The power of the fable and telling stories

I just read ‘Our Iceberg is Melting’, a short fable by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber (a name which coincidentally in German, means advice-giver!).


John Kotter is a change guru that has written a bunch of serious business books about Change. Yet is seems that his ideas spread more rapidly and effectively in the form of a short fable with large illustrations about a bunch of penguins living on an iceberg.

Now comes the difficult question: what is the best, having the greatest idea backed by 20 years of careful research and put down in a series of long serious books, or simplified and put down in a nice attractive simple book counting a memorable story, that can be read in one hour?

The best answer is certainly – both. But if you can’t do both then certainly the fable is the best medium to get your idea across. Marketing is key to get the interest. Then only the depth of your understanding will come to light when people will start asking questions.

It is amazing how a fable can be a wonderful educational and marketing tool. Our ancestors new about the educational. Why don’t we use it more for marketing our ideas?

When do you start counting stories around?

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Social networks dynamics like you have never seen them

The New-York Times research lab is developing an application that allows to visualize the dynamics of social networks. How some people serve as linchpins for the diffusion of information.

Have a look at

http://www.nytlabs.com/projects/cascade.html

there is a video that shows better than any words how that works. It is astounding. The information diffusion cascade is shown in real time. You can understand how it spreads (or not). No doubt we are now in the midst of the Fourth Revolution!

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Participate to worldwide competitions to leverage the collective cognitive capability!

Have you heard of kaggle.com?

It is a site to run workdwide competitions on data mining – how to use data to predict trends and other useful results.

For example, it has run competitions about predicting whether people will attend hospital next year based on their current medical history; how the condition of HIV infected people will evolve based on a limited set of current physiological data. Ford has posted a challenge to help devise an algorithm to decide if the driver is alert…

By leveraging the collective cognitive capabilities of humankind, clever solutions are found quickly that would have taken years and millions of dollars to develop. Winners get recognition by being invited to present their result – or can get 3,000,000$ by solving the problem of hospital admission prediction and thus anticipate the degradation of the condition of the patients.

Ready to participate to the Fourth Revolution? – put your brains at work for the best in one of these number-crunching competitions.

Right now you can participate in the Wikipedia prediction challenge – develop an algorithm to predict how many edits an editor will make in the next few months based on his contribution history – and beat years of Wikipedia internal data-crunching! Ready?

 

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Soft Power Leadership: what about a book?

What do you think about a book on “Soft Power Leadership?”

Following my previous blog, I’ve been thinking about this concept for a while and I believe it could be my next book.

It is so obvious that what distinguishes successful leaders today lies in soft power. And while the new form of leadership I describe in the book, “mutual learning leadership” is still very typical of the Fourth Revolution, “soft power” seems to be a great concept to describe what makes specific individuals remarkable. And incredibly successful.

Because it is a mix of personal and inter-personal mastery, quiet, soft power is really a great way to describe those personalities and leadership styles.

What do you think of the idea? You contribution and reaction (positive or negative) is welcome!

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Soft power – the key to leadership in the Collaborative Age

“Soft power” is a concept which was invented by Joseph Nye in 1990 in the context of international relations.

The Future of Power by Joseph Nye
The Future of Power by Joseph Nye

Here is the definition of “soft power” by Joseph Nye – a definition given in a 2004 article of the Harvard Business Review:

To lead is to help a group define and achieve a common purpose. There are various types and levels of leadership, but all have in common a relationship with followers. Thus leadership and power are inextricably intertwined. I will argue below that many leadership skills such as creating a vision, communicating it, attracting and choosing able people, delegating, and forming coalitions depend upon what I call soft power.

What is astounding is that this definition applies equally to leadership in an organization and to leadership in the world.

For me, effective leadership beyond the Fourth Revolution is grounded in soft power. What do you think?

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e-Choupal brings the Fourth Revolution in rural India

Have you heard about e-Choupal? Another example of the Fourth Revolution in action.

ITC, an Indian agricultural and food company, is revolutionizing rural India. By providing villages with access to a computer and internet, they give to the farmers unprecedented access to all sorts of useful information about weather, the market price of crops, best agricultural practices. By removing the traditional intermediaries they allow farmers to sell their crops a better price. They change considerably the social structure of rural India.

e-choupal group meeting
e-choupal group meeting

At the same time they create tremendous value for the farmers, ITC creates value for itself by selling its agricultural equipment, fertilizers and seeds, and getting much better quality products that it can use to manufacture world-standard food.

