi-Fi — Cisco is expected to wire every square inch of the city with synapses. From the trunk lines running beneath the streets to the filaments branching through every wall and fixture, it promises this city will "run on information." Cisco's control room will be New Songdo's brain stem.

New Songdo is a city being built from scratch in South Korea.

"It has been hailed since conception as the experimental prototype community of tomorrow. A green city, it was LEED-certified from the get-go, designed to emit a third of the greenhouse gases of a typical metropolis its size (about 300,000 people during the day). It's an "international business district" and an "aerotropolis" — a Western-oriented city more focused on the airport and China beyond than on Seoul."

Looking at the website it's clear that the city is being planned to exemplify the interactions of physical space with new collaborative and other technologies. Exciting times for space planners and another milestone in the march towards utopia. Let's hope that the outcome of both new ways of office planning and of city planning in fact have positive outcomes for citizens. It twill take time before we know whether these approaches work or whether Jane Jacobs would turn over in her grave and pick up cudgels again.

NOTE Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) "was an urban writer and activist who championed new, community-based approaches to planning for over 40 years. Her 1961 treatise, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, became perhaps the most influential American text about the inner workings and failings of cities".

Wednesday (yesterday) seems to have been my day for thinking about leadership. I had brushes with ideas on leadership during the day. The first was with someone with whom I was discussing possible reasons for organizational inertia. The second was with someone who was perplexed that people in the organization kept saying that they couldn't act because they didn't have the right level of leadership support. The third was an email that invited me to a lunchtime discussion on "Courage – The Essential Leadership Competency". The fourth was a piece of writing the author had sent me titled "Leadership in the Petaclasm" with his response to my response on that piece. So I'll take a brief look at each of the four pieces in turn.

Possible reasons for organizational inertia are, in the view of the person I was talking with, due to difficulties in communication between the top, middle, and bottom layers of an organization. She mentioned Barry Oshry's work on "Tops, Middles, and Bottoms", a notion that is developed in his article Total System Power and in an article on his website, Silo Breakthroughs: Creating a Powerful Middle Team, written by Marcia Hyatt, and Ginny Belden-Charles. In this article the authors:

"Examine the "middle space" in organizations. "Middles" in a system are those who are in the middle of the hierarchy or those caught between conflicting demands. The ones in an organization who experience this the most are the management layers between top executives and front line workers. In some systems this could mean 4-8 layers of management. They look at the conditions that exist in the middle and the common systemic patterns that these conditions create.

Failing to act without the 'right level of leadership support' seems to me to be a symptom of fear of failure in a punitive hierarchy typical of government bureaucracies. In a refreshing article in Government Executive, Martha Johnson, Administrator, GSA, rejects

'the "great man on top" theory, in which an omniscient leader issues directives from on high. In the age of social media, Johnson says that strategy "just doesn't work anymore." "People can be in connection with each other now in a way that we always used to control in our silos," she says. "With information technology, everyone shares everyone's ideas. Leading as if you're controlling doesn't work; it's just sheer arrogance to think you can." Her view is that "We have to learn to take risks, and perhaps fail, but fail fast, fail forward and fail fruitfully."

Given that taking risks requires courage it was timely that I learned from the flyer on the lunchtime seminar "Courage – The Essential Leadership Competency" that there are six types of courage. The seminar is led by Paul Deeprose who wrote an article on these. He talks about:

The Courage to Believe: Have the courage to aim high and embrace the positive challenges you will undoubtedly face.

The Courage to Innovate: "Courage disposes people not to just think outside the box, but to live outside the box." Try new things!

The Courage to Speak Up: Express opinions, give feedback and trust your judgement. You have unique talents; share them.

The Courage to Trust: Be trusting first, don't force people to earn your trust. Relax your control; trust that others are capable and want to do a good job. Work with integrity, humility, openness and honesty.

The Courage to Make Mistakes: Too few mistakes highlights complacency. Try things, make mistakes and learn from them.

The Courage to Take Action: Step over the line, build safety nets and the joy of success will far outweigh the fear of failure.

Once we have courageous leaders at the top, middle, and bottom will they be capable of Leadership in the Petaclasm? Only, if I'm reading Nigel Cameron correctly, if they have the additional characteristic of being a bridge builder and importantly:

First, a bridge to the future. And the faster change takes place, the more central this becomes. That is to say, leadership that is both innovative and constantly embracing of innovation.

Second, a bridge across the silos, disciplines, communities; a networking that draws on ever more diverse sources in the midst of the data deluge and the growing inter-connectedness. Leadership through innovation through networks of knowledge.

So yesterday brought lots of leadership stuff to think about and I'm now working through the patterns that are beginning to emerge. A project that came my way later in the day was one where the department was described as having been leaderless for years, and the task of the newly appointed leader was to fix what was broken and get the department to high performance and high customer satisfaction as quickly as possible. Paying attention to the middles, enabling them to act without deferring to him, showing courage, recognizing the value of knowledge networks and developing capability to work with a mindset that is future looking not hindsight looking could be a sensible way forward.

