Kristin Cobble – Eugene Eric Kim

Reflecting on Some Incomplete Scenario Thinking from 2011

Published April 26, 2020April 26, 2020 by Eugene Eric Kim

In August 2011, Kristin Cobble, Rebecca Petzel, and I had a planning meeting for Groupaya, the consulting firm we would start several months later. As part of that, Rebecca led us through some initial scenario thinking, which consisted of brainstorming certainties (trends we thought were almost certainly going to happen by 2016) and uncertainties (trends we thought were possibilities).

Here were the initial lists we brainstormed:

Certainties	Uncertainties
Economy really crappy in 2015 Mobile dominance Africa will be online Design firms flooding into the business (good design the price of entry) Communication and Advertising Firms coming into the business	There’s a backlash against “collaboration”? There’s a backlash against “social”? Earthquake in San Francisco Skilled, cheaper consultants coming here from developing countries Knowledge work in the US in the decline Knowledge work undervalued in the US Net Neutrality Trust in Internet services? Things like Wikipedia, AirBnB, eBay rely on trust Institutional clamp down or continued democratization Middle East political situation U.S. “Arab Spring” coming? Backlash against rationalism; rise of fundamentalism Large factory consulting firms hijacking our business

Certainties

Uncertainties

Economy really crappy in 2015
Mobile dominance
Africa will be online
Design firms flooding into the business (good design the price of entry)
Communication and Advertising Firms coming into the business

There’s a backlash against “collaboration”?
There’s a backlash against “social”?
Earthquake in San Francisco
Skilled, cheaper consultants coming here from developing countries
Knowledge work in the US in the decline
Knowledge work undervalued in the US
Net Neutrality
Trust in Internet services? Things like Wikipedia, AirBnB, eBay rely on trust
Institutional clamp down or continued democratization
Middle East political situation
U.S. “Arab Spring” coming?
Backlash against rationalism; rise of fundamentalism
Large factory consulting firms hijacking our business

Our “Certainties” list wasn’t very good. The economy was not “crappy” by conventional metrics in 2015, although we were continuing to feel the impacts of widening inequality. And we didn’t really see communications firms come into the business.

Our “Uncertainties” list was far more interesting. We no longer have net neutrality, at least at the federal level. Trust in several social media (Facebook and Twitter in particular) is down, and deservedly so. And reading the bullet point, “Backlash against rationalism; rise of fundamentalism,” now makes me want to cry.

I review these notes every few years out of curiosity and sentimentality, and I pulled them up again last month as COVID-19 was wreaking havoc on our lives. A few things come up for me when I look at these:

It’s possible to have an interesting scenarios conversation without a lot of prep. We were clearly already connected to a lot of interesting people and perspectives, which was how stuff like “backlash against rationalism” made it onto our list. (Kristin contributed that one based on conversations she had had with her friend and former colleague at Global Business Network, Eamonn Kelly.)
Prep would have helped broaden our perspectives and address some blind spots.
Pandemic wasn’t on the list of uncertainties.

The biggest thing that comes up for me is that we never truly benefited from the power of scenario thinking, because we treated it as a one-off. Imagine if we had returned to this list once a year, even without any additional prep, and talked through the possibilities. What might have come up? How might this have changed our thinking? What might we have done differently as a result?

This is a regret I often have about my own past work, and it’s something I find with consulting work in general: We barely benefit from the work (which is often time- and resource-intensive), because we never revisit it. There are lots of reasons we never revisit it, but the most common one is that we’re going too fast. I’ve been able to correct this with my own work (although it took several years and lots of focus and failure), and I continue to try to help others do the same. It’s been really, really hard, which is sad, because it’s so beneficial.

Perspective

Published January 27, 2017 by Eugene Eric Kim

For the past four weeks, I’ve been doing a little experiment as part of a cohort in which I’m participating. Every week, I’ve set aside three hours to write about lessons I’ve learned from different people (Doug Engelbart, Jeff Conklin, Chris Dent, Gail and Matt Taylor, and Kristin Cobble) and projects. I’m doing it primarily as a bottoms-up exercise to surface the core principles of my work, but I’m also curious to see if the stories themselves help people better understand my own story — why I do the work that I do and the core principles underlying my practice.

