You Cannot Lead without Inquiry

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BLOG UPDATE:  This article was originally posted in February 2012, and I am delighted to see that Hamza Kashgari, the young Saudi writer who inspired the article, has eventually been released from his prison sentence in Saudi Arabia. If you missed the original story, Hamza was imprisoned for expressing views deemed blasphemous by the authorities.  

(see Freedom House article on his release here)

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POSTED Feb 20, 2012      Too many people in positions of authority operate from a position of fear. Fear of not knowing, fear of being found out, fear of looking incompetent, fear of losing what has taken them years to attain.  This is true in companies, public service and politics. People who are in these positions are rarely stupid.  Being smart is usually a big factor in them getting to where they are. But, once they are there, something seems to kick in which is profoundly ‘anti-learning’. To paraphrase the great Chris Argyris, “Smart People find it tough to Learn”.

Today’s story in The Nation of Hamza Kashgari, a 23-year-old journalist, who faces potential death for daring to question, shines a powerful spotlight on the fear with which ‘leaders’ operate. As a species we progress by learning.  We are problem solvers, we are cognitive thinkers, we naturally question, challenge and inquire. It is by doing so that we have overcome the multitude of obstacles that have stood in the way of our evolution over millenia. But, we do not and cannot stand still. To do so would consign the human race to extinction, probably through self-destruction. More than ever before, we require Continue reading →

Fancy a Free Coaching Session?

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This is International Coaching Week 2012! And to mark it, I am offering a limited number of free coaching sessions to the first people who respond through this website. All you need to do is submit your contact details through the Contact Us page of this website together with a brief summary of what you’d like to get out of your free coaching session.

It’s that easy.  Go on, what have you got to lose?

New Year Resolutions – courtesy of Woody

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I love the simplicity and humble nature of this New Year resolutions list by Woody Guthrie.
New Years Rulin’s
Although simple there are many profound and meaningful words of wisdom that would not look out of place in any good ‘self-help’ book….

“Dream Good”
“Stay Glad”
“Keep Hoping Machine Running”
“Love Everybody”

and my personal favourite,
“Learn People Better”

Another breakdown in our society?

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Reading an article in the Scottish Review the other day got me thinking about the perennial question of whether our society (or more accurately the people who inhabit our society) are sliding down the greasy morality pole. Now, you may ask why, in a year that has seen some dramatic riotous events ranging from Tahrir Square at the beginning of 2011, to the streets of London in the summer, was I prompted to think about this subject by what, in comparison, is a rather mundane, albeit troubling, scene on a rural country bus in Scotland. Good question, Continue reading →

Why aren’t Business Leaders more like Athletes?

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It suprprises me that our aspiring business leaders and even general managers in corporations and in public service do not dedicate more time to brain science. I liken this to the world of athletics. An athlete’s primary job is to run faster, or jump higher or throw further. Sounds simple. But it is now well-recognised that to be the very best and to achieve the nano-second advantage that might make the difference between gold & silver or even between qualification for the olympic team and staying at home, athletes need to know a lot more than ‘just’ their traditional training programme. In the course of becoming the best they can be, they become well-versed in areas of muscle physiology, nutrition, anatomy, cardio-vascular mechanics, as well as some important principles of the the way their brain works through relaxation techniques, managing and channelling emotions and positive visualisation exercises. So what do we need and expect from our leaders? Continue reading →

Do we need more than ‘just’ attention to learn?

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I don’t believe we learn “simply by attending”….there’s more to it than that. It’s got something to do with integration and synthesis and making ‘new connections’ (resulting in new neural pathways). It is these new connections that we know as “Aha moments” – when things suddenly become crystal clear. This is captured well in my view by John Nelson in the book “What color is your parachute? For retirement(2007)”. He talks about the “sea of information out there and the difficulty of making sense of it all. It splashes around with no sense of order. It is also relentless – like a fire hose that forever is trying to fill you up as though you were an empty barrel.” Where he takes this metaphor next is the notion that it is “at the confluence of the information stream and your own stream of consciousness, that you’ll make your best decisions”. I would add that it is when you are paying attention to the confluence of streams of information that you “make connections” and where most learning takes place.

Reflection and Learning

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The importance of Reflection is clear. This is where LEARNING happens. For reflection to be successful the reflector needs to be open to his espoused theory and theory-in-use gap being exposed and crawled over. I suspect that many people may retrospectively “close this gap” (cognitive dissonance?) and thereby not acknowledge it. Doing this closes the door to learning. This is where the power of the techniques used and espoused by Chris Argyris come through – the power of disorienting people and leaving them feel exposed ‘in practice’. This then opens things up for learning. i.e. by Shining a Light or Focusing Attention sharply on the area.

