All you need is love.
02-May-06
With the Blogs and Social Media conference coming up in London, we asked Euan Semple the conference chair (and ex-head of KM, BBC) to write about 'social computing' in organisations. You can find more information about the conference on the event page.
Some time back Cluetrain author David Weinberger wrote that the motivating force behind the internet was love. It was the basic human desire to connect that made it all hang together. At the time I admired his idealism and indeed bravery at being so open about something we have all been trained to dismiss as at best personal and at worst a sign of weakness.
In contrast I have just finished reading Joel Balkan's The Corporation in which he exposes the fact that corporations are legally bound to do just one thing - maximise share holder value and that in fact to be motivated by higher ideals, or indeed love, could be considered detrimental to that overriding purpose if it impacts the bottom line in anything but a positive way.
Where did all this come from, where did the idea that the most powerfully motivating force in the world had nothing to do with business? We spend most of our adult lives in the workplace and at work we bring about the most important and long lasting changes to our society and our planet - and yet we are not encouraged to talk in terms of love. OK we just about get away with "loving our job" our "loving success" but start talking about loving colleagues or loving customers and you'll have people running for the door. And yet isn't this what makes great people and great places tick. A deep sense of connection with each other, a depth of purpose beyond the every day that sees customers as more than merely stepping stones on the way to returning that value to the shareholders?
Three months ago we had a closing down party for DigiLab, my small but perfectly formed department at the BBC, and the next morning I started to write a post about love at work and what a powerful motivating force it can be. But I stopped myself. I let myself be influenced by those grown up voices in my head telling me not to be so silly - certainly not in public! But the warmth and affection we felt for each other, for our physical space in Television Centre and yes, sorry guys, for the punters who we dealt with on a daily basis over the years had more to do with love than anything else I can think of and certainly little to do with those extrinsic motivators - money, corporate goals and efficiency that we we were meant to have taken so seriously.
Love is also the powerful force you unleash when you start to introduce social computing inside organisations. Some are concerned about the disruptive effects you should expect but the disruption results from stronger stuff. The stuff David was talking of. The desire to connect at a very deep human level. To see colleagues as intrinsically linked and capable of pulling together in ways that those who promulgated scarcity and competition as organisational drivers will never begin to understand.
Over the last four years of watching the BBC's internal forums grow to their current population of half the organisation I have seen so many examples of love and connection - some of which made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I mean real examples of people selflessly helping each other, genuine affection and concern shown between people who more often than not never physically met, and as one of the participants once said a greater sense of 'one BBC' than any of the corporate initiatives that came and went over the years.
Maybe love does have a place in business after all. Maybe more and more of us will start to have the courage to begin to talk about what really matters to us about work and our relationships with each other and to push back the sterile language of business that we have been trained to accept. Maybe we will realise that accepting love into the workplace reminds us of the original purpose of work - not to maximise shareholder value but to come together to do good things, to help each other and hopefully to make the world a better place.
Maybe ....
Oh and by the way if the above is too new age and namby pamby for you I reckon social computing is capable of talking 25% out of the running costs of most businesses - so there!
(Adapted from a blog post to Euan Semple's weblog The Obvious? )
Author Contact: Euan Semple
E-mail: euan@euansemple.com
AIM: Hydeend
tel: 44 (0)7711058611?
Business info: http://www.euansemple.com
Weblog: http://theobvious.typepad.com/blog/
Details
- Author:
- Euan Semple
- Publisher:
- KnowledgeBoard
- Date:
- 02-May-06
- Categories:
- Technology
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Addition...
oops, my comment really was to long...at least for the system. Here/'s the last paragraph:
• Re-Engage: Actively take care of the people & the tasks you would like to be connected to (by making pre-investments of trust and affection)
Amen & thank you for reading this lengthy comment which accidentally mutated into a sermon. I am only human, too.
Almost always your convinced communitator,
Britta
Love - and other complications...
Dear Euan,
Thank you for hitting a (painful) nerve of mine and prompting me to re-connect to you.
