"Although there may be nothing new under the sun, what is old is new to us and so rich and astonishing that we never tire of it. If we do tire of it, if we lose our curiosity, we have lost something of infinite value, because to a high degree it is curiosity that gives meaning and savour to life."
-- Robertson Davies

"No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit." -- Helen Keller

Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.~Thomas Dewar

"Yesterday is a dream, tomorrow but a vision. But today well-lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore to this day."

-- Sanskrit Proverb

"May I never miss a sunset or a rainbow because I am looking down."
-- Sara June Parker

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that." -- Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

"Grasp your opportunities, no matter how poor your health; nothing is worse for your health than boredom." -- Mignon McLaughlin

new videos on PCC network http://bit.ly/bPnwhK

http://ping.fm/zys8c

PCC, free to join, network, discussion forum, information resource. http://bit.ly/bPnwhK

Fiat saved by tractors - http://ping.fm/ixHWI

"You can do what you have to do, and sometimes you can do it even better than you think you can."

-- Jimmy Carter

"Most of the problems in life are because of two reasons: 1st: We act without thinking. 2nd: We keep on thinking without acting.” author unknown

"Everyone who got where he is has had to begin where he was."

-- Robert Louis Stevenson

The real leader has no need to lead--
he is content to point the way.
Henry Miller

If your actions inspire others to dream more,
learn more, do more and become more,
you are a leader.
John Quincy Adams

"Dance as though no one is watching. Love as though you've never been hurt. Sing as though no one can hear you. Live as though heaven is on earth." -- Souza

More about confidence based Learning (CBL) http://ping.fm/WsBEt

More about confidence based Learning (CBL) http://ping.fm/SJsEk

Backcasting http://bit.ly/c7wOgM

More about confidence based Learning (CBL)

·         Uninformed

This can be considered knowledge that a learner has not acquired yet. Someone who is uninformed is unlikely to act, which can result in a state of paralysis.

·         Misinformation

This can be considered knowledge a learner confidently believes to                     be correct, but which is actually incorrect. Those who have confidence in wrong information (misinformation) will very likely make mistakes on the job, which puts companies at the most risk.

·         Doubt

Occurs where a learner believes knowledge to be correct, but an element of doubt exists that may cause the learner not to act on that knowledge. Someone who harbors doubt may correctly answer in a test, but is likely to act with hesitation or not act at all.

·         Mastery

This is knowledge a learner knows confidently that is correct, and which will likely be applied correctly in practice. Learners who have correct knowledge and a high degree of confidence in their knowledge (mastery) are masters of that knowledge domain. These learners are likely to act correctly, resulting in higher performing and more productive learners who make fewer mistakes. (Confidence is key and should be considered relative to positive experiential neural imprinting).

four stages of competence

In psychology, the four stages of competence, or the "conscious competence" learning model relates to the psychological states involved in the process of progressing from incompetence to competence in a skill.

·         Unconscious Incompetence

The individual neither understands nor knows how to do something, nor recognizes the deficit, nor has a desire to address it.


·         Conscious Incompetence

Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, without yet addressing it.


·         Conscious Competence

The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires a great deal of consciousness or concentration.


·         Unconscious Competence

The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it becomes "second nature" and can be performed easily (often without concentrating too deeply). He or she may or may not be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.


Natural language is an example of unconscious competence. Not every native speaker who can understand and be understood in a language is competent to teach it. Distinguishing between unconscious competence for performance-only, versus unconscious competence with the ability to teach, the term "kinesthetic competence" is sometimes used for the ability to perform but not to teach, while "theoretic competence" refers to the ability to do both.

Certain brain personality types favor certain skills (see the Benziger theory), and each individual possesses different natural strengths and preferences. Therefore, advancing from, say, stage 3 to 4 in one skill might be easier for one person than for another. Certain individuals will even resist progression to stage 2, because they refuse to acknowledge or accept the relevance and benefit of a particular skill or ability. Individuals develop competence only after they recognize the relevance of their own incompetence in the skill concerned.

