Jeremy Sweeney and Russell Davies on organisations, learning and change.
In a wide ranging, stimulating and challenging seminar we covered some important themes:-
How organisations can reconcile hierarchic control and open democracy,how learning new things involves chaos and uncertainty first before a new consensus emerges,how the internet is changing the culture ,how “doing” is the now the best way to learn what works,how setting up experiments can be better than spending lots on predictive research, how easy and quick it can be to set up experiments and how if you want to understand the new social media you have to leap in and have a go.
Posted in: Big Thinkers Seminar, Effectiveness, Uncategorized
Brilliant presentation from Russell Davies, a man who is genuinely living the ‘Just Do It.’ brand, and another lovely example of how to use powerpoint.
‘The best comms is like velcro – millions of hooks: some catch’
A few thoughts:
– How do you persuade ministers to agree to provide space and money for civil servants to make mistakes, to try new things?
– How much does COI’s work really lend itself to the kind of creative team working that goes on in agencies?
– If you rebrand Nike to make it about the voice, can you do the same for govt? Can you make people want to listen to advice on healthy eating etc? Isn’t all a bit too easy in consumer goods?!
Jeremy Sweeney good too – all comes back to the ‘trust’ thing – if you can earn it, give it, you can allow people the freedom to achieve great things. Did wonder whether he was conflating voters/consumers and govts/brands a little too much.
A great morning though – lots of inspiration and things to think on – thanks to those who organised it.
Joseph Mitchell says:
February 12, 2010 at 4:23 pmVery thought provoking – many thanks. Thought I would share a huge coincidence and concurr with Russell re the cleverness of kids’ approach of learning by doing: I picked my children up on Friday and, no kidding, they also had also done a 20 min Spagetti challenge at school! They had spagetti, marshmellows (no sticky tape or floss) and an egg to balance on top. Jemima’s group (8 yrs, 8yrs, 4yrs and 9 yrs) managed a tower of 320 mm with an egg balanced for 31 seconds. She told me that “we did talk for a minute before we started but that was only because Ms Epps told us too. Otherwise we would have just talked whilst we started building!”
Our tower was taller but not sure we could have balanced an egg on top
Joolz Pohl says:
February 15, 2010 at 8:44 amA very interesting session. I think it was interesting that the view with new social media was that you need to ‘have a go’. This has always been the case with the ‘old’ media too. It was called testing and people used to do a lot more of it (as well as or indeed instead of research). However fear of failure seems to be the big issue here as it prevents people from doing small low risk testing off and online – and yet ’safe adventure’ (as Ogilvy call it) is the only way of challenging the paradigm and moving things on – both from an incremental approach or by doing something more radical to ‘beat the control’ as Direct Marketers would say.
Perhaps this signals the need for an ‘exploration phase’ before a campaign is launched. What cane be tried out for little or now cost, what can be put into the marketplace (owned and earned) and how does it land? What’s the initial feedback? What then needs to be done in terms of more ‘traditional’ campaigning (paid for) to fill the gaps?
Marc Michaels says:
February 15, 2010 at 9:23 amJeremy Sweeney referred us to two books worht checking out. Here they are: Harrison Owen, ‘Open Space Technology – A Users Guide’
Daniel Goleman – ‘Emotional Intelligence – Why it matters more than IQ’
Janet Grimes says:
February 17, 2010 at 10:34 amSome more thought provokers: knowing what needs to remain stable is important when undertaking change.
An Organisation or individuals capacity to tolerate the instability inherent in learning is a key determinate of their capacity to grow.
The balance point between organisationally necessary structure and the fluidity of being human is a dynamic process you engage in rather than a fixed point you agree on or impose.
Research designed to influence behaviour change needs to become as good at hearing what is not being said, as it currently is at recording and reporting what is.
We are entering the relationship economy; where the quality and integrity of the connection any individual, organisation, service, product or brand offers will be the primary currency of transaction.
We are entering the ‘Relationship Economy’ where the quality and integrity of what is done, in terms of the human connections it creates, will be individuals, organisations, products and services key transaction currency.
One of the challenges for research designed to either influence belief/behaviour or measure it, is the capacity to capture and understand what is not being said as well as we can currently capture and measure what is being said.
Jeremy Sweeney says:
February 20, 2010 at 3:21 pmHi,thanks for the blog post. Infos are really usefull and saves me a lot time which I spend on something else instead of searching
Thank you
GrowTaller4Free says:
August 27, 2010 at 8:55 pm