Category: leadership

World Bank Innovative Cities Symposium: Three Take-aways

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Last week, I participate in a two-day event that brought together researchers, thinkers, urban leaders, policy professionals, and social innovators to share strategies for strengthening regional economies and improving the quality of life in the world's urban regions. Graciously hosted by Keshav Varma, Head of the World Bank Institute's Urban Program, the Innovative Cities' agenda was organized around the theme of competitiveness, but covered a wide range of challenges urban leaders face: intra-regional competition, social inclusiveness, positioning on the value chain, "smart" policies, transport and infrastructure capacity, and cultivating a healthy business climate.

Unfortunately, I had to leave for a flight just prior to the last panel – the summary panel. So I will offer my own top takeaways, based on no criteria other than personal resonance. I have not been able to stop thinking about these issues since I left the symposium.

1. Jurisdictional boundaries are rarely aligned with where problems need solving, but collaborative approaches can make a real difference.

The first panel (on intra-urban competition) featured economic developers and urban planners from the Washington, DC region: Gerald Gordon (Executive Director, Fairfax County Virginia Economic Development Authority), Steve Silverman (Director, Montgomery County Maryland Department of Economic Development), and Richard Reinhard (Deputy Executive Director, Downtown DC Business Improvement District). After a brief presentation from each on their approaches to development and key priorities, moderators Stephen Fuller (Center for Regional Analysis, George Mason University) and Greg Clark

(OECD, LEEDs Program) began asking hard questions about shared strategies and significant challenges. Transportation surfaced immediately, as did the incentive structures and institutional barriers to collaboration on long-term (read: expensive and shared) priorities. Rich Reinhard (attributing the framing to his boss) offered the following insight:

"Our policy and program tools exist at three levels: federal, state local. Our problems exist at three different levels: global, regional, neighborhood."

Therein lies the problem.

At the risk of sounding like I've got a hammer and have discovered a bevy of nails, I have since come to see so many contexts in which this misalignment impedes shared action: jobs policy, site selection/location, educational cachement areas, investments in higher education or business support programs, etc. Government services (and the policies that drive them) are nearly always tied to jurisdictions in ways that inhibit scale and discourage broad, public participation through which creative solutions can emerge.

A specific example was raised in the room: a DC-commuter admitted "slugging" (essentially, organized hitch-hiking to DC from northern Virginia) and wanted to know (quite rightly) why it is illegal and what the alternatives might be.

At one level, this is a commuter-specific issue economic development professionals tend not to want to spend their time addressing (imagine the safety and liability issues...). But it is also an example of a larger pattern of citizen-led innovation (enabled by technology among other things) that could inform regional policy approaches on transport and other issues. So many citizen-led innovations emerge as neighborhood-based social practices (and occupy a legal grey zone), that it is hard to link them to policy making, let alone share them across a region. Moreover, this is the kind of innovation that can be shared any any direction – advanced economies have as much or more to learn from emerging ones as the other way around.

This speaks to new role of leaders - it's less about being the one with the solution, and more about knowing how to cultivate, test, and grow ideas that work (see reivew of Open Leadership for more on this subject) collaboratively, at different levels, and on different time horizons.

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2. We need many more conversations about the enabling role of technology in helping cities thrive (citizens and residents, not just governments) so that we can inspire new models of governance and leadership.

Relina Bulchandani (Cisco Smart + Connected Communities initiative, of which this blog is a part), Gerard Mooney (IBM Global Government & Education), and Debra Lam (ARUP) made important presentations about how shared data and information platforms, systems (and sensors) integrated into the built environment can change what's possible for city leaders trying to manage extremely complex systems.

Relina's presentation emphasized how ubiquitous connectivity and the proliferation of mobile devices give us the potential to reimagine many aspects of work, learning, commerce, and life. By partnering with cities like San Francisco and Amsterdam to redesign urban information architectures, Cisco is helping city leaders reinvent the way they collect data, turn it into intelligence they can act upon, and share it with citizens and residents who can apply it (and contribute to it) too.

Gerald described similar partnerships with urban environments in the context of IBM's SmarterPlanet initiative, an effort to help cities get smarter about systems that support water, health, public safety, and transport, and begin to place citizens at the center of their work.