No doubt: Love (as well as its absence) is a major factor in the workplace. But so are hate, happiness, jealousy, sadness, … After all, we are all human beings, aren’t we? When we go to work in the morning we carry the complete spectrum of human emotions with us (including all its advantages and disadvantages).
Ford is quoted to have complained: “Why is it when I hire a pair of hands, I get a human being as well?” - The attitude behind this complaint seems to still be predominant in many companies today. A lot has been written (and little understood) about the fact that people are not little boxes on .ppt slides that can be moved around, added and deleted to the liking of managers, analysts or business consultants. This (simple?) fact seems to be 100% tacit knowledge. To me there is no other explanation why so few people really understand it. You wrote: ”I have seen so many examples of love and connection – it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end” You could not have put it more explicitly. You acquired the knowledge by experience. It was even a physical experience! (Here we could enter a new dimension of KM, exploring the impact of body-knowledge . Maybe next time… ) I had similar positive experiences in the workplace, but also negative ones that genuinely broke my heart.
I, too, strongly believe in what you called “the desire to connect at a very deep human level”. I would even extend this desire to the complete environment including more abstract things like a company (and its goals) or your work tasks (job). There is no difference between the relationships that you have in your private life and the relationships that you have with your colleagues, bosses and people working for you. This means you do not only have to deal with love and affection, but also with rejection and fear in these relationships. During the last 15 years (which I am entitled to write about as I gained the tacit knowledge ) I have seen many people (yes, including myself) experiencing disappointment and rejection in their workplace. Very often the result is the same as in a private relationship: frustration, withdrawal, disengagement.
I distantly remember a Gallup survey from a few years ago where 55% of the people considered themselves as “disengaged” from their work and about 20% even considered themselves to be “actively disengaged” (whatever that means - sabotage?). How can it happen that 70% of these people are no longer connected to what they are doing 40 hours (ore more) of their precious lifetime per week?
My guess is that it is the increased demand for everything and everybody to be dynamic, which came with Globalisation, technological innovations, global recessions, etc. It is really difficult to stay connected and be dynamic at the same time. I do not say that it is impossible, but it is surely something our generation has to learn. Maybe for our children it will be natural. When I worked on the CoP topic in our Corporate KM department at Siemens a few years ago, I realized that the technology (Internet & Co.) that seemed to turn us all into a fungible resource could also be used to (re-)connect us, independent of place and time. Just like yours, our forums where (and still are) great means to help people stay connected to each other and their work, easing the effects of reorganizations and cost cutting waves. But the forums are just tools in the hands of people who actively want to connect. How do we reach those ones that are disengaged? And, not to forget, how do we keep ourselves engaged?
What else can we do to actively foster the existence of affection and connectedness, rather than rejection and disengagement in our corporate working environments?
Sorry, If I had a working silver bullet solution on offer, I would have published a book on the subject and earn a living from giving speeches at conferences.
I only have the humble suggestions to start digging where we stand. Here is my personal 5 point program :
• Acknowledge your own need to belong and to be connected.
•Learn (if you haven’t yet) that the folks around you are only human, too.
o Step1: Spend a day (or as long as you can stand it) behaving rude and aggressive towards everybody; don/’t give a damn about your job.
o Step2: apologize (for step 1) and spend a day (or the rest of your lifetime) with an open heart and an open mind for yourself and those around you. Feel the difference between step 1 and step 2.
• Take stock of your connections (I hope my poor English brings across that this does not mean to count your outlook contacts! A warning: really taking stock might actually result in a feeling of acute sadness…)
• Explore where you would like to be more connected and why and how
• Re-Engage: Actively take care of the people & the tasks you would like to be connect
Bold truth to ignite the sacred fire of love
Martin,
How refreshing to read someone daring to be blunt for the sake of love. I went to read the link you provided and in terms of economics, love leads us to harmonise the 3 main words of the last century: Capitalism, socialism and communism.
The image I use to describe this, is a village where he or she who gets a needed idea gets supported to complete the initiative. When one walks down the street and sees someone who is cold and the one who sees has 2 coats and gives one to the other who needs it.
