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flowingmotion Posts

How I learned to blog

Published May 2, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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What I promise

27 September 2009

I think I have kept my promise

flowing motion is approaching its 2nd birthday – well near enough for me to think about its party.

It deserves a party.  Blogging has been fun – more fun than I thought it would be.

From the outset, flowing motion was my miscellaneous blog.  I had purposeful projects elsewhere.

This is where I posted notes on books I was reading, and things I was thinking about, as they came up and without much of a plan.

flowing motion rapidly became my best blog.  It blossomed as I followed what I love.  And as I followed what I love, it blossomed too.

Two years’ ago, my preoccupations were

1.  What is positive psychology and how will working positively change my core trade – work & organizational psychology? (I can’t say occupational psychology because that is a protected label now in the UK).

2.  What is the mytho-poetic of management and can a strait-laced work & organizational psychologists wander around the corporate world talking about poetry?

3.  What is social media?  What are the hacks for using it efficiently?  How will social media change the way we work and in turn, the work of work & organizational psychologists?

4.  Why hasn’t the thinking of complexity theorists made great inroads into management practice?  Or, have I been missing something?

These themes may feel disparate but I knew enough about psychology and management to know that they have a common core.  What was missing was some plain-language renditions.

So, I read. And I wrote

And I wrote often.  It is so much fun writing knowing that occasionally somebody reads what we write – voluntarily – not because I told them to.

And I watched my stats and I set goals.  I was reminded of the variability of performance metrics.  It is good to apply our psychology to our own ventures.  And I noticed myself become more fluent.  Gradually, I began to explain the complicated notions of my field in simpler language.

After two years

I have well over 1000 pages.  Some are badly written.  Some repeat what I said in earlier posts.  I have enough material for a book or two – if I cared to write one.

Next

Because blogs are basically a chronicle record – organized by dates (despite pages, categories and tags), it is time to organize the work of the last two years and see what might emerge from the effort.

I’ve created a server on my desktop, downloaded a copy of WordPress, and ‘slurped’ my old posts.  I have an index in an excel file and I need to start printing, discarding, organizing and rewriting.

I think I will experiment with a magazine format or wiki, in lieu of a an ebook.  We’ll see.  Content first.

Will the effort produce worthwhile insight and clarity for a noobe to the field?

Carrying on

And in the meantime, I write on.  I chase my metrics, and set new goals for my content.

My blog leads me.  It shows me the path.   It allows me to truly achieve that terrifying feat suggested by positive organizational scholars:

build  a bridge while I walk on it!

Hopes

Next for me is carving out the work & organizational psychology of  social mediated business and business in social media companies.  Next for me is thinking of work & organizational psychology as design.  Next for me is integrating the new world of psychology with sound principles but at the same time jettisoning the ridiculous adherence to positivism – not to be confused with positive scholarship.

Time for a new world.   Time for another exciting two years.

Original Manifesto

I love working. I love doing my work. I like the idea of work. I like what we do with work. I love our audaciousness in flying aeroplanes and operating on hearts. I love our gritty planting of crops each season. I love the optimism of a youngster looking for her first job. I love the depth of knowledge of a person who has tended his craft for decade after decade.

I’ve made working my living. Not only do I put in the hours, as a work psychologist, that’s all I do. I think, live and breathe work.

This blog is not going to be organized. There is nothing in particular that I want to achieve. I am just going to blog useful tidbits that I find out about work from day-to-day. Or that I remember in response to something that I read, hear or do. I hope you find it useful. Use what you like. Give me a shout if anything is wrong. Offer a guest post if you have something to say.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

26 June 2008

I’ve been running this blog now for just over 7 months.  I am thinking now to focus it a little around a simple project

“what it means to train yourself as a positive psychologist to work in the 21st century with managers and organizations who developed in the 20th century”

  • What are the challenges of the positive psychology?
  • How do we do positive psychology at work?
  • Is there a positive HR?
  • Is there a positive management?
  • What are the challenges of the 21st century?
  • How is positive psychology influenced by these changes?
  • How does positive psychology contribute to a positive 21st century?

