Hello everyone! I’m delighted to be a guest blogger on Alexander’s Positive Sharing website while he is away skiing for the next two weeks. As he mentioned in his previous post, “Gone Skiing,�? I’m the Founder and CEO of a company called WorldBlu based in Washington, DC. WorldBlu is dedicated to elevating the human spirit through organizational democracy (“democracy�? as in universal principles of freedom, rather than a political system) and freedom-centered leadership.

What can you expect from my blog? The same tone as Alex’s blogs (although I’m not sure I can match his wit!) and my thoughts about whatever is captivating me at the moment, which will most likely have to do with freedom and democracy in the workplace.

To start us off, check this out. On Sunday, my friend Bill Taylor, founding editor of Fast Company magazine and also a member of the WorldBlu Global Advisory Board, had an article in the New York Times. Bill has a new book coming out this September called, “Mavericks at Work�? and he’s writing a monthly column about these themes for the NYT.

Bill’s column was entitled, “Here’s an Idea: Let Everyone Have Ideas.�? Of course it’s great to create environments at work that encourage everyone to have ideas and be innovative, so what’s really new here? I think what’s new is how ideas are now being captured and advanced at work.

We talk about innovation, participation, and voice at work, but now we have the technologies to actually make this happen on a daily basis. Here are a few excerpts from Bill’s article to show you what I mean. He tells the story of a company called Rite-Solutions based outside of Newport, R.I.

First, to their philosophy:

“We’re the founders, but we’re far from the smartest people here,” Mr. [James] Lavoie, the chief executive, said during an interview at Rite-Solutions’ headquarters outside Newport, R.I. “At most companies, especially technology companies, the most brilliant insights tend to come from people other than senior management. So we created a marketplace to harvest collective genius. . . ”

. . . Most companies operate under the assumption that big ideas come from a few big brains: the inspired founder, the eccentric inventor, the visionary boss. But there’s a fine line between individual genius and know-it-all arrogance. What happens when rivals become so numerous, when technologies move so quickly, that no corporate honcho can think of everything? Then it’s time to invent a less top-down approach to innovation, to make it everybody’s business to come up with great ideas.”

Now, how they get it done:

“[Rite-Solutions] focuses on an internal market where any employee can propose that the company acquire a new technology, enter a new business or make an efficiency improvement. These proposals become stocks, complete with ticker symbols, discussion lists and e-mail alerts. Employees buy or sell the stocks, and prices change to reflect the sentiments of the company’s engineers, computer scientists and project managers — as well as its marketers, accountants and even the receptionist.

At Rite-Solutions, the architecture of participation is both businesslike and playful. Fifty-five stocks are listed on the company’s internal market, which is called Mutual Fun. Each stock comes with a detailed description — called an expect-us, as opposed to a prospectus — and begins trading at a price of $10. Every employee gets $10,000 in “opinion money” to allocate among the offerings, and employees signal their enthusiasm by investing in a stock and, better yet, volunteering to work on the project. Volunteers share in the proceeds, in the form of real money, if the stock becomes a product or delivers savings.

Mr. [Joseph] Marino, 57, president of Rite-Solutions, says the market, which began in January 2005, has already paid big dividends. One of the earliest stocks (ticker symbol: VIEW) was a proposal to apply three-dimensional visualization technology, akin to video games, to help sailors and domestic-security personnel practice making decisions in emergency situations. Initially, Mr. Marino was unenthusiastic about the idea — “I’m not a joystick jockey” — but support among employees was overwhelming. Today, that product line, called Rite-View, accounts for 30 percent of total sales.

“Would this have happened if it were just up to the guys at the top?” Mr. Marino asked. “Absolutely not. But we could not ignore the fact that so many people were rallying around the idea. This system removes the terrible burden of us always having to be right.”

What I find fascinating about this story is the convergence of forces: workers wanting to engage more at work, CEOs being humble enough to admit that they don’t have all the answers, and a technology that allows for greater democratic participation at work.

In June, at the invitation of Harvard University Law School, I’ll be speaking at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society about the relationship between technology and organizational democracy. The question I’m asking myself right now is this:

Is our desire to engage and collaborate with each other at work fueling the creation of engagement technologies OR are these new technologies (e.g., blogs, podcasts, wikis) shifting the mindset and attitudes about what’s possible and stimulating greater workplace engagement as a result?

