"This movie - Rise of the Planet of the Apes, through it's engagement with creatures emotions via the very clever replication of eye contact has the ability to impact the psyche of the human race and encourage a change for the better"

Grant Crossley, founder Total Executive

Are your leaders connecting with the inner desires of your staff - a willingness to connect with our environment, community and nature...

How are your leaders engaging staff?

Are they communicating sincerely - looking them straight in the eye?

Are they still tied up with the antiquated historic style of management - ruling by Carrot and Stick?

So your staff always need to watch their back...

Do your leaders leave staff distant?

Wanting to start an Uprising?

Or, do your leaders engage with compassion...

Encouraging engaging conversation...

Building an environment of collaboration

Is your business encouraging engagement with community, staff and our environment as is an underlying theme for Rise of the Planet of the Apes?

Think about how your leaders are engaging with staff? Do they need a helping hand?

If so, Contact Us to discuss Responsible Leadership

And make sure you check out this Movie of The Year:

http://www.apeswillrise.com/

All images above sourced from http://www.imdb.com

The Total Executive July Newsletter has been released with a focus on:

• Responsible Leadership
• Digital Communication
• Online Education
• Sustainable Business Leadership
• Business Performance & Profit
• Executive Education & Coaching
• Technology & Communication (ICT)

The image below shows an introduction:

Download the newsletter quickly here for links to leading articles from our international database of knowledge for executives and their staff...

Total Executive July Newsletter

Are you registered to receive Total Executive Newsletters?
Register now and...

Currently complimentary membership to Total Executive is available for 2010/2011 Saving $495:00.

Learn about Leadership Sustainability Responsibility Technology Communication Creativity Coaching Training and Education from our network of leaders and executives from the TotalExec portal

Visit: http://www.totalexec.com.au/membership-benefits/

For more information CONTACT TOTAL EXECUTIVE

Here is an interesting video about innovation in leadership for executives to consider

The Total Executive Marketing & Sales Newsletter #1 has been released.

• Marketing
• Sales
• Leadership
• Coaching
• Strategy
• and more...
  

Read the rest of this post »

Like many afflictions,the curse of knowledge can manifest itself in a variety of forms and is one of the most insidious and challenging of all barriers to our capacity to collaborate and innovate.

When we know something, it is difficult for us to imagine not knowing it or to understand why others also don't know it. As a result, we often find it hard to communicate and collaborate effectively with others. Equally, it is often difficult for us accept that there are things that we think we know that in fact we don't know.

The unstoppable emergence of the knowledge economy is driven by the speed with which the three core ingredients of economic growth can now move around the globe. Today skills, capital and knowledge can be shuffled from one country or market to another with lightninglike speed. We only have to witness the fallout of the global financial crisis, the emergence of the BRIC economies and convergence of areas such as ICT and transport or health and food to begin to realise the implications for us all.

It was only a few years ago that we were being urged to "innovate or die", but the global marketplace has changed so much so quickly that to survive in today's environment we must have the ability to collaborate successfully across organisations, sectors and borders. Any individual, company or economy that believes it can do it all by themselves is doomed for natural extinction. There is a need for speed and a sense of urgency for Australia to build an open, productive, sustainable and competitive economy through developing our capacity to innovate collaboratively. In the words of Jeffrey Immelt, chairman and CEO of GE, "We are all just a moment away from commodity hell."

I believe the emergence of this new environment for innovation (where constant reinvention and collaboration is a simple imperative) demands a new definition of innovation itself. Almost every government, industry association and academic report we read tends to use a variation of what I regard as an 'industrial or manufacturing age' definition. It is usually described as "doing something new or different to add economic or social value".

I commend to you a new definition of innovation for these new times of the knowledge economy: "Innovation is the novel application of shared knowledge to add economic or social value". The point is that while innovation is actionbased delivering practical economic or social value, it is fundamentally collaborative. It generally requires shared knowledge and/or capabilities, most likely to be multidisciplinary and often sourced externally. Individually, we are capable of being creative and inventive but it is through collaboration that we innovate.