ARUP is an employee-owned engineering and design firm helping to green the built environment. Debra's presentation focused on measurement and feedback systems in the built environment that can help influence behaviors of people and communities. She offered some terrific visualizations that made evident why data transparency and presentation matter. When her slidedeck is made available, I will link it here.

Debra was also the first speaker to champion middle managers and experienced civil servants. While most of the symposium focsed on leaders and leadership, she argued that it is middle managers that make things work – these doers should not be overlooked as key agents of large-scale metropolitan change efforts.

3. We're not just reinventing strategies and tactics, but our fundamental approach to economic competitiveness and urban development.

Bruce Katz, Director of Brookings' Metropolitan Policy Program, launched the Symposium with some key observations about cities:

  • They will drive the next economy and create low-carbon ways to work and live.
  • They will grow in importance (because urban migration is increasing worldwide).
  • They will insist on new approaches to common, urgent challenges like long-term infrastructure planning, trade policy, and regional development.

Many other speakers used these as a foundation for their own observations about important changes within and across cities – growth, aging, poverty, access issues (energy, water, food), etc. – and described approaches to their key challenges.

But competing paradigms did emerge, provoked in particular by Bijal Bhatt (SEWA), Deputy Mayor Jerry William Silaa (Dar es Salaam), Michael Joroff (MIT), TIm Campbell (UrbanAge) and Melanie Walker (Gates Foundation):

  • Are we building clusters or making places? How are these agenda linked?/li>li>What role does human capital play in development?
  • Is competitiveness about growth or about broader indicators of health, soul, and prosperity?
  • Is development about sharing lessons from the US and Europe with the rest of the world, or about co-creating and sharing new models for sustainable working and living?
  • Do leaders make places or do citizens?
  • How do cities learn from each other (who doe the learning?)
  • How do we think about integrating the poor in development strategies? Are there things leaders need to do differently to ensure engagement?
  • How do we start measuring/comparing true costs of development, resource extraction?
  • How do we scale approaches that work (and does that mean replicate? grow? network? or something else?)
  • When (and how) are we going to integrate citizens and residents in not just policy review, but actual implementation – engaging citizens in placemaking as we do leaders?

We began defiing components of a "new operating system" for cities of the future.

And that's when I had to leave. I'd be grateful if another attendee could summarize the last session in the comments below. I will attach any materials I receive in the next week or so to this post.

Many thanks to Sabine Palmreuther, Jennie Datoo, Narmeen Iftikhar, Damon Luciano, Kashev Varma, and everyone else at the World Bank who helped organize the event, and the speakers and attendees who made it come alive

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Seven Reasons to Love DonorsChoose.org: Lessons for School Fundraisers?

Fundraising for Public Education

I'll be frank. I have mixed feelings about (seemingly endless) school fundraisers. As a policy wonk, I understand that needs exceed resources, but am perpetually frustrated when we are not transparent about the value of donations and contributions in public-school budgets, making it impossible to know what it actually costs to educate a young person. As a member of the village (no kids of my own, but aunt or god-parent of many), I do not favor buying things I don’t need in order to provide basic learning opportunities for the next generation. And as a citizen, I have a nagging suspicion that the effect of engaging hoards of parents, teachers, and children in fundraising exacerbates existing resource inequities and lets budgeteers (in state legislators, school boards, even foundations) off the hook, encouraging ever more local fundraising over deep thinking about sustainable solutions for providing high-quality public education.

Enter DonorsChoose.org.

I was prompted to try DonorsChoose while doing some fundraising research – I had not used the site before and was looking to compare its functionality and ease of use to other similar services. I logged on, set up an account, and found a request from “Mr. Tourzan”, a teacher in a rural, southern Oregon school. His request hooked me right away: stream monitoring kits to be used in the first environmental-science magnet program (also a K-5 program) to collect data with the intent of both presenting it in a public symposium, and using it to inform water policy in the community. This was something I could get behind. It’s science, civics, math, environmental stewardship, outdoor-education, and peer-learning all rolled up in one.

I made my contribution, finished up my research (loved the site by the way), and moved on with life and work.