It’s been challenging and fun. It’s definitely helped me get clear, and I’ve also gotten good feedback from peers. I’ve benefited from decently organized notes over the years, several of which I published on this blog.

At times, I find myself flummoxed by how long I’ve been doing this. I “officially” started focusing on collaboration in 2002 — 15 years ago! — and I started this blog the following year. I’ve been pulling up lots of posts that I wrote a decade ago or longer, and while it’s been fun to revisit work that I was doing and questions I was exploring, it also leaves me wondering where the years have gone.

Then I think about my mentors. Jeff had been doing this work for 20 years when I first met him, Matt and Gail for almost 30, and Doug for 50! One of the many things that all four of these good folks had in common was that they were still curious, still learning. They had strong points of view that they had earned through many years of real practice, but they never let that interfere with their hunger to learn more and from anyone, regardless of age or background.

Compared to my mentors, 15 years still squarely places me in the beginner category, which is good, because that’s about how I feel. Maybe I’m in second grade now. It’s firing me up for what I’ll learn in the next 15 years, at which point maybe I’ll graduate to third grade.

More importantly, it reminds me how lucky I’ve been to have important mentors in my life and how important it is for me to pay it forward.

An Anthology of my Critiques of Organizational Development

Published September 20, 2014 by Eugene Eric Kim

My friend and former business partner, Kristin Cobble, recently asked me to re-share some of my critiques of the organizational development (OD) field and of OD consultants in particular. It took me some digging to pull together what I felt were the most relevant posts, so I thought I’d share them here.

The best place to start is, “Group Process on Steroids.” I make the point that OD practitioners tend to be too meeting- or tool-centric. I think they need to be more principle- and practice-driven, like chefs.

In “Disrupting Organizational Consulting,” I talk about commoditizing the low-end of the market. For most people, hiring OD (or management, for that matter) consultants is overkill, and they generally get a low return on that investment. If we created more DIY and low-end support options (which is where I’m focusing a lot of my energy right now), we could eliminate that side of the market, which would also help weed out mediocre consultants. I riff on this some more in, “What Consultants Can Learn From the Photography Field.”

In “Organizational Development as Product Design,” I compare the two fields, and I talk about what OD consultants could be learning from product designers. One of those things is about naming and testing your assumptions up-front, which would give us a baseline for measuring our effectiveness. This rarely happens, especially among social change consultants, many of whom suffer from Noble Pursuit Syndrome.

“Lessons from the NBA on Life, Learning, and Navigating Power” is more of a personal riff, but I talk a bit about the lack of openness and collaboration in organizational consulting, something I’m trying to be a lot more intentional about modeling.

Finally, this network analysis of OD and related fields shows how siloed the OD field in particular is, and discusses some of the implications.

My Six Favorite Essays on the Groupaya Blog

Published March 18, 2014 by Eugene Eric Kim

A random interaction with an old friend earlier today caused me to search for something I wrote on the Groupaya blog a few years ago. That got me nostalgic, and I ended up reading every post on the blog.

It was great to revisit these, and it stirred up some useful, sometimes nostalgic memories. I’m proud of what I wrote in my time there (2011-2012), but I’m even prouder of what Kristin Cobble and Rebecca Petzel wrote. They shared some wonderful gems.

It’s unfortunate that the company no longer prioritizes real-time knowledge sharing, since there’s a lot of wisdom in that group from which the world could benefit. It’s understandable, though. Sharing what you learn openly and in real-time is challenging, even scary, and it’s not for everyone. You have to really value it to do it.

If you do, however, you’ll find that it’s not that hard to make it a habit. It’s also tremendously rewarding, as I’ve been rediscovering through my Faster Than 20 blog. The act of writing and sharing is valuable in and of itself. It helps you think, and it helps you find your people. I am constantly humbled by the people I meet and touch through my writing.

But the most valuable benefit of blogging this way is that your ideas become persistent. (This is also what scares a lot of people.) Others can discover what you write long after you’ve written it. That can lead to new connections and possibilities. “Others” sometimes even includes yourself! I find revisiting old thinking to be a hugely valuable learning process, if only to remind me of thoughts I once thought and have since forgotten.