In striving to build an open, productive and competitive economy in the context of the emergence of the global knowledge economy and our response to it as a nation, we must be alert to the curse of knowledge and the dangers it presents. It would seem to me that there are broadly two extremes of those of us afflicted with the curse: those who are 'blissfully ignorant' and those who 'know it all', and then of course there are those in between.

While ignorance may be bliss to most of us from time to time, there is no doubt it is also a major barrier to our capacity to collaborate and innovate. Locking ourselves away in silos and ignoring the rest of the world around us is one sure fire way to catch the curse of knowledge; we have all come across companies and other organisations that are so insulated from the rest of the world that they are almost dysfunctional within the context of the modern knowledge economy.

These 'blissfully ignorant' organisations and their staff are simply incapable of capturing external opportunities through collaboration. They are unable to look outside their current sphere, to see opportunities that may exist across sectors and boundaries. A small university spin-out that IXC has worked with was focussed on providing its enzyme technology to the mining sector. IXC discovered a multinational food company seeking an enzyme solution for a product and introduced the two organisations. This relationship brought the spin-out a new source of revenue and provided the food company with a solution that did not jeopardise its IP.

No particular type of organisation or individual is immune to the blissfully ignorant strain of the curse of knowledge. It can be found strangling the growth potential of major multi-nationals along with well-known Australian companies and can be particularly contagious within public sector organisations. Third sector groups and charities are not immune and, of course, there is more than one entrepreneurial type who has 'blissfully' re-invented the wheel.
Aware of these risks, the managing director of a leading Australian manufacturer commissioned IXC to carry out a three-month review and analysis of external policies, market trends and emerging technologies that could affect its future. With this type of leadership, it is no wonder the company is highly profitable and much loved by the markets.

At the other end of the scale is the 'know-it-all'. We think we know so much about the subject at hand that it is almost impossible for us to understand that others don't share this knowledge. We assume that because something is so obvious to us it is inconceivable that others don't share the same knowledge. It is a no-brainer to me and "you just don't get it!" In many ways this is an especially destructive and particularly wasteful barrier to collaborative innovation.

One of most common areas where the know-it-all form of the curse of knowledge is to be found is among the entrepreneur, start-up and SME communities. Experience the tragedy often described as 'founders syndrome' where a completely viable new enterprise with much commercial or social promise is torn apart, often with great personal and financial consequences for the collaborators involved, because the inventor, creator or founder simply cannot accept that others can't see things the way they do. It can sometimes be a case of my way or the highway.

Another all too common waste is all the great ideas that never make it to social or commercial application because the 'ideators' think that the idea in itself is so important and obvious that others will get it eventually. Here the curse of knowledge can be a major barrier to collaboration between research, academia and industry.

Then there are know-it-all organisations and individuals that are simply conceited about the depth or breadth of their knowledge and capabilities and believe that they already know or have access to all the knowledge they need to innovate. This group has no idea "that they don't know what they don't know" and tend to see collaboration as being something to be done on their terms only.

This attitude can often be found in larger companies with strong research and development budgets and in well-funded public research institutes. Not only do they miss out on valuable collaborative opportunities for new business growth but they run the very real risk of being blindsided by what they don't know. To avoid this predicament, a large international manufacturer approached IXC to find a technical solution to a problem with a new product it couldn't solve itself. IXC introduced them to an Australian university whose research could be applied to the problem. This willingness to look outside the company saved them valuable product and market development time.

To protect ourselves as a nation from the curse of knowledge we must commitment ourselves to three equally important courses of action. We must improve the capacity of our business managers to collaborate. We must educate our workforce from the days of early schooling on the important dimensions of human relations, including respect for the knowledge and ideas of others and the value of sharing knowledge with each other. And we must build a national collaborative platform that integrates the use of both people and technology for connectivity.

There is a need and an opportunity for our policy makers and education leaders to encourage the development of management courses and training programs for business men and women that focus on collaborative innovation. Organisations, such as the Society for Knowledge Economics, the Australian Business Foundation, Innovation & Business Skills Australia and others, are making promising progress in this direction and I have long promoted the need for an Australian Institute for Collaboration.