Envelope: Courtesy of the USPS, DonorsChoose.org, Mr. Tourzan, and his Students
This week, I received a 9 X 12 envelope from DonorsChoose.org. I opened it half cringing, expecting a plea for another donation. Instead, I found hand-written, illustrated, and teacher-edited thank you notes from Chris, Vivian, Bryce, Cora, Cassia, Kazes, Julianne, Thomas, one that was unsigned, and one from Zach Walker at DonorsChoose. I read them all outloud half-laughing and half-crying. They were hilarious: heartfelt and specific about what each students liked best (e.g. going to the stream “6 times!”, talking at the symposium, adding in the poisonous chemicals, watching the “0xygen go down”, etc.).

Here are the photos and thank-yous if you’d like to take a peek. My favorite illustration is posted below.

The whole exchange was a great experience.

What’s Going on Here?

Hmmm…..Feeling a twinge of guilt. Why did I respond so positively to this experience (which benefited kids I do not know personally), compared to other recent experiences at the schools of my nieces, nephews and godsons?

Here’s what I came up with:

  1. The ask was simple. I knew exactly what was needed and why, how much it cost ($490), and who would benefit. (Assuming one more of those kids adopts environmental stewardship as a lifelong practice, we may all be saved. You’re welcome. Please pay it forward).
  2. The donation supported applied, interdisciplinary learning, not pencils, textbooks, or teachers. Personal preference maybe, but I am squeamish about fundraisers that aim to pay for basic classroom supplies, capital expenses, or program fundamentals (of which art, music, and physical education are a part). I want my donations to support programs that address unmet need, explore new ways to offer learning opportunities, or connect subject-matter to civic engagement. Mr. Tourzan’s program meets these criteria (heck, I would like to enroll in his program).
  3. The transaction was mission-related. I can’t stand bidding on wine at a silent auction so that kids can have computers in school. There I said it. Again, I understand how we’ve come to this situation, but that does not make it right. It takes a lot of effort to organize auctions and events, and most leave me wondering how we might have invested that time differently for greater gain. Not to mention, I’m not sure what we’re teaching kids when we suggest that their ability to have a decent education depends upon the decision of a private citizen to buy a vacation weekend, massage, or fine-dining experience at an auction.
  4. The scale of the request was manageable (for my budget anyway) and I really liked the crowd-sourcing aspect of contributing on DonorsChoose (I like this about Kiva.org, too):  I couldn’t shoulder the whole $490, but together, five of us could. And we could even connect with one another and Mr. Tourzan, here.
  5. The approach is entrepreneurial but does not engage kids it direct selling, nor place undue burdens on teachers. It wasn’t that long ago that I sold everything from garbage bins to honey to people who did not need these things so that we could maintain a music class. Enough said.
  6. The site makes visible what’s going on in classrooms that participate. This is certainly a higher level of transparency than most schools and districts offer about their special projects.
  7. The thank-you notes were an unexpected, personal, and delightful surprise. They engage kids in the effort (and cultivate good writing habits). And the difference between my reaction to those letters, compared to the average polished, corporate-style appeal that arrives at my doorstep…let’s just say I’ll be giving to DonorsChoose again.

And I have not put the letters in the recycling bin.

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“We Seek Agility”

Team: Take a look. It's as if we helped create parts of this. (Perhaps in a complex, highly networked kind of way, we did). Grateful to ResonanceBlog for sharing.

Complexity & Humanity 2.0

View more videos from ResonanceBlog.

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Book Review: Open Leadership, Charlene Li – A Practical Guide to the Emerging Open Future

Open Leadership, Charlene Li I loved Groundswell (Josh Bernoff, Charlene Li). While little in the way of specific content was new to me at the time I read it, the book offered an organizing framework: an environmental snapshot, an articulation of changing practices, and specific strategies for embracing (and measuring) them – all of which gave me a coherent way to talk with colleagues and partners (including skeptics) about social technologies (more often called “social media” at the time). More importantly, colleagues and partners to whom I loaned or recommended Groundswell also liked it, and a few were inspired to take action.

A follow-up to Groundswell, Open Leadership is Charlene Li’s latest book (to be released today). While similar in structure – there’s a very practical kind of “roadmap” quality to it – Open Leadership is ultimately a more important contribution to modern organizational thought leadership and to the efforts of millions of people trying to apply open leadership in their own contexts.

