Thought Stimulators
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Malcolm Gladwell

For another review of this book, Click Here.

If you were part of a brainstorming session to generate ideas about how to reduce crime, you wouldn’t be surprised to see ideas such as: stricter laws, more police personnel, more jails, better control of drugs, more jobs, better youth advocacy programs and so on. You probably would be surprised to see something like “repair broken windows.”

According to “Tipping Point” author Malcolm Gladwell, New York City in the 1980s, was “a city in the grip of one of the worst crime epidemics in its history. But then, suddenly and without warning, the epidemic tipped. From a high in1990, the crime rate went into precipitous decline. Murder dropped by two-thirds. Felonies were cut in half. Other cities saw their crime drop in the same period. But in no place did the level of violence fall farther or faster.”

What made tens of thousands of people suddenly stop committing crimes? The normal answers of an aging population, economic recovery and decline in drug use don’t provide adequate answers since, in New York City, the influx of immigrants was actually lowering the average age, the city’s economic condition hadn’t yet improved and drug usage had been in decline for several years without impacting the crime rate. So, what is the something else that caused crime to “tip?”

It turns out that those broken windows played a major role and eloquently illustrate the second rule of epidemics: the Power of Context. In the mid-80s, George Kelling brought his Broken Window theory to the New York Transit Authority. This theory states that crime is the inevitable result of disorder and broken windows are a sign of that disorder and a signal that no one cares or is in charge. This leads to a sense of anarchy which spreads rapidly.

New York City acted upon the recommendation of Kelling and began rebuilding the subway system, focusing a great deal of energy on removing graffiti and litter from the cars. They developed a rule that once a car was “reclaimed” (graffiti-cleaned and refurbished) it would never be allowed to return to service “dirty.” Every reclaimed car was clean and graffiti-free at the beginning of the day … or it was removed from service.

The Broken Window theory spread from the Transit Authority to the Police Department and other city agencies and now New York City is considered one of the safest in the world. This is not to make this sound easy, it involved a lot of hard work and risk. But, it does indicate that broken windows and graffiti are among those “little things” that can make a big difference.

In addition to spelling out the conditions necessary for tipping a major change, this book reports fascinating sociological studies that could drastically affect how we look at the world around us. Here are two examples:

Social memory – Daniel Wegner, University of Virginia psychologist, set up a memory test with 59 couples. Half of the couples stayed together and half were paired with a new partner they didn’t know. All the couples were asked to read 64 statements and then asked to write down as many as they could remember. The pairs who knew each other remembered substantially more items than those who didn’t know each other.

“Wegner argues that when people know each other well, they create an implicit joint memory system – a transactive memory system – which is based on an understanding about who is best suited to remember what kinds of things.”

Question: Wouldn’t this be one more reason why layoffs are a horrible idea?

Social channel capacity – Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist, started looking at brain size in primates trying to find what correlated with the difference in size between various species. After rejecting most possibilities, he settled on the answer of group size. In all the primate species, the larger the neocortex, the larger the size of groups they lived with.

Dunbar argues that brains get bigger in order to handle the complexities of larger social groups. A group of five people requires a member to keep track of ten separate relationships. A group of 20 requires tracking190 two-way relationships. His calculations for the brain size of humans yielded an estimated group size of roughly 150 members, a number that turns out to be supported by current research and history.

Interestingly, Gore Associates, a privately-held, high-tech firm in Delaware has come to the same conclusion about size. At Gore, there are no titles and instead of bosses, there are sponsors who are charged with looking after the interests of those they are sponsoring. There are no organization charts, no budgets, no strategic plans. Salaries are determined collectively. They are also highly successful, profitable and growing rapidly. Bill Gore, the late founder, stumbled onto the “Rule of 150,” stating, “We found again and again that things get clumsy at a hundred and fifty.” So 150 employees per plant became the company limit.

Question #1: How much could we save and how much more could we do, if our organizations were limited to 150 people?

Question #2: If our schools were smaller and conformed to the Rule of 150, would we have fewer school shootings?

Recommendation: Must read for all change agents.

Hot Off the Press!
In Good Company
Don Cohen and Laurence Prusak

No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
-- John Donne

It's an old quote, but one that should be remembered in our way-too-busy, internet-focused world. The authors of "In Good Company" open with this quote and then show us how "social capital" (or the loss of which) determines the course of our organizations.

Visible Social Capital

In the mid-1990s in a troubled industry in a problematic city, a textile factory was completely destroyed by fire. The retirement-age CEO made a decision that stunned the business world and turned him into a hero. His decision was considered quixotic and altruistic. Had the world understood the value of social capital, that same decision would have been considered hard-boiled, analytical and shrewd.

