How We Can Savor Discovery, Learning and Inventing Together

Haven't some of your most meaningful memories been of times when you accomplished something greater with others? Didn't it bring you closer in the flow of camaraderie - even when someone in your group didn't act right - like you?'

What we learn from those times is vital in an information-flooded, connected world - and that's a good thing.

The most common and satisfying ways we learn and invent are not from sitting in a classroom seat being taught or trained. The world is too complex and fluid now to keep up with everything all by yourself.

That doesn't mean that we aren't sought-after for our mastery of a topic or skill. It simply means we stay relevant when we engage in projects with diverse others, learning and experimenting as we go. Like children we still learn best by observing, imitating, re-mixing, making fresh mistakes and, most of all, by playing and using our imagination - with others.

That's why the book, A New Culture of Learning, by John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas, two long time lovers of social learning-by-doing is so relevant today -- for students of all ages, in school, at work and involved with the causes and projects that most matter to us.

While their book is aimed at transforming learning in schools every concept I read can be equally applied to any part of our lives - lived well with others. If you'd like to see the next chapters of your life as the kind of adventure story you co-create with others and want a bigger voice in the role you play - literally - read and share this book with those you think will make engrossing, imaginative playmates.

Some of my favorite quotes from this book:

• The new culture of learning gives us the freedom to make the general personal and then share our personal experience in a way that, in turn, adds to the general flow of knowledge.

• In the new culture of learning, people learn through their interaction and participation with one another in fluid relationships that are the result of shared interests and opportunity.

• Play is the tension between the rules of the game and the freedom to act within those rules. When play happens while learning it creates a context in which information, ideas and passions grow.

• The important thing about the Harry Potter phenomenon is not so much what the kids were learning, but how they were learning. Thought there was no teacher in this setting, readers engaged in deep, sustained learning from one another through their discussions and interactions.

• In a world of near constant flux, play becomes a strategy for embracing change rather than a way of growing out of it.

• The challenge is to find ways to marry structure and freedom to create altogether new things.

• Study groups dramatically increase the success of college students in the classroom.

•  The connection between the personal and the collective is a key ingredient in lifelong learning.

• When information is stable, the explicit dimension becomes very important. The speed of light, for example, is probably not going to change....The twenty-first centry, however, belongs to the tacit. In the digital world we learn by doing, watching, and experiencing... not by taking a class or reading a manual.

• Students learn best when they are able to follow their passion and opeate within the constraints of a bounded environment. Without the boundary set by the assignment there would be no medium for growth.

• Indwelling is a familiarity with ideas, practices and processes that are so ingrained that they become second nature. When engaging the learner, we must think about her sense of indwelling, because that is her greatest source of inspiration, but it is also the largest reservoir she has of tacit knowledge.

• Dispositions indicate how a student will make connections on a tacit level... how she is likely to learn.

• Learning from others is neither new nor revolutionary; it has just been ignored by most of our educational institutions...

 ... and, I would add, by most of our organizations.

From the people under 30 who grew up studying and playing in groups I have enjoyed playing and co-creating on everything from business start-ups to models of more effectively serving causes. I hope that a version of this book is put up online for shareable input from us all - commenting, adapting, re-mixing the ideas, thus turning it into an ecosystem where we can hone our ideas on the new culture of, not "just" learning but also inventing and co-creating better ways to work and play together.

Find the book here: http://www.amazon.com/New-Culture-Learning-Cultivating-Imagination/dp/1456458884/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1304030552&sr=1-1

http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/

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Sensory Ways to Bring Others Closer…

… and enable them to gain bragging rights about their experience with you and your place or event.

Was it the butterscotch-colored walls, light coconut scent wafting through the door as I opened it or the cushy island of deep blue carpet under my feet as I stepped into the boutique hotel? I don't know yet I instinctively sighed with relief. And that was before I saw the the smiling doorman walking towards me, saying, “We’re glad that you’re safely out of that storm. Let me help you with your coat, if you like, and your bag.” 

The lobby was light with the soft, full-spectrum lights that store make-up counters have, making us all look and feel our best.

Hint: Positive sensory cues multiple their emotional effect when we feel more than one at once or in quick succession.