First, it’s focused on leadership. While this might seem obvious from its title, there are thousands of books on leadership (Amazon lists over 61,000) that are really about a particular leader (e.g., Jack Welch), a leadership style, or characteristics of a collection of leaders. Far fewer interrogate the nature of leadership itself. This one does – simply, and in the context of broader social, cultural, economic, and environmental changes. Pointing to the rise of a “culture of sharing” that increased connectivity makes possible, uncomfortable territory for many leaders to be sure, Li states, “At a time when customers and employers are redefining how they make and maintain relationships with social technologies, it’s high time organizations rethink the foundations of business relationships as well.” Open Leadership reflects transformative thinking not just at the level of practice but about how people in organizations and their customers relate to one another.

Second, the book profiles not just private sector firms, but global charities (The Red Cross) and key government agencies (the US Navy and State Department) responsible for some of the world’s most important and dangerous work. This underscores the emphasis on leadership broadly – not just for firms selling products and services, but for all kinds of organizations and institutions.

Third, the “roadmap” chapters (assessments, choices, etc.) offer practical direction not just for CEOs, but for open leadership and social technology advocates at all levels in their organizations. While Li doesn’t quite come out and say it, Open Leadership is a manual for leading openly from wherever you are. I would like to have seen more (and more explicit) emphasis on leadership outside of a firm context (community level government, multiple organizations engaged in humanitarian work, etc.), but these cross-organizational and network-based models could make nice case studies in a future book?

So What is Open Leadership?

“Having the confidence and humility to give up the need to be in control while inspiring commitment from people to accomplish goals.”

There’s an important nuance here – giving up the need to be in control is different than giving up control. The critical point is that social technologies have shifted the landscape so fundamentally that leaders simply cannot exercise the kind of control over information and decision-making they once did. However, they can connect to and collaborate with more customers and partners than ever before, provide a platform for those customers to connect to one another (engaging the collective “we” in problem-solving), and facilitate meaningful relationships along the way.

Li identifies five rules of open leadership:

  1. Respect that your customers and employees have power.
  2. Share constantly to build trust.
  3. Nurture curiosity and humility.
  4. Hold openness accountable.
  5. Forgive failure.

And then the book delves into roadmap territory (10 elements, assessments, models, checklists, etc.), so you’ll have to pick it up for yourself to make use of them. Importantly, these chapters (more than half the book) frame choices. How open do you want to be? About what issues? What kind of structure supports the kind of openness you want to achieve?

If you are an aspiring open leader, these alone are worth the price of the book as they will prevent you from having to reinvent a wheel or two. [Note: The chapter on structuring openness provides sage advice, and a myriad of examples, but if you need more, a host of social media guidelines or policies is here on the Altimeter Group wiki].

A Closing Note

While many of the examples cited in the book (Best Buy, the Obama campaign, Cisco, Comcast, Ford, etc.) have been the subject of inquiry many times before, Open Leadership presents them as unfinished stories rather than tales of hero/ines. This does a couple of important things.

First, it strengthens the case for open leadership on the grounds that ever more connected markets, communities, firms, and people both accelerate change, and make it less predictable, a condition for which open communications and information-sharing systems are well-suited.

Second, it portrays leaders as learners for whom adapting to the changing technology environment is mission critical – not just “fun.” Whether it means blogging, tweeting, or platform building, these leaders are not only embracing these practices but making them central to their work.

Anyone who has ever stood in front of a room full of skeptics trying to explain what a wiki is must have cheered at Paul Levy’s defense of CEOs blogging. [If you haven't been in such a position, imagine yourself trying to convince someone like Justice Antonin Scalia that Twitter matters.]

Finally, and on a personal note, I don’t know Jeremiah Owyang, but I’ve been following him on Twitter for some time now. I also read his blog and catch one of his webinars or videos now and then. I appreciate the wisdom he’s shared and sense that I would like him. I was surprised by the story in the chapter on failure (now you’ve got to buy the book), and felt at once supportive of his effort to “get back on the horse” and less embarrassed by my own open mistakes. We’re all learners really. And social technologies, used well, help us share experiences so we all move forward faster.

That’s Open Leadership.

Note: This review is cross-posted on Networked Publics.