Here, in no particular order, are my six favorite essays from the Groupaya blog that I wrote:

Enjoy!

Passing the Torch

Published December 11, 2013 by Eugene Eric Kim

We hired Dana Reynolds as Groupaya’s administrative assistant in the middle of 2012. She was a recent college graduate who had all the attributes we were looking for — hard-working, competent, detail-oriented, learning-oriented. She was also ambitious and aggressive, two attributes I love and relate to. She wanted to become an organizational development consultant, and she was looking for a place where she could learn the trade.

This past year, as I started to explore what I wanted to do next, I thought a lot about Dana. I knew she was learning a tremendous amount from working closely with Kristin Cobble, my former business partner, but I also knew that actual practice opportunities were few and far between.

My new mission, in many ways, can be boiled down to this: Creating practice opportunities for people like Dana. Changemaker Bootcamp has been my primary experiment, but I’ve been playing with other ideas as well.

Dana participated in my most recent Changemaker Bootcamp pilot, and I got to see first-hand how much she’s grown in the year since I left Groupaya. After my exit interview with her, we discussed her career goals, and I saw how hungry she was for practice opportunities.

A few weeks later, an opportunity unexpectedly cropped up. Meghan Reilly of Code for America reached out to me and asked if I would facilitate their staff retreat. I explained that I no longer do that sort of thing, but I asked if she’d be open to having someone less experienced facilitate the retreat, with me serving as backup. She very graciously said yes.

We had done this together once before. Meghan had reached out to me two years earlier about the same thing. I had just started Groupaya with Kristin, and I saw it as an opportunity to give our associate, Rebecca Petzel, some practice with me as backup. Meghan graciously agreed, and Rebecca killed. The difference was that Rebecca was far more experienced then than Dana was now, and she had known a lot more about the organization and the civic innovation space. Having Dana do it was risky, and I did not take the faith that Meghan and the other leaders at Code for America had in me lightly.

So we prepared. Dana worked really hard and put in extra time to make sure she was ready.

The day before the retreat, Dana and I were supposed to meet to complete our preparation. At the last minute, I needed to find a different location for our meeting, so I reached out to Rebecca to see if we could use her coworking space. Rebecca said yes, and she also found time to sit in on part of our meeting, which was an unexpected bonus.

At one point, Dana asked me if she could keep time during the retreat on her cell phone. I opened my mouth to respond, but Rebecca jumped in beforehand. She took off her watch (which her best friend had given her), and she handed it to Dana.

She explained, “When I did their retreat two years ago, I realized that it was hard to keep time with my cell phone. I didn’t have a watch, so Eugene loaned me his. Now I want to loan you mine, so you can use it tomorrow.”

It was a beautiful gesture, and the spot where I was sitting may have gotten a little dusty at that point. Dana ended up doing an amazing job, far exceeding my expectations.

I’ve been thinking a lot about mentorship this past year. I worked very hard to get to where I am, but the reality is that I was also incredibly lucky to have mentors who believed in me and who opened doors for me. The most important one — the one who set me on this path in the first place — passed away earlier this year. I feel a huge responsibility to create opportunities for others in the same way that he did for me.

I very much hope that my professional peers feel the same way. The kind of work that we do around collaboration is urgent and necessary, and a lot more people need to learn how to do it effectively. We have a responsibility not just to pass on our knowledge, but to create opportunities for others so that they can learn the way we did.

Seeing Rebecca “pass the watch” to Dana meant a lot to me, but what has been even more gratifying has been watching Rebecca work. This past year, she led a six-month collective learning process with a group of civic engagement funders that was innovative and transformative. There are only a handful of people in the world who could have done the work as skillfully as she did, and that handful does not include me.

I want to live in a world where there are thousands of people like Rebecca doing the kind of work that she’s been doing as well as she’s been doing it. Dana will get there, but we need many, many more. In order for this to happen, those of us who are already doing this kind of work have a responsibility to share what we’ve learned and to create opportunities for others so that a new, better generation can emerge.