The Greater IBM Connection Blog

Poll: What would make your city smarter? Choose your first priority!

Poll: What would make your city smarter? Choose your first priority!.

And visit the Smarter Cities Scan to share your ideas, insights, opinions and thoughts on how to build a planet of smarter cities.

Who is the IT superstar of the year? You, of course!

Imagine your friend or colleague opening their morning email today and finding out that they are the "IT Superstar of the Year".  Just plug in your friends' names and email addresses and they'll be the star of the show. 

Enjoy!

<posted by Ethan McCarty>

Quick Screencast Overview of the SmarterCities Scan

A quick screencast overview of the Smarter Cities Scan project, created with the excellent new service/tool Screenr.

YOUR GREAT IDEAS: How are they doing?

If we traced the path of GREAT IDEAS in the finest of organizations, we would probably all be astounded at the rate at which NEW THINKING is unintentionally squelched, squashed, smashed, stifled, smothered, misunderstood, ridiculed or just ignored.

Ever had this experience?
Ever felt like this woman looks?

This is what I wrote in an article a few years back. Around the same time, I was invited to speak at an ONLINE leadership forum with a focus on How to Get Buy-In for New Ideas. Over 550 leaders and innovators showed up to explore this topic, representing twenty countries. They came from major companies from every industry, as well as entrepreneurs, government, military, education, health care, and community organizations. I discovered the group was a cross section of CEOs and senior leaders, managers of every type, as well as educators, business owners, ministers, and consultants. Imagine all this diverse talent coming together, peer to peer, meeting on common ground, because they were brimming with NEW IDEAS to bring to their respective organizations. Following the online session, I conducted some follow-on dialogues. Three key themes were identified as BIG BARRIERS standing the the way of introducing the participants' NEW IDEAS:

• Culture isn’t open to new ideas. Resistance to change. There is a lack of interest in change and innovation. Everyone sees the need; no one wants to take the risk. New approaches aren’t welcomed.
• Gender, race, and age still play a role in acceptance of new ideas in our organization. If you think differently or ask too many questions, it leads to losing the respect of senior leaders.
• Senior leaders/managers take ideas and present them as their own. The focus from our leaders is on execution of strategy; they’ve forgotten people are leading it for them. It would be great if they showed more interest in what people have to say.

This begs a question...
What are the chances that you or other leaders in your organization might be leaving similar impressions about sharing NEW IDEAS? No one would purposely want to have members of their teams or constituents thinking this way. But perception is everything and this kind of breakdown in communication isn't uncommon. It erodes trust and impacts all organizations ability to put differences to work to generate new thinking, creativity, and INNOVATION. At this time in our history, we can't afford it. Too much is at stake.

A CONTINUING SAGA
What is alarming is that this reality doesn't seem to change --- at least in the perception of many of those with the GREAT IDEAS. I remember these same barriers coming up now and then throughout my career too. Last week, I partnered up with futurist and filmmaker Joel Barker to teach a professional development class on this topic. It focused on examining resistance to change, providing detailed guidelines, examples, and a step-by-step process that demonstrates how to get ideas accepted. Interestingly, we again discovered a similar result in a poll we took. A new issue did surface --- 23% identified "information overload -- breaking through the noise as a major barrier. However, a whopping 84% brought up issues similar to those noted above as standing in their way of introducing and seeding NEW IDEAS in their organizations.

Even before my time at IBM circa 1969, Thomas J. Watson, Jr., wrote in one of his well-known Management Briefings: "There's an old saying that when you talk --- you teach, when you listen --- you learn. There are a lot of ideas worth listening to in this company. Let's be sure we're paying attention --- we are never so rich in ideas that we can afford not to..."  It should be noted that this quote was preceded by him sharing a personal leadership story where he hadn't listened to an employee's idea to solve a critical business problem. "...Because I was frustrated and tired, I gave [the employee] a short interview and a non-sympathetic rebuff. ...Later that evening, I began to worry about the area which he had pointed out, and by morning, I realized that at least constructive and appropriate attention to his idea was the minimum he should expect from me." Hmmm...Big leadership at work!

What about YOU?

For those of you who never have this kind of experience...
What best practice can you share to help others who do?

I look forward to listening your points of view...

Best...
Debbe

Debbe Kennedy
Contributing author
Greater IBM Connection Blog
Co-Founder, GIBM Women's
International Network for
Leadership (GIBM WIN-L)

Founder, President & CEO
Global Dialogue Center and
Leadership Solutions Companies
author, Putting Our Differences to Work
The Fastest Way to Innovation, Leadership, and High Performance
IBMer 1970 - 1991 L.A.; Anchorage; Seattle; San Francisco
Twitter:@debbekennedy   @onlinedialogues

THINKing and other IBM inspirations

I suppose one of the highlights of working for IBM for twenty years + was learning how important it was to THINK. From my first moments, THINKing was an important part of any task or assignment. The word THINK was on notebooks, signs, and painted on walls. Looking back, it seemed that it was a kind of tap-tap-tap indoctrination into the founder's passionate belief in the power of THINKing. Taken to heart, it was far from the misconception that IBM was a place for conformity. It inspired something bold and independent to come to life inside. Admittedly, I have been forever grateful for the many opportunities I was given to develop this powerful skill in a vast array of wonderful jobs, working with the best in people, and leaders that believed in me.