That image tries to show free enterprise being socially supported and benefited from along with the sharing of goods based on common needs. China is somewhat seeking to steer in that direction, refining their coming from that direction.
I think you might like to check out the following work titled: "An economy for giving everything away". http://www.ms.lt/en/workingopenly/givingaway.html The author, Andrius Kulikauskas is currently visiting in the UK from Lithuania. He is the proprietor of an Internet lab called Minciu Sodas. Here is a letter of his, with the info to reach him while he is in the UK. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/minciu_sodas_en/message/6266
As you will read, he has positioned the lab to serve love in action and in truth by setting up his service in the deepest respect of freedom of thought and of choice for all human beings. As you look closely to the assembling of dedicated talents that he is hosting with his lab, we can now see that there is a consolidation of a genuine Global Village, ready to develop into a prototype of universal adaptability.(love+justice+serenity)
Because love is very much an experience of the spontanious being in the moment and because of this conversation of love we are on, can we commit to find the completion passage of inspired decision-making to "here we are for Love", from "All you need is love"? With the current timing, skills and tools we are equipped with the opportunity to land at the junction where past history's lessons may get to mend our correction within the tuning to destiny.
Let's see now:
"Technology to be launched irrevocably to serve the recovery road of humanity from self-destruction to self-control and community self government at the ground level, all the way from the top and the underground of our Western societies in transit, readying ourselves to reach out to the rest of the world with the re-distrubution of wealth.
It's just a thought coming from where I can make sense of the info I have and while the window is open with Andrius travels, who is ready and equipped to take it from my appeal with you guys in Europe, and together, on to the BBC.
I'll be waiting in Canada to work at igniting the CBC and to embark the PBS into a new angle of reality TV.
If all goes well, we'll soon be watching ourselves grow intelligent and wise from the simplicity of love's application in truth, throughout our decision-making...why not?
Shall we...
Not silly at all
What I found in my company after four years in charge of developing social networks and communities is that career-oriented people just never get it. They are so self-centered and caught into the game of internal politics (the "brown nose" syndrome of favors, kickbacks, secrecy and codes of silence that Benoît is talking about - great phrase! ) that they cannot comprehend that I am trying to create working environements where rivalry and competition between individuals is not welcome. Since the inherent logic of social networking is about creating high bandwidth communication, it is about trust, thus about benevolence. Everyone knows that this knowledge-driven economy works when people start by giving a lot: free software, free advice, free conversations...
And giving everything is precisely what love is about.
http://www.mopsos.com/blog/archives/000122.html
Love needs truth
Love needs to be embodied in truth and authenticity so as to break free from the perpetuation of being polite and respectful while what's wrong gets to be ignored.
The respect that can be define to be of service, is in the first contact between strangers. Love takes us from stranger to family and respect safeguards the movement of love until truth and authenticity are released and free in the presence and dynamics of love.
But there is a danger to insist on respect alone.
Respect and politeness are the mechanics of "synthetic relating" that are in place by the peer systems of survival necessities. This synthetic relating runs on the pricinples of the jungle law, in the subliminal handling of human behavior, historically inherited. That kind of respect generates the personal and local masks of deceit and evil that may come to be expose in full sight from micro to macro, as we carry on this conversation all the way to where love and truth can reveal its simplicity for us all to experience.
The distance that gets to be maintained by the forces of such respect also causes the constant civil obligation for our entire existance to get swallowed up to maintain all the social systems and infrastructures in place to insure the enforcements of law and order, of our contracts and businesses, all signed politely, with respect and keeping us all from ever having to look at our disapointing history of learning very little from past and present history.
The limits of existantial fears, of ignorance and of indifference are what need the synthetic culture of respect and politeness to go on, coupled to a peer power structure of command and control, which ends up repeating all the cycles of Empires decays. Those cycles repeat themselves with renewed versions of the "brown nose" syndrome of favors, kickbacks, secrecy and codes of silence as opposed to the educated and inspired empowerement of one another's genuine love and truth provisions. The demands to maintain respect without pressing on for love and truth serve to accomodate the comforts of sef-righteousness and to maintain distance between neighbours with systematic legal trust, whereas love is home for authenticity, liberty, growth and closeness of all in the integrity of sanctity.
