"Warm-up" Blogs

Thinking and acting with a "value network" perspective presents participants with a unique opportunity for getting into the flow. It helps you to achieve win-win outcomes in most situations, particularly in business, and guides you in the adoption of new mind sets to become fit for purpose in challenging environments.

There are three steps.

1) Seek out the formal processes that cross functional silos and other hierarchical boundaries. Identify what each participating group is designed to contribute as tangible deliverables.

2) Ask, "How do we really do the work around here?" Identify the informal social networks that provided the basis for relationship building and sharing of information, co-creating knowledge and the transmission of other favours without expecting immediate payback.

3) Be still, reflect, meditate/pray and be open to the energy that transforms disorder into order. Judge whether it is energy that destroys or builds for the future. ( See, for example, how to relate this to credit crunch issues here)

With this trinity of flows, be ready to transform your relationships and effectiveness with others whether in community, enterprises, regions, globally.

Optionally, inject some spirit into affairs, using whatever source inspires you or you are open to.

Note how your capabilities are enhanced and how behaviour changes.

Notes: Acknowledgement is given to the Verna Allee and Oliver Schwabe for the ideas behind the NetMat TM approach to visualising value networks, and Joan Bird for many conversations about energy in networks.

As one rather gauche American put it to me, "I am up to my a**e in alligators!"

That was 10 years ago, but I guess that sentiment could apply to us all now, with a nominal $600 trillion of debt still bubbling below the surface like a molten magma.

For those who feel like holding hands and riding events out together , maybe now is the time to adopt new mindsets, skill sets and tool sets to succeed at win-win in competitive environments using the value network perspective - the intuitive move from supply chain and value chain thinking.

A unique opportunity to start with the basics is open to all on Thursday, 11th June at Regent's Business School, London when, aided by a few rope manoeuvres, I'll be introducing attendees to value networks. It is organised by the Central and Westminster Branch of the Chartered Management Institute.

It's a short, participative session of 60 minutes with Q and A and you will have an overview of value networks and analysis (VNA).

What is it?
What can it do for me?
How can I get more of it?

The flyer is attached here...
CMI talk on Value networks D M Flyer 110609.pdf
[The slides accompanying the presentation are now added as a comment below (14th June)]

You are at http://tinyurl.com/qk45f6

Wal-Mart is harnessing the collective knowledge and wisdom of its own company, supplier companies, academia, government, and non-government organizations to explore mutual challenges and develop solutions that benefit their businesses and local and global communities.

Already a wealth of innovation and insight has led to improved energy use and efficiency, reduced or recycled waste, and increased introduction of environmentally friendly and organic products. Their purposeful value networks called SVN's (which is a way of organising win-win collaboration and alliances with a value network perspective) are currently focussed on:-

Greenhouse Gas
Sustainable Buildings
Alternative Fuels
Logistics
Waste
Packaging
China
Forest & Paper
Food, Agriculture and Seafood
Textiles
Jewelry
Electronics
Chemical Intensive Products

Read more and see the video with interviews with executives here

Thanks to John Maloney for drawing my attention to this

There was once a CEO of RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland, UK) who was pilloried for refusing to return a portion of his huge pension provision in the light of the subsequent disasterous performance of the group. Apparently he was legally justified in retaining what he was awarded when he left in disgrace. There has been talk of the Government enacting legislation to shred this award to a more fitting level.

Consider also the call of the Prime Minister for "global rules grounded in our shared values," plus a list of tests. The first test was "we must clean up the banking system." The last test was "we must never, ever, forget our obligations to the poor."

So a question arises, "is it good to make shedloads of money?" If not, how much is it appropriate to make? What should we expect of our organisations, and what should we contribute?

While many say Big Ideas-meganarratives- are out, that post-modern society is diverse and fragmented, and can't be reduced to any one organising concept, there are those who disagree.

Over the next few weeks, I will be addressing relevant material, some of it normally held to be off limits, in the search for a worldview or paradigm that can be considered in conversations as people in organisations envision a new future together.

I am indebted to Dr Charles Savage for his encouragement and ongoing dialogue when a year ago we started the quest for such a paradigm.

Life in organisations can be complicated and complex! Here's one viewpoint.