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Book Review: Open Leadership, Charlene Li – A Practical Guide to the Emerging Open Future

Open Leadership - Founder of Altimeter Group, Author of Open Leadership, Coauthor of Groundswell.jpgI loved Groundswell (Josh Bernoff, Charlene Li). While little in the way of specific content was new to me at the time I read it, the book offered an organizing framework: an environmental snapshot, an articulation of changing practices, and specific strategies for embracing (and measuring) them - all of which gave me a coherent way to talk with colleagues and partners (including skeptics) about social technologies (more often called "social media" at the time). More importantly, colleagues and partners to whom I loaned or recommended Groundswell also liked it, and a few were inspired to take action.

 

A follow-up to Groundswell, Open Leadership is Charlene Li's latest book (to be released today). While similar in structure - there's a very practical kind of "roadmap" quality to it - Open Leadership is ultimately a more important contribution to modern organizational thought leadership and to the efforts of millions of people trying to apply open leadership in their own contexts.

 

First, it's focused on leadership. While this might seem obvious from the title, there are thousands of books on leadership (Amazon lists over 61,000) that are really about a particular leader (e.g., Jack Welch), a leadership style, or characteristics of a collection of leaders. Far fewer interrogate the nature of leadership itself. This one does - simply, and in the context of broader social, cultural, economic, and environmental changes. Pointing to the rise of a "culture of sharing" that increased connectivity makes possible, uncomfortable territory for many leaders to be sure, Li states, "At a time when customers and employers are redefining how they make and maintain relationships with social technologies, it's high time organizations rethink the foundations of business relationships as well." Open Leadership reflects transformative thinking not just at the level of practice but in how people in organizations and thier customers relate to one another.

Second, the book profiles not just private sector firms, but global charities (The Red Cross) and key government agencies (the US Navy and State Department) responsible for some of the world's most important and dangerous work. This underscores the emphasis on leadership broadly - not just for firms selling products and services, but for all kinds of organizations and institutions.

 

Third, the "roadmap" chapters (assessments, choices, etc.) offer practical direction not just for CEOs, but for open leadership and social technology advocates at all levels in their organizations. While Li doesn't quite come out and say it, Open Leadership is a manual for leading openly from wherever you are. I would like to have seen more (and more explicit) emphasis on leadership outside of a firm context (community level government, multiple organizations engaged in humanitarian work, etc.), but these cross-organizational and network-based models could make nice case studies in a future book?

 

So What is Open Leadership?

 

"Having the confidence and humility to give up the need to be in control while inspiring commitment from people to accomplish goals."

 

There's an important nuance here - giving up the need to be in control is different than giving up control. The critical point is that social technologies have shifted the landscape so fundamentally that leaders simply cannot exercise the kind of control over information and decision-making they once did. However, they can connect to and collaborate with more customers and partners than ever before, provide a platform for those customers to connect to one another (engaging the collective "we" in problem-solving), and facilitate meaningful relationships along the way.

 

Li identifies five rules of open leadership:

 

  1. Respect that your customers and employees have power.
  2. Share constantly to build trust.
  3. Nurture curiosity and humility.
  4. Hold openness accountable.
  5. Forgive failure.

 

And then the book delves into roadmap territory (10 elements, assessments, models, checklists, etc.), so you'll have to pick it up for yourself to make use of them. Importantly, these chapters (more than half the book) frame choices. How open do you want to be? About what issues? What kind of structure supports the kind of openness you want to achieve?

 

If you are an aspiring open leader, these alone are worth the price of the book as they will prevent you from having to reinvent a wheel or two. [Note: The chapter on structuring openness provides sage advice, and a myriad of examples, but if you need more, a host of social media guidelines or policies is here on the Altimeter Group wiki].

 

A Closing Note

 

While many of the examples cited in the book (Best Buy, the Obama campaign, Cisco, Comcast, Ford, etc.) have been the subject of inquiry many times before, Open Leadership presents them as unfinished stories rather than tales of hero/ines. This does a couple of important things.

 

First, it strengthens the case for open leadership on the grounds that ever more connected markets, communities, firms, and people both accelerate change, and make it less predictable, a condition for which open communications and information-sharing systems are well-suited.

 

Second, it portrays leaders as learners for whom adapting to the changing technology environment is mission critical - not just "fun." Whether it means blogging, tweeting, or platform building, these leaders are not only embracing these practices but making them central to their work.

 

Anyone who has ever stood in front of a room full of skeptics trying to explain what a wiki is must have cheered at Paul Levy's defense of CEOs blogging. [If you haven't been in such a position, imagine yourself trying to convince someone like Justice Antonin Scalia that Twitter matters.]

