ROUND TWO: Classified Info (Part C)

That UCP's "Life Without Limits" vision applies to people with a whole spectrum of disabilities has me wondering. Including multi-stakeholder networks, I've identified, for classification purposes, five (5) CP-fighting sectors. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to locate the orgs and indivs within them along various spectrums / spectra or continuums / continua -- so that they'd be closer to or farther from "focused on CP," closer to or farther from "operates in the health arena," closer to or farther from "provides direct care," and so on?

That's just one thing I'd like to be able to do. More generally, I'd like to be able to quickly and easily manipulate my data. (aka the folks I'm following on Twitter and what I know about them) How come? To see what the landscape would look like if it were rearranged in various ways. To look for patterns. To gain insights about relationships, etc. 

Enter mind mapping. 

A mind map is a graphical way of expressing what's in your head; a means of displaying the connections your mind makes. (From the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, I always remember George, one of the two main characters, jokingly referring to an abstract painting as "a pictorial representation of the order of [his wife] Martha's mind.") By definition, a mind map is a visual thinking tool that helps you structure information and better analyze, comprehend, synthesize, recall and generate new ideas. 

I'm in the process now of transferring my Twitter "Following"s into an online mind mapping program so I can structure them as I see fit. I'm using my five-sector framework as a basis for grouping. I've also started to add Web site links to some, thinking that this could be useful / powerful down the road.

MindMeister.com is the service provider. As it says on its site, "It's very hard for two people to write notes on the same piece of paper, but it's easy for them to share a digital mind map. Mind maps are open and friendly and invite input from everyone. If you're working on a complex project with a large team of co-workers, you can create a mind map, share it with them and encourage everyone to annotate it."

The real potential lies in this idea of using maps collaboratively. Like I said before, my map is crude at this point; only a hazy beginning. The new formula for getting better faster, however, is to put things like it out in public and to invite others to use, make comments, etc. Mine isn't public in the sense that others can add notes or make changes, but those capabilites are there. 

If you'd like to take a closer look at the actual map, here's a direct link:  http://www.mindmeister.com/311249601/who-can-help-us-ko-cp.

ROUND ONE: Could You Please Be More Specific? (Part A)

Round one of "the fight to end all fights vs. CP" as I've framed it began on June 1st. If it goes the distance, i.e., if neither side gets its block knocked off, it'll end on May 31st, 2014. We're now twenty-one (21) days in. That's over three-fifths (3/5) of the first round. And five (5) percent of a whole year.

Time is whizzing by.

Coming from the business side of things, as I do -- where performance and numbers and measurable results are everything -- naturally I'm going to be keeping an eye on the calendar. It's my job...

Isn't it? 

*  *  *  *  *

Last fall I spent some time looking into the big ideas upon which UCP (United Cerebral Palsy) is founded. When it came to dissecting the org's vision statement, I was mildly surprised that I was unable to find references to specific stretch goals or time horizons. Don't get me wrong -- "Life Without Limits" is a wonderful aspiration. Please sign us up. We'll take two. But it's not by itself very conducive to being carried out, i.e., executed.

My "KO CP" is of the same ilk. 

Going forward with it, however, my inclination will be to: 

• label it (is that my mission or my vision?) 

• think of it in project or change management terms 

• translate strategic choices into operational programs, and 

• shoot for specific targets along the way. 

I'm hip to several tools, methodologies, and best practice frameworks that are available to help me do those things; I'm just now starting to think about which ones to use.

In the meantime, a still very general way of expressing what I hope to accomplish is: I want to make the CP landscape look brighter than it otherwise would if I'd choose to sit on my hands and do nothing the next eleven-plus months. 

This begs all sorts of questions -- not only of me, but also of the leaders of our "CP industry" organizations. For example, if it's my intention to help them take their games up a notch and do more, I need to have a sense of what they're already on track to accomplish. (How else could I gauge my impact?) I wonder: Are they focused enough on outcomes themselves to have realistic views of how things might look come next June?*

I'm not sure. I'd like to suggest, though, that a more methodical, results-driven approach might help in that regard -- and in others. (Here I'm thinking of all orgs involved in fighting CP, but especially of our nonprofit advocacy, support, and research organizations.) There's compelling evidence to back me up. I'd like to inch closer to some of it...

