Touring Montreal

Montreal is a nice city for walking round and lots going on. We started the day by slipping in for a quick visit to the Adler art exhibition, where the theme related to business. We got asked to draw self portraits and describe how they related to leadership. Having accidentally wandered into a workshop (Friday) on the relationship between the tango and leadership, it was easy to draw two dancers leading and following.

The conference organised a trip round Montreal businesses,

• a cafe for the homeless and the business that organises the equivalent of the UK's Big Issue magazine, where we ate brunch - 4$ for the itinerant, but we can pay more
  
• an organisation called 'LOVE' (Leave Out ViolencE) that helps kids move away from violence, hassling and bullying, where we photographed ourselves and wrote something relevant on the portraits for a collage
  
• Studio Breathe - a sustainable approach in a place that provides yoga and martial arts, where we practised yoga and got to taste Canadian wine.
  

With practical conference activities like this, business is fun.

Materiality

Too late I realise that today at this AOM conference, there is a workshop on materiality, a component I believe of engagement, and Orlikowski who writes so much on materiality, is there. But the session needed applying for months ago, some homework, and a code for registration (which I couldn't get work for another session any now) and registration by last week. So I'll choose something else.

There is so much choice, and wasn't easily done on the web. At least I now have a telephone-directory-sized reference manual to check sessions and days.

Conference overwhelming

Overwhelming, that's what this conference is. There are almost

• too many people - over 8000
• too many meetings - over 200
• too much choice of fantastic professional development workshops - more than 300

No wonder new comers feel overwhelmed at this conference. People have come from all over the world, from 79 different countries, and only half of them from the USA, so this AOM conference does have an international feel.

Some great options. Yesterday I was trying to get into an overfull session on maps and other alternative visual representations but somehow got mixed up in the wrong group and found I was doing the tango for leadership. That was great, but the potential to miss so much causes frustration.

Engaging dancing

The Axelrods' talk was the more important session for me here, and has been enlightening on how engagement allows sense making. As an added bonus, I met other phd students researching engagement. I hope to keep in touch with them and continue to compare notes.

There is so much going on it is easy to miss something good (like the session on materiality) or end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Today I was going to a session on visualisation, but it was full to overflowing. I heard someone say something about an alternative room and followed them to find ourselves in a huge ball room, where I discovered I'd joined another session, one on dancing the tango. The tango is a metaphor for leadership because it requires subtle understanding of the changes of moves, and quick reactions and Montreal is the northern hemisphere's centre for tango. If you live in Montreal, then go here.

The organisers aimed to demonstrate that social dance can be used to develop organizational leadership skills. It does “take two to tango”: a leader and a follower.

"The dance is a metaphor for work performance and a “successful” dance or partnering is like the achievement of organizational objectives by a manager with an engaged workforce. Social dance provides a powerful and “sticky” medium to bring these principles to life."

The organisers wrote that the Argentine Tango "embodies skills necessary to lead organizations. Above all, it requires the ability to dynamically adapt to rapidly changing environments. Both today’s business leaders and tangueros (tango dancers) must be able to “think on their feet” and respond effectively to the unexpected actions of others, including those with whom they interact most closely. Skilled organizational leaders, like dancers, more easily navigate the complexities of their business environment by establishing deep and fluid communication with their followers."

I began to feel as I moved with my partner that I understood what they meant - if I lived in Montreal I might join a tango class.

El tango no está en los pies. Está en el corazón. [Tango is not in the feet. It is in the heart.] Larry Caroll, Tango Corazon

It's a daring approach.

Tiny keyboard

I haven't had a laptop since 1993, finding it better to upgrade my desktop, but for travelling I have this tiny eeePC. The disadvantage is how difficult it is to type on its minute keyboard and mistakes, typos abound.

Conference

Am in Montreal for Academy of Management conference that starts on Friday. It's an enormous event with thousands of delegates, very American influenced. Each day has half a dozen activities timed for each of three or four sessions in one of four different venues. I'm going to spend today finding out where these venues are.

Engagement - an intermediate variable

Supervisor sent me a paper about engagement in a different context, where engagement is seen as an intermediate variable for on-line web advertising. Wilson notes that

"engagement is a volitional commitment by the customer to an active relationship over time"

and supervisor now realises we need to discuss volition.

Anne Mollen wrote her Cranfield MRes on engagement as an intermediate variable for on-line marketing. I read it some years ago, and discarded the ideas then after a short discussion with the then supervisor #1, because her systematic review showed that she was situating her research in e-learning and advertising literature, rather than in organisational development and change. I recommend reading the paper because she writes well, and because her Master of Research dissertation is an exemplar of a systematic review. Find it here at Cranfield research theses.

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Mollen, A. 2010. Engagement, Telepresence and Interactivity in Online Consumer Experience: Reconciling Scholastic and Managerial Perspectives. Journal of business research, 63(9-10): 919-925.