Thu, Jun 21, 2007
Chabon on Pigeonholing and Discipline #
MichaelChabon wrote a wonderful homage to ArthurConanDoyle a few years ago called, The Final Solution. It's a SherlockHolmes mystery set in 1944, and Holmes is an 89-year old beekeeper, long retired from detection work. The book never mentions Holmes by name, but it's clear from the start who the "old man" is. The plot is middling compared to Doyle's body of work, but the prose is far superior. It feels like a really well written, authentic Holmes mystery. (MCV)
In the paperback edition, there's some supplementary material at the end, including a transcribed 2004 NPR interview with SteveInskeep. Inskeep asks Chabon about a "serious literary writer" writing a mystery. Chabon responds: (MCW)
I'm really annoyed by pigeonholes and categories and labels. I view them as iniquitous to the spirit of play and of experimentation and of storytelling. The fact at a bookstore, the fiction is divided into fiction and mystery and science fiction, I don't understand why it has to be that way. To me it's all fiction, and I think the best science fiction, the best mystery fiction, the best horror fiction ought to be put on a par with the best quote-unquote "literary fiction." You know, there's this famous thing, SturgeonsLaw, named after the science fiction writer TheodoreSturgeon, who said that 90 percent of everything is crap. Maybe he said crud, actually. I think that's true, and it's just as true of the so-called literary fiction as it is of the science fiction and mysteries. So, you know, if I owned my own bookstore, I would just have the best 10 percent of everything and I would stick it all together in one section and call it fiction and have done with it. (MCX)
Chabon is also quoted in his bio on his views of success, which he says requires three things: talent, luck, and discipline: (MCY)
Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to focus on controlling, and you just have to hope and trust in the other two. (MCZ)
Baseball coaches and pitchers talk all the time about pitchers "trusting their stuff." They're describing what happens when pitchers reach the big leagues and start spending all their time trying to paint corners and make the perfect pitch, rather than rearing back and trusting their talent. Yes, you want to try and hit the outside corner, but in the end, you have to remember that your fastball goes 95 miles per hour and dances like a monkey. (MD0)
I go through this same anxiety all the time when I write and when I speak. It's easy to get caught up with writing the perfect essay or giving the perfect talk, but in the end, you can't control whether or not you can write like Chabon or tell stories like GarrisonKeillor. All you can do is work hard at your craft, trust whatever talent you have, and hope for the best. (MD1)
/books | Posted at 9:17am
Fri, Apr 06, 2007
Otto Scharmer's Theory U #
Last July, I spent a few days in Staunton, Virginia co-leading a strategic gathering with KelleeSikes for the Imergence project. I had been burning the midnight oil in the days leading up to gathering, meeting with potential partners and funders during the day, and working on my other projects late into the evening. When we arrived in Staunton in the early evening, I was already exhausted, but we had dinner scheduled with the participants, and I couldn't resist having a few beers and spending some quality time with the rest of the gang. (M4L)
People didn't start dispersing until 11pm, and Kellee and I still needed to finalize details on the next day's design. I was in a weird zone -- physically and mentally exhausted, but also on an alcohol-and-adrenaline-induced high resulting from both the social stimulation of the night's activities and anticipation for the next day's events. When I go through these phases, my guard goes down, and I am simultaneously at my most generative and receptive. I also get very punchy. (M4M)
While Kellee and I worked, MarkSzpakowski came downstairs and started listening in on our conversations. Typically, when I design a workshop, I hide the agenda from participants. However, this was not a typical situation. Mark was one of the creators of the legendary CommunityMemoryProject in the 1970s, someone whom I had interacted with off-and-on over email for several years, and someone I was anxious to learn from. Besides, anyone who's willing to listen to me babble after midnight deserves to participate in the conversation. (M4N)
I started explaining to Mark what Kellee and I were grappling with, which led to an ad-hoc discourse on the underlying philosophy behind designing emergent face-to-face events. Mark listened thoughtfully, then observed that some of the things I was saying reminded him of OttoScharmer. I had not heard of Scharmer before, so Mark drew a big "U" on a pad of paper and started describing Scharmer's TheoryU. I was fascinated and made a mental note to follow up on his work. I later blogged this wonderful Scharmer quote, which Mark sent me later: (M4O)
The essence of leading profound change is about shifting the inner place from which a system operates: the source and structure of the social field -- that is, the source from which our actions come into being. T (M4P)
Of course, I never got around to reading anything by Scharmer until he unexpectedly popped back into my life today. Next week, I'm flying to Baltimore to participate in the LeadershipLearningCommunity's Creating Space VIII conference. I'll be on a panel with AllisonFine and moderated by ElissaPerry. In preparation, Elissa sent us links to several background papers on CollectiveLeadership. (M4Q)
To my surprise, one of the links was to an excerpt from Scharmer's latest book, Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges, The Social Technology of Presencing. It was absolutely wonderful. My reading list is already too long, but this book has jumped up to the top of my list. (M4R)
Here's an excerpt describing the underlying motivation behind TheoryU: (M4S)