 

Finally, and on a personal note, I don't know Jeremiah Owyang, but I've been following him on Twitter for some time now. I also read his blog and catch one of his webinars or videos now and then. I appreciate the wisdom he's shared and sense that I would like him. I was surprised by the story in the chapter on failure (now you've got to buy the book), and felt at once supportive of his effort to "get back on the horse" and less embarrassed by my own open mistakes. We're all learners really. And social technologies, used well, help us share experiences so we all move forward faster.

 

That's Open Leadership.

 

Note: This review is cross-posted on StartGrowTransform.

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Categories

Book Review: Open Leadership, Charlene Li – A Practical Guide to the Emerging Open Future

Open Leadership - Founder of Altimeter Group, Author of Open Leadership, Coauthor of Groundswell.jpgI loved Groundswell (Josh Bernoff, Charlene Li). While little in the way of specific content was new to me at the time I read it, the book offered an organizing framework: an environmental snapshot, an articulation of changing practices, and specific strategies for embracing (and measuring) them - all of which gave me a coherent way to talk with colleagues and partners (including skeptics) about social technologies (more often called "social media" at the time). More importantly, colleagues and partners to whom I loaned or recommended Groundswell also liked it, and a few were inspired to take action.

 

A follow-up to Groundswell, Open Leadership is Charlene Li's latest book (to be released today). While similar in structure - there's a very practical kind of "roadmap" quality to it - Open Leadership is ultimately a more important contribution to modern organizational thought leadership and to the efforts of millions of people trying to apply open leadership in their own contexts.

 

First, it's focused on leadership. While this might seem obvious from the title, there are thousands of books on leadership (Amazon lists over 61,000) that are really about a particular leader (e.g., Jack Welch), a leadership style, or characteristics of a collection of leaders. Far fewer interrogate the nature of leadership itself. This one does - simply, and in the context of broader social, cultural, economic, and environmental changes. Pointing to the rise of a "culture of sharing" that increased connectivity makes possible, uncomfortable territory for many leaders to be sure, Li states, "At a time when customers and employers are redefining how they make and maintain relationships with social technologies, it's high time organizations rethink the foundations of business relationships as well." Open Leadership reflects transformative thinking not just at the level of practice but in how people in organizations and thier customers relate to one another.

Second, the book profiles not just private sector firms, but global charities (The Red Cross) and key government agencies (the US Navy and State Department) responsible for some of the world's most important and dangerous work. This underscores the emphasis on leadership broadly - not just for firms selling products and services, but for all kinds of organizations and institutions.

 

Third, the "roadmap" chapters (assessments, choices, etc.) offer practical direction not just for CEOs, but for open leadership and social technology advocates at all levels in their organizations. While Li doesn't quite come out and say it, Open Leadership is a manual for leading openly from wherever you are. I would like to have seen more (and more explicit) emphasis on leadership outside of a firm context (community level government, multiple organizations engaged in humanitarian work, etc.), but these cross-organizational and network-based models could make nice case studies in a future book?

 

So What is Open Leadership?

 

"Having the confidence and humility to give up the need to be in control while inspiring commitment from people to accomplish goals."

 

There's an important nuance here - giving up the need to be in control is different than giving up control. The critical point is that social technologies have shifted the landscape so fundamentally that leaders simply cannot exercise the kind of control over information and decision-making they once did. However, they can connect to and collaborate with more customers and partners than ever before, provide a platform for those customers to connect to one another (engaging the collective "we" in problem-solving), and facilitate meaningful relationships along the way.

 

Li identifies five rules of open leadership:

 

  1. Respect that your customers and employees have power.
  2. Share constantly to build trust.
  3. Nurture curiosity and humility.
  4. Hold openness accountable.
  5. Forgive failure.

 

And then the book delves into roadmap territory (10 elements, assessments, models, checklists, etc.), so you'll have to pick it up for yourself to make use of them. Importantly, these chapters (more than half the book) frame choices. How open do you want to be? About what issues? What kind of structure supports the kind of openness you want to achieve?

 

If you are an aspiring open leader, these alone are worth the price of the book as they will prevent you from having to reinvent a wheel or two. [Note: The chapter on structuring openness provides sage advice, and a myriad of examples, but if you need more, a host of social media guidelines or policies is here on the Altimeter Group wiki].