I may re-jig this as I go and I would be happy for comments – on the blog and on the journey to become a positive work psychologists in the 21st century.

5 January 2009

I am looking at what I said 6 months ago and I think I have answered many of these questions.  I’ve been feeling for a long time that I need to organize my posts and my good friend and web solutions provider, Paul Imre, agrees.

In the last few weeks, I’ve got into the numbers game wanting to drive my hit rate up.  Oddly, at the same time I achieved a little more interest in my positive posts which have gradually overtaken ‘law of attraction’, ‘batman’, “am I good looking” [a lesson in SEO for me’ and the recession.  I’m pleased about that.  And I am pleased to be gettting a lot more comments.  Oddly my page rank has dropped though that might be because I cleaned up some old blogs.

So where to next? Ned, loyal writing coach, thinks I should concentrate on what ordinary people want from work.  He makes the point that ordinary people don’t associate positive with work.  Yes, that is why the positive movement in management and psychology is growing.  We like our work and we don’t see why you shouldn’t too.  In fact I am outraged that isn’t the case.  I believe it should be possible for everyone to carve out a career they love and any unhappines should both strictly temporary.   So maybe that is what I should write about.  The question will be whether I can shuck the habits of academic and bureaucratic writing.

There is also the question of the recession.  It seems that more and more people think it will be “deep”.  The jury is out on its length.  Probably only a minority believe that it really challenges the economic system as we know it.  They are outweighed right now by people who have faith in Obama’s ability to lead us to a fairer world order.  Navigating our way as individuals will  be very hard without a good grasp of what is going on and how it is reshaped the opportunities we had and offering new opportunities we had never imagined.

So maybe I am going with Ned.  Then, I will need a much better layout and even a forum.  Hmm, don’t want to abandon the page rank that I’ve got.

And should I remain anonymous?  I know that is frowned on but there were reasons at the beginning and really people should read for content!  But if I am am offering advice rather than hust sorting out my thoughts, then people should know who I am.

Nothing like writing to clarify ideas.  So decision made.  I am going with Ned. I probably need an elementary game plan.  It won’t be much, but it will be more than I had when I started 14 months ago.  And people who stop by, thanks. Today, first working day of 2009 was a record day for hits here.  Really, thanks.

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Do we have the know-how to create fun and prosperous workplaces?

Published May 2, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of blogs out here in the blogoshere on HR, on psychology, on positive development, on management, on productivity, on running your business.  We don’t really need another one, particularly one dedicated to the esoteric features of HR, running an organization, choosing a career, and making your way in the business world.  Or do we?

Serious ideas for fun and prosperous workplaces

This blog is intended for people who are fairly serious about the people-side of a business, who read widely, and yet are practical and look for ideas-turned-into-method that they can use in contemporary workplaces.

The good, the true, the better and the possible

The blog is biased towards the emerging field of ‘positive organizational scholarship’, which is not to be confused with positive thinking or positivism.  20th century thinking assumes that the person at the top is all-knowing and all-seeing.  The ‘commander’ defines the direction and the ‘ground that we should capture’.  Our task is to follow and implement.

Positive organizational scholarship abandons that idea.  No one is capable of defining direction and by the time we have defined it, it is too late.  The opportunity has passed.

The task of 21st century organizations is to be nimble, flexible and resilient – ready to move quickly and defining our objectives on the move.  It is what we have always done.  We just acknowledge it now.

The task of management scholars is to describe how we do this and to help us talk and think more clearly about what we are doing.  This blog is about that emerging conversation.

How are organizations nimble?  How can we describe them?  And what are the advantages of talking about them more articulately?

Me

I write this blog from a small town in England, United Kingdom.  Olney is on the Great Ouse which flows across several counties.  About 8000 souls live here and we are in the Milton Keynes, Bedford, Northampton triangle.  We are in commuting distance of London and the Midlands and all the international airports in the south.

