Wandering the World…

I wonder if anything has more impact on our future than the questions we ask?

First, if we take it on more of a micro-level, imagine going into any random meeting. You will see things differently and have a different experience if you are asking “How can I get out of this meeting as quickly as possible?” vs. “What meaningful things can I learn and/or contribute during this time?” vs “How can I make sure I don’t embarrass myself in this meeting like I did last time?”
The questions we ask reveal some about the assumptions we take into the situation, and also have an impact on the consequent experience we have.

As another simple example, when meeting a person imagine asking: “What does he/she think of me?” vs. “What is his/her life like?” vs. “How can I make this person’s life a little better?” vs “Why am I even talking to this person?”
Depending on which question(s) you are asking (consciously or subconsciously) you will most likely have a different perspective, experience, and outcome.

As I was conducting a review the last 10 years of research on papers presented at the bi-annual CATaC conference (Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication), I was again impressed by the questions we ask in a research context. They are all laden with assumptions (usually unstated) and have an impact on how the research is conducted – including what end up being the findings and recommended future research.

For this paper we looked at:
• Who is asking the questions? (where are they from, what discipline do they represent, who do they work with)
• What questions are they asking?
• How do they go about finding answers to their questions? (what literature do they cite, what methods do they use, what population do they sample, etc.)
• What answers do they find?
• What suggestions do they have for future research?

Additionally, I kept asking myself, what assumptions might they be making in the questions they address?

Even working with great colleagues like Javier and Brooke, it was a ton of work (reading at least some sections of all 199 papers) – but perhaps one of the best things I have done professionally or personally. I now have a better idea for what has already been done in this field, what gaps there are, and what lines of inquiry have been more fruitful than others. On another level, I am more conscious of the assumptions behind the questions I ask and the potential impact they might have. I wonder, out of all the possible options, are these really the most valuable questions?

Your thoughts/reactions?
• In your personal and/or professional life, have you ever had an experience where you noticed that when you changed the questions you were asking it altered the way you saw the situation?
• Do you ever stop to examine the assumptions you are making which led to the questions you are asking?
• Of all the questions you could ask, why did you pick the ones you are asking? Do you think they are the most important or valuable ones you could be asking or is it for some other reason?

As a side line of thought:
• Do you think we ask ourselves enough questions? Why as we age do we seem to lose some of the curiosity of children and ask less questions?
• If not all questions are created equal, how can I lead myself to asking better and better questions?

Hope you don’t mind if I share some good news with you. I was very pleasantly surprised by it!

I recently got the reviews back from a paper submission we had made to an academic conference. The paper is a synthesis of some of my work in Finland (titled “Experiencing an International Virtual Team”) and the program planner for the International Division said that ours was: “perhaps the best proposal submitted to our division. Thanks for the submission. Virtual international collaboration is not only a must technological reach but a global responsibility.”

I thought that was a great compliment, and it was fun to share with the great Ph.D. students who worked with me on it. Three out of the five reviewers gave it 100%!

One reviewer said: “STRENGTHS of the Proposal: 1. Good references to appropriate literature. 2. A wonderful paper! 3. Very well-written. 4. A strong contribution to the research and theory on international communication; this will be a trend in research for the present and future!”

OK - enough of that for now. With the negative feedback that often comes from different papers or projects, it is especially nice to hear and share good news, celebrating the moment of its arrival.

I heard Ed Catmull, innovative president of Pixar and Disney animation studios, speak on Thursday at BYU. He spoke about a topic that I have been thinking a lot about lately - how do you create the best situation for a multidisciplinary team to work on something that has never been done before?

He started with a comment made to him by a producer: “It is not finding good people that is our problem, it is finding great ideas.” Ed Catmull argued why this statement is wrong. He gave examples of great ideas in the animation studio that did not work with a certain team, but another team took them and made them hugely successful. His point was that the most important thing is to create a team that works well together, especially when you are doing something that has never been done before.

Here are some of his ideas:

• Everyone needs to understand that they are equally valuable and important (e.g. neither the programmers, the artists, or the managers could feel like second-class citizens)
• Things will go wrong when you are the first people to do something new, don’t be afraid of making mistakes, just find ways to handle them well. “We are in the job of doing something new,” Catmull said, “Our measure is not whether we avoid different things. It’s how we respond to things when they go wrong.”
• Don’t let everything that is good mask the things that are not good - do a “postmortem” analysis, a review of each project to discuss what went well and what could be better.
• Managers are simply responsible for helping the team merge well.
• “I’ve always believed that you shape the management team around the talent rather than try to force people into a certain way of doing things.”

I also heard Brent Adams speak this semester on the same topic. He has been the driving force behind BYU’s very successful multidisciplinary computer animation program. In the past few years 1,500 animations have been submitted to the student Emmys, and BYU students have impressively won 5 out of 12 best computer animation awards and 2 of the 6 student academy awards.

He said where education has typically been an “individual sport” (with even group projects not being designed very well) -the advantage in this world will always go to those who can out-innovate and out-collaborate their competitors. Brent gave some very valuable ideas for designing multidisciplinary teams to work well in creative collaborative thinking:

• Flexibility – approaching the problem from many different directions
• Fluency – ability to generate LOTS of ideas (if you want to have a good idea, have lots of them)
• Novelty – originality, uniqueness, “I would have never thought of that”, innovation
• Definition – being good at defining the context, constraints, etc.
• Roles – design roles and responsibilities which allow people to play to their strengths.