Read more about Chris Argyris and his double-loop learning theories by clicking on the title of this blog post.

Cult Fiction

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My son Andrew (aka Andy, Drew or Ardie depending on which sub-culture you belong to) has written a book. Needless to say I am extremely proud. What father would not be delighted to see his son grow to write a novel and have it published?

He belongs to a generation immersed in social networks, new media, always-on communication and a new language associated with this world community. This is a world that appears to have no barriers, no boundaries, no class. It feels timeless and season-free. Ideas ping their way around the globe, being freely shared, blended, improved, challenged and accepted.

Of course I would love it if you read the book, and I do recommend it, especially if you have ever enjoyed any of the work of Douglas Adams. But, even more than the content of the book itself, this feels like the product of a new generation of thinkers, a new age of innovators, and the dawn of a more co-operative and hopeful world. Reading will never die, but the way that we create and generate new ideas to be read will continue to evolve. It’s exciting to observe at close quarters.

Whet your appetite at the following links;-

http://www.facebook.com/CultFictionBook

http://ardiecollins.com/blog/

military precision in the Tube

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Are humans naturally programmed to serve in the miltary? I was impressed as I watched the movement of people at the bottom of the escalators at Holborn tube the other day. The permutations of possible routes people can take is complex. Down and right to Piccadilly, down and left to Central. Direct from Central to Piccadilly and vice versa. Up from the blue line and likewise the red. 6 different routes in a relatively small space and hundreds of people all in full flow. I did not spot one collision. People seemed to lock on to their destination point and in a feat of collective co-ordination and uncanny, and apparently unwitting, mutual understanding, they weave and stride, eyes fixed, focused and unerring, slide past one another and disappear into the next tunnel or up the escalator. All of this achieved while many are locked away in their i-pod world or screening their texts and emails on blackberries and i-phones. I have been to the military tattoo at Edinburgh Castle, I have even been in a para-military organisation (steady!! – it was the Boys Brigade). I have trained for weeks for Drill Parades and was always secretly proud of my grasp and timing when it came to the ‘slow march’. But, having watched untrained commuters, from all cultures and countries, randomly thrown together in a tube station, perform a graceful and synchronised drill pattern with absolutely no rehearsals, I am wondering if we are indeed the descendants of a long lost military tribe with a natural instinct for co-ordinated and synchronised precision. Just a thought!

Is the Internet changing the way our brains work?

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According to an article in Newsweek (Monday Jan 18th 2010) the answer is no. But, it may be altering the way we think.

Shortened attention span. Less interest in reflection and introspection. Inability to engage in in-depth thought. Fragmented, distracted thinking. These are all ways that the Internet supposedly affects thought. 109 philosophers, neurobiologists, and other scholars were asked “How is the Internet changing the way you think”.

The general consensus of scholars who study the mind and the brain is that the Internet hasn’t changed the way we think. Neuroscientist, Joshua Greene of Harvard, argues that it has provided us with unprecedented access to information, but hasn’t changed what our brains actually do with it. Cognitive psychologist, Steven Pinker of Harvard, is equally uncertain that any fundamental changes have happened. “Texters, surfers, and twitterers have not trained their brains to process multiple streams of novel information in parallel, as is commonly asserted but refuted by research”.

And yet, many scholars do believe the Internet alters thinking. Howard Rheingold (a Communications expert) believes the Internet fosters shallowness and distraction, with the result that our minds struggle to discipline and deploy attention in any concerted way. It is also argued that the Internet is causing the disappearance of retrospection and reminiscence. Evgeny Morozov, an expert on the Internet and politics, claims that our lives are increasingly lived in the present, completely detached even from the most recent of the pasts.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (the author of the work on Flow – referenced and discussed elsewhere in this Blog) argues that since online information is often decontextualized it satisfies immediate needs at the expense of deeper understanding, resulting in more superficial thought. With facts (whether true or false) only a click away, the Internet allows us to know fewer facts, reducing their importance as a component of thought. But that increases the importance of other components such as correlating facts, distinguishing between important and secondary matters, knowing when to prefer pure logic and when to let common sense dominate.

In other words, more than ever, we need to apply judgement to what is important and what is not. I don’t believe this is fundamentally different to what has gone before (apart from in terms of volume). All sources of information are subject to interpretation, and are conveyed through the filter of someone’s brain. Judgement will become an ever more critical skill; but our brains, our thinking, and the way we process information, is tried and trusted and will serve us well.