I just got off a plane and was watching an advertisement for Cirque du Soleil’s upcoming shows. One of the shorts features a human pyramid doing jump rope. What amazing and skilful coordination and strength. Some people find solo skipping difficult enough, but it is a piece of cake compared to what I just saw.

It is easy to get things done … if we don’t need to work with other people.

I have long loved Karl Albrecht’s axiom: “Intelligent people, when assembled into an organisation, will tend towards collective stupidity”. It continually fascinates me how challenging it seems to be to work effectively and efficiently with other people. Yes, we can design and implement good processes, systems and protocol - these are crucial - but at the end of the day, organisational effectiveness tends to be a function of the ability of people to operate together. It is not as easy as it should be for our efforts to add value rather than contribute to collective inefficiency.

Like you, I sit here on the brink of another year. At Ergo we have high expectations. Firstly for our clients - our expertise and commitments are to improve organisational effectiveness, whatever that looks like. We will continue to work hard to help leaders cultivate alignment of daily activity with organisational priorities.

And for us, in response to developments through 2008 we will be evolving … more on this later.

Meanwhile, have a great start to the year and give lots of thought to the collective intelligence of your team. Happy team skipping.

This morning at 7am, year 12 students from Victoria received notification of their VCE results. As I listened to radio conversation in the lead-up, the talk was about expectations; and the differences between getting results that were higher or lower than anticipated.

It so happened I was already thinking about the power of expectation. On the weekend we are heading up to Queensland for a break over Christmas. I discovered yesterday afternoon that the discount airline who is carrying us won’t cart objects longer than 2 metres on their flights into Collangatta. WHAT? It’s the Gold Coast … and you won’t carry surf boards … you’ve got to be joking!!

I was discussing my disappointment with my wise 14 years old daughter. She lay down beside me and said, “Dad, do you remember Lyn, my primary school art teacher?” [I did]. When I’d make a mistake I’d take it to her upset and say, ‘Lyn I’ve made a mistake’. (All the teachers are referred to by first name at our local school). And she would say, ‘Rachel, in art there are no mistakes, only differences.”

Rachel then says to me, “Dad, I think holidays are the same.”

As an idealist, many of my expectations are fantasies, so it was a timely reminder not to set myself up for disappointment by creating a view of what is an acceptable holiday (with copious surfing), rather than making the most of what actually happens.

In the lead up to Christmas our lives are full of fantasies. Idealistic Christmas lunches where we imagine our relatives’ idiosyncrasies dissolve or new year’s resolutions that deny the realities of our ingrained habits.

Does this mean we simply lower expectations? No, that’s not the point. The point is that life is full of real imperfect people, imperfect systems; things go wrong. The contented life is one that rides these waves with resilience and humour. Life is mostly an art, not a science.

This will be my last (planned) post until the new year. I hope your festive season is satisfying as you embrace the things that matter in an imperfect world.

We’ve all been to too many conferences where the best conversations happen during breaks from the main sessions. To a very large extent, this is due to the inability of conference co-ordinators to learn from this basic fact, and continue to run events that consist of monologues with only token time for engagement.

(I found this image on a great blog called yesandspace)

There is, of course, a place for listening to those whose knowledge and experience is worth taking in. But many conferences are full of people who are already packed with all they need to know content-wise. What they need is meaningful engagement with others who share their particular interests and who are seeking to solve the same problems as they are.

Today, my colleagues Derek and Mohan and I are facilitating a 1 day forum for 100 TAFE teachers who are coming to terms with the significant changes that will happen in vocational education over the next few years. To avoid the potholes described above we are borrowing principles from The World Cafe and Open Space Technology, both approaches we use extensively to help groups engage conversations that matter to them.

I am looking forward to leading this group of professional educators through a style of conference that they will likely have not experienced before. I love seeing people get surprised at how engaging and productive they can be when they had assumed they would be adopting the typical passively interested posture appropriate for an end of year staff conference.