Which came first, technology or the desire for engagement and collaboration? It’s classic chicken-and-egg. I’d love to hear what you think! You can email me at traci@worldblu.com or post a comment to this blog.

Even CNN says that you should take it easy, and not work to hard.

Great website on strength-based leadership. I am deeply envious of a last name as cool as “Zinger”.

Philip Greenspun has an excellent piece on early retirement. I say we should all do this intermittently, and work a couple of years, retire for a year or two and then stage a come-back. Semco’s part-time retirement scheme is also cool.

The Wikimania conference is the international conference of the Wikimedia foundation. The 2006 iteration is August 4-6 in Cambridge Ma., and they’re currently calling for papers and topics (the deadline is March 30).

One of my current pet projects is a fundamental rethinking of the way democracy is practiced. A shift from the current top-down political process to one that directly involves large numbers of people bottom-up. I wrote about it here, and there’s a website in Danish about it.

The fundamental meeting place of this party would be a Wiki. This is where policies would be suggested, examined, improved and voted on. I would LOVE to present this idea at the conference, so I submitted the following abstract:

The political process in most modern nations suffers from a number of problems including:

• General mistrust of politicians
• Disengagement and disillusionment by most citizens
• Low voter turnout

Basically, a small group formulate policies and the vast majority of people get to vote every few years.

The solution is to reshape the political process to allow many more people to participate actively in formulating the policies.

This can be done by creating new political parties where the fundamental meeting place is a Wiki, where issues are proposed, examined and decided upon bottom-up involving large number of people. Wikipedia already demonstrates how a community can come to decisions on complex and emotionally engaging topics.

This session lays out a specific plan for a wiki-based political party including:

• What’s wrong with politics today
• The technologies and principles involved in the wiki-based party
• Advantages of the wiki-based party
• How to implement it
• Case studies from nations and communities who practice similar approaches

I would sure love a trip to the US in August to present the idea of the wiki-based party.

Allrighty then, I’m outta here.

I’d love to hang around, but there’s fresh snow in the alps, and Patricia and I can’t possibly stay in Copenhagen and leave those pristine slopes unskied/unsnowboarded by us. It would be against our religion. This time we’re going all out and staying for two weeks of fun in the snow.

While I’m gone, I have a special treat for all the readers of positivesharing.com: I’ve snagged one of my all-time favorite people as a guest blogger.

That’s right, the one and only Traci Fenton, one of the most determined, energetic, creative, fun, visionary people I have ever met, has agreed to blog right here.

Traci is the CEO of WorldBlu, a company dedicated to organizational democracy. She is also the woman behind one of the best conference events I have ever attended, the WorldBlu forum in 2005.

It’s only fitting that Traci should blog here, because we actually met through this very blog - way back in 2003 I wrote about a mention of Traci in Fast Company. Traci saw that and contacted me.

I’ve also pre-blogged a few posts of my own which will come online while I’m gone. Through the magic of technology… (start spooky voice) it will seem as if I’m still here.

And while I’m gone, why not read my best article on happiness at work so far: Make your business rich and happy.

It pays to be happy. Studies show that businesses with happy employees consistently outperform their less happy competitors in the marketplace and in the stock market.

Considering the challenges that modern organizations face, creating a happy organization is the number one strategic imperative and the only way to long-term success.

This article will tell you why happiness is so important for businesses today, and how you can make your business a happy one.

Read the rest of this entry »

I wouldn’t mind seeing my colleagues row past my desk some day.

Nonzero, one of my top 10 books, has a great website with lots of excerpts from the book.

In this great interview, Ward Cunningham, creator of the wiki, says that the power of collaborative development has only just begun to be realized, and open-source software will continue to spur more collaboration and more innovation. I will probably surprise absolutely no one by saying I agree :o)

Positive psychology can make you happier and this article by Martin Seligman et al proves it (pdf). With diagrams! The paper studies a number of very simple actions (eg. writing down three positive things each day) and shows that they work very well.