I am a work & organizational psychologist by training and I moved here two years ago after a joint career in university teaching and HR consulting.  I am used to creating large HR systems for very competitive organizations and central critical organizations.

In the last two years, I have been shifting my work into social media – meaning blogs, Facebook, etc.  I run a small private company, Rooi Limited.  We are interested in the virtual world as a collaborative resource.  How can we and do we, use social media to work with other people to explore activities of interest to us?

Strengthening organizations, communities and economies

As we are work & organizational psychologists, we tend to work in the economic space.  Our first project was  Olney100, a social network for the town of Olney.  It had as its byline – Talking to neighbors over our horizon. That is the general principle of our work.  We use virtual communities to talk to people who are at the 2nd or 3rd degree of connectedness – the friends of our friends.  By using the virtual world as we once used the telephone, we are able to strengthen organizations, communities and economies.

More communication, cheaply

This is a straightforward goal and we often feel we could do just as much without the internet.  We could.  The internet just makes connecting faster and easier.  It is economical, in other words.  It allows us to connect more for very little cost.

More ad hoc fun and profitable projects

We are not just saving money either.  The trace left on the internet ‘captures data’ and allows us to position ourselves relative to other people more easily.  We can form a flock, in other words.  Like birds we can soar and swoop together without colliding.  In addition to our successful journey, we can journey with others.

More invitations, more possibilities

And like birds, when we are on the internet, we are high up.  We can see further.  We can dream bigger.  We find new destinations.  The world from the internet is both bigger and smaller.   We see further and see people beckoning us to join them.

Academics

Complexity theorists, who have read this far, will be recognizing the concepts I am using.  I hope theorists will find this interface between theory and practice useful.  My intention is to talk to people who are running organizations beginning with the organization of one, otherwise known as ‘my career’.  I will be adding practical heuristics though, and I would love your comments on whether I have represented ideas about complexity accurately.

What is happening on this blog now

This blog has been running for just over a year and there is lot of material here.  I will be re-organizing it during the next few months.  I am also writing a science fiction account of a company called Xoozya.  Xoozya is run in a strictly bottom-up fashion.  It has few rules and as yet, as a newcomer to Xoozya, I am not quite sure what business it is in!   It is my experiment to see how far I can fashion an organization that has extremely permeable boundaries.  Always happy to have comments.

Thanks for stopping by and reading so far!

Jo Jordan

Olney, May 2009

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Work & organizational psychology, GenY and Geni

Published May 2, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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My Manifesto

My BHAG

“I am young, I am British, and I love my career.”  That, is my BHAG – my big hairy audacious goal.

What is your BHAG?

If you are here, you are probably interested in that possibility of a startlingly lovable and enjoyable career. So welcome!

  • If you are young, we would like to hear your stories.
  • If you are British, we would like to hear about exciting opportunities that don’t get attention from the mainstream media.
  • If you have thoughts on careers to die for, we want to know!

Who am I?

I am a work psychologist. I am not young, and I am not 100% British.

I have had an interesting career doing work I love – helping people coordinate their careers with the careers of other people.

I did career guidance & coaching. I’ve computerized HR departments. I’ve facilitated strategic planning for turnarounds. I’ve provided redundancy counselling. I’ve mediated pay negotiations. I’ve selected pilots and army officers. I’ve selected apprentices and executive directors for the C-suite.

All this is the glue of large hierarchical organizations. These are the systems behind the traffic lights that allow us to flow through a large organization without bashing into each other.  These are the systems you only notice when they go wrong.  Like Victorian children, good psychologists are seen and not heard.

Where am I going?

Work has changed though. The financial crisis is shining a spotlight on changes that have been coming for a long time. The changes were partly the cause of the crisis as well, but only because they were ignored by business leaders who didn’t understand them or willfully ignored them

Young people of today will have very different careers from my generation. Opportunities will be different.