Traditionally, young people have not been formally taught the importance of human relations as part of preparing for work life. Yes, we were all encouraged by our parents and teachers to share our lollies, to play nicely and to respect others but this has generally been within a societal context and not as a formal part of preparing people for the workplace. When it comes to thinking about work and careers, young people are still more likely to be encouraged to be competitive rather than collaborative.

There is a compelling need to develop school-based pre-university courses in human relations that prepare our workforce for a world where collaboration is based on the application of shared knowledge. There should be no reason why young people can't study the impact of human relations on their potential for a successful career while also studying economics.

It is equally important that as a nation we build the internal and external connectivity that is needed for businesses and the workforce to be competitive. This requires more than simply leveraging or connecting the myriad of research, education, industry support and innovation programs that already exist or the creation of some new web portal or database.

In order to build a national collaborative platform to drive both our productivity and our international competitiveness we need to combine the power of technology and people with new processes and systems for 'on demand' access to knowledge and capabilities. This will require new thinking and cultural change on the part of government, research and business as we seek out how to quickly and safely access, move and share knowledge across traditional legal, organisational and national barriers.

Source:

Total Executive

http://www.TotalExec.com.au/te-tips/

Supporting Executives and their staff with daily quotes and tips

Currently complimentary membership to Total Executive is available for 2010/2011 Saving $495:00.

Learn about Leadership Sustainability Responsibility Technology Communication Creativity Coaching Training and Education from our Network of executives & leaders

Visit: http://www.totalexec.com.au/membership-benefits/

Have you ever wondered how many of the offline sales that happen in your retail chain or call centers are actually driven by online campaigns and research activity on your website? Would you like to know the true value that your online media spend is driving including offline conversions?

Total Executive provide business coaching services in this area...



Source:

Datalicious

This white paper report from Institute for Informations Systems (IWi) at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) provides a great insight into:

A Collaboration Framework for Cross-Enterprise Business Process Management.

Download the white paper here

Looking for a coach? Planning a meeting across time-zones? Hosting a conference, running a workshop or training employees? If so, an avatar may be at your service. In the not-so-distant future, virtual worlds may be the go-to technology for getting work done.

Here is some news from the Centre for Creative Leadership

It is "early pioneering days," according to Forrester Research, but "Virtual worlds like Second Life, There.com, and more business-focused offerings are on the brink of becoming valuable work tools." Forrester predicts that, within five years, the 3-D Internet will be as important for work as the Web is today. Tech consultancy Gartner, too, is predicting the growing popularity of virtual worlds: 80 percent of Internet users will be in a virtual world by 2011.

Virtual worlds open up whole new ways for people to interact. But the technologies may also influence what people communicate, how they innovate and what they learn, says CCL's Cresencio Torres. So CCL's early forays into Second Life are focused on both doing and learning.

For example, CCL's innovation group designed a campus in Second Life for coaching and feedback research. We conducted our first coaching and feedback alpha test in February. The coach and coachee spent three hours "in-world" interacting and using real world assessment data. (The picture below shows the two in the "Visual Explorer" room selecting a picture that began the feedback process.) Through the process, Torres and his colleagues learned a great deal about avatar interaction, focus and sharing of information and goal planning.

A snapshot of a CCL coaching session in Second Life.

"Unexpectedly, we realized that we needed to move beyond the limitations of our current understanding of coaching. It was a major breakthrough in thinking about the entire feedback process and the possibilities that exist once you dramatically change your experience," says Torres. "Maybe in the future, for instance, coaching isn't called coaching at all, but something else."

Millions of Second Life users will have access to a CCL Network and Commercial Island in the summer of 2009. It will be the only Second Life leadership space created for both research and commercial use. Our avatars will see you there soon!

Source: The Centre for Creative Leadership

Kevin Byron is an active member and creative leadership practitioner within the international Creative Skills Training Council.

