The context is familiar: the American populace, desirous of continuing our oil addiction, has tasked the Federal Government (Congress and the White House) with exploiting all possible natural resources; the Feds, in turn, have tasked BP as their agent for drilling for oil beyond the limits of imagination, deep in the Gulf of Mexico. BP, of course, together with its subcontractors, dropped the ball. As the oil-producing agents of the American voter, BP is to be blamed as the party of last resort.

Washington, looking at its credibility in light of upcoming elections, is the cheerleader of blame: as a tragic, hideous, and environmentally disastrous scenario, participated in by consumers, government, and industry, unfolds.

Enter Mr Crooks and Mr Morris. They document the vicissitudes of collaborative and integrated effort between BP and the Federal Government in addressing a situation that neither have the equipment or expertise to control: the blown out well.

While pointing out the new difficulties in this relationship, attendant upon the political pressures felt by Federal actors— such as complicating an already complex integration of 3 Louisiana and 1 Texas response bases with another in Florida— or the Coast Guard’s new demand for a paper trail of communication rather than telephone communication with BP— Crooks and Morris also contextualize the enormous cooperation between the players in this strategic alliance of government and corporation.

They document the continuous contact between Tony Hayward, BP’s CEO, and Admiral Thad Allen, the chief federal officer in charge of the response. They document the integration of teams composed of government officials together with 400 BP workers and 150 workers from other oil giants— with team meetings chaired by a BP manager and Coast Guard officer– together with continuous input from Ken Salazar, the US Secretary of the Interior and Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security chief, as well as Energy Secretary Steven Chu and other scientific experts.

What they document is that: IT WORKS. And this working through will be the only way disaster will be contained.

Well, prosaically enough, my telephone land-line simply ceased to function a few days back. I think it is a modem problem— but insoluble via customer service half-way around the world. So…. I was offered an array of options for a technician to visit my home: three hour windows of customer (my) availability were required. I picked one.

Roughly two hours of waiting in, a representative from the dispatcher called me: seemed as if the technician would be late. He wasn’t answering his calls. My immediate sense was worry: was this a case for 911? for CSI New York? What happened to this fellow out there on tough city streets in his monopoly-monogrammed van?

It was only a moment later, when I realized that the emotion of organizational dysfunction was being actively extruded: over the organizational boundary and into the customer. As new container of my own anxiety– waiting at home for a repairman who never ultimately came after 7 hours— and the firm’s rationalization. Indeed, 5 separate customer service agents responded to me, as did 3 agents of the dispatcher. Four asked me to grade their helpful performance on a survey they promised I would get, assessing their utility. Each was Mr Lynch: each had the same message and the identical inability to summon another serviceman in a city of millions served by a large monopoly. Each directed my call to 10 minute waits for the dispatcher– and if I was lucky and someone picked up before i hung up (my limit is 20 minutes)– I was told about their inability to find that poor poor unanswering tech: and the promise that he would come, if late. Of course, he never came.

Godot indeed! I still had no telephone service.

When all was said and done, they left a voicemail on my cel-phone: we could try again two days from now (tomorrow is booked, they said): I, of course, yoked to them via my need for a phone, will await them, as did those two other helpless chaps, their Godot.

The modern perversion is that this kind of customer service serves the customer— except in redoubling the anxiety that prompted an appeal to customer service in the first place. The organizational deceit is that the frustrated customer is unaware that “service” is anything but: 1) linguistic hypocrisy and 2) exploiting the customer to absorb organizational incapability.

Beyond the certain, highly probable, and probable, we enter a complex and chaotic future. Based on the trends we’ve seen over the last weeks, we have a sense of where the S&P 500 will be tomorrow. But forecasting 6 months ahead is highly uncertain, especially in volatile markets. Still, 7 months from now, the situation that looks so uncertain today will have returned, in retrospect, to certainty.

We make sense of uncertainty by constructing mental maps which define our interests, desires, strengths, and weaknesses. Casually or formally, we generate scenarios of possibility— usually highly influenced by the kinds of results we expect to see. Often, we construct our maps without notice. We recognize successful former patterns in the events we see; and base our plans on our skill at imposing what has worked before upon what comes next. We bridge uncertainty through learned inattentions and shortcuts; and convince ourselves that we have tamed its dangers.

A discussion with a client provides an example. She still had her job when she had explained to me that her career path had taken her to the height of her profession.  “No”, she said. She was not interested in considering how her work skills might be employed more productively— how her future might be determined more by her than by market forces.  She was certain.

Some months later, after her lay-off, she presented with a new  dilemma. Quite rationally, she explained the corporation’s reasoning: her salary and benefits had been too high; and younger colleagues, while not at her level, understood enough to maintain the division as a going concern. She had decided to begin a consultancy; but it was not going well. She believed that the envy of her former employees prevented them from hiring her. Yet again, she had rejected uncertainty for certainty: her consulting venture had been designed to fail. However, it had two plusses: it allowed her to speak her anger and frustration at her unemployment; and it demonstrated that she had “tried”; she was now resolved to wait for a new corporate opening.

