Terrence McNally
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WINNING MEMBERS: Attention, Engagement, Activation, and Flow.
Attention is our most precious resource or asset, even more than time -- because it is
the quality of our attention that determines the value of our time.
Engagement is what people crave and what makes us feel most alive. It helps keep us
young, healthy and growing.
An organization meets people wherever they are. Activation is my word for the
process that draws them toward greater, deeper, and more rewarding engagement.
It’s also what we want to do with ourselves.
Flow is the happiness we experience when we are fully engaged in something and
receiving feedback that we are making progress toward a goal. Dancing, skiing,
basketball, performing surgery, cooking, making love. When we are in flow, we are
present, unselfconscious, and being alive in the moment is its own reward.
Attention
Link to Video on Selective Attention: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4
“Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear
and vivid form, of one out of several simultaneously possible objects or trains of
thought. …It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with
others.”
-- William James, 1890, Principles of Psychology
“My experience is what I agree to attend to.”
-- William James
"Only that day dawns to which we are awake."
-- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.”
-- John Milton
When she woke up in the morning, she’d ask herself: Do you want to lie here paying
attention to the very good chance you’ll die and leave your children motherless, or do
you want to get up, wash your face and pay attention to your work and your family
and your friends? Hell or heaven — it’s your choice.
-- Winifred Gallagher, RAPT: Attention and the Focused Life
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"The skillful management of attention is the …key to improving virtually every aspect
of your experience, from mood to productivity to relationships."
-- Winifred Gallagher, RAPT: Attention and the Focused Life
“Multitasking is a myth. You cannot do two things at once. The mechanism of
attention is selection.”
-- Winifred Gallagher, RAPT: Attention and the Focused Life
“People who are interrupted take 50% longer to complete a task and make 50% more
errors. When you’re always online, you’re always distracted.”
-- John Medina, Brain Rules
“Driving while talking on a cell phone is like driving drunk. The brain is a sequential
processor and large fractions of a second are consumed every time the brain switches
tasks. This is why cell-phone talkers are a half-second slower to hit the brakes.”
-- John Medina, Brain Rules
“The brain’s processing power, while impressive, is not unlimited. One function of
attention is to filter out a flow of information that would otherwise be
unmanageable.”
-- Robert Desimone, Director, McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
“It takes a lot of your prefrontal brain power to force yourself not to process a strong
input like a television commercial. If you’re trying to read a book or have a
conversation at the same time, you may not have the resources left to focus on the
words.”
-- Robert Desimone, Director, McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
Sites that feature cognitive training techniques -- I’m not endorsing them, but I think
this field is provocative: positscience.com, lumosity.com
A Native American grandfather (occasionally it’s a grandmother) tells his grandson, “I
have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is vengeful, fearful, envious, resentful,
deceitful. The other wolf is loving, compassionate, generous, truthful, and serene.”
The grandson asks which wolf will win the fight, to which the grandfather answers,
“The one I feed.”
-- retold by Sharon Salzberg
Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation; A Heart as Wide as the
World
Jack Kornfield, The Wise Heart; After the Ecstasy, the Laundry
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are; Coming to Our Senses
Phil Jackson, Sacred Hoops
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Engagement
Human beings are highly social animals, and have an innate need to communicate and
interact. Therefore, any engagement marketing initiative must allow for two-way
flows of information and communication. People embrace what they create.
-- Henry Jenkins, author, Convergence Culture
Engagement is a hot topic in education. K-12 schools working to improve student
engagement and achievement concentrate on balancing five focus areas:
•Inviting Schools
•Learning by Doing
•Higher Order Thinking
•Student Voice & Choice
•Real World Connections
Clay Shirky (http://www.shirky.com) studies the effects of the internet on society and
has written two books on the subject: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of
Organizing Without Organizations and Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in
a Connected Age
Shirky -- three basic emotional motivations for contributing to a participatory system:
1) “a chance to exercise some unused mental capacities.”
2) the emotional pleasure of “vanity” -- feeling capable and making a mark on the
world.
3) simply the “desire to do a good thing.
Jane McGonigal is a game designer who believes gaming could help solve global
problems. I left her out due to time, but recommend her site and TED talk.
janemcgonigal.com
http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html
Flow
Economist Edward Castranova, who studies MMO – massive multiplayer online -- games
that engage players for an average of 21 hours per week, offers the specs for flow:
“…immediate feedback, a clear sense of objectives and failure states, and a challenge
level that is not too easy or too hard ... Do these things, and flow will happen.
Happiness follows.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention
The Evolving Self
Activation
I have conceived of this as one of the central forces in any organization. A successful
organization meets people wherever they are and draws them into its community. I
envision concentric circles of relationship. Wherever a member or a potential member
is, your goal is to invite, motivate, activate them to the next level.
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From cold (new) to curious
From curious to informed
From informed to invited
From invited to attending an introduction
From attending to enrolling
From enrolling to enrolling again
From enrolling to volunteering
From volunteering to teaching…
You want everyone to know a basic model of what steps or levels of engagement are
possible and you want to have strategies and actions to move people up the scale.
I could find almost nothing written about this, so I’m going to ask you to help me fill
out the picture a bit. Please take a few minutes to think about this whole idea of
moving people and members up a certain ladder of involvement and identification. I’d
appreciate any ideas you have or things you’ve successfully implemented.
Neoteny
A zoological term, neoteny is “the retention of youthful characteristics and qualities
into adulthood.” It is more than retaining a youthful appearance, although that is
often part of it. More it is the retention of curiosity, playfulness, eagerness,
fearlessness, warmth, and energy.
“Unlike those defeated by time and age, our geezers have remained much like our
geeks—open, willing to take risks, hungry for knowledge and experience, courageous,
eager to see what the new day brings.”
-- Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas, Geeks and Geezers
“People who have worked with me say I am ‘innocence in action. They say I have the
innocence and unselfconsciousness of a child. Maybe I have. I still look at the world
with uncontaminated wonder.”
-- Walt Disney
“Time, the loss of friends and loved ones, and a society that is often cruel in its denial
of the worth of the old can take a terrible toll. But the person who retains the best
qualities of a five year old has little time for mourning what is lost. Five-year-olds live
in the now. They live outside themselves and in relation to other people. They do not
spend a great deal of time in self-conscious contemplation. They have trouble to get
into, trees to climb, frogs to find, mud pies to fashion.”
-- Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas, Geeks and Geezers
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