In fact, without my knowing it at the time, that doorman looked more handsome and caring than I would have experienced him if the entry to that hotel had shiny metal railings, an elaborately patterned carpet and/or a dark colored wall. Further, since the “closing scene” when I left the hotel the next morning was as a positive as the opening scene, I tended to forget the slow room service or  cramped bathroom, according to research on the power of the sequence of events within an experience - from a vacation to a colonscopy. 

That’s why it behooves anyone who wants their guests, customers, conferenceattendees or families at home to feel welcome, brag about their experience and act nicely to storyboard the sequence of multi-sensory experiences that those they serve or love experience in their “place.”

Even apparently small physical experiences make a big emotional and even learning difference. Adapt these multi-sensory cues to emotionally engage with others: 

1. Children “are better at math when using their hands while thinking,” found to Josh Ackerman, a MIT psychologist. Further, the weight, texture and hardness of objects we touch affects our opinion of the people and the situation.

2. Actors recall lines better when moving and we remember more when walking, gesturing, eating or physically working on something.

3. “People are more generous after holding a warm cup of coffee and more callous after hold a cold drink,” discovered Yale University psychologist John Bargh.

4. Patterns, whether on the walls or floor or upper part of one’s clothing, break up the observers’ attention span and, like ambient noise in a room from the heating or air conditioning system, make us more agitated and inclined to become irritated by each other’s behavior.

 5. Scent is the most directly emotional sense and thus a two-edge sword. If the evoked memory is positive it hits deeply and, if not….well, we are more likely to project bad characteristics on the scene and individuals around us.

6. Enable people to engage in the scenes or objects around them and gain bragging rights as a consequence. Have a “What’s next for you?” sign on a large bowl of positive sayings or fortunes near places where they must wait or pause, such as check-in areas.  Staff can encourage them to read theirs aloud. (The more actions we take on behalf of something the more deeply they believe in it, identify with it and will share it with others.)

7. Encourage colleagues to stand and walk side-by-side with those you serve this "sidling" is more likely to evoke a convivial  “us” feeling.

 8. Create a story about your region, place, interactive object or monument or event, hopefully involving humorous, heroic or otherwise emotional incidents andindividuals, where you can invite those you serve to become a part of that story, asPeter Gruber suggests.

They may become a part  of "our" story when they can participate your custom ritual, receive your souvenir as a gift, eat the snack that’s part of the story or you take a photo of them in front of the scene on the wall that represents a highlight of our story – and email it to them after they leave.

9. Continue to keep them involved with “our story.” Use geosocial apps that enable them to connect with each other  - and your staff - as they walk through your store, hotel, hospital, sports arena or event. That’s what DoubleDutch did for TED conference attendees. And use augmented reality apps, as in Tuscany, yet to enable people to discover more about your area, place or meeting.

What multi-sensory cues have you used to involve people in your place, event or other experience?  Also let's share ways to say it better on Twitter. I am @kareanderson.

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I Was Completely Surprised by His Behavior

Reinventing himself when he arrived at college Sam, “who had never had much luck with women” successfully beguiled a string of women into one-night stands, leaving his male friends shaking their heads in wonder because the women, though dumped, saw him as “sensitive, caring and sweet.” Also odd, Sam took up the habit of frequently washing his hands.

Now this might make you sufficiently curious to read the book in which this story is told, Out of Character. As you might have anticipated, Sam was subconsciously wiping his hands of guilt. A Macbeth effect for a man who’s dorm room was untidy.

Consider the sexual foibles of Eliot Spitzer, Tiger Woods and others. Yet, under the right circumstances we women can act as badly men. In fact, rather than acting heroically or evil we are all influenced by context and cues much of the time, according to the co-authors of this book.  Blame it our brain in constant combat, between the emotional and rational side. Yet understanding how we can convince ourselves to cheat, then minutes later, condemn others for the exact same behavior(another experiment in the book) can lead us to make more moral choices that serve us well in the long run, if not always in the tempting moment. And to stand up to bad behavior as Dan Weiss did at the Kennedy Center.

Here are three more examples of how we can be influenced to act badly – or better:

1. When angry people are more likely to see guns in the situation.

2. Experiment subjects are asked to watch video vignettes, some saw a skit from Saturday Night Live  and others got stuck watching part of a dull documentary of a quiet Mexican village. Then all were  asked how they would respond to a situation in which they are standing on a footbridge adjacent to trolley tracks. The only way they can save the lives of five men further down the tracks is to push a nearby, burly man off the bridge and onto the tracks, thus stopping the train.

