How Do You Get Inside the Heads of People You Know? There are two quick and easy steps to follow. Describe your problem. Let a mentor tell you a story about how he or she solved a similar problem. It’s easy to get inside the heads of mentors if you know how to get them to tell good stories.  Getting someone to tell a good story is, well, another story and one which we will focus on in a later blog. A mentor needs a well defined problem. A person has to be bold enough to ask for help. The problem statement must be well thought out and researched.  You have to at least try to solve the problem on your own first. In addition, the right story teller must be found. The mentor must personalize the story. The mentor must understand where you are coming from and be able to relate to you. Does the mentor know your background and level of expertise? Will the mentor be able tell the story with details at the right level - not too simple, not too hard - so that knowledge transfer occurs? A good story has several parts. What resources were required, What did you expect to happen, What happened, What went well, What could have gone better, and What were the results? Sometimes one story isn’t enough. Several  stories that occurred under different conditions are helpful to identify different ways to look at the problem. Did the same or similar problem happen more than once? Did you solve it different ways? Did you have different resources? Did you learn something different? Determine when it is time to codify stories. Is it difficult for the mentor to be innovative and creative because he or she is solving the same problem over and over? Has the organization developed a methodology that needs to be stated explicitly or risk losing the valuable expertise if mentors leave the organization? Has the knowledge become transactional and critical to organization profitability? The first step to codifying stories is to collect enough to address a strategic objective.  Model all of the stories at a sketch level.  Find the similarities and differences in the sketches.  Fill in details.  Specify special conditions.  Before going any further in the codification process you should have a clear understanding of how the expertise in the stories will be deployed in the organization. In my next blog I will go into more detail on how Discovery Machine codifies stories. See 6 Steps to Boomerang Expertise for our full approach.

In last week’s blog, I started telling you about an effective model you can use to achieve balance so you can enjoy your life more and resist stress.  The acronym for the PACT model stands for Perspective, Autonomy, Connectedness, and Tone. Adopting this model and putting it into practice on a daily basis is a fabulous way to keep your stress level in check and keep your work and life in balance—the ultimate goal being a happier and more peaceful day-to-day existence. Who wouldn’t want that? We started last week with P: Perspective.  Keeping good and bad experiences in perspective can contribute greatly to a feeling of well-being and help your stress level remain low. A: Autonomy The next element that contributes to peak periods of happiness and high stress resistance is autonomy.  Autonomy is a feeling of having control over your own life. People with a high sense of autonomy usually have a clear sense of their own identity, feel the freedom to make choices in their lives, have career or job options and sufficient skills, and see their daily activities as moving them toward their long- and short-range goals.  If we ask individuals a single question—Are you in control of your life?—and they answer "no," we know that those individuals are at a much higher risk for illness. The lack of power and control felt by those who are underprivileged, really struggling to make ends meet, in a situation where there is racial or sexual discrimination occurring, or simply stretched to their limits in terms of workload, is the very opposite of autonomy and control.  People who feel powerless are under the most stress and are often the most angry.  These people often have the most severe health problems of any group in our society. On the other hand, people who are good time managers, who feel that they are managing their daily lives well and have the skills to do it, are the ones who are likely to feel the most control and the most autonomy.  In their stories of peak periods of happiness, these people often referred to two or three weeks or a month when they were in a special place and they could decide what it was that they were going to do each day.  Others referred to a job they had or a project they were working on where they could choose the direction in which they were going and felt in control of the situation. Clearly, most people can’t go through life on a vacation or in complete control of everything—but certainly a young mother with two toddlers running around and no money for a babysitter has a different degree of autonomy than a young mother whose youngest child has just entered the first grade. The latter may have six open hours for deciding how to spend her time. Is she going to play tennis or sleep until 10:00 a.m., take a class to further a career goal, or start a part-time job? What is her choice for today? One of the most powerful ways to build control and choice in your life is through the development of key skills—skills like knowing how to manage others effectively, being a good parent, managing your time well, or helping people feel like they are doing their jobs well.  Again, people often have different degrees of autonomy at home and at work.  Some people do very well at the office—they set goals, hold committee meetings, participate in performance reviews, and they progress well.  