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Unintentional Mindfulness and the Power of Mindful Attention
September 22nd, 2011
Facebook’s recent change to the News Feed over the past several hours has people around the globe on edge—tweeting that they don’t like it, posing questions to geek forums about how to fix the Feed, posting “Hate the new facebook News Feed” signs on their walls, and otherwise grumbling and getting caught off guard with what many might consider a minor change (intended to add value to the customer experience). It’s a relatively minor change with major repercussions and several lessons about our capacity to handle change.
The reaction to the News Feed change reminds us that messing with people’s roles and impacting their competency (their capacity to do things well) generally serves to upset the apple cart. That’s a change lesson that’s well known and long established, an old factoid wrapped in a new package (facebook). What fascinates me is this: The user illusion that my facebook feed is mine. After all, I decide who gets to send posts to me and control them with the “x” button once there (stopping status updates or stopping a connection). I control my social circle in other words – and the type of information I’ll accept from them. But, as of today, I can’t control my News Feed. I can’t see the most recent postings first. This causes me (and I assume others) great cognitive difficulty. I can’t get my “new updates” and “recent stories” in the context to which I’m well accustomed. I’m not even sure I care when the items were posted, but I sure seem to care that they don’t automatically show up in chronological order.
Here’s what’s actually happening. This recent facebook change is bringing me and others face-to-face with a frame of reference…an implicit scaffolding that we use to make sense of our world. The scaffolding was comfortable, long-standing, and often-used. It was chronological , a very common frame (used in history lessons, family photo albums, and large variety of archival information, just to name a few). That world shifted today. And, as a consequence, we are mindful of choice, our discomfort in not knowing what to do, our frustration with the loss of the easy way, and a number of other insights.
And, friends, this change was really insignificant. Why aren’t we as attuned to shifting global power structures, the ever-widening division between the political parties in the US, the health of our planet, the care of the less fortunate, and world peace (just to name a few)? In Buddhist philosophy, mindfulness begets right action (doing the right thing for the right reasons). Imagine a world brought forth by people who cared as much about it as they cared about their facebook feed. Our challenge: to make it happen!
p
September 22, 2011
To maximize buy in an organization can involve people and move them gradually through change or determine that “X” change will, or must, must be implemented in “this” manner and push (or pull) people through. To be successful you must be aware of the different positive and negative consequences associated with both and plan appropriately.