Knowledge work & Science

#1 We know, for example, that most work in the west is knowledge-based or service oriented. More importantly, we are on the brink of massive discoveries in the all of the sciences. TED talks give us a leisurely and enjoyable way to keep up to date. Because science is where the future lies, if you have the opportunity for a scientific education, take it!

International & Languages

#2 The world has got smaller. Young people travel readily. You will also work across borders more. You will take assignments across borders and work with people all over the world using the internet. China, India, Russian and Brazil are the the countries of the future. Learn a second language! This is no time to live in mono-lingual world!

Networked Economy & Social Media

#3 The internet changes more than our scope. Facebook and Twitter may seem like play-things but they represent an important social innovation – the power to talk directly to each other. As internet thinker, Clay Shirky, says: Group action just got easier. Suddenly, large organizations are not as powerful as they once were. This is a shock to people whose career was tied up in conquering and commanding a large organization. The collapse of the newspapers and broadcast media is all over the news as I write. Importantly, younger people who grew up with Facebook, Spotify and other platforms expect direct, egalitarian interaction. They are ready for new types of organizations and they will move smoothly into the organizations that displace the old powerful hierarchies. Play on social media. Get used to it!

Positive Psychology & Personal Portfolios

#4 The world has also become more respectful of the individual. As “bosses” become less relevant, so too does the Victorian notion that one person knows best. We no longer have shape ourselves in someone else’s mould. We are free to ask: what do we love to do and who wants to do it with us? Whether it is to sail around the world alone or make a new scientific discovery, we have to ask ourselves what it will take to do what we want to do. We have to take ownership of our dreams and have the courage to invest in what we believe is worthwhile. This brings responsibility as well as opportunity and the freedom, and requires skills that few of us developed in the past. We have to learn to manage ourselves and bring supporters and collaborators around us. This is true for the magnificently talented and the ordinary, the scientist and the artist, the crafts person and the sales person. Writing an engaging story is your job now! Don’t wait for someone to write it for you!

Networked Business &  New Business Models

#5 And we have new ‘technologies’ blossoming in this atmosphere. Boeing is trying to build aeroplanes by making the fuselage in one place and the wings in other and bolting together the big pieces like so many pieces of Lego. Mining companies are throwing open their geological records and asking the public to find the veins of gold that they missed. We come to care about design and the experience of the user. We like to make activities playful and sociable and fun. Where obedience might have been the currency of work in days gone by, today the currency is fun. He or she who creates fun wins!

How do work & organizational psychologists contribute to these changes?

For individuals, we have a clear role in helping each one of us take charge of our dreams and to take the first rather scary steps of gathering people around us. For this, we use positive psychology and interventions like gratitude diaries. We also freely put poetry and stories to work and and encourage people to organize their stories as an epic tale using the Hero’s Journey.

When we talk about groups and organizations we are less articulate. We will bring forward many of the techniques of the past. We’ll also study the work of internet watchers like Clay Shirky. We’ll study the work of contemporary anthropologists like David Logan on Tribes.

But then we are on our own trying to figure out what new organizations will look like. What traffic lights will be needed to aid the smooth flow of people through the organization? How will we design the systems that deliver traffic lights that go on and of at the right times?

This blog

This blog is a chronicle of my thinking in that direction. It is a patchwork. In the spirit of the age, I don’t try to produce a finished product. I just write every day making notes about what I hear on the radio and read on the web. I note. I connect. And I sort. Eventually, I understand.

What a work & organizational psychologist does for you

When I understand, then I can explain.  And when I can explain, then I can deliver the services needed by individual performers and the managers who help them coordinate.

When they have an issue, I help them resolve it quickly with

a) A clear model to organize the questions

b) Vicarious self-efficacy through the stories of other people at a similar junction

c) Continued social support by sticking with them till they are done.

So, to work!

What are the issues of working in the 21st century? Who is taking a playful approach to their work? Where are they? And how can pursue the work we love?