Many attempts have been made to add to this competence model. This addition would be a fifth stage, and there have been many different suggestions for what this fifth stage would be called. One suggestion is that it be called "Conscious competence of unconscious competence". This would describe a person's ability to recognize and develop unconscious competence in others.

Another suggestion by consultant David Baume:

As a fifth level, I like what I call 'reflective competence'. As a teacher, I thought "If unconscious competence is the top level, then how on earth can I teach things I'm unconsciously competent at?" I didn't want to regress to conscious competence - and I'm not sure if I could even if I wanted to! So, reflective competence - a step beyond unconscious competence. Conscious of my own unconscious competence, yes, as you suggest. But additionally looking at my unconscious competence from the outside, digging to find and understand the theories and models and beliefs that are clearly, based on looking at what I do, now inform what I do and how I do it. These won't be the exact same theories and models and beliefs that I learned consciously and then became unconscious of. They'll include new ones, the ones that comprise my particular expertise. And when I've surfaced them, I can talk about them and test them. Nonaka is good on this

—Nonaka, I. (1994). "A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation." Organization Science 5: 14-37. (David Baume, May 2004)

"Everything will be all right in the end; if it's not all
right then it's not the end." - unknown

"Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar."

-- Bradley Miller

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." Elbert Hubbard

Lessons for business from nature - Leaderless Honeybee Can Organise! http://ping.fm/vdF0Q

Lessons for business from nature - Leaderless Honeybee Can Organise!

See the original article here;

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070611154001.htm

ScienceDaily (June 16, 2007) — Undergraduate education generally involves acquiring "received knowledge" -- in other words, absorbing the past discoveries of scholars and scientists. But University of North Carolina at Charlotte senior biology major Andrew Pierce went beyond the textbooks and uncovered something previously unknown.

Pierce's discovery has to do with detecting a significant new detail concerning the behavior of the European honeybee -- perhaps the most studied and economically important insect on Earth. Beyond agriculture, the finding may also have key implications for understanding the dynamics of all social animals, including man.

Pierce's recently reported his research in an article appearing in the behavioral biology research journal Ethology, with co-authors Lee Lewis and UNC Charlotte biology professor Stanley Schneider, Pierce's mentor. Pierce was first author on the paper -- a rare achievement for an undergraduate.

"It was a very good work and an impressive achievement for a student researcher -- he got a publication as an undergraduate," Schneider noted. "I really like working with our undergraduate honors students -- they are so bright."

Pierce, age 22, has been working as a researcher in Schneider's lab for the past two years through a UNC Charlotte Honors College program that fosters research experiences for undergraduates.

Using an ingeniously designed experiment, Pierce and his co-authors were able to document details of bee social behavior that fundamentally confirm the hypothesis that major colony activities are initiated by the cumulative group actions of the colony's older workers, not by the queen's individual decision.

What Pierce and colleagues found was that older workers gave signals to the queen and to the rest of the colony that it was time to swarm and leave the hive. Later, they were able to observe inside the swarm itself and see workers give the queen a signal, known as "piping" that tells her to fly.

"Researchers have never reported worker piping being done on the queen before, so some of what we found was exciting," Pierce said. "It was generally surprising to see the level of interaction that the older bees have with the queen. This doesn't normally happen in the hive," he noted.

"It's interesting because it shows that though the queen has a tremendous impact on the colony, she's not the decision maker," Schnieder said. "The colony is not a dominance hierarchy and, from a human perspective, this is unusual. Our human society is very dominance hierarchy structured --we have centralized systems of control. But bee colony systems of control are very different -- they are totally de-centralized."

Schneider's lab studies the honeybee and its behavioral ecology. Like humans, honeybees are remarkable for living in large organized groups where highly developed social behaviors coordinate the efforts of thousands of individuals to accomplish complex tasks -- manufacturing, community defense, environmental control and maintenance, food production, brood-rearing and education. Like human civilizations, bee societies follow organizational principles, such as following social rules (like human customs and laws) and division of labor.