He has sent us the story below that provides an interesting insight into creative thought, conversations, success and other attributes that can be learnt. Education through the power of words is a very important tool used in executive coaching.

It is interesting that many of our planets most successful leaders are also fantastic storytellers...

Fish Ears

There was once a chef who owned quite a successful fish restaurant in a busy city. He didn't make a fortune from his business, but earned a decent living by making a few popular dishes of the time. He was always asking his customers what they thought about his food. He was somewhat obsessed with fish and had fishy thoughts most of the time. From time to time he would come up with a new fish recipe that attracted those extra few customers that made his livelihood worthwhile, and when word got around his business would enjoy a temporary boost.

But because in the city there are so many choices for diners and so much competition, eventually the numbers attending his restaurant would fall back to the average level again as the diners sought novelty elsewhere. At other times it seemed like the business would fail when the number of people eating out for some unexplained reason would drop to a low level. At these times he used to philosophise about what it was that made a recipe special - "What is the magic formula, the perfect dish that would fill my restaurant ?" he would ask himself at these quieter times and with the spare time available he would experiment until he found his next good idea. But he never seemed to find that one really great recipe that would enable him to change direction completely and seek out his other unfulfilled ambitions in life.

One day he was idly sitting in a nearby café where he took his daily break. He was day-dreaming about fish and about his future and wondering if they were inextricably linked. He was also feeling concerned that he hadn't had a really good fishy idea in months, when his introspection was halted by a conversation on the far side of the café that drifted over to his table. He couldn't hear much but listening, he distinctly heard someone - a rather distinguished looking business-woman saying to the group of younger people that were hanging on her every word - "....the secret to success is the right combination of Thyme and Plaice and..." He had heard all he needed to hear through his fish ears because being an expert in this business this was a big 'Eureka' moment to him. He hurriedly jumped up, paid his bill and rushed out to buy the magic ingredients.

He came back to his restaurant with a big bunch of fresh Thyme and some quality Plaice that had been freshly caught that day and he feverishly began to experiment with a new recipe. He worked for hours creating wonderful sauces with the thyme and testing different ways of cooking the plaice and then pouring the sauces over the fish and tasting them. But nothing seemed to work - nothing that is that made him believe this was the magic recipe that could change his life.

Eventually he looked at all the different sauces and the huge amount of cooked plaice and wondered what on earth he could do with them. It was soon going to be time to open up the restaurant. He certainly couldn't offer one plaice dish because he had cooked all the fish and had a range of sauces but not enough sauce to offer a consistent dish on the menu. He decided the only thing left to do was combine them all into one dish and that would have to be a soup - "Soup of the day maybe !" - he thought to himself . So he added a little extra water and let the mixture simmer very slowly over a low heat whilst he got busy preparing all his other standard dishes.

Very soon people started to drift into the restaurant but as he wandered outside the kitchen to see who was there he noticed a very delicate scent in the air and his customers noticed it too "Mmm ! - they said that smells delicious ! - I'll order that please !" they said to the waiters. Soon the scent had drifted outside and along the street. People who were on the point of going into a neighbouring restaurant suddenly turned and followed the scent. Before you could whisper "Lobster Thermidor !" the restaurant was full to capacity with people eagerly chatting and sharing their unique descriptions of the wonderful aroma of delicious cooking.

The chef meanwhile had gone back to the kitchen to locate the source of all this interest and lo and behold he discovered it was the large saucepan of his newly invented 'Thyme and Plaice' soup. "Thank goodness !" he thought to himself that he had done so many experiments with the vast quantity of fish and huge amount of thyme that he had purchased. He had made enough soup to serve everyone that came into his restaurant that night. Everyone loved it and every last serving was consumed. The chef went home that night and though quite exhausted had a lively skip in his step, a big smile on his face and enough energy to occasionally try and punch the Moon.

