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Themes that excite us...

In the other place (LI), Andrew Armour says: "It is great that there is a varied series of talks - but where are the talks about computer interface design, smartphone culture, the media habits of Tablet users, the business clusters that the UK can own, the financial products of tomorrow, the competitive advantages we should be encouraging? Intellectual property? Innovation centres? The link between Universities and business? "

I did ask a little while ago for more notice about talks - a calendar feature of some sort, as I find it frustrating when topics come up with too little notice for me to reschedule my work and attend.  I suspect that this might affect people from out of town more than the city dwellers.  I was told that the programme is deliberately kept flexible to accomodate speakers who happen to be available at short notice.  I have also noticed that many speakers are either recent TED talkers, or authors of new books. 

I've written quite a few books, including my latest "The Senior Executive's Emergency Job Hunt", but I'm not foolish enough to think that mine would be that interesting to RSA Fellows!  It's hard to define what makes a topic interesting to Fellows, but I wondered if we might try coming up with a kind of list related to BUSINESS and, especially (though by no means exclusively), MANUFACTURING?

Are there any people you've come across lately that inspired you?  Are there any commercial firms that fascinate you for their innovative approach?  Have there been any books published recently that made you sit up and think?

Over to you folks.

Best wishes

Graham

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Matthew Kálmán Mezey on May 7, 2012 at 21:54

Hi Graham and others,

This may be a complete tangent, but I keep wondering whether the Knowledge Management (KM) tool known as the 'River Diagram' might enable a quantum leap in Fellows sharing their skills + expertise with other Fellows.

The River Diagram basically allows people to benchmark their various skills using the relevant skill maturity models - making it very easy to see who is one or two notches beyond where you are, and therefore worth speaking with.

Such benchmarking might also enable the tracking of Fellows' skills over time, and could highlight the particular skills where Fellows at a whole are most lagging... (when you plot lots of people's skills, you end up with a graph that looks a bit like a river - with the north and south banks showing how high, and how low, skill levels are. Where the 'river' gets wide, there is a big gap in the expertises levels on that particular skill.)

River Diagrams have been used in places like BP, the NHS, GCHQ (management development), Syngenta (manufacturing), Balfour Beatty, and the UN are testing an on-line tool to make them.

The RSA could play the role of the UK's host for a whole panoply of different skill maturity models - and could catalyse and enable widespread skills-sharing (and tracking)

Perhaps best at explaining what a River Diagram actually is is this short video, by Chris Collison: http://www.bit.ly/91np2j

Matthew

Permalink Reply by John Oakley on May 7, 2012 at 23:09

Matthew, it may a complete tangent to the discussion so far but that has wandered somewhat from the original question that Graham asked. The discussion it seems to me has veered over to the seemingly recurring theme (in other places) of how do we get involved with other Fellows of like or complementary thought.

If we had the required data about all the fellows that we could graph using a river diagram I'm sure that we might see some useful opportunities. But I think we are some way from that because, correct me if I'm wrong, but the only current source of that data would be the new Skills Bank, which is opt-in and pretty free form beyond some basic characterizations. Given that I suspect less than 4000 Fellows are using online tools then the Skills Bank at best would not contain many more entries. 

Then again how do you rate individuals on any scale. I'm sure that there are some in the Society would rate themselves at 5 ( on a scale of 1 to 5) regardless of real capabilities - or at least seem to from their online postings. And there are other valuable members who would measure themselves at 1! I'm sure Fellows in general exhibit the ranges of self-confidence you find in any large organization - perhaps a tad up on most - so self-assessment is pretty unreliable.

Peer assessment is a lot more reliable in my experience but how on earth do we do that in the RSA? We can't find our peers! Which is to where our conversation has veered. I think we could make more progress faster if we could easily find each other and then use normal social methods to peer-assess. This is precisely what Graham has suggested. Having suspected (rightly or wrongly!) that from his observation of comments on this and other discussions that maybe Peter and/or I have ideas that we can build on he has suggested that we meet via Skype to further progress this discussion and to decide if we are likely to be able to help bring about some progress.  I doubt we will use a River Diagram to decide form width and banks where we should focus. It will be far more subjective than that.

However, Matthew, in your central JAS role, if you have the data from some other source then it may well be something you might want to try. But if you do have this data then please release it to the rest of us so that we can make our own assessment of who we might want to connect with.

And I always remember my first presentation to the head of IBM in Europe. I had produced a presentation deck of 12 slides, with backup slides for every fact presented making a total of over 100 slides ( actually they pre-dated Powerpoint and were called "foils" in IBM).

I got as far as the second one when The Man said "Put those away. Graphs are the crutch of the unsure. Just tell me your story." I actually had to have and know the data before I could develop the graph and could do that.

Does the RSA have the demographic information required to build a RIver Diagram and if not, can we get it? 