I get the Merriam Webster word of the day every day and find that some I know and some I don't. Most weeks I learn a few new words but rarely keep them long enough in my memory to use them in speech or writing.

This week I've come across new words in emails sent to me. First is copacetic (everything is ok) and the other is TMI (textspeak for Too Much Information) both I had to look up. I mentioned copacetic to someone and he instantly said it was the title of a 'rubbish song'. So I then had to look that up and found that

"Copacetic is an album by Velocity Girl, an American indie rock band formed in 1989 in College Park, Maryland, although it was generally known as a Washington, DC-area band. The band released three albums before splitting up in 1996."

Moving to a new organization brings a sudden vocabulary increase since every organization has not only a host of acronyms but usually a set of commonly used phrases or technical jargon that is specific to that organization.

One of the things I've noticed in my current organization is the punitive language that seems to stop people doing things. They are afraid of being 'written up', or 'rebuked', or 'reprimanded'. They don't want to make decisions without consulting their 'supervisor', and they ask each other 'who is your supervisor?'.

Not only that they describe each other in terms of level in the system. 'She's a grade xxx', or 'He can't have that information because he's only a grade yyy.' The preoccupation with management and hierarchy seems to preclude any hope of 'decision making at the lowest level', 'empowerment', or 'taking initiative' which is what other organizations look for from their staff. And which we are now seeking from our staff.

So would changing the language of the organization change the system, or would changing the system change the language, or would doing both (plus other things) need to happen simultaneously if things were to change. Going back to text messaging – the technology changed the language, because it's quicker to type in shorthand than whole words. Now people use text style shorthand in emails, SMS messages, and other quick written exchanges with people. I find myself doing it – and the language of texting is changing the way people use language and symbols. (I can't bring myself to use emoticoms or similar symbols yet).

I was discussing organizational language use today with someone and suggested that we try collapsing the grades from the current 21 to something more in the order of 5. Without the all the grade numbers people wouldn't be able to talk the same way. On this topic, sitting on my bookshelf is a book I haven't yet read that I bought earlier this year – a time when I was also mulling over the notions of language and work. It's called How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation and it's by Robert Kegan, and Lisa Laskow Lahey. The editorial review of the book on Amazon says that:

"Language is the primary tool by which we communicate. Kegan and Lahey argue, though, that the words we use do more than represent feelings and attitudes. The very choice itself of one word or expression over another can determine feelings and attitudes and–most importantly–actions."

So I'm now thinking that I will start a conscious attempt to change the language of the organization (I'll read the book first!). Simultaneously I'll lobby to collapse the grade structure to see if that moves us away from punitive language towards more equitable language. I've already – a few months ago – started to change the language a bit by getting the word 'transformation' to supersede the word 'modernization' in the wide-ranging project that I'm involved in; but even changing that one word has proved an uphill battle. I haven't yet managed to change the word 'reprimand' to 'praise' but when I do maybe everything will be copacetic.

Already this week I've been involved in two meetings that had a similar outcome – they required a proposal or strategy to be written on a business issue: telework take up, and building governance. Simultaneously I have been assigned some PhD learners by the university where I teach. They are wrestling with how to write a decent proposal that will take them to the point on their PhD journey.

In thinking about how to guide the PhD students I pulled out a paper written a couple of years ago by a faculty member I have worked with – Dr John Latham. He wrote a paper Building Bridges Between Researchers and Practitioners: A Collaborative Approach to Research in Performance Excellence Which describes a collaborative approach initiated by the Monfort Institute at the University of Northern Colorado to engage high-level practitioners of performance excellence and academic researchers to a) identify the external and internal dilemmas facing practitioners in high-performing organizations; b) develop a purposeful research agenda that addresses both the needs and interests of practitioners and researchers; and c) develop a concept of operations to address the research agenda.

What I found useful about the piece is that in it he identifies criteria that if met would result in quality research. But the criteria are equally applicable to business proposals. Organizational practitioners identified 10 criteria for quality research:

1. Content-New or profound information and best practices versus incremental knowledge in a narrow topic.
2. Readability-New knowledge presented in a language that they can understand that is fully deployable to all employees in the organization.
3. Utility-Actionable information that will help practitioners close gaps in performance, exceed customer expectations, and help sustain the organization in turbulent times.
4. Transferability-New knowledge needs to be transferable across the organization and ideally across industry sectors. The corollary to this requirement in research is the concept of generalizability.
5. Credibility-The depth of scholarship, including analysis and supporting data, is sufficient to inspire confidence and implementation of the new knowledge (Baldridge, Floyd, and Markoczy 2004). Part of the credibility is transparency on sponsorship and funding sources.
6. Timely-New knowledge and information needs to be accessible in time to address real-world problems and challenges and ideally in time to create a competitive advantage.
7. Access-Easy access to new knowledge and information available in multiple media and formats.
8. Benefits-There should be a clear connection between the new knowledge and information and organization results and overall success.
9. Involvement-Practitioners should be involved throughout the research process. As the practitioners put it, "Don't ask for our problems and data and then toss the research findings over the wall." The corollary to this in organizational change is the notion that resistance to change decreases as the involvement of the key stakeholders increases (Beckhard and Harris 1987).
10. Dissemination-Present new knowledge and information at public forums such as the annual NIST Quest for Excellence and make the new knowledge available to the public.