It also creates employment opportunity for the e-choupal village representative who handles the computer.

Summary: providing access to long distance interactive communication in rural india, a company changes the life of farmers, raises their revenue and at the same time creates significant value for itself.

The Fourth Revolution is indeed a Revolution. When do you start co-creating a joint future with your suppliers and customers, to unleash the value of the Collaborative Age for the benefit of all?

For more information on e-Choupal, ITC provides some nice high level explanations here and here. A long paper from the World Resource Institute explains the e-choupal system and its profitability.

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Co-creation or the Fourth Revolution in action

I cannot recommend enough the book “The Power of Co-Creation” by Venkat Ramaswamy and Francis Gouillard.

The power of co-creation cover
The power of co-creation book cover

This book is a perfect illustration of the Fourth Revolution at work. It shows how companies and organizations are leveraging the power of co-creating with their customers, suppliers and other stakeholders to create unprecedented value. Value not just for them, but also for the entire community they create.

Furthermore the book is packed with case studies and examples from a variety of industries and types of organizations.

For those that would still doubt it just demonstrates that the future lies in open, fluid organizations that actively co-create with a community extending beyond their boundaries.

Read again part V of the Fourth Revolution Manifesto: the open, fluid organization!

When do you start co-creating the unprecedented value of the Collaborative Age?

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Public presentation of the Fourth Revolution Book Saturday in Kuala Lumpur!

The Fourth Revolution Book cover
The Fourth Revolution Book cover

Meet me at 10am at the Malaysian Association of Certified Coaches

 

62, 2nd Floor, Lorong Rahim Kajai 14
Taman Tun Dr Ismail,
60000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

There will be a presentation and discussions around coaching and the Fourth Revolution!

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Be consistent with what you want to be

I am always amazed at how people sometimes act inconsistently with what they want to be. And thus, with what they are – deep within. That is particularly visible in my practice of coaching.

Who are you?
Who are you?

I do also fall into this trap too often. And I regret when that happens.

Because I know that it is only by being consistent with what I want to be, that I’ll become what I want to be. But my behavior is not always consistent!

So, what can we do? Probably the best solution is to keep in mind what we want to be, what is our goal and purpose, and repeat it inside us over and over again like a mantra throughout the day.

Repeat it, in particular when times are tough and stressful and we tend to come back to our old natural self.

But don’t say it because if your behavior is inconsistent with what you say, that’s even worse!

The day where somebody will tell you that he or she feels like you really are like what you want to be, you’ll know you are on the right way.

When do you start monitoring how consistent you are with what you want to be? What do you do to improve this consistency?

 

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How to publish worldwide, from anywhere

Here is a summary of my experience of self-publishing from a country which has an emerging economy (Malaysia). Even from there, today anybody can stand up and publish to the world his or her ideas. All it takes is time and a really not a lot of money.

Obviously there is no shortcut to the creative work of producing the book, manifesto or whatever you want to spread. You still need to get the rights to the material you want to use (pictures…) and possibly get an editor for an independent review of the text.

Then, for anything between 0 and 50$/year you can have your website and blog up and running, publishing to the world, interacting with the world.

For around 70$ you can have an agreement with LightningSource, the Print-on-Demand leader, send the electronic files of the book over and in less than one month, be present on all the electronic bookshops around. You can touch easily the developed countries, and anybody worldwide willing to pay for having the books sent.

In Malaysia I found it better to go the traditional way of distributing my book, by printing a number and letting distributors put them in bookshops. That requires a bit more capital upfront – say 2,000$ for printing 500 books. Still that’s quite affordable, but less easy to come with.

In summary – it is not so difficult to publish your ideas. How come there are still some traditional publishing companies around?

 

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The Fourth Revolution spreads: now (almost) on Amazon!

Breaking news: The Fourth Revolution book is now on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes&Noble.com etc etc !

Follow the links:

The Fourth Revolution book on Amazon.com

The Fourth Revolution book on Amazon.co.uk

OK, seems like that everything is not setup completely, I suppose that’ll be done in a few days, and then orders will be available. I am also working on my author’s profile and so on…

But, just figure that out. I write a book. I self-publish it. In Malaysia, far from Europe or the US (and I could have been anywhere I guess!). I sign an agreement with a Print-on-demand company. I send the electronic files over. 2 weeks later I receive a proof copy. 1 more week and my book is available all over the world. Anybody can read my ideas, debate with me! This setup cost me 70$ only!. WOW. Who can deny that the Fourth Revolution is there, today?

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