These examples of unproductive certainty reflect a turning from reality. Our second discussion examined working knowledge. My client’s clarity about her former subordinates’ envy was striking. It was clear that the business planning for her consultancy was based on her own disregard for her working knowledge. Their envy was not simply a hunch: she had worked together with them as a team and had recognized it for a long time.

Then why base a business on such a failing proposition?  Her certainty here was of failure. It mirrored her real despair in the crashing and burning of a lifetime’s work. And it was only from examining her new working assumptions relative to her working knowledge that this emotional blockage emerged. She had needed someone to blame; and her business idea had simply recycled the worst part of a team dynamic she knew. Its yield? 100% productivity in blaming; 0 business productivity. In one sense it had completely eliminated uncertainty. In another, left the future completely at risk.

On reflection, what she’d left out was reciprocity. The only way that community works is by reciprocity: individuals support the commons from which they derive benefit. Categorical refusal to “use” the commons– to stand apart as if community were somehow disengaged from its utility to its members—is counter-productive. Were all members to avoid the benefits of communal membership, the very idea of their “common”  link would fall apart.

My client was fixed on the hurtful potential of exploitation: of deceitful, one-sided gain rather than its more general productive  meaning  “making use” of a resource. This utilization means that the entrepreneur makes use of a very specific situation— the focal “need” which solves the customer’s situational dilemma— whether for a product or service.

Successful entrepreneurship is about productive, living use of the commons. Indeed, the success of this reciprocity is not decided by the entrepreneur herself, but judged by what the commons requires and how well that requirement is satisfied by the entrepreneur.

The Working Knowledge that individuals think they recognize as successful are practical “hard” skills: concrete activities such as writing, editing, networking, selling, marketing, and researching. However, as others listen to the accomplishments of a lifetime, what emerges is a softer side.

What others hear in the same stories are such ideas as: creativity, ability, knowledge, capability, flexibility, risk, and perseverance. What others enable us to hear in what we are proudest of, needs to be internalized and held dear. We need to write it in bold colors across our bathroom mirrors, as we look at ourselves each morning.

Others have the capability of teaching us that our human dimensions, above and beyond the job-specific tasks we’re accustomed to portraying on our resumes, are the starting point for recognizing what we genuinely know in what we do: and our starting point for stretching beyond our comfort zones through exercise of those “soft skills”, to new beginnings.

Getting back to the main point: what does it say about us, that the skills we see in ourselves lead us to limitation? And that, generally uninvolved with telling our stories to others, we never get to value the genuinely transferable abilities gained during our working lives?

C’s “Working Knowledge” story has developed through multiple associations of knowledge workers: both in generating ideas and in building ideas into realities.

1) The first team effort began about two years ago, when C and two associates asked Accord’s help in developing a start-up business. Within three months, it became clear that one of C’s colleagues had hoped for an easy ride. While nominally continuing with the team, most of the effort rested on C & D. Together, they mapped an initial plan for their highly targeted management consultancy. They collaborated on projects, bringing to their teamwork, the contributions of several other colleagues.

2) With D’s decision to work solely on his own business idea (which had incubated as part of his collaboration with C), C continued on with two other mutual acquaintances who had joined the team. C, together with E & F developed two business plans that were highly regarded by potential clients. However, failing to win the corporate funding they sought, E & F moved on.

3) By now, C had recognized the solid and bankable nature of his business plan. His consistent efforts in amplifying the fledgling thoughts of 18 months before— through the interpersonal efforts of four different team members, had paid off.  His sense of success was mirrored in a note to his Accord consultant, “ Its been quite a process with its share of ups and downs, but the business model is consolidated, our aims are clear, and what you’ve helped me to learn about my own strengths and competencies, I couldn’t have dreamed of eighteen months ago.”

4) Through social networking, C located two colleagues with complementary skills necessary to take the project forward.

It should be noted that with each stage of process development , both C’s sophistication and the project’s skill requirements from team-members had developed. Together with a reconstituted team of three, different aspects of production and marketing were refined and integrated.

Yet a third client presentation won high praise: but its client sponsorship foundered around financial negotiations. C and his team continued to work the idea.

5) Finally, with the same team of three, C found a corporate sponsor to fund what became a successful corporate rollout. C remains partnered with his two colleagues and is developing a new consulting product geared to the needs of the group’s corporate host.

1) The premises of WKI are unreliable, untested (by me), and might discount my view of reality. Its something new— I’d prefer the tried and true. There’s nothing really wrong, anyway. Things will get better. I’ll wait to find work.

2) If my view of workplace reality is questioned, other certainties might also become uncertain. While it is frightening, financial discomfort is better than shaking up how I see the world. Things will return to the way they were. I will find a suitable job in time.

3) While I am unemployed/underemployed, there are many like me. This satisfies both my independence and my similarity to others. Its comforting to know that others are suffering too— but without knowing too much.

