A week is a long time in parenthood. Last Saturday Carole and I and a packed house watched Keira and her fellow dance school pupils put on a great show. The school puts on a show only once every three years and boy do they prepare well. As a result, the performances were compelling. A mix of dance genres: ballet, tap, modern, street and musical theatre were shared with us. Graceful and entertaining.
This weekend I find out that Keira has a new drumming project. Her teacher has asked her to learn the classic Sheena Is A Punk Rocker, by punk trailblazers The Ramones. I love the way kids can flip and flop to learn all manner of different things, and seeing this in Keira is a constant reminder to me that experimental learning and doing is useful and fun.
In the summer of 2011 I was fortunate to meet Arturo Vega, artist and muse to The Ramones, and by way of a vaguely interesting coincidence, back in the early 80’s me and a bunch of journo mates recorded a version of this song as a birthday gift for the eminent photographer Tom Sheehan. It was unspeakably rude and it made number three in the Melody Maker playlist the week after we handed it to Tom (via everyone in the press office of course). And now, courtesy of my daughter and her drum teacher, It’s 1977 again – in a good way.
While I leave you to think about the new stuff you’re going to learn this week, here are The Ramones at their 1977 best. 1234……
Here are two biiiig reasons why personality or psychometric tests suck….
You know the drill. Once in a while the boss decides you’ve all got to get together and find out about each other. What makes you tick, and all that jazz. So how’re ya gonna do that? Lucky you – it’s MBTI time (other tests are available). Forms are filled, scores are totted up, foreheads are wrinkled. And then you are ready for the illumination – the results (cue fanfare).
Guess what…the test results tell you a bunch of stuff you already know about yourself, and importantly, it’s stuff you like. ‘Ooh, isn’t it uncannily accurate’ titters the excited recipient. Well derrr, you filled out the form, what did you expect? This is the first reason these tests suck. They tell you what you already know.
And guess what else…the test results tell you a bunch of stuff you already know about yourself and don’t like. And being human, you choose to disregard it all. Yeah OK, you might buy it for a wee while, but as soon as the L&D expert’s back is turned – you’ve flipped back to the real you. This is the second reason these tests suck. You ignore the stuff you don’t like.
And please – don’t get me started on Belbin. If you want to know your ‘team role’ just take a look at your desk. It’s state of organisation or otherwise will tell you pretty much all you need to know. There you go – I’ve just saved you a bucket of cash for you to spend on something ‘useful‘.
From my experience I know many folks in the world of work agree with these observations, and I’m struggling to think of anyone who approaches these assessments with anything higher on the excitement scale than vague (and often forced) interest. What do you think?
Budd, Humap and What Goes Around helped to organise and deliver the first Stop Doing Dumb Things unconference on November 23rd. If you missed it, the next one will be on 27th June 2012 – watch this space for more details. The photo above was taken by Martin Couzins and shows some (we couldn’t fit everyone into one shot!) of our guests unconferencing.
One of our guests called me after the event and he simply described the day as “an outstanding experience”. What a lovely thing to say. We’ve been in touch with all our guests and asked them for feedback. Of course many of you have already seen some immediate feedback provided on the Twitter stream, and in the spirit of sharing and continuous improvement, here’s what we’ve learned from our guests so far:
‘I want to thank you for last Wednesday.
The whole notion, the speakers, the range of ideas and approach of the unconference. The food, the location. The organisation, which despite its seemingly chaotic nature at first, all makes sense now and I can’t fault in the slightest! Courage to do it differently. The variety in approach. The quality of discussion. The forum for airing and exploring ideas. Informal, conversational style, audience participation. Saw it more as an ideas conference – flying kites. Quirky venue, shame about the sound and the room could have had a bit more heat!
Thank you so much for being brave enough to put this type of conference on, but don’t settle there, keep pushing the boundaries.’
‘Thanks again for today’s SDDT, had an absolutely fantastic time and have so much enthusiasm to take back to my role that wasn’t there before. Already looking forward to next year!’
‘Thank you for the day, I did not know what to expect, but it was very thought provoking and I am still thinking about it as there was a lot to take in. I wished that I had taken a photo of the art; I hope that it could be photographed and sent to everyone as that is a great way to remember, a fantastic way to take minutes of a meeting…I am glad that I attended, thank you very much’
‘It was certainly different and I did enjoy myself. I hope you did too.’
