Not just a pile of bricks

“You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than you can from a lifetime of conversation” - Plato

Endless possibilities...

I don’t know about you, but for me there’s something innately comforting about Lego. That it fits so neatly together, its pleasing iconic design, the way it transports you back to a time when both play and possibilities were endless…

I’m currently enjoying the ‘Lego Experience’ a second time around through my son John. I don’t know how many ‘Rebel Alliance bases’ I’ve built so far for his Star Wars Lego figures but we’re definitely into double figures. The current base is white and very Empire Strikes Back (Hoth-esque if you’re a devotee).  A few weeks ago, for reasons I won’t go into here (but I do here) my wife and I happened to be entertaining the actress Caroline Blakiston, who played Rebel Alliance leader Mon Mothma in Return of the Jedi, and it amused me hugely that one of ‘her bases’ was in the same room. I half expected her to criticise the accuracy of the build! John has a lot more Lego than I did as a kid, mainly because I still remember how much I craved and coveted friend’s larger Lego collections (Simon Brown – your Space Lego circa 1983 was truly a wonder to behold) and this time around I’d kind of like other kids to crave and covet his. The huge vat of Lego we bought off ebay has certainly helped with that!

Gavin Wedell and helper (copyright Gavin Wedell)

Anyway you get the point – I think Lego rocks. But why am I blogging about it? Well, I recently heard about a Lego training session being run for business school faculty by one of our MBA students who has worked as a corporate trainer, with clients including Diageo and Vodafone, one Gavin Wedell. Gavin was one of those lovely MBAs who nodded in all the right places during the induction sessions, completely gets what we’re about and is a great advert for what is a largely misunderstood breed of student. I should make it clear that Gavin isn’t just randomly dumping Lego in front of people in these sessions and hoping something creative or good happens, he’s actually – now let me get this right – an officially certified facilitator of the innovative LEGO^® Serious Play™ methodology, having been trained at LEGO’s U.S. headquarters (I love that they have a U.S. headquarters, with Lego figures on guard presumably). What is LEGO^® Serious Play™ I wondered? So I took at look at their site and read their their promotional blurb:

‘An innovative, experiential process designed to enhance innovation and business performance. Based on research that shows that this kind of hands-on, minds-on learning produces a deeper, more meaningful understanding of the world and its possibilities. [It] deepens the reflection process and supports an effective dialogue – for everyone in the organization.’

One of my models in which a mystified cat looks on as I contemplate bridge-building

This description taken together with the fact that I knew Gavin was ‘one of the good guys’ and that my team needed a fun summer training session (and of course the fact that – Hey! We’re talking about Lego here) motivated me to email Gavin and ask if he could run a session for us. Gavin was fantastically accommodating. Not only was he keen to tailor the session to our specific needs, but he was very flexible about a date and, best of all, he refused payment. I knew we were on to a winner by the team’s gleeful reaction to news of the workshop: smiles all round which suggested many happy childhood hours with The Lovely Bricks.

My expectations were already high at the start of the workshop. but I could not have anticipated just how much fun and, more importantly, insight and productive team-building would arise from the session. First up we were tasked to build a tower, a tower which, on receipt of new phoned-in instructions from Sir Paul Judge (via Gavin), suddenly had to be rebuilt at 90 degrees (to reflect how priorities and directives can suddenly change). More model-building followed as we used the bricks and figures to reflect challenges in our current job, before we all switched seats and had to describe each others challenges on the basis of each other’s Lego models alone.

Sarah's model (as the outcome of our wider model)

What surprised me was:
1) just how good everyone was at building with Lego (special mention must go to Natasha who had never used it before, but immediately employed it in such an eloquent and creative way that it almost left me speechless with admiration);
2) how the models we built spoke volumes about our challenges – it seems a lego model also paints a thousand words
and; 3) how much we already understood about each other and were willing to understand and empathise more.

The final half an hour saw us bring together our individual models as one over-arching strategy for the team going forward. By this point our models had been named by each of us with attributes that were means of overcoming the challenges we currently face. So, for instance, Sarah brought ‘open communications’, Natasha brought ‘hope’ (or the ‘Helicopter of Hope™’ as I prefer to call it!) and Ange brought ‘blending talents’ to the table. Surprising again was that the end result was strategically viable as a way forward for Information & Library Services within our institution.

