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Malcolm Gladwell mentions an example in his book “The Tipping Point” that when the number of people who can act in the scene increases then the number of people who will act will decrease considerably. My observation on this has been very similar when working with project teams, I guess that is almost everyone’s observation as the big ball of mud is often noted in the codebase of large teams. Gladwell says that people are lot more sensitive to their environment than they seem. It is no surprise that the retrospective prime directive says

Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand

It is so surprising that how an individual would never do something alone will do that when doing it as a group or vice versa. Brain (mind) also keeps growing beyond the physical growth and can reach very high levels of maturity over the course of years. An writeup on Constructive developmental theory by Peter Pruyn predicts that around 58% of the population is stuck at the maturity level “Socialized mind”. At this level of maturity an individual’s alignment would be to conform to the local group leading to the perception of belonging to a clan. The fear of exclusion will drive most of the individual’s action. It is sort of a phobia which will prevent people from moving to higher levels of maturity as mentioned in Constructive developmental theory.

What can we do to remove this fear?

One inspiration I drew was from this ted talk. In this talk, David Kelley mentions about Guided Mastery, a technique derived from the works of Albert Bandura. Using this technique people with a specific fear get away from that fear by slowly building up the confidence; stepping up the challenge in small increments where people get used to the fearful activity but not at the level which is overwhelming. Some more info about that technique is here. In a team setup mostly people find it hard to take up a task of fixing something or letting their peers know that something is wrong and we need to correct. The reason people find it hard is because of the fear of being wrong and getting rejected. By making sure and enforcing the fact in the team that no one will be penalized just because s/he was wrong or blew a whistle; also getting the new comers feel very comfortable with this style of communication in a phased manner.

I enjoyed the transformation I went through as a team member in such a team, it definitely turned out to be a high performing team.

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While playing cricket, it takes some time to get settled into the rhythm of the game and play well as a batsman. One thing I noticed while playing  is, as long as I concentrate on my game I continue playing well. The moment I admire my own shot or think that I did better than what I expected, I lose concentration and the performance dips. This was not only evident in cricket, it was more pronounced when I showed up on stage plays at school, it is imperative that I remain focussed till the end of the event.

This began to worry me when presenting to a large audience because I used to feel good that if first part of my presentation went on fine and I would lose focus for few moments before I regain it. Presentations unlike writing takes a lot of preparation and it is one time write only style of delivery. The focus for a presentation should be being present for the entire duration however the presentation turns out to be.

Q. How to stay away from analysis, course correction or recovery thoughts while presenting?

A. Think of worst case scenario – the worst possible thing that can happen is that the presentation can go bad. This will bring focus onto delivering the presentation than analyzing it midway.

Q. What about recoveries from failure? Should not I be prepared for it?

A. Garr Reynolds in his book Presentation Zen talks about how connected we should be with the subject we are talking about, such that we can weave a story around the topic we want to deliver and be able to deliver the talk even without the slides.

Q. How do I know the pulse of the audience?

A. It is better to do some homework about the audience we are delivering the talk to if we are new to presenting than to try to get the pulse of audience during the talk.

Q. How do I get to think about my talk or admire it?

A. Someone in the audience should record it for us to help us retrospect our talk.

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Dr. Liz Alexander visited ThoughtWorks Bangalore today (Sunday Apr 29, 2012) to give a talk about writing a non-fiction book. Many thanks to her for agreeing to give a talk on a sunday morning. It was great to hear from someone who has written 13 books and has a readership of a million.

Below are my key takeaways from talk.

Why to write a book?

  • The question I like to answer is ……
  • Who is my target audience?
  • Where are the audience and how do I find them?

Platform

  • Establish a writing platform, show up at places, expand reputation. Blogs, magazine, conferences matter.

SEO of book writing, it is OES

  • O-Opt-in identifier. Take into account demography and psychography.
  • E-Emotional hook. Can people relate themselves to the book?
  • S-Special sauce. Our knowledge and expertise.

Help from others

  • We need the help of proof readers, critical reviewers, layout artists, cover artists, page look and feel designers for a book to be of publishable quality.

Publishing

  • Vanity publishing vs commercial publishing
  • Vanity publishing requires upfront investment from the author to get it to the market.
  • Commercial publishing takes a lot of effort, credibility, being at the right place right time. Also pays upfront but a lion’s share of revenue goes to the publisher for the risk taken.

Ego vs care for readers

  • It will be tempting to push an idea into a book through vanity publishing which is like a startup idea being tried in a small office space at the corner of the road without any business plans.
  • The desire to sell the books written will also focus on what the readers want than trying to get the book published and not sell much.
  • Critical reviewers are very important to shape the final look. Friends, relatives and fans will just praise the effort without helping to improve.

Once again I thank Dr. Liz Alexander for her presence and sharing the knowledge, Rajiv Mathew for arranging the meetup.

Image: Rajiv Mathew/ThoughtWorks