The next day he had hardly got out of bed after a very pleasant night's dreaming about fish when his head waiter was on the phone informing him that it was only 10.00am and the restaurant had already been inundated with telephone bookings for the next few weeks ahead. The chef rushed out to the fish market and bought even bigger quantities of plaice and armfuls of freshly picked thyme. Back at the restaurant he set about re-creating the recipes he had invented the day. He then combined them in the same way by adding water and making a most wonderful and flavoursome soup. It worked every time - full to capacity night after night his restaurant was soon the talk of the town and everyone wanted to dine there just to experience the taste of 'Thyme and Plaice.'

This went on for many months and the chef enjoyed every material benefit with his newly acquired wealth that his great fish soup had brought him. But in living his success it wasn't long before he was no longer wondering about his future and about his unfulfilled dreams. He was no longer asking questions about what it was that gave that extra something to a recipe. He was no longer curious about being creative with new ideas - for the fame that his soup had brought seemed sufficient to please him.

But what he also hadn't noticed was that every time he prepared the recipe for his wonderful soup he was adding a little more water than the last time. The soup still tasted wonderful and its delicate scent still twisted and turned its' way down the streets outside his restaurant seducing the nostrils of passers by. But each day the distance it travelled got less and less as little bit by little more and more water was being added to the recipe.

It took a while before the head waiter pointed out that for the first time in months the restaurant was not full. It didn't seem a big enough problem to mention though because the takings were still well up on the year before. But after a couple more weeks the restaurant was emptier still and business started to go rapidly downhill. The chef also noticed that very few people were ordering his wonderful soup but just choosing his standard fare.

He had also received quite a few complaints from people who tried it before and said that it was now just a shadow of what it used to be, but he wasn't listening to them like he used to. He believed he had been preparing the soup in exactly the same way. But because he had been adding more and more water a little at a time each day what he couldn't see was that he was now creating almost clear water. It had virtually no taste let alone nourishment and as for the delicate scent that had vanished too. Weeks passed and eventually there was just the usual handful of faithful customers in the restaurant that he had had in the leaner times before his great fish soup creation. No-one amongst them was the least bit interested in experiencing the 'Thyme and Plaice' anymore.

To stay in business the chef had to downsize his newly acquired life of luxury brought about by his fish soup and it was then that some of his earlier thoughts about what makes a successful dish started to slowly arise in his mind again. He soon realised that he had lost something somewhere after dining out on one good idea for too long. No sooner had he realised this when his creative skills were activated once again as he felt the desire to experiment again and to listen to what people around him said about his dishes. He also recognised that his whole life had been determined by fish and he began to think that there might be other things he could cook up in his imagination.

With these thoughts he gradually restored his business to its earlier satisfactory state before the great soup discovery and managed to occasionally win a few more customers with his new creations. But most important of all his curiosity returned and was now extending in different directions. He was still puzzling though over what it was that made a magic recipe - he thought he had found the secret but on reflection realised he may have found something but lost many other things that were far more important.

It was whilst he was musing over these interesting thoughts that he just happened to notice someone he thought he recognised seated in the corner of his restaurant. It was that same distinguished looking lady he had seen in the café many months earlier. Again she was surrounded by another group of younger people their glistening eyes staring at her with rapt attention to catch her every word.

Then there appeared one of those unexplained lulls that occur sometimes in a roomful of people. He was no longer listening with fish ears. He heard what he maybe should have heard all that time ago before he discovered his soup as the lady said ".... the secret to success is the right combination of Time, Place and..... People !"The chef smiled inwardly - somewhat wiser he continued to experiment in his modest way but not just with fishy ideas now but with how he thought and he also remembered to listen more carefully to what those around him were really saying.

K.Byron

"A solved problem is like a broken sword on the battlefield"

Proverb quoted from 'The Dermis Probe' by Idries Shah

http://www.octagonpress.com/titles/books/depr.htm

Video artist Viola, winner of McDermott award, samples new technologies during weeklong residency at MIT

Stephanie Schorow, MIT News Office
March 19, 2009

More than 35 years ago, Bill Viola jolted the contemporary art world with a new kind of artistic expression: electronic images and sounds that explored themes of love, death and rebirth. Today, the title "video artist" could be claimed by any kid with a camera, but the label rightfully belongs to Viola, who harnessed the potential of high-definition technology to produce evocative and startling snippets of video for museums and installations.