But here the similarity ends. Bees do not have large brains and are not capable of complex thought like humans. Though the bee colony is centered around the queen and her reproductive capabilities, findings by Schneider and others indicates that she does not exactly "rule." Instead, the colony appears to be controlled by the anonymous consensus of the colony's workers.

Though it is of great interest to researchers studying social behavior, a great mystery still remains regarding how bee societies effectively direct and coordinate complex operations without a central controlling intelligence. Pierce's finding is part of an ongoing research effort in Schneider's lab aimed at understanding the mechanisms of leaderless societal management -- in particular, the importance of two communication-related behaviors known as the "vibration signal" and "worker piping."

Different from the famous "waggle dance" that foraging worker bees perform to tell other bees where to find a food source, the vibration signal appears to be a more general, multi-purpose form of communication. Schneider has concluded that this signal, which consists of one bee grabbing another bee (worker or queen) and then vibrating its body, does not convey a specific message, but instead is a form of "modulatory communication" that alters existing bee behaviors (making bees perform their jobs more actively, perhaps) or changes bees response to other signals.

Pierce and Schneider have documented in their current paper how workers use the vibration signal to prepare the queen for swarming by making intrusions into her "court" and vibrating her hundreds of times an hour. She responds by changing her behavior -- reducing her food intake, slowing egg laying and becoming more active. At this point, the workers begin to send a second signal that researchers call "worker piping" at a fevered pitch. Piping, which consists of bees making contact and vibrating their wing muscles rapidly, appears to be a general instruction to fly.

The researchers document that the workers stop using the vibration signal when the queen flies and leaves the nest with the swarm. Piping, however, continues in the swarm, as the bees need to make the queen fly again once a new nest site has been selected.

"Drew Pierce did this project last summer," Schneider explained. "We constructed a special observation stand where we could actually see how workers were interacting with queens inside a swarm cluster, where they are hanging in a tree. That was really interesting, because nobody had ever really been able to look at that before," he noted.

"What was interesting was how little attention the workers pay the queen -- until it became time to go -- to become airborne. Then they started interacting with her at very high rates, and performing the 'worker piping' signal on her. This interaction is a behavior that nobody had described before," Schneider said.

Contrary to the popular conception of a colony controlled by instructions from its breeding queen mother, the research shows a picture of the queen as a passive egg layer whose own behavior is programmed, with changes dictated by signals delivered by older workers.

This does not mean, however, that the colony is controlled by a key group of experienced bees either. The worker bees that deliver the critical signals have short life-spans and tiny brains incapable of managing the colony the way a human village might be managed by a council of elders. Instead, critical strategic choices, such as the assessment that it is time to divide the colony and swarm, appear to be decided by the dynamics of the group itself. Social interactions, environmental pressures or group dynamics in some still-unknown way initiate a string of behaviors that effectively manage complex group activities.

"It is a real challenge to understand how bee colonies work, but it is also fascinating because they are so different. Evolutionarily, they got to the same point as humans -- living in these highly organized societies that function with remarkable efficiency -- but they are organized so differently when you start digging into them," Schneider said. "It's interesting that these major differences can result in the same emergent social properties. It may tell us something about ourselves."

"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to
overlook."

-- William James

They can because they think they can.
Virgil

Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.
Albert Einstein

Ford Invites More Development of Car Apps
http://tiny.cc/r4tgu

There go the people. I must follow them for I am their leader.
Alexandre Ledru-Rollin

Lao Tzu - On Leadership http://ping.fm/mRNNr

Lao Tzu - On Leadership

When one with the highest excellence does not wrangle about his low position, no one finds fault with him.

By being lower, rivers and seas are able to receive the homage and tribute of all the valley streams—thus they rule over them all. So it is that a wise leader, wishing to be above men, puts himself by his words below them, and, wishing to be before them, follows them.