Team (with Natasha holding the 'Helicopter of Hope' TM)

Post-session emails of thanks, individual comments and tweets from team members suggested that our LEGO^® Serious Play™ workshop had been a great success. The only caveat I would add is that we’re currently very lucky to be in a team which really IS a team – respectful, appreciative of our differing talents, empathic – our challenges are more from without than within and several times during the session I thought ‘Ooh!” at this or that element which could well have been awkward, if not downright uncomfortable, in other teams I’ve worked in or led. Having said that, I do think the methodology seems robust enough to deal with that, especially if you have a facilitator as good as Gavin.

So where does this leave me and Lego? Well, I am of course now looking at it in a whole new light. Why do I build rebel bases for John in a particular way? Why do I adopt a rigid colour scheme? Why do I always build in an arms store? Why do I only ever have one door? What does all this say about my personality?  Sometimes a rebel base is just a rebel base – isn’t it? Now I’m not so sure.

Gavin Wedell can be contacted as follows:
Email: gavinwedell AT gmail.com | LinkedIn | Twitter

EBSLG 2011, HEC Paris: Innovation in Libraries (Part 2)

Day 2 (continued)
Lunch on the second day provided an opportunity to meet Anna Drabble of Emerald (@anna150 on twitter), Head of Digital and Product Development at Emerald Group Publishing, who was the only other person tweeting at #ebslg11 (although there were plenty of lurkers). As well as our shared interest in the impact of social media we discussed the specific matter of live-tweeting at conferences. I find that it helps me to process the events I attend and, of course, it gives access to the event for those unable to attend. I wrote about this issue at some length after last year’s BLA conference and upon reading that post again, apart from being amused to see I was still resisting an iPhone back then (I couldn’t live without now), it made me realise how much more accepted device-use is at conferences, just one year later. I distinctly remember dark looks at last year’s EBSLG when I got my laptop out, but this year, loads of delegates were on iPhones, iPads, laptops, even if only two of us were tweeting.

However, we’re not all the way there yet… one sponsor made the mistake of demanding we switch our phones and laptops off at #ebslg11 - ironically during the mobile tech roundtable! – presumably on the basis that we weren’t concentrating. I refused on the basis that I was tweeting (others could have refused on the basis that they were taking notes) and realising his mistake, he quickly, and unconvincingly, pretended it had been a joke. Today’s speakers need to realise that devices are now part-and-parcel of their teaching experience. If it makes some of them try harder to grab our undivided attention then that can’t be a bad thing! Although doing so by making a whole conference hall do aerobics and air-kisses is probably not for every speaker – apologies Cambridge librarians, but I just couldn’t resist it.

Thorsten Meyer of the German National Library of Economics (ZBW) was the first speaker after lunch (and now the new president of EBSLG – congratulations!) on the topic of Open Innovation, the process by which customers are actively integrated into the innovation process via Web 2.0. At ZBW open innovation has been employed by ZBW labs and for an ideas competition: The EconBiz challenge. Essentially, ZBW is sourcing input form the outside world in order to improve and develop new and existing products. One soundbite from this session that I particularly liked (tweeted by @anna150): It is important to have good ideas – but an idea is not yet an innovation…

Veronique Mesguich, Library Director of the Leonardo Da Vinci University spoke next. There were plenty of ‘take-aways’ from her session. Firstly, the simple statement (that I think I’ve been saying since circa 2001): ‘We are in the age of access not property’. Secondly, the observation that librarians are more like teachers and teachers more like librarians (because the latter are searching for, and retrieving, more data from the web with which to present). Finally, the fact that librarians now have many new territories and, because of this, collaboration with those already in these territories is key. She talked specifically about ‘soft empowerment’ as her preferred approach to this collaboration.

I personally find that because ‘the game has changed’ and librarians now must actively embrace technology and marketing that I am perceived as encroaching on other departmental territories more and more and it is a challenge to square that with all parties. I agreed with Veronique and, later, Dominic of MBS, that communication, listening and building relationships is key. Unfortunately there is sometimes little difference between positioning and empire-building in the eye of the beholder. I guess I just have to try harder to be understood and to make it clear that what we’re about offers the opportunity for collaboration and a fuller overall service to our users and does not constitute a threat. After all, we’re all cogs which go to make up a larger organisational mechanism.