‘I liked the flow of the day and the focus on the issues that people wanted to talk about, but some of the conversations in the afternoon ended up being very similar, and sometimes too definition focused. If I was being critical there were a lot of “nice” conversations i.e. people talking about the same challenges without any “well how do we change?” what do I make the changes in the organisation to make these things happen. Talking about similar issues has a lot of benefit and it’s good to talk to other professionals outside of one’s own organisation, I like to take away something about the practical actions to make change and the session that you kicked off started that, so perhaps that element could be the focus of the next meeting?
the venue was great, a non-office or hotel environment added to the day, as did the non-use of organisational names..
I thought the “Art minutes” was a fantastic idea and could really be exploited.’
‘Thanks for a great day – hope to come next year. One suggestion – maybe you could ring-fence an hour on the day for people who want to be able to facilitate discussions they want to lead. They could do a 30-sec pitch and wander off to different corners and people could come and join in. Lightening talk sessions could also be good. Although I felt the collaborative approach worked in determining the topics, it did feel that the conference missed some straight forward presentation with Q&A. Finding a way to empower people (as some interesting people there) to share what they want, how they want, would be good. I did find it surprising on the day how restricted many of the attendees were in their place of work and lack of buy in to the customer experience within the wider business.’
‘I really enjoyed the unconference. The opportunity to meet so many like-minded people was really great. In your own environment you can get really blinkered, and fresh ideas can seem to come rarely. I left SDDT with so many fresh ideas, so much future hope and real inspiration to help more people discover a facilitative, autonomous approach to tackling issues. I gained some great advice and contacts.
You’ve been a real inspiration, thank you for having and helping me. I really hope I can come again next year!’
‘Thanks again for an inspiring day last week.
Never been to an unconference before, and I am quite shy/outside my comfort zone at these sort of events (I am really a techie – should explain everything). The people made it – but then in hindsight I think you can’t go wrong at an unconference about engagement – you’ve got people attending who want to engage about engaging…. After the first table of the world cafe I knew I was going to enjoy the day.
1) World Cafe at the beginning was very good for getting into the swing of things. I enjoyed that. At one point the table I was sat on we weren’t too sure what the aim/question was – I think it was a result of each of us having had different discussions/perspectives – and last table I sat at I think we were taking the conversation more where we wanted to (I think). Which was fine (and interesting).
2) I joined the measurement and feedback discussion and it got hard to hear the discussion – I think just because the size of the group especially if someone was more softly spoken. But also the group was probably too big because the discussion was dominated by a few although most others did join in. There was no leader/chair and I didn’t have the confidence to chair the talk. There was some good stuff covered, and some not so relevant to me (goes with the territory, it’s fine), but our summary was weak and I came away feeling like good conversation, interesting, can I remember any of it? Little nuggets…
Thinking about expectations – I wanted to hear what was on others minds, so the “not so relevant” was more than fine. As we frequently say about our work/clients – we’re low down the list of priorities to our clients, and the whole day was really useful just seeing the bigger picture, various things that don’t get discussed between our client and us when it comes to them saying “I’d like to do this customer survey…”
One other expectation. I expected more H.R. people present, but I think it was more customer focused? As we found out on the day, engagement means so many things to different people!
3) Lunch very good. Happy with the produce, quality, quantity, format…
4) After lunch – what works was the weakest. It might work better next year if some of us are prepared for this sort of session – e.g. little things we can share that have worked for us/our clients?
5) The 10 minute problems session was surprisingly very good. I feel I helped the people I conversed with, and I asked a genuine question that sort of arose during the day. I felt not alone, and good karma!
Other things. The cartoonist was a nice touch, fun, curious to see at work. Also the twitter feed (essential these days). I think your communications before the event were good and helped prepare us. I would really like a list of names/companies/twitter contacts who attended (I didn’t give out my business card but I think I should have – my naivety(!) – there were a couple of conversations that I’d like to try and pick up and I thought I’ll find so-n-so on LinkedIn or Twitter. It’s not that easy!) – that’s a lesson for me next time.
What did you get that you expected to get? Different perspectives, better understanding from the company viewpoint (rather than my service providers pov)
What did you get that you did not expect? More than anything, confidence.
What didn’t you get that you expected?Nothing (I didn’t expect a lot)
What did you learn that you can use? What others struggle with – we’re thinking hard about – how can we take account of that (their challenges) in feedback and measurement (help them solve those challenges). I don’t think I can explain this in an email properly! It’s sort of intangible.
Overall, excellent. Consider my response to have ticked the top box or given an NPS score of 10! I’m keeping the 27th June free.’
We think we helped to do a good job and we know we will do even better next time. If you attended or listened in via Twitter and you would like to add further feedback, we’d love to hear from you.