At home, however, they never have time to exercise, break appointments with themselves and other family members for scheduled "quality time," or they might have half-finished projects around the house they have been putting off for years. C: Connectedness The third ingredient in stress resistance and high life satisfaction is connectedness.  Connectedness relates to the quality of relationships in peoples’ lives.  People who report high connectedness often feel they have positive relationships with friends, family, self, coworkers and supervisors.  Connectedness also relates to a feeling of contentment and resonance with one’s physical environment.  You can have a highly connected experience watching a beautiful sunset or walking into a home that you’ve decorated because it feels good to you. In fact, there are good reasons for people, when they first move into a home or a new community, to spend time decorating that new environment so that they feel more connected to it. You can have a highly connected experience having a cup of coffee with a friend or sitting in bed at night cuddled up to a loved one. My definition of low connectedness is when you do not feel you are an integral part of your environment.  For example, if you move to a new community and go away for the weekend, then return and find that nobody knows that you were gone and came back, it can be an indicator that you are not very connected to your neighborhood.  In fact, after a move most people feel totally disconnected and many people report a great deal of illness during the year following a major relocation. In their stories of peak periods of happiness, people often referred back to a time when they were first married and didn’t have much money and so did more things at home, such as played a lot of bridge because that was all they could afford to do. Often, however, their friendships were solid and meaningful.  Men often referred back to fraternity days in college or to a high school group of friends when connections were strong and non-competitive. All types of relationships you have affect your connectedness, but the most important relationships are those with your spouse and your boss. In fact, the number one predictor of health at the worksite is your relationship with your boss.  A bad relationship with a supervisor can make people sick.  A good relationship can enhance a feeling of overall well-being and productivity.  On the home front, are you spending quality time with your spouse?  Do you make special efforts to plan "memory-building" times together?  In general, have you spent the time that you need to nourish the most important relationships in your life? T: Tone The fourth element in the PACT model is tone. This important concept includes how you feel about yourself physically. This includes the way you look, your health and energy level, your sense of fitness, even the way you are dressed and the colors you are wearing.  People with high tone generally have high energy levels, maintain a proper weight, have sound nutrition and feel really good about their physical appearance.  In their stories of peak periods of happiness men very often thought back to high school or college when they were in the best shape they had ever been in—easily able to bench press 300 pounds or run several miles.  Women often talked about the time when they were 10 pounds lighter and could fit into all the clothes in their closet.  Generally both men and women talked about a time when they were active, looked good, had an abundance of energy, and paid attention to their physical health. Over the years I’ve found that when everything else seems to be floundering and I feel my balance is slipping away, often the quickest and easiest ingredient to impact is tone.  Tone is often easiest because it lends itself better to measurement and you can see concrete results more quickly. Balancing the Elements What has been helpful to me about this model is that the elements of perspective, autonomy, connectedness, and tone can be a dynamic balance for one another.  As an example, what do we do in our society when someone becomes ill or injured and is hospitalized?  By definition, their physical health (tone) is low now. So what do we do? Customarily we send this person a card.  What might the card say?  We care about you (connectedness).  This won’t last forever (perspective).  Soon you’ll be up and about (tone) doing what you want to do (autonomy). We may even send flowers to help him or her connect better to a sterile hospital room. Why I like the PACT is it helps.  It’s like a good diet.  It will work even better for you as you personalize it and make it yours.  I have used this model for many years now to keep my own life in balance and monitor the times when balance isn’t present.  If I notice I’m not looking forward to a given day or time, or I feel my energy is lagging, I try to step back and ask myself:  What’s feeling out of balance?  Am I so over-committed or over-stressed that I’m doing what everyone else wants me to do today without any time for myself?  Or am I upset about a relationship with someone close to me?  Or does my house feel untidy with lots of undone tasks and thus doesn’t provide a nourishing harbor from the stormy world?  Or have I lost track of what all my efforts are for?  Or am I confused about why I’m working 12 hours today and worked 12 hours yesterday and don’t have time to see the people I love? The PACT model has helped me, and it can help you, identify what’s wrong when you’re feeling out of balance and pay more attention to life when you are feeling great. When your life is in balance, stress naturally loses its grip and you are able to enjoy life on a higher level.

