(Details below.)Hello Everyone,
There is a printable version of the Newsletter here. (5 pages)
Kiwi Scrum has 2565 members. That's an increase of 57 for the month. Welcome to the new members, and thanks to those who have invited people they know, to join this group.
This month's newsletter was inspired by Miles Stratford. (Details below.)
Most people who are regular users of LinkedIn are now aware of LinkedIn Groups. You can join as many as 50 groups. I suggest that you join 50, so that you can contact other people who share your interests, and they can contact you. Of course, you can't follow the discussion in 50 groups. That's not expected.
Join a diverse set of groups, especially join a few groups with many members, like the Facebook, Skype and Gmail user groups. I've also found "Green" is a useful group in that way.
It's inevitable that we are all indoctrinated by the time we are five, and by the age of 25, we are fully trained in the rules and attitudes needed to maintain the status quo. 
You are "full" with other people's ideas, with ideas that are from 60 to 1000+ years old, carefully selected. Our parents want that for us. The education system is designed to deliver that result. The current debate about standards testing in schools is evidence of our present concern for getting schooling right. (Note that I avoided using the word education there.)
We are trained how to find the cheese in a maze; how to be successful mice. We are not trained to build and maintain mazes, nor even to recognise that the maze exists. Like the three monkeys, we become well behaved "good" mice.
To be an effective innovator or leader, you have to both be steeped in this knowledge and also independent of it. You have to learn how to climb out of the maze. That's the easy bit, the hard but is to get the maze out of yourself, a task that takes about 20 years. I call this process de-schooling, a term I learned for Ivan Illich. That's what this newsletter is about.
In a modern world, new knowledge grows quickly, but one's ability to absorb and use that knowledge is slow to change. Our education system as an example is still based on training people to be square pegs for slots in an industrial machine. Students are treated like empty bottles to be filled with carefully prescribed information. Sadly, schooling prepares us for the 20th Century.
Much of what society expects you to know is already out of date by the time you learn it. Sometimes this is not critical, facts change. London is no longer the largest city in the world. Sometimes new technologies change the way we do things. Handwritten letters are becoming rare. Sometimes the facts are not known or knowable. For instance, after WWI, the troop ships returning from Europe were welcomed home, but those ships carried the influenza virus that killed thousands.
For the last 60 years governments have always met the problem of high unemployment and civil unrest by creating new debt, and increasing spending, both private and public. In a world facing limited supplies of oil and climate change induced by our industrial development, that "solution" is no longer viable. The whole structure on which modern monetary economics is built, looks very unstable today.
Your useful common is not only the Internet itself, but all of the networks, online and off line that you are part of; and also the community facilities of your own city or town, and the laws and traditions that make free public information and ways to access the common available. The Common is the activity and learning space available to everyone. You can enlarge that part of the common you have access to, by networking.
Miles Stratford wrote:
"I take on board the connectivity 'message' you have been espousing on LinkedIn. ... I was wondering, how does a person linked to an open networker like yourself, work through the masses of connections you have in an efficient fashion?"
Miles is asking me how anyone can cope with the size and the vast quantity of data flowing through the useful common. My general reply is; "engage, but remember you can't drink the ocean." It's a valuable topic.
Being directly connected to me gives you 10,000+ people in your second level. You can search the profiles of those people and find people who share your interests, or who might be potential customers. If you share networks with those people, you can contact them directly; or you can ask for a referral. Use keyword searches to find people of interest.
Lots of Connections: Kiwi Scrum makes it possible to build your first 100 connections quickly and easily. (Use the Open Networkers.) You should keep building your network slowly and steadily. Read the key points of the profile page for each new connection. Write to every person you connect with, personalizing the letter if you can. Tell them what drives you, and offer something you can give away, like the link to a valuable resource.
Only a small number of the people you write to will reply. A couple of times a week I exchange 2-3 letters with a new person, and that usually involves visiting a web site of two, and learning something about what that person is up to. Contact is often maintained via a LinkedIn Group we both belong to, or by adding another subscription in my RSS reader.
I NEVER try to send a message to all my LinkedIn connections. They help me, but most of them don't "know" me.
Engage with other people and Groups: You become like the people you live and work with. Like the people you choose to have in your circle of friends. If you wonder how other people view you, look at your friends; you are like them in most respects.
We learn from other people. We learn best when other people are close enough to demonstrate, by the way they live and think and work, a way of being that impresses us. You learn from people you admire. Often, that learning is unconscious, like a process of osmosis. You become like the people you associate with.
That's also true online. You learn from the people you exchange messages with. Especially from people who are far away and who don't live in the same information pool as you. Those people can have new ideas, insights or ways of seeing the world, that may be a powerful new way of thinking and understanding for you. The Internet allows each of us to immerse ourselves in a hothouse of ideas.
Lots of Diverse Groups: I spoke about this in the opening of this newsletter. You can never tell where the next piece of critical understanding or knowledge will come from, but it's very likely you'll get that information from a person. Research shows that the key information is most likely to come from a weak connection. So develop ways to grow weak connections. Communicate with them occasionally via common group membership. Use LinkedIn Groups to do that.
Invitations: When you get invitations from other people to join their network, my advice, is always to accept. But do more, send a note trying to open a discussion on a topic important to you. Mostly, the other person is too busy and too disconnected to reply. But some do, and a few of those people have useful knowledge relevant to your work.
Be active in sending invitations to other people as well. In this case you choose who to invite. Choose people who you admirer. Choose the people who write the blogs you follow. Choose people in your industry. But also be a mentor to young people, connect to students just leaving university, set an example for them.