4) I’m doing everything I’ve been told to do: I’ve rewritten my resume many times; I’ve sent hundreds of resumes and letters to potential jobs I’ve found on-line; I’m on Linked-In (FaceBook is a bit much!); and I’m thinking of doing some volunteer work. What more can I do?

5)The WKI requires that I inventory what I know. This might throw what I think I know into question.

6) Even if I’m certain that I know what I know, why should I trust it with someone else? Even if I’m not using it— even ever— why should they have it?

7) If I were to team up with others, how would I make sure that they wouldn’t get the better of me? Perhaps it would be better to wait to find a suitable job offering.

I’m too old and tired to try something different. There’s too much to learn. Too much to unlearn.

And one argument for:
1) Even if my view of economic reality shifts a bit, even if I have to question what I know to affirm the value of what I know, even if I have to collaborate with others to achieve an important goal, even if I have to consider that learning is continuous and lifelong—- the goals of achieving financial stability, productive interaction with others, and renewed self-esteem are worth a try. It might be fun.

With the financial markets bubbling up 50% above their recent lows, clients seemed curious about looking back over adulthood and quantifying “how far” they’d come. For most, looking at the last dozen or so years in terms of present material asset values relative to earlier material “worth” (and correcting for inflation), they’ve discovered that their current material worth is roughly equivalent to what it was back then: say, in 1997!

The exciting turn is this: mulling about this personalized finding, there has been consensus across clients that the life lived during this time: of career challenges; of relationships– kids, wives, husbands, ex-s; and of what has been carried forward— the deepening of emotional learning about self in relation to others—- has been a real and valuable yield.

Almost always, there has been a comment about how “Zenlike” this moment feels— when the no-growth stability of material wealth contrasts with the emotional intelligence gained in living. Almost always they have commented on how learning really does emerge as the only value that we take forward from within our challenges and joys.

It can be likened to baking cookies: you roll out the dough and shape it with a cookie cutter. What remains on the counter is the potential stuff of cookies. In fact, I remember from childhood that the squooshing together of all that remaining cookie dough (which can be likened to the action of curating), allowed for a super-delicious special cookie—unlike the others in shape, size, and gratification for this baker.

Knowledge management is like that too. We’re embarking on a community-wide “Working Knowledge Initiative” program in November under the sponsorship of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York City.  The WKI is rooted in the same knowledge management idea— but in application to the lifelong work and personal skills of underemployed professionals. Linked together, expanded as a team, and facilitated by Accord, these skills (like the cookie dough) can form the basis of a new entrepreneurial business; and provide its members both with new hope and revenue.

Now back to this site: the question before us was, “what have we missed that was on our minds as we have gone forward this year?”

Surprisingly, two significant developments emerged: The first was a fairly cohesive set of blog-essays on the psychological situation/adjustment of midlife individuals undergoing significant economic and personal transitions. We’ve decided to compile these as an “e-book” and place it in our site’s “White Paper” section.

The second was an understanding of what Accord does— based upon what has been on our minds as a result of our ongoing work rather than upon our original “Vision” and “Mission” statements.

Curating keeps us up-to-date with who we’ve become as we pursue what we do. We expect to re-visit what we’ve said about the Accord Advisory Group throughout our site with this new knowledge in mind. We like it. And hope you do, too.

What one discipline holds as the meaning of a word or concept is not its understanding within another, related discipline. For example, “personality” within the i-o world conjures the very useful “5 factor model”- but this is terra incognita within clinical psychology; and even more far afield from psychodynamic thought.

So it was that I found myself addressing the subject of personality within a business school from a clinical perspective: only to be blocked institutionally by the sway of “positive psychology” which cast harsh shadows upon clinical diagnostics— consigning clinical wisdom to the dark realms of negativity and pathology. Perhaps. But what about added value? Nope. There was no chance of this under the iron will of a sunny psychology. The boundary of one discipline had sealed itself off from the insights of another.

Shifting gears, I found myself contrasting the individual personality dimensions of 5 factor thought—- instrumental in evidence-based coaching assessment— with the qualitative constructs of cross-cultural value-based dimensions of personality (enormously helpful both in Western and non-Western organizations).

Initially, I tried to line up the variables with which each system occupied itself— attempting to link central ideas with peripheral thought— but found myself running into the difficulty of very different conceptual bases; and disciplinary cultures. Where we start out from in making sense of our worlds really does flavor our points of view!

After several years of fairly intensive study, I came to the same conclusion as Herman Kahn in his description of scenario analysis (“On Thermonuclear War”): that is, it is essential to generate a descriptive language simple enough to get at all the essential points for all the essential players; and broadly flexible enough to convey accurately both the starting point of inquiry as well as its incremental evolutions.

Quite simply, that’s the goal at Accord: of clear problem definition both from the subjective perspective of the client; and from the subjective perspectives of stakeholders necessary to address as the psychological situation develops through multiple permutations of action toward its evolving approximation to both its original and successive concepts of deliverable goal. It all begins with the negotiation of a language agreed-to by all participants.