The earliest people did not know that there were rulers. In the next age they loved them and praised them. In the next, they feared them; in the next they despised them. When rulers had no faith in the unvarying way, the people had no faith in the rulers.

How deferential the earliest rulers appeared, showing the importance they set on their words! Yet their work was done and their undertakings were successful, while the people all said, "We did it ourselves!"

A wise leader has said, "I will not try to change things, and the people will be transformed by themselves; I will be fond of tranquility, and the people will by themselves become correct. I will not pursue riches, and the people will by themselves become rich; I will manifest no ambition, and the people will become as natural as uncarved wood"

A wise leader grasps humility, and manifests it to all the world. Free from self display, he is conspicuous; free from self-assertion, he is distinguished; free from boasting about himself, he is valued greatly; free from self-complacency, he acquires superiority. Free from striving ambition, he finds none strives against him.

Thus a wise leader puts his own person last, and yet it is found in the foremost place; he treats his person as if it were foreign to him, and yet that person is preserved. Is it not because he has no personal and private ends, that such ends are therefore realized?

Seize power and try to manipulate people, you will not succeed. People have their own way and cannot be manipulated. What you attempt to seize, you destroy; what you attempt to grab, you lose.

Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching (approx. 3rd Century BCE) 

This and so much more requires psychological understanding if we are to perceive the damage 'Control systems' like ERP and standard accounting practice can have on performance when their use is not understood at this depth - Just as Taiichi Ohno promoted when trying to get the West to understand TPS - In leadership there has to be an element of 'Letting go' - and in my own words, "to gain control we must give control" and at the moment all of our logical systems 'Take control' away from 'people'.

This was posted as an answer to a question on LinkedIN - "how would a systems thinker describe the differences between a leader and a manager?" In answer to this original question, I'd suggest a 'Systems thinker' would describe the differences between a manager and a leader as; one who relies upon systems to control or understands and uses systems to get the best from those people he serves.

The Virtues of Temporary Solutions http://tiny.cc/46vwq

"It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say 'I don't know'."
-- W. Somerset Maugham

Learn how large companies including Wells Fargo and SAP as well as smaller businesses such as restaurants and nail salons are using Apple's iPad to make employees more productive and keep them better connected to the office http://tiny.cc/ijrgd

With the worst of the recession behind us, workers who previously felt they didn't have options may start looking around. Keep them, advises CCL

http://tiny.cc/4qwff

"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self."

-- Aristotle

Jeremy Rifkin on "the empathic civilization" | Video on TED.com http://ping.fm/yTpPs

Jeremy Rifkin on "the empathic civilization" | Video on TED.com

This is one to watch - it's also good to see the comments below, which I couldn't help myself responding to.

Jeremy Rifkin on "the empathic civilization" | Video on TED.com

Confidence based learning (CBL) http://ping.fm/3K7HU

Confidence based learning (CBL)

CBL is a term we make reference to but perhaps reflect upon in a different way at PCC. Following are a few thoughts to consider in relation to instilling confidence in people at work and the class-room:

CBL is focused on the ‘method of learning’ (detailed below), which is similar to the Socratic method.

The Socratic method is a negative method of hypothesis elimination, which means better hypothetical solutions are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those that lead to contradictions. In CBL the method of improving the ‘method of learning’, appears to be influenced and mixed with the current cultural need to ‘Prove’ knowledge.

We suggest ‘Proof’ is required by a society that continues to lose its capacity for trust with honesty and respect, and thus, empirical studies that provide proof are often missing the opportunity to address root cause issues that reside in how people are being (Honest / Respectful / Trusting / Trustworthy), as opposed to what they are doing (Behaving).

Being unconscious of this gap between being and doing, approaches like CBL fill this gap between trust and proof by making reference to advanced statistical models which take positive hypotheses, and test them with mathematical models to try and ‘Guess’ what may or may not be the outcome before putting the theory into practice (i.e. Six Sigma), as can be seen here.