 

A Closing Note

 

While many of the examples cited in the book (Best Buy, the Obama campaign, Cisco, Comcast, Ford, etc.) have been the subject of inquiry many times before, Open Leadership presents them as unfinished stories rather than tales of hero/ines. This does a couple of important things.

 

First, it strengthens the case for open leadership on the grounds that ever more connected markets, communities, firms, and people both accelerate change, and make it less predictable, a condition for which open communications and information-sharing systems are well-suited.

 

Second, it portrays leaders as learners for whom adapting to the changing technology environment is mission critical - not just "fun." Whether it means blogging, tweeting, or platform building, these leaders are not only embracing these practices but making them central to their work.

 

Anyone who has ever stood in front of a room full of skeptics trying to explain what a wiki is must have cheered at Paul Levy's defense of CEOs blogging. [If you haven't been in such a position, imagine yourself trying to convince someone like Justice Antonin Scalia that Twitter matters.]

 

Finally, and on a personal note, I don't know Jeremiah Owyang, but I've been following him on Twitter for some time now. I also read his blog and catch one of his webinars or videos now and then. I appreciate the wisdom he's shared and sense that I would like him. I was surprised by the story in the chapter on failure (now you've got to buy the book), and felt at once supportive of his effort to "get back on the horse" and less embarrassed by my own open mistakes. We're all learners really. And social technologies, used well, help us share experiences so we all move forward faster.

 

That's Open Leadership.

 

Note: This review is cross-posted on StartGrowTransform.

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Getting Strategic About Skills

Thanks to Cristóbal Cobo Romaní in Flickr.

Thanks to Cristóbal Cobo Romaní in Flickr.

NOTE: This is the third in our recent “let’s share the findings from all those OECD reports with each other (and the world)” series. Again, the content is not likely scintillating, but it’s important to us, and we’re happy to let you in on it.

The OECD Designing Local Skills Strategies Report (2009) focuses largely on questions of balance in locally designed workforce strategies: balance between short- and long-terms needs, balance between training and placement, balance between meeting the needs of people, firms, and communities, and balance between workforce players – private, non-profit, and a diverse collection of government agencies at different levels.

Authors Francesca Froy, Sylvain Giguère, and Andrea Hofer offer case studies of the following communities:

  • Shanghai (China)
  • Michigan (U.S.)
  • Choctaw Tribe (Mississippi, U.S.)
  • Mackay (Australia)
  • Malmö (Sweden)
  • New York City (New York, U.S.)

While, other communities are also cited in the narrative, these communities’ launched initiatives representing what the report calls balanced strategies, the authors’ recommended approach. Balanced strategies focus simultaneously on:

  • Attracting and retaining talent
  • Integrating disadvantaged groups
  • Upskilling those in employment – though in most cases, this was the most difficult strategy because of its complexity (designing opportunities for working adults, often with families).

The report concludes by recommending that local workforce actors seeking to implement effective (and balanced) approaches focus on five key strategic issues:

  • Access to relevant data and information. Local actors need to understand their “skills ecology” and its impact on the wider economy to be able to design appropriate policy and program interventions.
  • Balanced and long term strategies. It is tempting for local actors to focus on only one or two strategic objectives. Focusing on all three areas is more difficult, but also promises to deliver more substantive impact over time.
  • Batter mapping of skills provision, for example through “career clusters” or “career ladders.” This provide a focus for otherwise disjointed systems and creates opportunities for individuals to advance in meaningful ways. However, careers advice is a key (and often lacking) component of this approach.
  • Building strong relationships with employers. While necessary to ensure effective connecting of supply and demand, public-sector and non-profit entities can play an important role in emphasizing long term needs and suggesting changes in workplace practices in ways that round out employer’s tendency to focus on short-term needs.
  • Look to the future and anticipate change. Skills strategies should be subject to regular review and change, and should build toward local areas of “flexible specialization” (sometimes called workforce or talent competencies, or clusters of talent) that encourage the development of local talents and skills that are specific enough to make the community distinctive, but broad enough to avoid dependency on narrow industries or occupations.

Not rocket science, but it does take determination – people who do this work rely on persuasion and trust, not hierarchy.