Next.

*Sure would be interesting to know their forecasts and how they intend to judge whether or not it's been a successful year.

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 1.2

One thing that LIVESTRONG has that Red Treehouse and UCP don’t is its own manifesto. A manifesto is a public declaration. It makes me think, “bold" -- to the point of “in your face.” I also think, “change.” Manifestos are connected with efforts to change the status quo. They're part and parcel of movements of all sorts. 

LIVESTRONG is a movement that was founded on passion, emotional energy, and trust (a blend of hope, faith, and confidence).* It exists to help cancer patients and their families live their days to the fullest, and to help them tackle intensely personal things -- HEADON.

Just an observation: 

In my very limited experience – I've had no exposure, for example, to any of UCP’s affiliates – I can’t say that I feel like UCP and Red Treehouse are trying to build those same sorts of personal and emotional ties between me-and-my-daughter and them. "Life Without Limits" doesn't feel like a movement to me. 

For better or worse, neither of the two organizations is conveying anything so rousing as...

LIVESTRONG Manifesto

We believe in life. 
Your life. 
We believe in living every minute of it with every ounce of your being. 
And that you must not let cancer take control of it. 
We believe in energy: channeled and fierce. 
We believe in focus: getting smart and living strong.
Unity is strength. Knowledge is power. Attitude is everything. 
This is LIVESTRONG. 

We kick in the moment you're diagnosed. 
We help you accept tears. Acknowledge the rage. 
We believe in your right to live without pain. 
We believe in information. Not pity. 
And in straight, open talk about cancer. 
With husbands, wives and partners. With kids, 
friends and neighbors. And the people you live with, work with, cry and laugh with. 
This is no time to pull punches. 
You're in the fight of your life. 

We're about the hard stuff.
Like finding the nerve to ask for a second opinion. 
And a third, or a fourth, if that's what it takes. 
We're about preventing cancer. Finding it early. Getting smart about clinical trials.
And if it comes to it, being in control of how your life ends. 
It's your life. You will have it your way. 

We're about the practical stuff. 
Planning for surviving.  Banking your sperm. Preserving your fertility. Organizing your finances. Dealing with hospitals, specialists, insurance companies and employers. 
It's knowing your rights. 
It's your life. 
Take no prisoners. 

We're about the fight. 
We're your champion on Capitol Hill. Your advocate with the healthcare system. Your sponsor in research labs. 
And we know the fight never ends. 
Cancer may leave your body, but it never leaves your life. 
This is LIVESTRONG. 
Founded and inspired by Lance Armstrong, one of the toughest cancer survivors on the planet. 

*with a nod to David K. Hurst

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 9.0

The Power of Pull, initially published in 2010, just now out in paperback, is one of my favorite books of the last few years. In this section, I'd first like to overview it broadly-shallowly-quickly and then relate two of its big ideas narrowly-deeply-deliberately to Red Treehouse and UCP. 

Here’s how I see things unfolding:

9.1: OVERVIEW /KEY CONCEPTS

Thesis. “To get better faster at whatever it is you do, you’ve got to be supported by a broad array of complementary people and resources from which you can pull what you need to raise your rate of performance improvement.” 

Three levels of pull. Pulling is about accessing (searching), attracting (making serendipitous connections), and achieving (collaborating). The last set of practices entails participating in what the authors call creation spaces -- which are akin to Gartner’s collaborative communities. 

Success formula. Use pull techniques to: (1) define compelling trajectories for change, (2) provide leverage to the passionate individuals who are attracted to these trajectories, and (3) amplify the impact of these individuals. 

9.2: SHAPING STRATEGIES

"By grasping how pull works we can build institutions that can act as platforms to catapult change, and maybe even transform the world in necessary and far-reaching ways." 