Who is this CEO whose decision earned him an invitation to the White House? Aaron Feuerstein, leader of Malden Mills the factory that was destroyed and which, in normal hands, would have resulted in the unemployment of 3,000 people. What was Feuerstein's decision? Keep all 3,000 people on the payroll until a new factory could be built. So what is this thing that Feuerstein understands so much better than the rest of us?

The authors define social capital as the "stock of active connections among people: the trust, mutual understanding, and shared values and behaviors that bind the members of human networks and communities and make cooperative action possible." Note that it is social capital that makes cooperation possible.

"Social capital" the authors state "makes an organization, or any cooperative group, more than a collection of individuals intent on achieving their own private purposes. Social capital bridges the space between people. Its characteristic elements and indicators include high levels of trust, robust personal networks and vibrant communities, shared understandings, and a sense of equitable participation in a joint enterprise -- all things that draw individuals together into a group."

This is an interesting book in a time when "free agency" seems to be the dominant metaphor ... and in an economic environment where organizations are once again participating in the lemming-like behavior of ritualistically destroying social capital through massive layoffs. Popular beliefs would seem to indicate that people are like nuts and bolts: put the right number of the right parts in a box, shake, and out will fall perfect products. If you need fewer perfect products, just put in fewer nuts and bolts. While it's unlikely that anyone in today's information age would admit to believing the nuts and bolts scenario, actions speak louder than words and our actions are screaming our indifference to social capital.

One Question

So, if you truly believed in the importance of social capital, what would you do to strengthen it?

The answer isn't a 2-day offsite team building event (although they can be a powerful part of a bigger process). The authors state: "By and large, though, one-shot "bonding" activities are ineffective because they are brief and a thing apart from daily work. Social capital is mainly created and strengthened (and sometimes damaged) in the context of real work."

So, what can a sincerely committed management group do to build social capital? First, realize that it's not quick. Second, understand that EVERY action you take affects social capital. Every time you hire a new person, implement a new policy, install a new technology or set a new objective, you are building or destroying social capital.

The foundation of social capital is trust. How do you build trust? -- by being trust-worthy and trusting over time, in good times and bad times, in difficult situations as well as easy ones.

The life-blood of social capital is the complex interconnections between people; networks that make work happen through the sharing of information, material, ideas and processes. "Networks are incubators of collaboration, especially voluntary collaboration that does not rely on external incentives to spur it," state the authors. What happens when "the numbers" aren't looking good? Incubators of collaboration are the first target: travel gets cut, meetings are eliminated, training programs are postponed. What's the message behind this action: don't think, don't talk, don't plan ... just do!

Recommendation: This book deserves to be read and discussed long and deeply. There are no easy answers, no quick fixes. You might begin to ask before taking any action: What will this do to the interconnections between people? Will it promote cooperation or make it more difficult?

Hot Off the Press!
The Springboard
Stephen Denning

Click here (.pdf format) for an Interview with Stephen Denning, the author of The Springboard, by Information Outlook

The mind is not a vessel to be filled,
But a fire to be ignited.
-- Plutarch

“In June, 1995, a health worker in Kamana, Zambia, logged onto the Center for Disease Control website and got the answer to a question on how to treat malaria.”

This event happened, not in 2015 but in 1995 and it happened not in a rich country but in Zambia, one of the least developed countries in the world. Also, it occurred not in the capital of the country but in a village six hundred kilometers away.

The World Bank was not involved with this happening but when Stephen Denning heard the story, something clicked. He had recently been charged with looking into the possibilities of information-sharing within the World Bank and this 29-word story, told casually to him by a colleague, stayed in his mind. As Denning included the story in his presentations, it became the fuel that ignited the imaginations of people throughout the organization and led to a cultural transformation.

Gradually, Denning noticed that all of his carefully designed charts and graphs were having less effect than this simple story. He began to focus on stories and their role in the change process. The outcome, in addition to a highly successful change initiative within his organization, was a book: “The Springboard, How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations.” The book is an honest look at a major change effort and a deep exploration of stories and storytelling. The book begins:

“Why storytelling?
Nothing else worked.
Charts left listeners bemused.
Prose remained unread.
Dialogue was just too laborious and slow.”

Nothing else worked. A 29-word story carried the power to open minds to a new way of being. As change agents we need to become masters at crafting and telling "springboard" stories. Denning's book is a great first step.