One theory about both innovation and learning, assumes that information-rich environments, make learning quicker and innovations more numerous. Warsaw and Edinburgh were in their time great centres of learning, culture, innovation and commercial success. Much like Silicon Valley is viewed today. If that is a valid idea, today any office, any group of people, or any city can create a hothouse environment where learning and ideas and innovation are cultivated and developed. Some people want to avoid being in a hothouse. They prefer a quiet life.
To participate in a hothouse you need to be open to meeting new people and their ideas. You need to overcome the fear of explaining who you are and what you do in public. You need to develop a personal point of view and the ability to express it. You need to engage.
Engage with some groups: LinkedIn Groups have become a good way to find out what other people are thinking. Most people are retelling what they were taught, sharing the best knowledge they have, confirming their indoctrination. Proving that they are well trained mice who use the maze efficiently. Confirming your commitment to positive thinking, to goal setting and creating stepping stones to success, and to the general idea that "growth" is good, is to say, "I'm a member of the executive class." This is the cool end of the hothouse.
Please do this. Find in yourself the confidence to express what you've been taught, in public. It's no mean feat to absorb all that knowledge, and it's a necessary step before you can go on. Early in your career, that culture and those rules will serve you well. However, in mid-life you need selectively to break some of those rules to succeed. That's not easy to do. Especially if the rules have served you well in the past.
There are groups, usually small in size, often led by an outstanding individual, breaking important new ground. I can't tell you where they are, you need to discover your own. Life can be hard in these groups. Disagreements can flare up. Often, when people want to progress, things seem to get stuck and the way forward seems confusing and impossible to navigate. This is the hot end of the hothouse, where new ideas battle for a place in the future.
Miles Stratford wrote:
"My experience is that many people don't want to grasp the reality of their situation. So, getting the societal 'horse' to water is a massive challenge. .... "
People can't grasp the reality because their education and experience tells them that what I'm calling "reality" simply can't be true. In the tradition of the three monkeys, they can't hear, can't see, and can't speak, about the full consequences of climate change for instance. The topic is too difficult to deal with. Denial is easier. They remain trapped in the maze, doing the good work they were taught to do. Schooling has a lot to answer for.
Therefore, de-schooling is a seriously important task for modern adults. It's admirable to be full of the idealism of positive thinking when you are 25, but if you have the same inability to see the downside and risks at 55, you've denied yourself many learning opportunities.
You can't de-school in school. You need to learn how to learn without assigned teachers, and without being sure who the experts are. You have to strive to become "yourself" by making choices about what you do and what you pay attention to.
Volunteers: I always write about the importance of volunteering in these newsletters. Recognise that the most important conversation is the one you have with yourself. The most important work you volunteer to do, is to undertake your own de-schooling. De-schooling involves slowly to unpacking all the learning of your youth, to re-examine it for value in your life and in the modern world.
Much of what you know is either wrong or in need of fine tuning. Either way, the time it takes to do this work is time well spent. The quality of your life depends on you becoming informed by the best ideas you can discover.
Find a Mentor and later many mentors: Somewhere in your life, there will appear someone who will offer you training and opportunity and friendship, that will open a new future for you, if you are prepared to take it.
Eventually, you have to give up on the idea of finding individual teachers and experts to help you along. Many people have part of the knowledge you are seeking to develop, and if you are open to learning they will all contribute to your understanding.
Trying hard - Doing things - Making Mistakes: One of the best ways to de-school yourself is to get your nose bloody on real projects. When things go badly, is the time when you are most open to learning. But you need to be invested in the project, to have given it your very best shot, to have applied all your skills and knowledge, and still come up short. Don't lose that moment. Write it all down and try to work out what went wrong. (Maybe two years later, it will be clear to you.)
Use an RSS Reader:
We all need to read, to read a lot. The most efficient way to build a list of sources you respect and are interested to read is to use an RSS reader. I use Feed Demon, but Google Reader is heavily supported and easy to access.
When you subscribe to new blogs or news sites, you build a list of trusted sources. If the feed from a site proves boring or ill informed, it's as easy to unsubscribe. Most sources only update once a week or even less often. Those that have new information daily are few.
What you choose to read and think about, and later to write about, shapes who you are becoming. My RSS reader with over 200 subscriptions is a fire-hose of information, I cannot cope with. I read when I have time, 3-4 days a week, but always with the time restriction for the last 24 hours selected. Yes, I might have missed 150 items from the two days before, but I know I can't drink it all.
Write a Blog:
You learn to write by writing. Practise writing. Start a blog. A blog reinforces what you know, and helps you to get your ideas into a logical order. Writing a blog is a way to find your own voice.
You learn to think by thinking. Reading, speaking and writing are different ways of thinking. Each mode of thinking uses different parts of the brain, and has it's own language. In a knowledge age, learning is a significant part of what our work is. You learn faster and more easily if you read, write, and speak about the things you are learning. Scott Ginsberg would also recommend meditation.
A blog can be private or public. Writing a public blog forces you to think more carefully about what you really mean and to pay more attention to details like spelling and punctuation. The prospect of having "readers" and better still comments, forces you to raise your game.
Miles Stratford wrote:
"I don't subscribe to the LinkedIn 'professional' service and there may be some tools in there, which can help."
I have used LinkedIn as a paying member occasionally. For me, the main value is in the ability to do deeper searches. Many of the key people in today's society are not big linkedIn users. They may never be. So they don't have a lot of connections, and when I can get close to them, they are not in any groups, and they might even have invitations turned off.
Being able to search up to 300 or 500 people is useful, especially if you want to find people who are occasional users, with few connections.
Having Inmail, means you can always send a message to anyone you can find. A job 25% done. Getting them to open the inmail, or better still to reply is the other 75%. Working online is like fly fishing. You need to put a fly on the hook.
More interesting news next month,
John Stephen Veitch
The Network Ambassador