Those who watched the SNL skit were three times more likely to push the man onto the tracks. What made the difference was the emotional state the videos evoked just before they were asked.  Those who watched the SNL skit felt upbeat and were thus able to overcome their aversion to killing one person to save five. They operated from their rational mind – thinking it made logical sense. Yet emotional contagion can influence our behavior in many ways. We are inclined  to belittle the next person we are around after we treated that way, for example. Co-author, David DeSteno suspects that “we act honorably—to the extent that we do—because we feel we should, not because we think we should.”

3. Sitting in a waiting room with a dirty rug, wall paintings askew and a dirty tissue on a table means you are considerably more likely to view the person who comes up to help you as not only less attractive but also less well-intentioned and skilled. You justify your less gracious behavior.  To warm others up towards you, consider storyboarding the multi-sensory cues that  people experience at your store, workplace, event or home.

Imagine the implications for our behaviors and settings at work or home. Later in the book see how you can view someone’s actions as arrogance or justifiable pride, depending on whether you believe that person knows what she or he is doing. Those asked, for example, about George Bush or Barack Obama’s actions are seeing them through the lens of their opinions about each one.  Similarly we are more likely to feel compassionate towards those with whom we can identify – they act and look like us.

That probably does not surprise you.

Yet when soldiers from vastly different backgrounds march together just once, they see and describe themselves as more alike and take more actions to support each other. One march does that.  Synchrony. It happens even when individuals in a study are asked to tap their hands in sync, some tap along with one person, others follow a different person.  Afterwards they answered questions that indicated they liked the people who tapped with them more than the others.  Makes you think of what you might want do when first convening a project team or starting the family off on a vacation?

Especially when I was younger I was astonished by heroes with feet of clay, not looking inward at my own incongruent actions. Coward or hero? Chaste or promiscuous? Bigoted or tolerant? We’ve played many roles.  As Dan Gilbert notes, “the hero and the villain that live inside each of us.” Reading this book is a fresh reminder that we all act “out of character” sometimes in ways that can make us ashamed or proud, depending on whether our emotional or rational brain is in the driver’s seat. We need both and David DeSteno and Piercarlo Valdesolo helped me see ways to balance them.

If you, too, are fascinated by what influences how we act towards each other then you may also enjoy Sway, Nudge,Multiplicity, Tell to Win, Influence, Just Listen, and Smart Choices.

See links here http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2011/04/10/i-was-completely-surprised-by-his-behavior/

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How to Nudge Others to Act “Right”

Unconditional love is a swell idea yet admit it. Aren’t there times you’d like to change other’s behavior? Get them to act right, like you. Or perhaps you’d like to drop a bad habit. Then learn how to “nudge.”

That’s a situational prompt that sways people to change.

For example, the traditional approach to getting drivers to reduce speed are those portable signs stationed at the side fo the street, showing how fast you are driving.

This is a shame or fear-based method. Instead, evoke pride or humor – or make it easier to do the right thing. In places in the UK, those signs don’t just tell drivers their speed. They smile at cars under the limit, and frown at cars over the limit.

Make the Right Option More Pleasurable Than the Other One

To encourage people to get exercise by taking the stairs instead of the elevator, one inventive group made the stairs sunnier and another made it more fun (piano stairs experiment) to walk than stand on the elevator.

Appeal to Our Better Nature

To motivate more people to wash their hands in the restroom two signs were

added, one for women and a more blunt one for men.

Instead of telling motorists to stop acting bad with “Don’t Litter” signs the state of Texas had much greater success by appealing to Texans’ pride, with signage saying “Don’t mess with Texas.”

Make it Easier to Do the Right Thing

If you worked for an organization that offered automatic payroll deduction for savings you’d be much more likely to save if the system was one where you had to opt-out than how they usually are set up – you must opt in to save. So discovered the authors of Nudge.