Leadership and Governance Really Matter

While the report does not emphasize leadership and governance as a theme, the frequency with which the difficulty of this work is noted in the narrative is striking.  Meeting many diverse public and private needs, balancing the short and longterm, collaborating with large and changing networks of partners absent a structure, meeting shared national policy needs and in a local (and sometime divergent) context, developing and allocating resources fairly and in ways that deliver results – this is complex work all over the world, and speaks to the level of management expertise and leadership talent it takes to do well.

What’s our strategy for developing the workforce workforce?

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What We Know About Regional Economic Growth, Innovation, and Recovery

Screen shot 2010-01-20 at 4.52.31 PMNOTE: We’ll be be posting findings from a few papers we’re reviewing with the intent of sharing with colleagues. We’re doing this here so that you might benefit from them too, but wanted to warn you before you read too far.

We just reviewed Regions Matter (OECD, November 2009). It’s chalk full of bits and bobs we’d picked up (and learned ourselves) while studying, conducting research, or providing technical assistance to stakeholders in regions, but offers a difference level of coherence than we’ve seen in some time.  We thought we might share.

Key Policy Messages about Regional Economies and Development (the “Big Picture”)

  • The intent of regional policies is evolving: they are increasingly about fueling growth and not just limiting (or reducing) disparities.
  • There is no consistent relationship between urban concentration and economic performance – simply concentrating resources in a place does not necessarily lead to growth.
  • Public policy matters in maximizing the potential of assets in regions.
  • Leading and lagging regions are both important – when lagging regions improve, they make important contributions to growth and equity, opportunity.
  • The use of productive assets (labor, capital, technology) are correlated with growth, but no single factor explains improved performance in a region. It is the interaction and interdependence of key assets that matters (suggesting flexible and integrated policy approaches).
  • Investment and governance are important dimensions of regional innovation and change, but there is no blueprint for these. Policy should be developed in the context of the specific assets a particular region offers.
  • Research- and technology-driven innovation is highly concentrated, but public policy can impact growth and capacity in regions with assets in emerging fields.
  • Innovation policy is not just about inventing the next new technology, but also about its adoption or application. Different regions have different innovation assets and can and should develop these based on their unique capacities. Some regions will invent; others will deploy or scale.
  • Innovation capacity is moving East (to Asia, where there are high concentrations of skilled labor and dense supplier networks). This mean regions in OECD countries must be mindful of how they develop knowledge capital that allows them to compete.
  • Rural regions offer innovation potential but in different ways – social innovation around environmental issues, better public services (on which most rural areas are highly dependent), and new cooperative arrangements for living, working, and managing communities hold promise.
  • Sustainable urban growth is widely recognized as a key policy priority.
  • Regional policy is difficult to manage at the national level. It would benefit from coordination and multi-year co-financing.
  • Learning, knowledge-sharing, monitoring and evaluation need to be coordinated across levels of government.

What turns places with concentrations of assets into agglomeration economies? (from Krugman, 1991)

  • The sharing of unique, place-based facilities (labs, universities, creative space, etc.)
  • Gains from producing complementary products in a wider array of facilities
  • Gains from a wider array of suppliers (and supply chain connectivity)
  • Deeply and broadly skilled labor reduces risk of adjusting to market shocks
  • Matching mechanisms (connecting workers and jobs, suppliers and purchasers, distributers with buyers and sellers, etc.)
  • Learning mechanisms based on the generation, diffusion, accumulation of knowledge and the systems that cultivate and disseminate it.

Results of OECD Growth Model Analysis

  • Human capital and innovation positively influence regional growth (as traditional growth theories suggest).
  • Elements from new economic geography theories (e.g. agglomeration economies) are also relevant and reveal a spatial connection to growth.
  • Infrastructure is a necessary but not sufficient condition for growth – it is only relevant if human capital and innovation are also present.

Time also matters in regional development efforts…

  • Infrastructure and human capital shifts require three years to positively influence growth
  • Innovation is even longer-term, netting positive effects after five years.

Governance in Regions

Regional development depends on efficient governance. Accountable and credible leadership is important, but it looks different than a generation ago:

  • It’s network-based, not organization based.
  • It’s championed by collaborative leaders, not individual heroes.
  • It’s more likely to be university or public sector-based than private sector based (and that’s okay, as the attention of private sector leaders is now often global, not local).
  • It manifests in shared public-private ventures that can take a variety of forms.

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