Martin Seligman is the author of the excellent book Learned Optimism (read my review here) and the founder of the positive psychology movement which is based on the idea that psychology should focus more on what makes people happy, rather than focusing solely on curing mental illness. Makes sense to me :o)

A Fast Company article from 2002 tells the story of a Canadian gold mine threatened by bankruptcy:

McEwen [the owner] believed that the high-grade ore … was present in parts of the 55,000-acre Red Lake stake — if only he could find it…

Eventually, the group’s attention turned to the Linux operating system and the open-source revolution. “I said, ‘Open-source code! That’s what I want!’ ” McEwen recalls…

His reasoning: If he could attract the attention of world-class talent to the problem of finding more gold in Red Lake, just as Linux managed to attract world-class programmers to the cause of better software, he could tap into thousands of minds that he wouldn’t normally have access to. He could also speed up exploration and improve his odds of discovery.

He released all his corporate survey data from the company’s land, information that is:

• The heart of any mining operation
• Very expensive to come by
• Normally an extremely well-kept secret

He organized a contest - on the internet - to point out the best sites to dig. Anyone could access the survey data and participate. The first prize was $105.000.

The result? The company has drilled four of the top 5 winners’ sites, and have found gold in all four. Which proves that you can get very valid and valuable results from this approach.

The first prize winners? An australian geoscience outfit who’d never been to the mine - or even to Canada. Which proves that this approach can open new sources of information that you’d not have access to otherwise.

Corporate information is worth little when it’s locked up. Don’t keep all data in your business a deep, dark secret. Insteat, open your company’s inner workings to the world. The good and the bad!

The perils of secrecy

In the information age, many businesses have fallen into a trap: They have correctly identified information as the key to success or failure, but they have incorrectly concluded that the best way to profit from the information is to lock it away from the world. They make corporate information secret by default.

This goes for financial information, project development, new partnerships, strategies and plans and virtually every other aspect of the business. “Knowledge is our corporate, intellectual capital and we must protect it or it will be stolen from us.” seems to be the thinking.

But this approach comes at a cost:

• It reduces the efficiency of employees who don’t know what’s going on
• It makes the company look untrustworthy to the public
• It limits the potential for generating new ideas and partnership

The opposite approach, to make all information public by default and only keep a few select areas secret, makes much more sense. This is especially true in an information-dense environment which carries a high probability that a company’s dirty secrets will be revealed sooner or later.

In fact, as we saw, releasing top-secret corporate data can be a gold mine. Literally. Here’s another example.

Be open with customers

Another great example of the open approach is Semco. Yes I know I write about them all the time, but they get it, dammit. They get it and they do it. In his excellent book The Seven-Day Weekend, Ricardo Semler tells the story of a negotiation with a potential customer for a huge contract.

Of course Semco had done their homework and made calculations showing what their profits would be depending on what price they could negotiate. At the meeting, Semler showed the customer these calculations, letting them know exactly how much Semco stood to make from the deal. This honest, open approach impressed the customer and Semco got the contract.

Businesses should ask themselves these questions:

1. What are we keeping secret and why?
2. What information could we share, that would bring us new ideas, new partners and increased profits?
3. What risks are involved in sharing this information? Are they offset by the benefits?
4. What risks are involved in not sharing it?

That last question is often left out, as businesses list the dangers of openness and ignore the dangers of secrecy.

If you liked this post, I’m pretty sure you’ll also like these:

• Why overpaid CEOs are bad for business
• Top 5 business maxims that need to go
• Why secret salaries are a baaaaaad idea

Last week I wrote a few thoughts on how being incurably lazy has enriched my life, inspired by Fred Gratzon’s book The Lazy Way to Success. Fred read that post and commented on it, saying among other things:

Your insight about starting many small projects and seeing which grabs you is incandescently brilliant. You are absolutely right when you say that the ideas that happen are by definition the right ones.

Read Fred’s entire comment here.

That’s the first time something I’ve written has been called “incandescently brilliant”. I’m blushing here :o) Thanks Fred.

The smart people at The Well talk about globalization and China and more. Bruce Sterlings comments are particularly insightful. Via Classy.

Superhero action figures from the office. My favorite: Bossman. “Leading a crusade to reach objectives he empowers, implements change and captures mindshare.”

There’s rising Frustration with Microsoft’s Compensation and Review System. Salaries are stagnant, the stock isn’t rising and their review system is “little more than a closed-door popularity contest in which managers “fight�? for higher scores for their team, or defer to higher-level decision makers who mandate how many workers drop to the bottom of the review scale.” We’ve also been discussing this over at the businesspundit.