The diagram below is my most complicated one yet to capture some of life's challenges in organisations. This is for consumption by engineers and blatently breaks all the rules of good presentation by ignoring the benefits of "chunking." You can obtain a larger image by clicking on the jpg at the foot of the blog.

The blue blocks show how intangible assets are conceived and grouped, using the descriptions found in the value network approach. The intangibles are:

>>> Foreground intangible assets (Human competence, business relationships, internal structure)
>>> Background intangible assets (Corporate identity, social citizenship, environmental health)

Tangible Assets are show in red as facilities and trading, for want of better headings.

The horizontal brown bands represent interventions or concepts that interweave at four levels:

>>> Personal
>>> Interpersonal
>>> Organisational
>>> Societal

A recent book " Long-Range Futures Research - An application of complexity science" by a former colleague at Planning Research Corporation (PRC), Robert H. Samet, provides rich new insights on alternative ways in which to reconfigure these levels, as well as extending the horizon to 2150 with a tracing of an evolutionary trajectory to 2250.

The "Focus of Conversation" blocks are based upon a theoretical construct of aspects of knowledge devised by former colleague Verna Allee in her book"The Knowledge Evolution - Expanding organizational intelligence," itself based on the prior work of Karl-Eric Sveiby and Leif Edvinsson.

Usefully, these aspects can be directly linked to the time horizons of CEO's as they wrestle with the sometimes conflicting demands of short term action and longer term issues and worldviews. Although the brown topics above are not linked to the planning horizons, their significance seems eternal.

A question for Remuneration Committees: - How should a CEO's remuneration be linked to the Planning Horizons?

Dimensions of Organisational Existence.jpg

Four people gathered at the Institution of Civil Engineers (UK) for three hours on 7th January 2009 to co-create a simple way of visualizing how the current financial system could be tweaked to fund needed action to help combat climate change effects and causes.

The brainchild of Ian Greenwood, with supporting analyses and input from Jamie Walton, Ian assembled information from the UK Treasury, the Bank of England and other authorities to formulate options for restructuring the funding of sustainable energy production and energy conservation/usage in buildings. Concurrently, he conceived how both commercial property and householders could benefit from the proceeds of a range of new taxes that re routed conventional commercial banking money flows along new channels to help offset the tax needed for the restructure.

Following probing questioning from Beverley Daley, a Value Exchange Systems (VES) diagram was developed with facilitation from David Meggitt. A first cut at the current situation was co-created by first identifying two broad groupings of participant as follows:

• The banking ecosystem, consisting of commercial, banks, the money market, the UK Treasury, the Bank of England

• A UK development ecosystem, consisting of a) designers, builders / installers, product manufacturers, raw material suppliers and customers for insulation products b) more general investment by Government in infrastructure and services provided by a network of other contributors

We identified some key transactions that flowed between the participants by asking a simple question, “What are the deliverables that a Participant creates and launches to be received by another Participant?” The following diagram was prepared to show how these flows fit together. The Participants are shown as ovals and the transactions as lines with a description of the deliverable on the line. The activities needed to create, launch and receive the deliverables are contained within the ovals. These activities include the formal procedures and processes required for that purpose. The receipt of rules enforced by regulation and legislation is omitted for clarity.

The following VES diagrams are provided as examples only and subject to continual refinement.

The transactions, shown as solid lines, are associated with contracted and expected agreements, albeit, at a low level of detail at this stage.

We then asked ourselves whether this represented the real way in which the overall “system” worked. Had we acknowledged the informal networks that oil the wheels of the machine? Recognizing this omission, we then added a representative sample of informal flows of information that normally fell outside the auditable standard processes, shown as dotted lines in the diagram following.

The next step was to consider new possibilities, termed scenarios, in which the quantity of interest paid by customers to commercial banks for loans was reduced and a portion diverted via a Credit Money Banking Adjustment (CMBA) which is passed straight to the Treasury. Similarly, an Environmental Tax on Imports (ET) raised from customers is redirected to the Treasury using the existing VAT system but clearly indicated on receipts to fund further activities in the development grouping that will help combat climate change (ET%).