What nudge will you try to improve behavior – yours or others? See links to this post at http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2009/10/18/how-to-nudge-others-to-act-“right”/

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I Knew What You Meant When You Touched Me

Even when blindfolded, when touched just fleetingly we often recognize the emotion behind it. Even when touched by a stranger. Those touched in the study could identify the emotion (from eight, ranging from disgust to sympathy) more often than could happen by chance. Yet they were touched just five seconds.

More surprising to me, is that we are more likely to guess the right emotion that’s being expressed by someone’s touch than we can by hearing their voice or seeing their facial expression.

These three findings may startle you too:

• Men tended to avoid touching the face “and then only to express

anger or disgust at women and sympathy for other men.

• Women touched faces frequently to express anger, sadness and disgust for both (genders) “and to convey fear and happiness to men.”

We have a deep hunger human contact. Touch is the most direct, visceral path of contact with one another.

Yet Americans are among the most touch-adverse of all cultures, except with our closest family and friends.

In fact, increasingly schools have formal a Hands Off policy. “Even high-fiving and pats on the back have been outlawed” so we can protect youth from violence. The lesson, learned at an early age, is that adults would rather protect them from a problem (bullying and other violence) than help them with an opportunity (closeness and friendship). It’s easier to manage.

I can’t help but wonder if this cultural phobia is connected to the rise in loneliness. This is worth closer studyas loneliness may be as dangerous to one’s health as smoking.

Even smiling keeps us better connected with each other. In fact, just from looking at a yearbook photo, one can predict with some accuracy whether a person will divorce later in life,” claims Matthew Hertenstein, Director of the Touch and Emotion Lab at DePauw University.

But let’s end on an up note.

“Men soothe their loneliness with computers, women do it with pets,” says the co-author of Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, John Cacioppo. In addition to his loneliness-relieving “make friends” tips why not literally get in touch more often every day?

Mind you, I still get itchy just thinking about popular Leo Buscaglia’s well-intended notion that we should greet everyone with a bear hug, including strangers. (“You can’t wrap love in a box, but you can wrap a person in a hug.“) Hugging everyone one meets negates the notion of touch having special meaning.

Yet why not hug your friends – and those to whom you are instinctively drawn? Shake hands with a smile when greeting colleagues.

As my Dad says, you seldom know if this time will be the last time you see that person.

Let’s stay in touch. (See links to this post here http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2009/08/15/i-knew-what-you-meant-when-you-touched-me/

Meanwhile let's connect via Twitter: @KareAnderson

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Making Your Town Feel More Like a Community

Out driving you spot a pothole or tree branch in the road. What if you could use your phone to photograph it, with the location noted via GPS, then type a quick note re the problem and forward both via an application on your phone that enables your Twitter account to route it to the right agency? That makes being a good citizen easy and worthwhile. San Jose’s launching this service.

FixMyStreet offers another option. It lets people report, view and discuss problems based on mapping mash-ups.

A silver lining in the current, wrenching city government budget cuts is that politicans are desperate for ways to save money. Thus some are more open to using such citizen-involving technology to increase efficiency and involve citizens.

In Vancouver citizens can get an email alert to remind them to put their garbage out. In Seattle you can sign up for government RSS feeds and get information sent directly to your phone or mobile device. Several departments, including fire, police and transportation provide Twitter feeds too.

EveryBlock relies on location-based data to inform citizens about crimes, restaurant inspections and new permits, all mixed in with news and information provided by bloggers and volunteer journalists.

Does your business serve a local market? Do you care about your town or neighborhood? Want to stand out and serve? If your town government doesn’t step up to the plate you could launch a simple town-centered social media site using free tools:

Ning, Twitter and Posterous. Encourage local groups to form on the site for their civic (Rotary) or special interest (dog parks) group or project, departmental program or citizen protest. Other group topics might range from block-level news exchanges to anticrime block watches to volunteer sign-ups for civic events. Use other free tools like Zoomerang and SurveyMonkey to survey citizens on issues. Bill Schrier suggests more tools.

Libraries have become helpful places for less tech-savvy citizens to learn how to use these online tools.

Rather than look at a government Web site with menus and channels, citizens should enter the public sector through a map that visually shows everything from transit and crime information to locations for social services or election information. “People care about place,” notes FortiusOne CTO Andrew Turner. They don’t care about agencies or programs. One of their app maps for Washington, D.C. maps provides information for locating crime-infested neighborhoods and crisis response information. Another remarkable geospatial service, Virtual Alabama, provided integrated public safety, emergency management solution, born in the wake of Katrina.