Meanwhile, when you are sitting through you next Powerpoint presentation that is answering questions no one is asking, remind yourself that it doesn’t need to be this way and suggest the organisers give us a call next time around.

As a year 10 student, I loved both technical drawing and art. The precision and detail of technical drawing, and the idea that complex shapes could be represented by two dimensional perspectives engaged me. On the other hand, I enjoyed the free flow of art and the encouragement to experiment. Salvador Dali intrigued me deeply and in my painting I attempted to mimic his twisted view of how the world fits together.

These days I spend a good deal of my energy on organisational effectiveness. Like so many other things in life, cultivating organisational effectiveness is both a science and an art. It is a science because there are some things that we just know need to be in place. They have been ‘proven’ over and over again. Clarity of accountabilities, effective systems, alignment of activity with agreed objectives, healthy relationships, good communication from leadership to name a few.

But organisations are not machines, and people are not robots. Working with people is mostly an art. It involves powers of observations and emotional intelligence. It requires agility to move with what actually happens rather than what we as leaders expect will happen. As I plan for a few new projects this week, I find myself thinking about what I need to do that is ‘technical’ and what I need to do that is more innovative and responsive. Both will be necessary for good outcomes.

If you are a regular reader of this blog you will notice some changes over the next couple of weeks. We are launching a new blog aligned with the agile software solutions part of our business. That blog will be called Agile Minds. My musings here will be renamed Generative Edge (from the current ‘Ergo Blog’)

We are hoping the technical change will be seamless, but please be aware that the name of the blog and associated image(s) will evolve.

Meanwhile have a good week. If you are in Melbourne, please join us for Christmas drinks this Friday 5^th. Drop in anytime after 4pm. (49-51 Rosslyn St, West Melbourne)

The first time I recall thinking about the relationship between discipline and freedom was when learning scales as a primary school age piano student. The simple idea that the routine and disciplined monotony installed competency that couldn’t be fast-tracked, was potent.

Some years later I was standing in front of a packed auditorium of Japanese high school students attempting to argue (in Japanese) that the ‘training’ justification for the strict code associated with secondary schooling (such as wearing ridiculously uncomfortable high-collar uniforms) was pointless. I am embarrassed at my teenage naivety. Even though I learned an extraordinary amount about cultural differences, while at school in Gifu, at the time that didn’t extend to appreciating the richness of an economic society that celebrated the common good ahead of individual achievement.

Last week I joined a small group of people invited by my squiggly mate Steve to watch Man on Wire, the true story of Phillipe Petit’s, incredible performance - 45 minutes running, laughing, lying, dancing and kneeling on a wire strung between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in NYC. Standout achievements like this are frequently the combination of unusual ambition and unreasonableness, married with relentless discipline. Certainly in Phillipe’s case, the lifetime of practise and mental toughness was the foundation for what could have looked like frivolous adventuresomeness.

The social freedoms that have changed our western world over the last 40 years have failed to deliver inner freedom. Our ideological commitment to removing restrictions and allowing people ‘choice’ has disappointed those who imagined we would be happier and more content as a result. Instead we work longer, break-up more often, suicide more frequently, and strive more for greater freedom.

Perhaps it’s time to recapture discipline as a foundation for freedom.

In business, some disciplines are imposed. There are things that just have to be done. The disciplines that set people apart are typically unseen and discretionary. Physical; diet and exercise. Intellectual; what I take in, and what I produce, how I make decisions. Emotional; commitments to attitudes, restraints, and inner reflection.

Life is a marathon. Inner and outer worlds tend to align. Achieving our dreams in the outer world will only happen if we are disciplined in our inner world. We might aspire to dance unencumbered on a wire, but if we haven’t put in a lifetime of backyard practice, the ‘courage to transfer our weight from the building onto the wire’ will desert us. And that looks ugly.

There are no shortcuts.