Not only did the practitioners identify a comprehensive list of what success is, they also succinctly described what success is not. According to the practitioners success is "not academic arcane language in some obscure journal."

Academic researchers identified three key factors for success:

1. Access to data-Access to good data and cooperation from participating organizations.
2. Dissemination-Successful dissemination of new knowledge via multiple channels including high quality academic journal articles, top practitioner journals, conferences, and workshops.
3. Interesting-Broaden the interest in the research topic with graduate students and academic colleagues both within and outside the particular discipline. The requirement for the research to be "interesting" is consistent with the definition of research proposed by Baldridge, Floyd, and Markoczy (2004, 1065) "interesting based on the extent to which it challenges assumptions or extends knowledge…."

Latham notes that:

The combined key success factors identified by the practitioners and academic researchers are consistent with the notion that research has a dual purpose of application to practice and advancing theory.

I encourage readers interested in organizational research (academic and practitioner) to read the full article.

Last week was curious in that I stumbled across all sorts of stuff that will be useful in my work with clients. But what I noticed was that the stumbling was entirely random. How would I know, for example, that the BlackBerry polling system that I wrote about was available unless I happened to be sitting in that particular session where it was being used.

How do people get to hear about stuff that is potentially useful? How do they squirrel it away for the time when it might be? I read somewhere (where???) about a pen that when you write in one language speaks in another. OK so I am going to Shanghai next week a pen that does that would be very useful now I come to think about it. How do I find out where I read about it?

Well, in this case, it wasn't too difficult as I remembered reading it in a particular room in a house I was visiting at the time. A quick call to my host and I got the information. It was James Fallows, writing in The Atlantic about the LiveScribe pen It has many features:

"For instance: a translator that lets you write out "One coffee, please" and have the results read out in Mandarin, Spanish, etc. A calculator that lets you write out a math problem and click on it for the answer. And what I think of as a notebook orchestra: you sketch a crude grid representing eight keys on a piano and it becomes a music synthesizer, letting you tap out tunes and hear them "played" by piano, steel drums, or other instruments."

I took at look at the LiveScribe website. It has apps for the pen that translate, but not into Mandarin which is what I want. But I have an ordinary paper phrasebook so maybe a translating pen is not what I want to add to my inventory of two BlackBerries (home and work), two laptops (ditto), one i-pad (work experiment), one Bose Headset, one webcam device (because it's not integral to either laptop), one i-pod (before I got the i-pad), one Kindle (also before I got the i-pad), and one headset for when my laptop is a softphone.

However, I've emailed LiveScribe to see if the Mandarin app is hidden somewhere else on the site, and I'm mulling over whether a talking/recording pen would make all the difference to my life.

But how would I have known about the talking pen unless I happened to chance across The Atlantic? I'm curious because I had a longish discussion in an organization design workshop I was facilitating about how do organizations know what trends are out there that they need to be cognizant about and be flexible and adaptable enough to meet? Or can an organization be designed to be adaptable enough to meet anything? Is that what we mean by 'sustainable'?

Someone suggested the notion of organizational 'scouts' – a different take on 'futurology' which is somehow more purposeful in its searching. Scouts would just be looking out for potentially interesting, useful, or otherwise valuable information from random sources that the scouts just happened upon. So I looked up 'organizational scouts' and got a lovely selection of information related to the Boy and Girl Scouts of America. Clearly the notion of an 'organizational scout' is a new one more closely aligned to the definition of scout as "someone who can find paths through unexplored territory" but in this case the first taks is to look for the unexplored territory.

Pursuing the notion of organizational scout as a real job I looked at an email that I'd just received. "My boss has asked me to write a job description for the … role with a view to establish how much time will be required for each task in the job description and then establish how many people we will need in this role.

Have you come across a formula of some sort that can size a job with a view of how many people will be required to do it?"

If you fitted the words 'organizational scout' in front of the word 'role' would that work to find someone to fit the role? I don't think so. The whole notion of an organizational scout is about innovation, making random connections, and so on. Maybe it's time not only to revisit organizational roles but also organizational processes like job sizing. How else will organizations be able to handle random information that any scouts they have bring back because they think it is worth a second look?