Across the board, we collectively create outcomes (and side effects) that nobody wants. And yet, the key decision-makers do not feel capable of redirecting this course of events in any significant way. They feel just as trapped as the rest of us in what often seems to be a race to the bottom. The same problem affects our massive institutional failure: we haven't learned to mold, bend, and transform our centuries-old collective patterns of thinking, conversing, and institutionalizing to fit the realities of today. (M4T)
... (M4U)
The rise of fundamentalist movements in both Western and non-Western countries is a symptom of this disintegration and deeper transformation process. Fundamentalists say: "Look, this modern Western materialism doesn't work. It takes away our dignity, our livelihood, and our soul. So let's go back to the old order." (M4V)
This reaction is understandable as it relates to two key defining characteristics of today's social decay that peace researcher Johan Galtung calls anomie, the loss of norms and values, and atomie, the breakdown of social structures. The resulting loss of culture and structure leads to eruptions of violence, hate, terrorism and civil war, along with partly self-inflicted natural catastrophes in both southern and northern hemispheres. It is, as Vaclav Havel put it, as if something is decaying and exhausting itself. (M4W)
What then is arising from the rubble? How can we cope with these shifts? What I see rising is a new form of presence and power that starts to grow spontaneously from small groups and networks of people. It's a different quality of connection, a different way of being present with one another that moves us beyond the patterns of the past. When groups learn to operate from a real future possibility that is seeking to emerge, they begin to tap into a different social field that manifests through an altered quality of thinking, conversing, and collective action. When that shift happens, people can connect with a deeper source of creativity and knowing. One they don't normally experience. They step into their real power, the power of their authentic self. I call this change a shift in the social field because that term designates the totality and type of connections through which the participants of a given system relate, converse, think, and act. (M4X)
When a group succeeds in operating in this zone once, it is easier to do so a second time. It is as if an unseen, but permanent, communal connection or bond has been created. It even tends to stay on when new members are added to the group. (M4Y)
The crux of his theory stems from his thoughts on organizational learning: (M4Z)
Having spent the last ten years of my professional career in the field of organizational learning, my most important insight has been that there are two different sources of learning: learning from the experiences of the past and learning from the future as it emerges. The first type of learning, learning from the past, is well known and well developed. It underlies all our major learning methodologies, best practices and approaches to organizational learning. By contrast, the second type of learning, learning from the future as it emerges, is still by and large unknown. (M50)
A number of people to whom I proposed the idea of a second source of learning considered it wrongheaded. The only way to learn, they argued, is from the past. "Otto, learning from the future is not possible. Don't waste your time!" But in working with leadership teams across many sectors and industries, I realized that leaders could not meet their existing challenges by operating only on the basis of past experiences. Sometimes, the experiences of the past aren't exactly that helpful in dealing with the current issues. Sometimes, you work with teams in which the experiences of the past are actually the biggest problem and obstacle for coming up with a creative response to the challenge at hand. (M51)
When I started realizing that the most impressive leaders and master practitioners seem to operate from a different core process, one that pulls us into future possibilities, I asked myself: How can we learn to better sense and connect with a future possibility that is seeking to emerge? (M52)
I began to call this operating from the future as it emerges, presencing. Presencing is a blending of the two words "presence" and "sensing." It means to sense, tune in and act from one's highest future potential -- the future that depends on us to bring it into being. (M53)
Beautiful stuff. Can't wait to read the book. (M54)
/books | Posted at 10:18pm
Wed, Jan 03, 2007
Getting Things Done #
Last year, I reached a point where I wasn't managing my time and tasks to my satisfaction, so I decided to check out the GettingThingsDone bandwagon. I went to Green Apple to buy DavidAllen's book, but I couldn't find it in the business section. I asked a salesperson for assistance, and to my horror (and amusement), they suggested I check the self-help section. (LPB)
GettingThingsDone is indeed a self-help book of sorts, but it's also full of good advice on information management. More importantly, the philosophy it espouses not only has important implications on task management but also on collaboration. (LPC)
The problem it seeks to address is, how do we manage our day-to-day, overcommitted lives in this age of information overload? Allen's solution is simple. Keep your mind in a relaxed, ready-for-action state, which he compares to the "zone" that athletes often experience. In martial arts, if the body is tense, it will not react quickly or powerfully. Keeping your body relaxed is what separates the masters from the novices. (LPD)
Easier said than done, right? Allen's method for getting your mind into this state is two-fold. First, get things out of your head into a system you trust. Second, frame tasks as something actionable. Starting with managing the nitty gritty in your life will free your mind to do the higher-level thinking we all wish we had more time to do. (LPE)
The ready-state and trust are critical concepts. Much of our day-to-day tension is the result of trying to balance all of the things we need to do in our head. The brain is not good at this sort of thing. Once you move all those tasks into a system you trust, you relieve your brain of that stress. (LPF)