Permalink Reply by Dr Graham Wilson on May 8, 2012 at 0:32

John

"And I always remember my first presentation to the head of IBM in Europe. I had produced a presentation deck of 12 slides, with backup slides for every fact presented making a total of over 100 slides ( actually they pre-dated Powerpoint and were called "foils" in IBM).

I got as far as the second one when The Man said "Put those away. Graphs are the crutch of the unsure. Just tell me your story." I actually had to have and know the data before I could develop the graph and could do that."

Ha! Another digression - I so remember my first presentation to someone awfully near the top of Exxon...  A detailed report with all the evidence to back it up and a set of fancy slides created with Lotus Symphony.  I'd got the second or third slide up, when he looked up from his desk and said, "Never mind the b***t. I've got the conclusions here and it says...  Do you believe them enough to stake your job on it?"  Answer; "Yes."  Reply; "Fine. I'd love to hear your story, but I've got a stupid day today and can't do it justice. Let me know if you need anything or anyone hassles you."  End of meeting.

Cheers, Graham.

Permalink Reply by John Oakley on May 8, 2012 at 0:56

Yes, I think it was that incident that demonstrated to me what I had to do to be a leader rather than a manager :-)

Permalink Reply by Dr Graham Wilson on May 8, 2012 at 7:23

I just saw this too. why do I keep stumbling on these things? no notifications/alerts? no default landing page?

http://rsafellowship.com/group/digitalengagement/forum/topics/techn...

Permalink Reply by Matthew Kálmán Mezey on May 8, 2012 at 8:54

Hi John,

I think the 'River Diagram' approach would enable exchanges between all Fellows, rather than the support from the current Skills bank members towards Fellows' projects, which is how things currently work.

I certainly agree that quicker and more subjective 'finding' of Fellows is pressing - hopefully a new CRM system would enable that? I view the River Diagram approach as a second more structured level, that would take place once easy finding (of Fellows/skills) is in place. (Also, I view a 'River Daigram' approach as using user-contributed data - not something we could generate centrally.)

This is all speculative though - I'm not part of the technology strategy board.

Graham, when you say 'no notifications/alerts?' - do you mean that you don't receive automatic notifications from Ning groups that you're a member of? You can sign up to make sure that you do. I'm not quite sure what you're referring to re 'no default landing page?'.

Best wishes,

Matthew

Permalink Reply by Peter Churchill on May 8, 2012 at 8:56

John, Graham I am happy to join in. John has my contact details.

Enjoyed the McCrystal video - sharing information sounds like a good start - "social reporting" might be a useful part of this if it can be organised?

Permalink Reply by Dr Graham Wilson on May 8, 2012 at 22:17

Hello Matthew

Thanks for the pointers about the ning site. I tend to take as my base case the ecademy.com social networking site.  It's a bit tired design-wise but the technology has been going largely for over ten years and seems to set a standard for others to better.  Through simple use of cookies if I visit their 'home page' then its content is almost entirely customised to me.  This makes it easy for me to see who has left me messages, who has asked me to 'befriend' them, which of my groups are active, etc etc.  With the RSA Fellowship Ning site the landing page isn't customised at all as far as I can see.

I have looked at the settings area and can't find any notification options - could you point me there please?

Cheers

Graham



Matthew Kálmán Mezey said:

Hi John,

I think the 'River Diagram' approach would enable exchanges between all Fellows, rather than the support from the current Skills bank members towards Fellows' projects, which is how things currently work.

I certainly agree that quicker and more subjective 'finding' of Fellows is pressing - hopefully a new CRM system would enable that? I view the River Diagram approach as a second more structured level, that would take place once easy finding (of Fellows/skills) is in place. (Also, I view a 'River Daigram' approach as using user-contributed data - not something we could generate centrally.)

This is all speculative though - I'm not part of the technology strategy board.

Graham, when you say 'no notifications/alerts?' - do you mean that you don't receive automatic notifications from Ning groups that you're a member of? You can sign up to make sure that you do. I'm not quite sure what you're referring to re 'no default landing page?'.

Best wishes,

Matthew

Permalink Reply by Matthew Kálmán Mezey on May 8, 2012 at 22:42

Hi Graham,

Do you see a menu on the right like this:

Matthew Kálmán Mezey

Permalink Reply by Dr Graham Wilson on May 8, 2012 at 23:15

Yes, but there's no information about how to use them.

How do I hear of new blog posts for example?

Permalink Reply by Peter Churchill on May 9, 2012 at 8:49

Graham I am more familiar with http://virtual-coffee-house.ning.com/.

If you look at http://virtual-coffee-house.ning.com/profiles/profile/emailSettings (or RSAF equivalent http://rsafellowship.com/profiles/profile/emailSettings) you can adjust your settings for alerts related to your stuff: general content updates is not a Ning option as far as I know but you can (or at least could...) subscribe to Nutshellmail on the top menu dropdown from "Labs" for preset updates - I get a weekly digest.

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