"it is unacceptable not to share what you know"

Karl Fisch, Colorado educator (and creator of 2006's way-gone-viral Did you know? education-shift presentation) has a look at the surprising goings-on on at Cisco. He directs his editorial comments/questions to fellow teachers and administrators, but they're relevant to anyone lost in the tactical weeds of their particular profession and, perhaps burdened by the "Walk before we can run" managerial mindset. From the TheFischbowl:

The December/January issue of Fast Company has an interesting article on Cisco and its CEO John Chambers. Here are some lengthy excerpts (emphasis added by me).

He has been taking Cisco through a massive, radical, often bumpy reorganization. The goal is to spread the company’s leadership and decision making far wider than any big company has attempted before, to working groups that currently involve 500 executives. This move, Chambers says, reflects a new philosophy about how business can best work in a networked world. “In 2001, we were like most high-tech companies, with one or two primary products that were really important to us,” he explains. “All decisions came to the top 10 people in the company, and we drove things back down from there.” Today, a network of councils and boards empowered to launch new businesses, plus an evolving set of Web 2.0 gizmos – not to mention a new financial incentive system – encourage executives to work together like never before. Pull back the tent flaps and Cisco citizens are blogging, vlogging, and virtualizing, using social-networking tools that they’ve made themselves and that, in many cases, far exceed the capabilities of the commercially available wikis, YouTubes, and Facebooks created by the kids up the road in Palo Alto.

Cisco is moving from “me” to “we.” What about your district? Your school? Your classroom?

An avowed Republican (and a cochair of John McCain’s presidential campaign), Chambers politely ignored my observation that Cisco’s new regimen feels a bit like a socialist revolution. But Chambers did kick off the analyst conference with a slide that read, COLLABORATION: “CO-LABOR”; WORKING TOWARD A COMMON GOAL. In language and spirit, Chamber’s transformation is a mashup of radical isms and collectivist catchphrases. Of course, with analysts suggesting that the “collaboration marketplace” could be a $34 billion opportunity, it’s radicalism of a reassuringly capitalist bent.

Cisco is emphasizing working toward a common goal and developing the collaboration marketplace. In your last staff meeting did you discuss a collaboration learning-place, or did you discuss moving borderline students up to the next cut score?

Trust and openness are words you hear a lot in the endlessly optimistic world of Web 2.0, but at Cisco, it seems to be more than a PowerPoint mantra, even to my jaundiced eye. As Mitchell and I settle down to our conversation in an open space not 25 feet from Chamber’s office, I can hear the CEO chatting on the phone with customers. Mitchell, who is charged with encouraging the company’s rank and file to adopt new technology, is undistracted. “We want a culture where it is unacceptable not to share what you know,” he says.

"Unacceptable not to share what you know." Yeah. But what if you've spent 20 years--or 300 of them--building a reputation? What if you inherently know that the fetish for sorting is counter-productive or wasteful, but creating, then checking off, boxes is how you are evaluated? What if what you know--or who--is your only concrete symbol of worth? You've worked hard to adapt, to get along, to suck it up, dammit.

Does anybody like it when someone flutters in and says "Time's up, move along"?

From media and their "anonymous sources" to Professionals and the knowledge of their arcana, the hoarding and obfuscation of information or influence from the top down is being rendered a low-efficiency model by technology and it's levelling influence. (Setting aside the too-clever-by-half and now-dead Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, just ask all the accountants replaced by Quickbooks.) Heck, even iTunes is abandoning DRM--the media industry's 21st Century version of hoarding--after only a few years of valiant effort.

That's the trend, but the on-ground resistance is still problematic, eh?

For people, organizations and communities, the one thing that remains an obstacle to accepting this implacable truth of rolling change is the explicit assault it makes on our accrued self image--the difficulty letting go of it, of letting it become something more. Because, "something more" likely means a new, different thing that was decided without you, by market forces or generational and technological change. Maybe, it's the result of your own success--your ideas have run their course and you've neglected your upkeep and, therefore, obsoleted yourself. Just like Corporations do all the time but resist admitting with ferocious vigor.

This would likely explain why there's no Union Pacific Airlines. Or no Ford Prius. And no Greater Richmond MetroRail Company.

The Hindu(?) proverb goes "The true nobility is in being superior to your precious self." I think maybe that's fancy talk for get out of your own way. For this reason alone, Cisco deserves an A for effort, and Chambers, a Gold Star for humility.

The question for me, after years of head/wall/banging experience in similar organaizational brand initiatives is, simply, how is Cisco creating a culture where it's unacceptable not to share your care? I ask this more and more often in business situations, because shared care--converging agreement on what matters, what moves us--the actual affinity between people, is the roadblock. And I'm certainly not claiming any wisdom in that statement...

"I don't care what you know until I know that you care."

Some sayAristotle wrote that, others think John C. Maxwell. Doesn't matter though, since it holds so very true. And universal. And, sadly, in so many "professional" environments, "care" seems to be just too, well, irelevant or squishy. The best way I've found to eliminate this remove is to talk about it, early and with those who hold the checkbook. The conversation is often begun with a skeezy aphorism I can claim.

Nobody ever threw themselves on a hand-grenade for a spreadsheet.

You know what? I really hope Cisco and Chambers have done their homework AND their heartwork. I hope their lexicon is not limited to TCO and ROI and ROE. I hope it includes a real awareness of ROEI, Return on Emotional Investment. Because that's what they're asking many to abandon. But let's be optimistic. In Cisco's case, the future Chambers talks about is not alien, it's not like a whole body blood transfusion. Their entire reason for being relies on awe and respect for the networked existence, the understanding of individual, unique nodes MAKING the value of the network. In fact, faith in 1s and 0s, in their power is not a problem at all at Cisco: Digits are predictable and manageable. They do what you tell them. They respond to reason.

So, it's an older form of the analog hole they are tackling, isn't it? As the article suggests, the revolutionary aspect of their change is getting turf-conscious executives and professionals--lots of emotional equity and habits of expertise there--to lay down their weapons and play nice together. That's the ultimate and age-old low-tech problem.

Yeah. Whether we're talking about Cisco's efforts at renewal and change, or those of my little town of Richmond, all the panels and consultants and formulas and grand initiatives in the world can't overcome something I heard at a seminar once:

The Heart has reasons that reason cannot know.

Believe it or not, that is from a hard-core mathematician and scientist, Blaise Pascal. He wasn't saying you couldn't know or understand, just that using the wrong tools, asking the wrong questions, and in your favored vocabulary, will doom your efforts no matter how good intended or deep your pockets. He saw the difference between analog and digital, and respected both.

Somehow, if that guy could grasp the gist of motivation's seeming mystery, I'm guessing plenty of other number crunchers, have a chance too.

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Something extra for the process-minded after all that "touchy-feely": The transition cycle - a template for human responses to change. Awareness that more 'change agents" could benefit from if they don't already.



Graphic on Human Response to Change via EOS LifeWork. Try their guidelines for organizations anticipating change from a very useful broader article.