Do leave comments.  Only 10% of readers comment.  Wouldn’t it be great if the British internet were different and 20% or 30% of people felt free to add their voice to the debate?

Jo Jordan

Olney, England

2 May 2010

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Bad job descriptions . . . norm and embarrassment

Published April 29, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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Do you want traffic to your blog?  Write about bad job descriptions!  I mean it ~ bad job descriptions.  See, I know how to do SEO.  Bad job descriptions.  People put bad job descriptions into Google.

Amazing.  But they don’t have to search far. Job descriptions are uniformly bad, spinny and scammy and show woeful lack of understanding of the purpose of a job.

In the throes of a general election, Britain, home of satire, has produced this wonderful spoof of the typical HRM effort at describing what we do at work. Jobsgopublic.

It’s funny, very funny, but not so much for the HR profession. When will we lift our game?

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Who knows if there will be another dawn? Tonight we can be what the gods are!

Published April 28, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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Tonight

Do not strike the chord of sorrow tonight!
Days burning with pain turn to ashes.
Who knows what happens tomorrow?
Last night is lost; tomorrow’s frontier wiped out:
Who knows if there will be another dawn?
Life is nothing, it’s only tonight!
Tonight we can be what the gods are!

Do not strike the chord of sorrow, tonight!
Do not repeat stories of sufferings now,
Do not complain, let your fate play its role,
Do not think of tomorrows, give a damn–
Shed no tears for seasons gone by,
All sighs and cries wind up their tales,
Oh, do not strike the same chord again!

Faiz Ahmad Faiz

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Meeting of hopes & dreams: will that happen in this General Election?

Published April 27, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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Affect images and political campaigns

“for the student who seeks to learn; the voter who demands to be heard; the innocent who longs to be free; and the oppressed who yearns to be equal.”

I badly want to hear candidates in the general election describe “we the voters”.  I so badly want to hear.

I want to feel the “throbbing resonance” of shared beliefs, shared purpose and shared hopes.  I want to feel the protection of an arm around me as we whisper our fears.

As a relative newcomer to UK, I want to hear the shared mythology that long time residents share and reassure them we are in this together. I want to see their shoulders relax and their eyes light up.

We are a different place from the US and we are on a different journey.  And maybe in my noobe status, I am not hearing what is being said.

Maybe though we are going to have big surprises when the results are announced.  Maybe too social movements like Hang_em will take off.

What do you think about the connection between the politicians and the voters?  I’d love to know.

QUOTATION FROM: Barack Obama addressing the United Nations Wednesday 23 September 2009

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3 ages of control

Published April 27, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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Leaving adolescence

It’s interesting when we start to take control of our lives.  We make a plan.  Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t.  And we resign ourselves to being powerless.

Encountering adulthood

Then we get a bit older and we resolve to make things work.  And we do. When a plan threatens to come apart, we jump around and keep it altogether.  And feel very good for it.

Muddling through middle age

It’s only much later that we realize that we weren’t really keeping things together. We were feeling better. We were exploring other stories about ourselves in the world.

Not confronting the experiences of middle age

I see the converse too.  I know people who are brilliant at retelling a story as if the world does it’s bidding.  They can’t countenance a notion that sometimes the world really is not on your side.

They’ve never made the transition from that early stage of needing to be in control.  They’ve just learned to divert their strong need to be in control to a story that convinces .  .   . well, them.  It doesn’t convince anyone else. They are still aiming to feel better and they are willing to pervert reality to regain that feeling.

Living honestly with our lack of control

I can’t believe that this self-deception is a good thing.  Misreading the world is dangerous.  The world simply doesn’t do our bidding.

Our best bet is to position ourselves in the river and go with the current, steering lightly but not fighting.   It’s tough though. I still don’t like being washed along.  I have to reverse attitudes I worked so hard to learn.

But maybe I can achieve more through inaction?

There!  I still want to achieve.  Maybe by promising myself that prize, I can experiment with inaction and simply enjoy the river in all its tumultus chaos?