“Successful innovation is the union of convergence and divergence processes – weaving in and out when coming to an appropriate situation.” (paraphrase)

Aside from how much I like both the Pixar and BYU animation movies, my interest in this all stems from the fact that I think some of the most innovative teams in today’s world will be both multidisciplinary and cross-cultural. I am interested in finding the best technologies and techniques to reduce the miscommunication and increase the innovative potential from having such a rich combination of experiences, expertise and perspectives.

Questions:

Does anyone have any good ideas about how to create an effective, innovative team?

Has anyone been a part of a team like that? If so - what made it work well?

Thanks for all who participated in an interesting seminar! Don’t forget the next seminar at Kitee on 21.11.2007 (see http://www.clintrogersonline.com/blog/?p=77)

We still need some work on figuring out the best ways to handle video and audio in this environment (especially for people who wish to join us from developing countries), but at least this represents a start at trying to include people at a distance in these PhD seminars.
I’m sure one day we will look back and think about how primitive these tools are, but for now it is the best we have.

• Report by Erkki’s trip to South Africa & Discussion with Marjo from San Diego (unfortunately, although we could hear her great, the mic didn’t record Marjo very well as we tried to capture her voice from Skype into Adobe Connect): (Duration - 00:31:36) http://connectpro64128288.emea.acrobat.com/p92688056/

• Introduction to Temtim (his connection was not working, so I used some material that he gave me in advance to introduce him) and report on our paper that I presented in Sweden (Duration - 00:06:07) http://connectpro64128288.emea.acrobat.com/p31931981/

• Discussion led by Javier regarding how to better reorganize the existing EdTech and IMPDET web pages. (Duration - 00:31:36) http://connectpro64128288.emea.acrobat.com/p53044092/

• Discussion led by Clint about research by the Gallup organization regarding what is it that people have in common who are excellent at what they do (in business, education, sports, entertainment, etc.). We discussed the one thing they found these people had in common. (Duration - 00:24:50) - For part of this time (starting at about 00:17:00) we broke into groups and I do not think anyone will want to watch that part. http://connectpro64128288.emea.acrobat.com/p38892677/

• Continuation of the previous discussion…reporting on each others strengths. (Javier also suggested a questionnaire for anyone to take which helps you identify your strengths - can be found by clicking on this sentence) (Duration - 00:14:41) http://connectpro64128288.emea.acrobat.com/p64215209/
  

• Presentation by Andres about his research in Tanzania (his audio was not very consistent for us, but you can actually hear the first parts of it better once his slide show starts in the recording than we did in real life). Once you are viewing it, you can also see in the “file share” pod a document called presentation.pdf - click on it and save it to your computer, or you can also find it as an attachment on my blog entry about this PhD day. He has requested that we please review the presentation document and email him any feedback you have for his research! (Duration - 00:17:34) http://connectpro64128288.emea.acrobat.com/p80216809/

I have some questions for you now:

1. Did you watch any of these?
2. Were they helpful?
3. Should we continue to do this?
4. Any other suggestions/ideas to make it better?

I just presented at a training day yesterday for the editing department of a large international organization which creates both print and media instruction in nearly 50 languages around the world. They asked me to come and present about cultural differences in teaching and learning expectations.

They already create some great material and do quite a bit that is cutting edge. I find it interesting, however, how the idea has persisted as long as it has that if you simply translate something into a different language then that means other people will be able to understand it and use it. Wrong.

In the best case, you should take the time to do a lot more to customize messages so they are more relevant to specific audiences - so the message is more credible and resonates in a way that people can understand it and chose what to do with it from there.

At the very least, there needs to be more done in order to avoid miscommunication - to take out concepts / illustration / logic patterns, etc… which (1) cause confusion, (2) bring unintentional amusement (see the picture of a sign below from a hotel I stayed at my last visit to China), and (3) especially which might be offensive.

Sure if it is in the right language that helps, but there is so many more assumptions that are made in teaching and learning which are very different in different areas of the world.

Here is a list of a few of the ones I covered:

• Credibility of speaker/information

• What we notice when we look at images

• Logic styles in writing and speaking

• Emphasis on written vs. spoken word

• Emotional appeals in the overtones of certain values/stories

• Shared Knowledge and Schemas

• Cause and Effect Reasoning

Each of these areas has relevent research which clearly denotes important cultural differences. Now, which “differences really make a difference” and which “similarities really are significant” - that is what we hope to discover as we continue research along these lines.

As we are continuing with research and development, however, I highly recommend these 5 questions as a guide to dealing with cross-cultural information exchanges:

1. What message, or experience, do you – or he/she/they – want to communicate or receive?
2. How important or relevant is the message or experience – to you and the “other” person(s)?
3. What conditions, customs, concerns, attitudes, and/or values (yours and theirs) hinder or help communication of the message or experience?
4. What specific interpersonal or media communication methods, or patterns, succeed most and succeed least? Why?
5. How do you and they determine message effectiveness and the possible need for further communication experience?

(by Lynn Tyler, November 1975, CultureGram Communication Aid)