Especially because of our leading material position, the Western democracies, business and globalization need to choose between accomodating such masks of the past, for all cultures, or to get on with growing the culture of love and authenticity that transcends our differences, from the top to the underground populations and back from the underground to the top with songs and dances. This is the apprenticeship to grow free from under the personal, cultural and legal limits of peer ignorance of indifference. These limits that are now showing as the entity of terror-anti-terror, are multiplying out of control at all levels of societal fabrics, each one with their own versions of respect that demand, and not always politely, to be respected.
When love is alive, respect does not need to be called for, as it is one of many many many other flavours of the Spirit of love and truth, Who draws individuals and collectivities in the high-trust flow of wisdom and knowledge management...
...all blessings be with us all...
Benoit Couture
Love Actually
I agree with Euan that insufficient attention is given to the importance of love as a motivator in creating and sustaining successful work relationships. I'd like to make a couple of points in response to his question "Where did all this come from, where did the idea that the most powerfully motivating force in the world had nothing to do with business?"
Our understanding and approach to work is derived from neoclassical economics which is based on a reductionist view of people as selfish materialists. Consequently working together with others is seen as a mutually advantageous transaction based on complementary skills or economies of scales. The model leaves no room for altruistic behaviour; and the essence of love is the ability to act altruistically.
Partly as a result of the above, work has been seen as instrumental - by which I mean it is seen as means to an end rather than an end in itself. In other words works enables us to earn the money we need for food, housing etc. and to fund our "sacred" leisure time.
Euan's comments highlight problems with the model; moreover the power of the model over our thinking is part of the reason why we continue to organise work in a dysfunctional way.
Coming back to essentials
Essentially, it's all about love. Intrinsic rewards mainly come from our relationships with others, from networks based on reciprocal benefits supported on honesty and respect (r-e-s-p-e-c-t), from equitiy in the workplace, from a sense of collective achievement. Oh, such a thing! It's about culture as well.
What I admire in your note is your reflection on the essential reasons for being 8 hours per day / 5 days a week in "that place". I remember some of the original ideas about management from Charles Handy or Peter Drucker.
I'd like to share my weblog about management and thess kind of things that some call a soul, or love...
http://management-notes.blogspot.com
Regards
Rosanna Marotta
Can we mean business with love?
Dear Euan,
I love you for daring to push love forward against a past ruled by the complicity of ignorance and indifference known as business and government. When it comes science and power, business and governments can brag a whole lot, but not when it comes to love. There is someone who is well known to the members of the EU Knowledgeboard and who has been asking, pleading, showing and demonstrating since 1976 that businees must account for its investment in people first, not machines, if we are going to avoid self-destruction.
Are we here to build the momentum so that we get to get on with love as the priority of all priorities? If that were the case, then that would certainly ignite the wik to the sort of paradigm shift that keeps being talked about so much for so long.
That is why I work on the Internet as a stay-at-home-dad-citizen-voter.
If you are looking for a track record of thoughts that I've contributed here on the EU Knowledgeboard, you can go to the bottom of the page at: http://www.knowledgeboard.com/whoswho/7464/11471.
Love and truth produce the integrity of sanctity. The only parts of business that cannot make room for such basic human value are the businesses that humanity does not need. Shall we begin to elaborate and to develop the strategies to convert the time and energy that are going into these businesses? We have tools; do we have the heart and spirit for it?
Visualizing the Innernet
I think this is all ado about the innernet (nothing wrong with the spelling), it is not just about the outernet.
Cover story of the May / June 2006 AIIM E-Doc Magazine, has a lead article on Be Serene: Channel you inner records manager, [ continue reading from my blog on Visualizing the Innernet ]
See also my previous post: Labyrinths, Sacred Geometry, Innernet & Visualization