Allen cited one of his clients, who said that she never stressed about forgetting about a meeting, even though she had a lot of them, because she knew that information was in her calendar. Whenever she scheduled a meeting, she immediately off-loaded it into her calendar, so she knew that it was always current. She wanted a similar trusted system for managing other types of tasks. (LPG)
Allen also noted that just as we feel guilty about breaking agreements with others, we also feel guilty about breaking agreements with ourselves. If you tell yourself you're going to eat a salad every day, but you keep eating cheeseburgers, you've broken an agreement with yourself, and you're going to feel bad about it. Even worse, you'll lose trust in yourself, or at least, your system, and so continued use of that system will make you even antsier. (LPH)
How do you resolve this? By acknowledging that you are in fact making an agreement, and treating it as such. Just as you would call a friend to reschedule, you need to explicitly renegotiate the agreements you make with yourself. (LPI)
Explicitness is critical. The act of framing a task as an action is an important, but oft-neglected step. "Eat better," is not actionable. "Eat fish three times a week," is. The act of writing down an action item makes it both real and subject to renegotiation. (LPJ)
In keeping with his philosophy, Allen's book is full of concrete actions you can take to improve your information management. These have been covered in great detail elsewhere, so I'll just point out a few that I've found useful: (LPK)
(For a more comprehensive list of my GTD implementation and some other tips and tricks, see LifeHacks.) (LPN)
These sort of tips sound trivial, but when performed with the larger framework in mind, they are extremely effective. One of the things I really like about Allen's book is his emphasis on environment, which parallels my philosophy on collaborative spaces. How you structure your workspace will have a great effect on whether or not your work processes are successful. (LPO)
Allen doesn't spend much time on the implications of GettingThingsDone on collaboration, but he does reiterate the importance of trust in groups. When you have a list of action items, and you're not getting them done, others who are depending on you are going to lose trust. Since trust is the foundation of good collaboration, it behooves you to to be good at GettingThingsDone. (LPP)
This is essentially the PersonalInformationHygiene point that I made last year, although I like how Allen explicitly incorporates trust into his explanation of its importance. However, I also think it's an oversimplification. One of the inherent advantages of a team over an individual, is that you can compensate for individual weaknesses. I'll write more about this in a later post on GroupInformationHygiene. (LPQ)
/books | Posted at 2:53pm
Sun, Dec 31, 2006
Tom Clancy on War #
I read TomClancy's Debt of Honor over the holidays. It was a guilty pleasure, although it wasn't that pleasurable. I hadn't read Clancy since high school, and Debt of Honor -- the eighth of the JackRyan franchise -- felt stale. It was 400 pages too long, there was too much exposition, there were too many series characters who didn't need to be in the book, and the plot was just too outrageous in the end. Yes, JackRyan is awesome, but in this book, he's Superman. Kind of ridiculous. (LMA)
That said, I read the whole damn book. All 990 pages. Pages 500 through 900 are classic Clancy. Clancy writes about war like no other, and the level of detail was, as always, extraordinary. Clancy, incidentally, is proof-positive of how effective OpenSourceIntelligence can be. (LMB)
I especially enjoyed this exchange between JackRyan and the President on the nature of war: (LMC)
"There's something big we don't know." (LMD)
"The why?" (LME)
"The why may be it. First I want to know the what. What do they want? What is their end-game objective?" (LMF)
"Not why they're doing it?" (LMG)
Ryan turned his head back to meet the President's eyes. "Sir, the decision to start a war is almost never rational. World War One, kicked off by some fool killing some other fool, events were skillfully manipulated by Leopold something-or-other, 'Poldi,' they called him, the Austrian Foreign Minister. Skilled manipulator, but he didn't factor in the simple fact that his country lacked the power to achieve what he wanted. Germany and Austria-Hungary started the war. They both lost. World War Two, Japan and Germany took on the whole world, never occurred to them that the rest of the world might be stronger. Particularly true of Japan." Ryan went on. "They never really had a plan to defeat us. Hold on that for a moment. The Civil War, started by the South. The South lost. The Franco-Prussian War, started by France. France lost. Almost every war since the Industrial Revolution was initiated by the side which ultimately lost. Q.E.D., going to war is not a rational act. Therefore, the thinking behind it, the why isn't necessarily important, because it is probably erroneous to begin with." (535) (LMH)
"Almost every war since the Industrial Revolution was initiated by the side which ultimately lost." Something to think about, especially with what's going on in the world today. (LMI)
/books | Posted at 5:45pm
Fri, Oct 14, 2005
Open Sources 2.0 #
Open Sources 2.0 is out. Contributors include yours truly (my chapter's also available online), MitchellBaker, DocSearls, StevenWeber, SonaliShah, and many, many others. Buy it today. (JVL)
/books | Posted at 5:42pm
Tue, Aug 31, 2004
Self-Organizing Collaboration at the World Trade Center Ruins #
In early 2003, I had lunch with RichardGabriel for the first time, and I explained to him my desire to uncover common collaborative patterns across different disciplines, starting with OpenSource communities. Richard recommended that I read WilliamLangewiesche's American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center, a book that described the dismantling of the ruins and the self-organizing process that emerged. (2AW)
Over a year later, I finally got around to following Richard's advice, and I'm glad that I did. Langewiesche's book is a gripping, thoughtful account of what happened at the WorldTradeCenter site immediately following 9/11. (2AX)
/books | Posted at 6:28pm