This is the Wiki intro to CBL –

Confidence-Based Learning or CBL is a methodology used in learning and training that measures a learner's ‘knowledge quality’ by determining both the correctness of the learner's knowledge and confidence in that knowledge.

Additionally, the CBL process is designed to increase retention and minimize the effects of guessing which can skew the results of traditional, single-score assessments. This combination yields a profile of the individual's knowledge base, and identifies the difference between what the individual thinks they know and what they actually know.

Once knowledge and confidence gaps have been identified, the approach in using the methodology is to create a customized learning plan for each learner in order to fix the knowledge gaps once they have been identified.

The process, similar to quality improvement processes such as Six Sigma, is continued until the learner achieves total mastery of the knowledge they need for a particular skill. The CBL methodology defines mastery as the validated achievement of confidence and correctness for 100% of the content. This means that a learner must answer a question with confidence and correctness two consecutive times. Mastery then becomes confidently-held, correct knowledge put into practice.

We acknowledge the findings of CBL but we feel the output is structured to satisfy the prevailing language and expectations in the market rather than digging deeper. In so doing CBL has missed an opportunity to provide greater value.

In regards to the workplace and to the classroom, PCC suggests that ‘learning’ efficacy (speed, sense making and longevity of retention) is increased when individuals are confident, not only in their knowledge, but in themselves.We also understand and posit that creativity, innovation, problem solving and overall organisational development and performance are improved where individuals are fundamentally more confident in themselves and in their relationships with their boss, their peers and with the inert business systems with which they are required to interact.

These relationships and inert systems should be (but seldom are) consciously designed to remove assumption and therefore eliminate blame, relative to measures and judgements against assumed targets (as current standard business systems promote and accept as ‘Good’ – i.e. conducive to control).

In missing the connection between personal confidence (Self-concept) and performance, these systems are often designed in such a way as to provoke emotional reactions based in fear (of failure & rejection) and in their use we unconsciously undermine the performance we are aiming to enhance and improve.

The same logic & systems are used to judge the workforce in Schools and factories, i.e. Teachers are under the same systemic duress as any other worker, and yet our teachers hold the responsibility of leading our children to become our future adults and workforce! In such conditions, our teachers lead by example imprinting children to accept these threat based reactions are par for the course in today’s society.

We (PCC) focus on what constitutes effective communication for humans at a psychological level, to address the issues listed by CBL (below ABCD), but we also go further, recognising the mechanics (in brackets) of existing in conditions in which we are;

A- Uninformed (transferred data is not contextualised and made relevant to our understanding. Our inherent understanding from which we judge anything new is not checked or challenged. We fail to derive meaning from Data)

B - Misinformed (logical targets and drivers are set based on assumptions, often derived from detached, educated / programmed knowledge, rather than tacit intuitive knowledge gained through first-hand experience)

C - In Doubt (Doubt being a resultant emotional condition triggered by sub-conscious fear and uncertainty, provoked by  ‘data only’ relationships with logical systems, which create our prevailing conditions to which we emotionally react / behave / perform)

D - Enjoying a degree of ‘Mastery’ (because, based on our previous knowledge and experience, we enjoy a clear understanding of our environment , we are confident to such a level that we can rationalise meaning from diverse historial experience and use the meaning derived from these other experiences to correlate to the current conditions and ‘Innovatively problem solve’, we know what is expected of us and can respond appropriately, reinforcing our self-concept. We know what is coming and we know how to respond effectively (positive reinforcement).

In this way we hope to convey a challenge to the cultural need for ‘Proof’ that comes from and is satisfied by the overt reliance on logic today, (i.e. answering twice with ‘confidence’ (that can’t itself be measured) = Mastery).

In this way and at this depth, we help others understand that confidence in conjunction with and relative to conditions, has to be considered when designing and accepting the efficacy of standard business systems.

It is at this level that PCC helps organisations design their systems to maximise performance.

Why IT 'Logic' based measures cause problems http://tiny.cc/1klg9