I think the biggest problem with knowledge flow is design.  Design begins with abstract representations and progressively gets more detailed and structured.  Early stages of design involve stories, desires, and sketching with notional shapes.  Knowledge management and social media systems are pretty good at this part.  However, the next stage of design - where abstract notions are molded into a solid framework - is ignored.  I call this stage formalize.  Formalize is where flow is considered and enabled.  Flow is an important aspect of design - I can’t think of any designed artifact where flow isn’t a major factor in the success of the design.  Consider a house.  A house has entries, windows, and connections between rooms.  These are designed to enable flow of light, air, and people.  When you walk up to a house, it is clear how flow is enabled.  Now consider something more abstract - like software.  Flow is enabled through user interfaces as well as data through the program.  User interfaces and data will flow easily only if a good framework is constructed during the formalize phase of design. In the book A New Culture of Learning the authors discuss World of Warcraft (WoW) and how effortlessly knowledge flow occurs.  I think it is because there is a design for the flow.  Flow is designed around the game and the knowledge assets are clearly deployed in the game.  This happens a little more easily because WoW is not anywhere as complex as the real world.  The real world does not come with instructions, hard and fast rules and clear boundaries.  In the real world we must consciously design knowledge flow in the formalize phase.  Knowledge assets from social media, intranets, wiki’s, communities of practice, documents, manuals, notes and e-mail do not constitute a framework for flow - they are just storage.  A taxonomy and search is part of the solution but not a complete design.  Flow must come from the decision making and problem solving of practitioners. The framework evolves from divergent points and commonalities in requirements, stories, and sketches.  What is the pattern? Where are the gaps? Visualizing a framework helps the framework evolve to a more complete stage.  At Discovery Machine we have a methodology involving 6 major steps that reveals knowledge flow and how to support flow. There is resistance to designing knowledge flow because designs can be difficult to build and maintain.  How a knowledge flow will be deployed and maintained is critical to the design.  In later blogs I will discuss deploying and adapting knowledge assets to support knowledge flow.

Knowledge transfer does not equate to knowledge flow. On linkedin I am reading a discussion on renewable energy.  It is an amazing dialog.  Many people from all over the world are participating.  Links to data and research supporting different points of view are being shared.  Knowledge is going from being stored to transferred. What are we doing with transferred knowledge? What actions will take place?  What decisions will be made?  Knowledge transfer for the sake of knowledge transfer doesn’t necessarily help an organization accomplish its strategic goals. For knowledge flow to be powerful knowledge assets must be operational. By operational I mean: Solve a problem, Assist a novice, Give an answer, Give advice, or Bring a past experience to forefront. At Discovery Machine we have a methodology involving 6 major steps that reveals knowledge framework and how to support flow. One of the steps is making the knowledge assets operate.  We do not stop at creating a framework for knowledge, we create job aids that create a force for knowledge flow. We have found four critical features for any operationalized knowledge asset to enable flow. Situational awareness: Problem solving must occur in the context of the current problem. Communication:  Job aides must communicate with end users in a natural manner. Explanation:  A job aide should be able to explain how it solves a problem or why it is giving a piece of advice. Adaptation:  The job aid should adapt over time incorporating new experiences related to the knowledge framework. Powerful knowledge flow enables an organization to accomplish its strategic goals through decisions and actions.

I’m really excited about my brand-new book, Lead with LUV, that I wrote with Colleen Barrett, President Emeritus of Southwest Airlines. The reason I’m excited about it is that if I were asked to leave a legacy of my thinking today, this would be it. The world is in desperate need of this message of love and people first. If you know anything about Southwest Airlines, you know they’re all about love. (They sometimes spell it L-U-V because LUV is their symbol on the New York Stock Exchange.) They love their people and they love their customers. They love their work and take it seriously—but they don’t take themselves seriously. For example, a colleague of mine was flying on Southwest recently when the attendant got on the public address system and said: "You know, this is the last flight of the day and we’re really tired. To be honest with you, we don’t have the energy to pass out the peanuts, so we’re going to put them on the floor in the front the plane and when we take off and gain altitude, they’ll slide down the aisle.  If you want some nuts, just grab them." And that’s what happened! The whole airplane was in hysterics—laughing, having fun, grabbing peanuts, passing them to their neighbors—just having a blast! That’s leading with LUV. How different is that than your typical experience on most airlines, where everyone seems so uptight? Leading with LUV is about treating your customers right. Southwest really gets this. For example, when you call most airlines to change a reservation, you usually get a recording that says they really value your business, but all of their operators are busy right now; they’ll get to you as soon as possible. Then the music starts.  