Should UCP pursue a shaping strategy, i.e., should it attempt to reshape the CP arena on a global scale? Based on the BIG SKY PROJECT vision of the future for people with disabilitiles, is UCP already moving in this direction?  

Inquiring minds want to know. 

9.3: KNOWLEDGE STOCKS AND FLOWS

The authors contend that the sources of economic value are moving from "stocks" of knowledge to "flows" of new knowledge, and that we must "accelerate a shift to a very different mindset and to practices that treat knowledge flows as the central opportunity and knowledge stocks as a useful by-product and key enabler." 

What are the implications for UCP and Red Treehouse?

I can say already that the implications are huge. Our new ways of knowing impact everything these organizations do. In posts 9.3+, I'd like to look closely at UCP's Public Education & Outreach (PEO) efforts -- and then use that as a springboard for exploring David Weinberger's new book about "networked knowledge" (Too Big To Know) in section ten.

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 8.2

When you use social media for community collaboration as a matter of course, when it’s the way you operate, when challenges or opportunities arise and "Would a community be a better way to deal with this?" always gets asked – yours has become a social organization. Per Gartner, you’ve reached the FUSING stage, the topmost rung on its SIX F attitude-toward-social-media ladder. THE place to aspire to be. 

An organization on the bottommost rung, on the other hand, views social media as a source of entertainment with insufficient or no business value. It has a FOLLY attitude. Which is NO place to be. (Or truer to the Gartner spirit, no place to stay if you hope to become great at what you do.)

On which rung or rungs do Red Treehouse and UCP stand? Where are they in terms of their development? How sophisticated are they in their understanding of social media?

These are the kinds of things I’ve been trying to zero in on with the help of my borrowed Gartnerscope: a precision instrument, to be sure -- though its usefulness and my views through it have been limited by the fact that I'm on the outside looking in. Unfortunate. But you have to start somewhere. 

RED TREEHOUSE:

So, based on what I’ve seen and not on what may be comin’ down the pike...

I’d peg the social media attitude at Red Treehouse near the lower end of Gartner’s ladder, somewhere in the FOLLY—FEARFUL—FLIPPANT range. The organization as a whole appears either to have a limited interest in, or a limited understanding of, social media and the management tools needed to realize its potential. 

Flipped around and restated: Red Treehouse seems to have lots of room for growth in this regard. Lots of room for adding new organizational competencies. 

A couple of things that've informed my view: 

• Red Treehouse is a relative non-user of social media. It did join a social Web community known as Facebook (heard of it?) in October of last year – but that's the last time anyone from the organization shared anything there. My recommendation would be to disable the account in the interest of "doing no harm" to RT's reputation, if only for the time being.

• This may come as a surprise given the organization’s mission to be a vibrant gathering place, but I don’t see www.redtreehouse.org as an online community in the Gartner sense. 

 I aim to elaborate in the next post. 

UCP:

The ideal of Internet-connected and hyper-empowered people has been near ‘n’ dear to the Life Without Limits initiative from the start. UCP saw the potential of social media enabled communities back then and it's been exploring ever since. (Sometimes very imaginatively. Before we address UCP circa today, let me point out that Ruby’s Bequest [2009] was a crowd-sourced immersive scenario game that’s well worth looking into if you’re not already familiar with it.)

Fast forward to the present. 

I’m puzzled why there are no Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube badges or links on the homepage at www.ucp.org (or throughout the site, for that matter). Nevertheless, I can look beyond that. And when I do --

It becomes clear, first of all, that UCP has one foot squarely on Gartner’s fourth rung. It easily meets the criteria for having a FORMULATING attitude toward social media in that it: treats social media as more than technologies, funds multiple social media platforms, and integrates community collaboration in a variety of ways. 

What’s harder to tell from the outside is whether or not UCP's other foot is firmly on the fifth, a.k.a. FORGING rung. By definition, organizations at this stage have “developed the capabilities needed for consistent, repeatable success with social media across the enterprise.” Has UCP been building the right kinds of managerial capabilities behind the scenes? I'm not sure.

