TEDx Auckland – Session One: Michael Henderson

As I alluded in my initial TEDx Redux, the inaugural Auckland event was awesome. In the next three posts I will briefly cover my perspectives on the presentations delivered at this, the first TEDx event in Auckland, New Zealand.

The first speaker was a fascinating guy called Michael Henderson [UPDATE: Looks like something ‘weird’ is happening with his domain,try here for his cached page in the interim] , a Corporate Anthropologist. As well as being unemployable (who want’s an Anthropologist anyway?), he is never bored – because people are so interesting to study. Some observations:

• Organisations are the modern tribes
• CEO – Interesting title
  • Chief – Head of the tribe
  • Executive – Head of Structure
  • Officer – Very Militaristic – Head of Strategy
• The difference between a cult and a culture is:
  • In a cult, the leader sees greatness in themselves
  • In a culture, the leader sees greatness in people
  • Silo mentality never occurs in a tribe
• Engagement Studies
  • Organisations:
    • Engagement = email sort
    • Worldwide ~20% of employees are engaged and 80% sit on the fence
  • Tribes
    • Engagement = contact sport
    • No tribes run engagement surveys, all members are engaged 100% as you are either learning, doing or teaching

“Why is no one teaching GenY to respect those who came before them as sources of learning?”

Executives go on a ‘retreat’ (never an advance?) then return to proclaim new company values to their employees.

• Employees don’t hear values, they hear violations;

“Integrity, really?? Aren’t you the CxO trying to set up XYZ to fail so you can get more headcount/budget?”

“Language is the bloodline of a tribe”

His parting observation was on the two dynamic forces of organisations: Relationship versus Results

“Measure yourself on Relationship versus Result – is the win [on this point] worth more than the long term relationship?”

The interesting observation I made about his talk was that, not only was I noting the same points as one of my colleagues, these same points were also being noted by a number of other ‘corporate types’ around where we were seated.

For another summary of the talk, click here to see what Missing Link said.

Update: A TED talk on this theme of Anthropology and Tribes was posted recently “David Logan on Tribal Leadership”

Update: Domain seems to be back – have adjusted links & text

Update: September 2011 – Added Michaels new business sites and the following TEDx video…