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Let the energy drip into your heart

Published April 27, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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Sometimes my heart feels like a solid rock.

Time to step back and ask if I am going in the wrong direction?  Life shouldn’t be this hard.

“The world is made to be free in.”  David Whyte

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Let the world look at you. I assure you, the world will like what it sees.

Published April 26, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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Gratitude or selfishness?

When I first encountered the idea of a gratitude diary, I was discountenanced by feeling grateful for things like . . .  well, my coffee.  I suspected greed, not gratitude.

Once I started using a diary, then I realised that I was often thankful for the meals I had had that day.  I am grateful for a homemade soup, for example. but am I grateful just because I could have been out all day and been subjected to junk food?  Partly.  Yet  when I feel grateful for soup, I never simultaneously think of the disgusting fare served up as food up-and-down the arterial transport spokes.  I am think of much I appreciate a well made home made soup.  I experience pleasure not gluttony.

In short, I experience me.

This still seems selfish, doesn’t it?  But it is my job to see me.  It is my job to appreciate who I am.

The funny thing is that we cannot see who we are, or appreciate who we, are except in the eyes of the world.  It is when I reach out to some thing I value and treasure, when I recognize what is good in the world, that I recognize the good in me.

Khalil Gibran talks of adventuring a path and meeting the soul.  Not a soul.  The soul.

David Whyte talks of the universe taking its ball home too, when we get up and take our ball home. He points out that universe is not punishing us.  It is just that without “the faculties of attention, there is nothing to be found.”

We are what we are grateful for

We are what we are grateful for.  It’s a simple as that.  When we remind ourselves of what we truly appreciate, we remind ourselves of ourselves.  We are validated.  We belong.

But because we are simple folk and all these word feel like mental contortions, we can listen rather to the words of Mr Chips’ fellow teacher.

“I found that when I stopped judging myself harshly, the world became kinder to me. Remember I told you once, go out, and look around the world. Do that now. Only this time, let the world look at you. And the difference, I assure you, the world will like what it sees.”

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Time to bring your life alive?

Published April 26, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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Will you die from an overdose of satisfaction?

The delightful Paolo Coelho quotes Salvador Dali in his blog today.  I deduce that Dali is an artist.  But you and I are probably more interested in his attitude to life.

“The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant. At the age of six years I wanted to be a chef. At the age of seven I wanted to be Napoleon. My ambitions have continued to grow at the same rate ever since. Every morning when I awake, the greatest of joys is mine: that of being Salvador Dali. There are some days when I think I’m going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.”

Do your ambitions continue to grow?  Do you like being you?

I am pretty sure you do.  I’ve never met anyone whose eyes don’t light up when we acknowledge their existence.

But so many of us are trying to be someone whom we are not.  We are exhausted by our constant pretending.

It’s so much easier to look at each day and marvel at the moments when we were just doing what brings us alive.  We can put aside the long commutes and grubby trains.  We can put aside the dentist’s chair.   As we pick our way through the rubbish tip of western life much as a small child does on the rubbish dumps of third world cities, we can still find time to celebrate not only what fascinates us but that we are fascinated at all.

Can we celebrate being us and not airbrush ourselves out of the picture leaving only the rubbish dump for the world to see?  Hey this is us. Why should we bring our lives down to the tip around us?  I nearly said, “sorry not me”.  But I am not even going to give that possibility that much airtime.  I’m too busy.

Put rubbish in the rubbish bin where it belongs

I say to university students, “when something is rubbish, pick it up and put it in the rubbish bin where it belongs.  And move along.”  They are always so relieved. They think they are obliged to honor rubbish.  They aren’t.  They just have to bin it.  With gusto and applomb.

They are too busy and too interesting to waste time on refuse.  That belongs on the dump.

Have your ambitions being growing at the same rate – chef at 6, Napolean at 7?  If not, then it is time to bring your life alive!

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