Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

Five hours on a plane to and from Melbourne this week for the EUAA’s Annual Conference was a great opportunity to get most of the way through Roger Martin’s earlier book “The Opposable Mind”.

More about the book at some later stage – but just want to highlight a few quotes from the book that help to clearly explain what I mean when I say that “Openness” needs to be one of our core company values.

If there’s one overriding lesson to take away … it’s that:
(1)  anything we think is real is actually (JUST) a model of reality; and
(2)  that model is probably imperfect in some important respects (from p123)

If anything but your model is wrong, every other model is a problem to be eliminated or ignored.  If instead your model is one of many, all of them imperfect, then the existence of a clashing version is to be expected, not feared (from p124)

My perspective is that these clashing models are to be welcomed, and even to be actively sought out, pragmatically.

‘Contented Model Defence’ is by far the most prevalent (mode of behaviour) – it is the factory setting for most people, who are generally unconscious of its operation (from p125)

In past years, I have invested considerable hours in trying to shift some employees paradigms from this ‘Contented Model Defence’ to what Roger calls a ‘Optimistic Model Seeking’ paradigm (this has been akin to seeking to facilitate the “warm–to–cold–to–hot” transition).

However our success rate has been low.  I’ve recognised it far more important to ensure that anyone new on the bus shares this ‘Optimistic Model Seeking’ paradigm as a pre-requisite to coming onboard.

Read this one late in 2010 – so this is a delayed post (delayed by a number of things, including the floods).

The Book	What we thought
“Strategic Intuition” by William Duggan	Worth a Read

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It seems “Openness” means different things to different people…

1)  Some talk about “Openness” as being a state of being, in which:
(a)   They are open to … new ideas, … or innovation, … or new experiences, … or some “thing” else. AND/OR
(b)  They are willing to freely share of themselves, their ideas, dreams & fears, etc…

To me, this view seems like it implies a sort of passivity.  Given where our bus is headed, “Openness” needs to be more active than that to us.

2)  At other times, I’ve seen or heard it mentioned as a form of “seeking out”, which is more active than the above case.

However this is not exactly what we’re looking for, either.

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For those who have been frequent readers of this blog, you will understand that I have a number books on the go at any one time.

This makes for eclectic reading, and generally slower progress than would otherwise be the case.

1)  Binary Review

… however I pretty much flew through this one, given it was aligned with our primary core value of “Customers First”, and the other ones as well.

The Book	What we thought
“I love you more than my Dog” by Jeanne Bliss	Just where we are headed

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