The remainder of the afternoon was given over to the Bazaar of Ideas which this year saw the following projects/topics explored: implementation of an open-source LAS system at INSEAD (Pascale Pajona) – very neat it is too; a database of research publications at University of Paris Dauphine (Andre Lohisse); library book events and social reading at HEC Paris (Sylvie Marion); Manchester Business School’s excellent Business Research Plus blog service (Dominic Broadhurst); more on the EconBiz challenge at ZBW (see above); development of the Cranfield Research Information System (CRIS) (Mary Betts-Gray); use of Twitter at EADA library (Carolina Sanmartin); and finally, my own presentation on our adoption of a WordPress blog as the new front-end of our service here at Judge.

Thanks to my switched-on team the demo involved some instant chat (a component of the new site) in French for the benefit of the continental audience. As each of us taking part in the Bazaar had to present 4 times with the audience circulating, I found it interesting to see how I could improve on my content and flow as I progressed, with the third session probably  the best and the first outing definitely the weakest. Practice absolutely does make perfect. The prezi presentation I used is available by clicking on the image below.

The Hall of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles

The day was rounded off in style with a virtually private tour of the Palace of Versailles which is usually heaving with visitors. The Hall of Mirrors was my  particular highlight due to its historical significance as the venue of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, although it was also great to see the door through which Marie Antoinette fled when the French populace stormed the palace at the outset of the Revolution in 1789.

Versailles was followed by a return to the HEC Campus in Jouy-en-Josas and the gala dinner at the CRC castle at which the company and  food was superb and the wine flowed freely.

Next time in my final #ebslg11 post (Part 3 of 3): Google Books; the impact of mobile technologies and social media, and a visit to Maxim’s.

Ungrateful, if deeply realistic, sod

Today I found myself complaining about having to attend a training session having only just got back from a three-day conference. Then I suddenly caught myself and mused on what an ungrateful sod I was. At the Judge Business School, all managers are given the opportunity to attend a year-long management development programme covering all aspects of management, team development and other relevant HR issues. My previous experience had been quite different – you had to chase after training and it certainly wasn’t offered as a matter of course institution-wide. In fact the very idea of this happening at my previous place of employment amuses me no end.

One of the best parts of the Judge training programme apart from the detailed examination of each topic in hand is the opportunity to get to know and catch up with the other managers across the business school – something we wouldn’t have the time or perhaps the inclination to do otherwise. Also I find I can’t help but use it as an opportunity to hopefully subvert a few expectations as to what it means to be a business librarian today, especially in this current climate of rapid technological change.

Today’s session was on assertiveness and threw up some inevitable lightbulb moments because I guess your communication skills can always be improved:

1. Occasionally I still fit the child role in transactional analysis terms (I suspect due to too many years in a deputy role during which I inevitably sought approval and acceptance as I didn’t have the final say)
2. Some more verbal techniques for assertive communication: broken record (importance of repetition and restatement); probing (asking questions rather than stating your case); and, best of all, not always asking how people feel about something (you may mean well but it can invite more problems than it solves).
3. Something which sounds obvious in the cold light of day: simply the fact that you shouldn’t always expect an immediately positive outcome when seeking buy-in for a change of procedure or practive, instead you can gradually work on seeking acceptance. You may only get part of the way there initially – but that’s fine.
4. Finally, I was stunned by the difference of opinion in the group when ticking against a list of items from which we were asked to choose  what we thought were the rights of a manager. I was in the minority by not seeing commanding respect and getting the work done as a given. I only see these as attainable if you fulfil your duties as a good competent manager, not as an automatic (and expected) right of any manager. For me this seems to depend on whether you are idealistic or realistic in your approach. I’m a committed idealist and am driven to unreasonable fury by those people who bang on about how someone should be behaving or how things should be working. Got no time for that!

Thanks to those of you who are following my blogging journey so far. Tomorrow unless something else crops up I’ll return to reviewing the sessions at the EBSLG conference, starting with a fascinating insight into what makes Generation Y tick…

Andy