Like many artistic revolutionaries, Viola is now old school. He has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the J.Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. In 1997, theWhitney Museum of American Art staged: "Bill Viola: A 25-Year Survey."

His latest honor is the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts, given by MIT's Council for the Arts, which brings a $75,000 stipend and a chance to spend a week on campus. Which is why, earlier this month, Viola could be seen rushing through the corridors of MIT, wearing a black turtleneck and jeans and carrying a bulging backpack that helped him blend with students and faculty. While admitting he is a self-described "tech head" who delights in new gadgets, Viola used his weeklong residency to both revel in new technologies and rail about its pitfalls. "There is a danger in a place like MIT of having too much head work and not enough heart work," he later explains.

On his first day on campus, the 58-year-old Viola has willingly accepted an agenda that seems wildly overscheduled; he seems anxious to interact with as many people as possible. In the space of a few hours, he plays games at the GAMBIT Lab, talks photography with Frédo Durand, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, takes a tea break and visits the Tangible Media Group, before dashing off to a Visual Arts Program and dinner with faculty.

In a cramped office, where every surface is covered with lenses, camera bodies and cords, Durand hands Viola a modified lens that can capture different depths of field in one shot. He then shows Viola on a computer how to choose which section of a photo to put in focus. Viola sees the potential immediately: in the future, photographers may not have to make quick decisions about focus, lighting, shadows and other issues during shoots but instead deal with them later while processing photos on their computers.

Durand and Viola discuss the ethics of altering photographs and whether future cameras will become mere "input devices" for computers. Viola's wife and artistic partner, Kira Perov, who is accompanying him, blurts out, "When are we going to take pictures with our eyes?"

Everyone laughs, but Durand takes the question somewhat seriously. "I'm sure it will happen," he says. Viola expresses his worries that technology has allowed photographers to alter images too much. People tend to believe a photograph reflects reality unlike, say, a painting; yet photos may be no more real than any other form of artwork, he says. Still, both he and Durand agree that the popularity of programs like Photoshop have taught the public not to accept all images at face value.

Viola leaves Durand's office reluctantly but is soon engaged by the objects in the Tangible Media Lab and the work of Hiroshi Ishii, the associate director of the Media Lab and the Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Media Arts and Sciences. The lab has created perfume bottles that are "filled" with music. Pulling a stopper out of a bottle triggers a riff of classic music or jazz. "How did you get those musicians into those little bottles?" Viola asks, with only a hint of smile. Actually, the bottles utilize a seemingly invisible interface that Ishii believes could be introduced into household objects. Viola opens another bottle, which is silent -- a glitch, Media Arts and Science graduate student Jamie Zigelbaum explains, adding, "The musicians got out."

Moving to another area, Viola runs his fingers through the fine gravel of what looks like a wired sandbox. This is "SandScape," an interface for designing landscapes through computational simulations. A computer projects contour lines representing wind and shadows onto the sand's surface. As Viola manipulates the sand, the projected lines change, illustrating in a very concrete way how changing a land surface will alter its microclimate. Explains Ishii, "It bridges the gap between the digital world and the physical world." Perov takes a turn digging into the sand. "It's like a Zen garden," she says. "It reminds me of what the Buddha said: 'When foot feels floor, foot feels foot,'" Viola adds.

Viola is pleased at how the lab has turned touch into a computer interface. "I think Hiroshi is on to something extremely powerful," he says. "The average person -- certainly not the people who work here -- has a mistrust of technology. If you can't see it, if you can't touch it, they don't quite believe it, and they don't quite trust it."

By the end of the residency, Viola -- like so many visitors to MIT -- says he has seen the future. But he is not sure all of it works. Once, he says, he was like other MIT students, eager to use the latest imaging technology. "Now, I tend to talk a lot less about technology and a lot more about the use of that technology, which ultimately is about human moral, ethical and spiritual decisions."