We then added these new flows to the VES diagram, below, and in so doing identified a new group that we wished to add:

• Overseas programmes beneficiaries,

The tentative suggestion flagged up here depends upon whether banks are able to fulfill their new roles in return for leaving the principal payments untouched and flowing to the programmes. A funding stream is definitely needed to accomplish climate mitigation and adaptation for the poorer producer nations.

We now have a first cut / draft of the value exchange system for the existing situation and one for a possible future scenario. Subsequent work, as below, would show the sequence in which the activities and deliverables took place. Additionally, for those who prefer lists and tables to diagrams, spreadsheets are available which also show additional detail needed for analysis of costs, risks, perceived values et al.

The current diagrams can be used as a “Discovery Dialogue” with interested parties prior to establishing a project to move to the next stages. This can be formulated to develop a “Discovery Map” of a desired arrangement, leading to a “Business Model,” “Strategy Blueprint,” “Business Process Prototypes, and Deployment.”

Further questions can now be raised. Where is the energy or passion in this ecosystem and how is it raised or lowered? Is greed a shared passion? Is enabling a sustainable cause a motivation? How does that affect behaviour of the whole or part of the ecosystem? How is synchronous leadership cultivated? Techniques that complement the VES approach can be used. For example, we can begin to visualise the possibilities of energy flow quite easily: see here.

-----------
Additional notes from Ian Greenwood

1. Revenue must be directed as part of the system towards insulating the “hard to treat” buildings - it is no good having:
• difficulties/time lag in applying for adequate funds/subsidy
• long delays or stop-start of funding,
• immense staff or bureaucracy costs

2. The message from STEERglobal is that an equal dollar return must be made to the producer nation for their sustainability & energy efficiency. This can be achieved via an Environmental Tax on Imports (ETI) or ET. Credit money re-directed - the Credit Money Banking Adjustment – (CMBA) at the level of the base rate can then enable offsetting of ETI Tax. Such an adjustment would be about 50% of so-called “free” commercial bank money.

The key point about CMBA is that it diverts a portion of the large amount of so called FREE MONEY that currently accrues to Banking and Finance. This FREE MONEY has significantly contributed to the CREDIT CRUNCH through build up over preceeding years. With a target 5% base rate, CMBA would divert about half and be adjustable.

3. Additionally, now that the other proposal, the Credit Money Banking Adjustment (CMBA) has been devised, the revenue can flow from where it has been inflationary (or held back in the credit crunch) to where it is necessary to achieve energy and resource sustainability, directly to projects investing in a sustainable future. Allowing these investments in a balanced way across the world would also create more stable finances and benefits socially, environmentally and politically. Confidence can then return.

4. Notes on conversation Ian/David 21-04-2009v2: Possibly change red arrow to black from customer to Commercial bank. In due course maybe suggest that in return for retaining the principal on “free” money, C.banks administer the system at no extra charge: i.e. the diversion to the treasury can be an un-necessary task. The banks in receiving the principal merely return some of it direct to the customer – i.e it is healthy to SHOW the interest on the statements, but maybe not necessary to collect part or all of the principal/interest. No doubt there are further “takes” on this. IG

You are at http://tinyurl.com/cs9dtq

Value network methods help us visualise the relationships between people, what they contribute and the roles they play, whether as individuals or in groups. The blog here illustrated the place of "spirit" in guiding human activity in organisations.

So what could the title of this blog mean?

Based upon definitions in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, the following is today's contribution.

To "Put your spirit into your value networks" is to release your vital animating essence (courage, energy, vivacity, dash) into the collaborative work you do with others. This involves being sympathetic to the mental or moral conditions or attitudes prevailing at the time...to which I will add, beliefs.

So where to begin? For initial inspiration, a recently rediscovered set of articles originally published in the Spring 2000 edition of Faith in Business Quarterly (FiBQ) may be helpful. Now out of print, I am indebted to Dr Richard Higginson Director of Studies at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, a member of the Editorial Team, for permission to reproduce articles from this edition of FiBQ entitled "Spirituality at Work Issue".

The first is a review of the book "SQ: the ultimate intelligence" by Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall. At the time, Zohar taught in the Oxford Strategic Leadership programme at Oxford University and was a Visiting Fellow at Cranfield School of Management where she led a one day course to launch SQ in February, 2000.