On one hand, I have some doubts. I’ll express why in an upcoming post. (For now, even the fact that telltale social media signs at www.ucp.org are so few and far between makes me wonder.) More detective work is needed. 

On the other hand, there's a UCP community -- I have in mind the forum at www.mychildwithoutlimits.org -- that seems to be making all the right moves. There's also LIFE LABS: an online R&D center for creating technology-based solutions to problems facing people with disabilities. It looks to be a collaborative community in the truest sense. It features social networks and other Web 2.0 projects (including, for example a wiki for submitting assistive technology ideas and potential projects, i.e., things “to build upon and improve”)...

I’ll elaborate on all of the above and go more specifically into what Gartner may have to offer Red Treehouse and UCP, individually and separately, in the next few posts.

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 5.0

More than just bits and bytes, this digital infrastructure consists of the institutions, practices, and protocols that together organize and deliver the increasing power of digital technology to business and society.*

Ultimately, I want to evaluate how well these two orgs. are utilizing the world's digital infrastructure to deliver on their high-level promises – beginning with a basic accounting (below) of what I call their “digital deliverables”: those offerings o' theirs that I as a user or visitor can access with my laptop.

Two notes: I don’t have a particular framework for doing this accounting. No cool tools, in other words, to bring to the party. Nor do I have any insider knowledge whatsoever.  

Red Treehouse 

Short and sweet: There’s the web site. There’s a separate Facebook page (that, for some unknown reason, isn't linked to or from the main site). I‘m tempted to add press releases to the mix, but will hold off. All I really want to do now is say a couple of words about the first.

The web site brings together “three sources for information and support”. It’s structured so that users can search for and find the following: 

1. RESOURCES, guides and tool-kits.
2. Names, contacts and helpful information about community ORGANIZATIONS.
3. Calendar of EVENTS, trainings and activities happening locally.
   

Ohio families, young adults, professionals, and organizations make up the user universe. Those who register receive monthly heads-ups regarding new content that’s been added to the site. 

UCP

UCP's web site is bigger and more sprawled out than Red Treehouse’s. I’m just starting to get a grip on the structure and logic behind it. 

One of the largest health non-profits in the country, UCP differs from Red Treehouse in that it operates a large affiliate network and also advocates for public policies “that ensure fair and full citizenship for people with a spectrum of disabilities.” A sizable chunk of the real estate at www.ucp.org is dedicated to those two functions. What's left of it (the real estate, that is) is tied mainly to UCP's Public Education & Outreach (PEO) efforts. It's those efforts that lead me to want to compare the two organizations in the first place.

PEO combines two primary components. First, there’s Public Education Resources. UCP’s online offerings in this category remind me very much of Red Treehouse’s offerings in their entirety. Included therein are in-depth online Resources, and State Resource Guides: contact information for state and local disability related services and organizations. “Never scour the Web again for bits and pieces of disability information and resources from disparate sources!”

Public Education Campaigns is the second PEO component. Subsumed under this heading are four (4) issue-specific campaigns, each of which has, or will have, its own web site. The four are: My Child Without Limits, Brave Kids, My Life Without Limits (to come), and Siblings Initiative (to come, as well).

About PEO online, I'll just say generally that newer digital tools are richly in evidence. Here you'll find blogs, tools for helping people with reading disabilities, online communities, live stream webcasts, and more. Social media use looks to be lively, especially as it relates to the issue-specific campaigns. 

UCP has been experimenting with trying to harness the power of the Net for some time. Much of the experimenting has stemmed from the Life Without Limits initiative begun in ’04. Peruse the site's pages and you still see references to older LWL campaigns (Don't Block My Vote and Who Will Care?), social media experiments, a crowd-sourced immersive scenario game (Ruby’s Bequest)...

Aggressive, if not progressive, use of digital technologies has been and still seems to be a UCP preference. I hope to dig deeper into it going forward.

*from The Power of Pull  (2010) by John Seely Brown, John Hagel III, and Lang Davison