Ascent

Ascent

Remembering the Mountain as a metaphor

Walking along the river recently, reflecting on the challenges I'm facing in starting and running my own business, I thought back to my first Snowdon Ascent. I thought about that time, about 2/3 of the way up, when there's barely any flat ground, just steps and more steps, muscles getting heavier (not enough preparation of course!), stopping more frequently to recover. It was tough both mentally and physically, but I knew for sure I would make it to the top, there was never any question of turning back. At this point I couldn't really see the peak, too misty, just a hazy view, but I knew there was a celebration there - of sorts.

I remember looking back down the mountain, thinking how far and how high I had climbed in such a short time - an amazing journey of challenge, learning, new friends and connections made, laughter shared and a few tears shed - definitely no turning back, having come this far; too far; I knew I would make it.

And I think that's where I am now in my life, on this new, challenging and fantastic journey; I'm at those steep steps, needing to replenish, the helping hand of a guide or two and tempted briefly to turn back, back to the old well-trodden road. Then I remind myself of that journey to the top of Snowdon and it restores my belief that I can make it to the first peak of my new mountain. I'm reminded of what the journey means for me, what first inspired me to take this path - the peak looks a little clearer now!

Flocking Leadership

In Poznan, we tried an experiment during the Alpha Leadership workshop.

Alpha Leadership is something created by Robert Dilts who is famous for creating practical models of talents such as Disney's creativity strategy. Robert Dilts interviewed many modern leaders across the world to distill the Alpha Leadership model which is the opposite of a more traditional, authoritarian management style.

One of the principles of Alpha Leadership is to do with the idea that we don't need complicated rules to organise people's behaviour in an organisation. Complicated rules work when the elements of the system are unable to make their own decisions.

In a system comprising autonomous elements, like the Internet, or a Motorway network, or a company, complex rules put too much decision making load onto the elements, therefore the most efficient way of organising a system made up of autonomous elements, like people, is to have very simple rules.

A lot of authoritarian managers think they have to control people's behaviour, when in fact this greatly increases the number of rules and slows the system down to the point where it can no longer function. I guess you can imagine the kind of culture that this creates.

So, back to our experiment in Poznan. We took a group of people, gave them five simple rules and then left them to make their own decisions. We videoed the result and it was very interesting!

The rules were: Follow the group, don't bump into anyone, keep the group together, keep moving, no talking.

When the boundaries of the system were very wide, it gave people almost too much freedom and the group merged very quickly as you can see in the first video. When we made the boundaries smaller, just big enough to give the group freedom to move, we saw a beautiful pattern of behaviour emerge, like watching a shoal of fish. Complex behaviour arising from simple rules in an autonomous system.

In between, we kept the boundaries large but split the group. As you will see, in each video there is at least one person who tries to break the rules. You'll see a point where two sub-groups pass by and neither wants to follow the other, then later this happens again and you see one person is unable to resist following the rules!

One person in particular tried, in each experiment, to break the rules. The first three times, everyone ignored him. Then in the final experiement, you will see that other people start to follow him.

This is a really important observation for leadership. It's not about getting it right first time, it's about pursuing an idea and being persistent until that idea comes of its time. When the idea and the time are right, people will follow you.

So here are the videos in Windows Media format (.wmv):

Wide boundaries, one group #1
Wide boundaries, one group #2
Wide boundaries, split group
Small boundaries, one group