The reviewer, Bob Cumber, was a retail banker, and in 2000 an independent management consultant.

The review is attached, which contains the following comment: "As with many new age thinkers she applies subtly different meanings to conventional spiritual vocabulary and she promulgates a smogasborg of beliefs not dissimilar to many new age thinkers. This includes concepts taken from psychology, eastern philosophy, mysticism, gnosticism and all the worlds' major religions, including Christianity, but very much on a pick-and-mix basis. .... The task which Zohar sets her readers is daunting.......Despite these criticisms, SQ does provide very useful insights to any seeking to gain an understanding of the ways in which many people are thinking about spiritual things at the start of the 21st century.

What Spirit.. SQ Zohar Review.pdf

In the workplace, it is increasingly useful to link "beliefs" to actions. According to Joseph O'Connor in his NLP handbook, beliefs are the principles that guide actions - not what we say we believe, but what we act on. Beliefs give meaning to what we do.

Values are why we do what we do, what is important to us - health, wealth, happiness, love.

On an organizational level, businesses have principles they act on and values they hold. They are part of the culture of the business. Beliefs and values direct our lives, acting both as permissions and prohibitors on how we act.

Incorporating other factors that affect our capacity for learning and coping with change is the "model" below developed by Robert Dilts from the work of Gregory Bateson. The factors should be viewed as interconnected levels, not a hierarchy.

It is useful, although considered by some not to be entirely consistent, exhaustive or even logical, but has been widely adopted in NLP thinking.

We will be looking at other models in future blogs.

I am grateful to Jennifer J Stenhouse, a Master Practitioner in NLP and also a participant in the only course with Robert and John Dilts to date on modelling effective entrepreneurship, for introducing me to this approach.

I have been a member of the Institute of Business Ethics (IBE) for two years and enjoyed the dialogue at the meetings immensely.

Invariably held under the gracious chairmanship of the IBE Director, Philippa Foster-Back under the Chatham House Rule, and underpinned by the excellent research unit led by Simon Webley, my own insights and views have been enriched.

It is also amazing what one unearths in the well stocked library. One find was a Papal encyclical with a fascinating critique of socialism tending to mould people into a state machine.

At heart, the thrust of IBE is to cultivate the practice of behaving with integrity, and a current preoccupation is to “embed” public corporate codes of ethics into actual operations.

My own niggle has been to probe an area that has largely been neglected. Whilst much is known about the formal processes and procedures in organisations, scant analysis has so far been directed on the conduct of informal (or social) networks that interweave most healthy organisations.

More research is needed in this key area, which IBE acknowledges. The value networks approach provides a convenient one stop shop for discovering what really goes on in organisations, and for modelling the interaction of both formal and informal activity. Further involvement (and this may need further facilitation to be most effective) can probe the roles people play and value of what they contribute as felt by others as well as identifying the associated costs and risks in doing so.

One of my favourite meetings was addressed by Dr Georgette Bennett, the Director of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding. She described the challenges and opportunities arising from religious diversity in the workforce.

In answer to my question: “How does behaviour in an organisation contribute to its long term sustainability (i.e. support its growth and adaptation over time), Dr Bennett replied “Reciprocity is key, it goes straight to the bottom line!”

I’m sure that Chatham House won’t mind my sharing that!

My first introduction to value networks was through the ground breaking book "Digital capital - harnessing the power of business webs" by Don Tapscott, David Ticoll and Alex Lowy, HBS Press, 2000 which I acquired after meeting Don at an event organised by Thomas Power in London, through the business oriented social networking community called Ecademy.

Don is from Toronto in Canada.

The diagrams and approach were the brainchild of Verna Allee who lives on the west coast of USA.

Calgary, between the two locations, is in Canada.

Therefore, in honour of both I am seen sporting below my Calgary Stampede vest and wearing my favourite summer hat bought at the Stampede. I gather my wife's "first cousins removed" were involved with the early Calgary Stampede founders (Graves).

Apart from the sporting events they put on one of the most spectacular open air evening shows available.

Today, with value networks by your side, you can co-create some of the most spectacular shows on earth as well!