Widgetwonders Manifesto

Human beings form organizations to pool resources and to create value collectively; value which is unavailable to individual members. To achieve these goals, community members must dictate, find, or create agreements in several key areas:

• Shared experience & identity (Who are we?)

• Shared language & goals (What are we shooting for?)

• Shared codes & behaviors (How do we go about it?)

It is my experience as a consultant to multinational corporations that many organizations stumble along with very low quality expressions of agreement in these three areas. At one level, facilitating agreement is often ignored, in favor of command and control management styles. Compliance or alignment is the goal.

At a more serious level, we humans are good at recognizing a competitive relationship, but bad at recognizing a co-operative relationship. As a result, we use competitive relationship skills in co-operative situations, which wastes opportunity & stifles growth. This explains the popularity of Dilbert cartoons.

The growing complexity of global organizations and demands for locally empowered workforces increase the need to evolve our species’ consciousness and skills for agreeing with co-workers, strategic partners, customers, and family members. Brands are things that people inside an organization do, before they are things that people outside buy. Agreement among teammates is critical. Brands Summarize Agreement.

In the table below, the left column suggests a set of co-operative or co-creative “rules of engagement”. Try them at work or home. Co-creative skills come from improvisation and performance, where agreement defines all content between players. The right column suggests the opposite set — skills for a competitive relationship environment. Learn to use the right tools in the right situation. Send me news.

Co-creative skills 1. Say Yes. Accept. 2. Agree. Be changed. Go into the cave! Let go. 3. Attend to partner. Listen. Speak 2^nd. 4. Be generous. Make your partner look good. 5. Be obvious, not clever. State the shared value. 6. Play fit & well. Have the best intentions and attitude. 7. Say the 1^st thing that comes to mind. Be open, spontaneous, and authentic. 8. Assume the best intentions of partners. • Skills for a co-operative or co-creative relationship environment. • Unlimited value (grow the wealth) orientation. • 1+ sum value equation. • Win/win exchange scenario.

Competitive skills 1. Say No. Block. 2. Resist change. Control. Protect the status quo. Waffle and wimp. 3. Dominate discourse. Speak 1^st & loudest. 4. Make your partner look stupid. Sabotage. 5. Compete. Try to outdo others. 6. Criticize self and others. Be cynical and exert control. 7. Be closed, defensive, and calculating. Protect yourself. Edit thoughts and ideas. 8. Assume the worst intentions of partners. • Skills for a competitive relationship environment. • Limited or finite value (share battle) orientation. • Zero-sum value equation. • Win/lose exchange scenario.