Over the years, I've collected wisdom here and there from IBM's founder, Thomas J. Watson, Sr. I have always admired his candid way of speaking, giving us a personal moment of truth with each bit of wisdom.  Here are a few timeless favorites...

“Follow the path of the unsafe independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot'' than the stigma of conformity.”

"All the problems of the world could be settled easily if [we] were only willing to THINK. The trouble is that [we] very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think."

“If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.”

“Really big people are, above everything else, courteous, considerate and generous - not just to some people in some circumstances - but to everyone all the time.”

On my very first day working for IBM in my first career, there was a nameplate on my desk when I arrived. My name had been engraved on the front on a brass plaque. On the back there was quote. It has stayed with me and kept me striving to follow the unsafe path of the independent thinker.

"If all objections were considered, nothing would ever be tried." -- Unknown

How about you?

Do you have a favorite inspiration from IBM?

Best...
Debbe

Debbe Kennedy
Contributing author
Greater IBM Connection Blog
Co-Founder, GIBM Women's
International Network for
Leadership (GIBM WIN-L)

Founder, President & CEO
Global Dialogue Center and
Leadership Solutions Companies
author, Putting Our Differences to Work
The Fastest Way to Innovation, Leadership, and High Performance
IBMer 1970 - 1991 L.A.; Anchorage; Seattle; San Francisco
Twitter: @debbekennedy   @onlinedialogues

The SmartCites Scan: Let's Build a Planet of Smarter Cities

 

A collaborative intelligence project for building a planet of smarter cities.

You are cordially invited to contribute to the Smarter Cities Scan, a social media project in crowd-sourced research and open knowledge exchange.  In the tradition of IBM's global online brainstorming events known as Jams, the Smarter Cities Scan will build on the momentum from the Smarter Cities Summit in New York City, Oct. 1 -2, and run into the early part of 2010.

The mission: to bring thought leaders in urban innovation, IBMers and young adults around the world together to share ideas on building smarter cities

The environment: the innovative, easy-to-use and fast growing Tumblr platform, home of the Smarter Planet Tumblr site that complements the Smarter Planet Blog and feeds the Smarter Planet site on ibm.com.

The objective: participants will collectively shape a Smarter Cities Open Model.  IBM data mining expertise and software will be used to "scan" the body of multimedia contributions from all participants, and the resulting public blueprint will be available to cities and grassroots groups to use as a foundation for projects to make urban centers smarter.

New Intelligence from Deeper Data

The program's objective underscores the mission of IBM's new Business Analytics & Optimization consulting services: to extract new intelligence from deep and diverse data that businesses and complex organizations like cities can leverage to flourish and operate more effectively. This creative output will also flow into and inform work at our network of Business Analytics Centers launching around the globe: Berlin, Tokyo, Beijing, New York, London and Washington, D.C.

 

How the Scan works

Go to http://smartercities.tumblr.com and click on Post Your Ideas to start contributing. Posts can include images, video, links, quotes, text or any combination of all of these. Alternately, you can submit a post by email, even via a mobile phone, by sending your thoughts and ideas to smarterplanet@tumblr.com.

 

 

You don't need a Tumblr account to submit a post, but please be sure to include your city and country and any descriptive tags at the bottom of your post so that your ideas can be tagged for others to find. You can also easily create a free Tumblr account if you like this easy-to-use, multimedia microblogging tool.

 

You 're always free to scan all posts, search on topics and tags, soak up some of Smarter Cities background and inspiration material in the about section, or find answers in our Help & FAQ section.

 

Start Scanning now, and share this invite with friends and contacts to http://smartercities.tumblr.com. 

Got a question? Contact us at smartercities@tumblr.com or Jack Mason, IBM Global Business Services jkmason@us.ibm.com

The SmarterCities Scan: A collaborative intelligence project for building a planet of smarter cities

IBM Launches New Advanced Analytics Center In New York, SmarterCities Scan social media project

…IBM is also partnering with New York-based Tumblr to launch the Smarter Cities Scan, a social media project in crowdsourced research and open knowledge exchange. The initiative is using advanced IBM analytics technology to scan participants’ input to build a public blueprint for Smarter Cities. The output will be available to cities and grass-roots groups to use as a foundation for projects to make urban centers smarter via a Smarter Cities Open Model. IBM will also leverage this open model via the IBM Business Analytics Center in New York and the other centers around the world.