You could be waiting on hold for fifteen or twenty minutes or more. But when you call Southwest Airlines, you usually get an operator, and if you don’t, you get a recording that says, "Your business is really important to us.  We’re sorry all of our operators are busy right now, but at the beep, please leave your name and phone number and we’ll get back to you in ten minutes." I did this recently, and you know what happened in ten minutes?  My phone rang and somebody said, "Is this Ken Blanchard?" "Yes, it is," I said. "This is Bob from Southwest Airlines," he said. "How can I help you?" Now that’s what I call raving fan service! And that’s how you lead with LUV. No wonder Southwest is the only airline that has consistently turned a profit while the others have struggled. These heart-warming stories don’t happen by accident. When an organization has happy people, happy customers, and happy shareholders, it’s because the leadership has created a culture that supports leading with LUV.  So, how do you do that? First, you have to create a vision—something to love, something with a higher purpose than just making money. Southwest’s vision was that all people—not just the elite—would be able to afford to fly. Second, you have to create the rules of the road—the values that will guide people as they work toward that higher purpose. For example, Southwest has three values: A Warrior Spirit A Servant’s Heart A Fun-LUVing Attitude Third, once you have the vision in place and the values established, the leaders have to get out of the way so they can cheer people on to achieve the vision. This means turning the traditional pyramidal hierarchy upside-down, so that the leaders support their people, rather than vice versa. What does this look like in the real world? How do you, as a leader, lead with LUV? First, by acknowledging people. When she was president of Southwest, Colleen Barrett sent out thousands of hand-written notes to her people every year, celebrating their successes, sympathizing with their losses, and thanking them for being extraordinary. Second, by backing people up. Southwest founder Herb Kelleher once got a letter from a grumpy customer complaining about how much it bothered him that the flight attendants goofed off during the safety announcement. Because a Fun-LUVing Attitude is a Southwest value and this was a customer who tended to complain a lot, Herb didn’t apologize or offer him a coupon. Instead he wrote back, "We’ll miss you." He stood by the values and the people of Southwest. The third way to lead with LUV is to make your people your business partners. For example, pilots at Southwest have personally paid for hotel rooms for customers who, because of bad weather, had to spend the night in an unfamiliar city. The pilots could see that the people needed help. Because the pilots knew they were Southwest’s business partners, they didn’t call and ask, "Is it okay? Will I get reimbursed?" They led with LUV and created grateful, satisfied customers. Leading with LUV is not soft management—it’s smart management. When you put positive relationships ahead of profits, you end up with an abundance of both. Someone once said to my wife, "Margie, you’ve lived with Ken for almost fifty years. What do you think leadership is?" Margie nailed it when she said, "Leadership IS love, it’s not about love.  It’s loving your mission, it’s loving your people, it’s loving your customers, and it’s loving yourself enough to let other people be magnificent." I couldn’t say it any better. So if you’re looking for satisfying, long-term success, remember: Leading with LUV is not about somebody else in some other organization. Leading with love is about you. So treat your colleagues and your customers like family, and Lead with LUV. Here are a few other great things we’re doing around the book: We opened a new webpage for people to learn more about how our company uses the Lead with LUV principles at www.leadwithluv.com. You can even watch Southwest’s fantastic corporate video! Do you know someone who leads with LUV? There are two ways you can let the world know about it: Go to our Lead with LUV page on HowWeLead and post your story in the comments section. Do you know of a great video like Southwest’s? You can even embed a YouTube video if you like! Catch someone doing things right via Twitter. Use the hashtag #leadwithluv and post a quick Tweet about a friend or coworker who exhibits these great qualities. Watch a video introduction by Colleen and myself, read the first chapter of the book, and learn more about leading with LUV at our book page. Have a great day!

Do your knowledge assets reach the right target? This blog is part of a series - 6 Steps  to Boomerang Expertise.  Harvesting knowledge is discussed in this series, but harvesting is an academic exercise  if practitioners don’t have access to the knowledge asset during problem solving and decision making. Deploy a knowledge asset in the [...]

In my previous blogs I describe how knowledge flow requires: 1. Making knowledge assets operate and 2. Deploying knowledge assets in the enterprise where they will be used. Now I will discuss another requirement for knowledge flow. 3. Any knowledge flow infrastructure must have adaptation as a key requirement. Beyond the laws of physics, is [...]