Melbourne and San Jose are using wikis to make it easier for citizens to become involved in city planning.

Philadelphia’s new CIO, Allan Frank “sees the city’s 311 hotline as a transformational tool that will allow the city to move from functioning as a ‘service request operation’ that responds to incoming complaints and queries, toward a more proactive work-order management operation that anticipates customer service needs in a timelier fashion.”

To make your town’s information and operations more understandable, citizen responsive and efficient several companies are going geospatial. That means they are mashing maps and government data together. They are doing this by creating applications with free and open APIs. That means application programming interfaces.

Imagine the value of your town getting a custom template of any of these applications.

If your town government doesn’t step up to the plate you could launch a simple town-centered social media site using free tools: Ning, Twitter and Posterous. Encourage local groups to form on the site for their civic (Rotary) or special interest (dog parks) group or project, departmental program or citizen protest. Other group topics might range from block-level news exchanges to anticrime block watches to volunteer sign-ups for civic events. Use free tools like Zoomerang and SurveyMonkey to survey citizens on issues. Bill Schrier suggests more tools.

What ways could your cash-crunched town use online and mobile technology to reduce costs, become more efficient or offer you more value or make it easier for you to hear about city events or volunteer for a commission? For more fresh ideas take a look at the Learning Pool and also see the local government’s equivalent of the Grammy awards for citizen-serving uses of the web.

See links to this post at http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2009/09/20/making-your-town-feel-more-like-a-community/

... and follow Kare on Twitter at @KareAnderson

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Elevate Your Value and Visibility by Jointly Offering a Speed Coaching Event

Job hunting is dispiriting – often lonely and isolating.

That’s why it was so comforting for job seekers to be in a room full of knowledgeable people who were ready to meet with them, one-on-one, to answer their specific questions.

From job hunt web sites to career counseling coaches could personalize their advice to each person’s need. Hundreds of unemployed people flocked to this free speed-coaching event in New York. My colleague, transitionist coach Terrence Seamon was one of many coaches who volunteered to sit in “twenty minute sessions, to review their job search campaign strategies as well as their resumes, making sure that they are accomplishments-focused.” The event was the co-created service of The New York Library, Vault and volunteer coaches.

In this bad economy what top-of-mind topic most concerns your kind of client?

Recruit a cadre of non-competing and credible experts to coach them in a fast-paced, speed coaching event where participants get hundreds of dollars worth of the specific advice they most seek – and coaches demonstrate their expertise to “pull” prospects towards hiring them. More than a free for all, “here’s my card” networking event people actually get to meet the individuals they’d most like to know at that time.

You, too, could leverage your value with a custom speed coaching event that serves a hot need or avid interest felt by your kind of clients. Here’s a quick checklist of jumpstart your first popular, speed coaching event:

• What other credible, complementary (non-competing) experts and organizations serve your “mutual market?”

• What preoccupies your clients?

• When would it be easiest for them to meet?

• What is a convenient and attractive meeting location for them?

• What if you created a helpful meeting momento – an eBook of three tips from each coach plus their bio and s brief description of all partnering organizations, with links to all resources cited in the eBook?

• How long should your event be? Some are as short as two hours and as long as a day. One-on-one coaching sessions in different events range from five-minutes to 20-minutes. Collectively choose the length that works best for your kind of attendee and speed coaching theme.

• Consider combining 20-minutes “expert roundtable” sessions for five to eight attendees to ask an expert questions – concurrent with the one-on-one speed coaching sessions.

Put the coaching sessions on one side of a ballroom or other large meeting place and the roundtables on the other.

• Place large signs behind each coach with their name and/or topic and on roundtables with the table topic.

The more partnering coaches and organizations you involve the lower the per-partner cost and the higher the benefit to them for participating – and the higher the number of people you can reach and serve.

Here is one kind of speed coaching event I co-designed with the astute head of the S.F. chapter of Savor the Success, Ayesha Mathews-Wadhwa. See links to this post at http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2009/09/29/elevate-your-value-and-visibility-by-jointly-offering-a-speed-coaching-event/

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