Reading

Apparently, humans were not born to read.

“Reading is a cultural invention,” [Dr. Guinevere] Eden said. “There’s nothing designed in the brain to make us readers. Reading has only been around for 4,000 years, maybe a little longer. There are no systems in place from an evolutionary perspective designed for reading.”

Governments and organisations seem to revere documents as the means by which things are run... it's interesting to reflect on how unnatural this may be.

Hat tip: Harold Jarche

A great interpretation of the 80/20 principles

Greg Rader offers some principles for disruptive learning environments. I like that he's reluctant to do a list post, and as lists go, this is pretty good.

This thought stood out for me:

Embracing varied challenges and stimuli capitalizes on the Pareto principle - 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes... Promulgators of shallow wisdom will suggest that we should therefore focus only on the 20% and ignore the 80%. (Un)Fortunately, we do not live in a static world. The 20% today is not necessarily the 20% of yesterday. Besides, such a strategy would only lead back to complacency. The solution is perpetual growth-inducing variety that continually redirects attention towards the current 20%.

Hat tip: Viv's reweet

Status plays toxic to innovation

This article from Forbes got mentioned a lot on twitter: Why Innovation Dies. Steve Blank cites a letter circulated within a university detailing the creation of a strategy committee. Here's a snippet to convey the tone, bur read the whole thing, if you can bear it.

To this end, we are convening a Strategy Committee that is charged with overseeing our efforts and accelerating implementation. The responsibilities of the group will be to provide overall direction to campus, make decisions concerning strategic priorities and allocate additional resources to help realize these priorities. Because we anticipate that most of the innovation in this area will occur at the school/unit level we underscore that the purpose of the Strategy Committee is to provide campus-level guidance and coordination, and to enable innovation. The Strategy Committee will also be responsible for reaching out to and receiving input from the Presidents Staff and the Faculty Senate.

It's a classic example of verbose management speak. As Blank says, on the surface it sounds so adult and reasonable. At first, one feels a little embarrassed that it's a struggle to understand. But the embarrassment is soon replaced by irritation at the constant status plays: the convoluted language, the name checking of important people who are going to be in charge of things, and some brown nosing of the biggest of these mozarellas.

I think senior managers get sucked into these unwitting status plays all the time. They are highly toxic to healthy change and innovation. Do they seriously expect their people to be glad that the big cheeses are going of on a half-day retreat from which everyone else is, by definition, excluded? Would you feel like sharing your more edgy ideas, the ones you feel anxious about, with that kind of crowd?

Hat tip: Anne McCrossan

Hooked on control

Chris Rodgers challenges the everyday complacency with which managers claim to measure results and assess the value of interventions

Recognizing this disconnection between mainstream thinking and the messy, complex social dynamics of organizations is not a counsel of despair or a call for inaction. On the contrary, it releases managers and consultants to focus on the everyday reality of organizational life, rather than requiring them to collude with the view that it’s all measurable ... and it’s all controllable ... and it’s all predictable.

In my coaching work, I often find the conversation starts out with abstract descriptions of organisational problems. It usually becomes much more alive when we narrow the focus to a single specific example of an exchange in a relationship: he said X so I said Y. We might then spend a chunk of time exploring all the many different versions of Y there could be, variations of words and tone, of intent and posture. Eventually we seem to get a sense of a breakthrough or insight that I rarely get from abstract discussions about the future of the organisation.

I think that links to what Chris says here:

From this perspective,?evaluation?is not?something separate. It is a normal part of the ongoing sense making and action taking process from which outcomes emerge. It’s here, in the 'open play' of day-to-day interaction, that the perceived value of formal investments and informal propositions is continuously assayed, lessons learned, and their intended benefits realized ? or not.

Hat tip: Penny Walker

Understanding vulnerability

Camila Batmanghelidjh asks why child protection remains such a challenge in the UK.

There aren't simple answers but I so agree with her on this point:

Nationally we comfort ourselves with inquiries, almost as if writing and debating a document solves the problem

I've long felt we suffer from this bias towards the written word and those who wield it with the least poetry. Don't get me started on governments' related fixation with getting celebrity "tsars" to write the things. As if the original Tsars were some kind of benchmark for benign wisdom?

I think she's right here too:

It's just that repeated prime ministers haven't known what it feels like to lie in terror on your bed, wondering what harm you'll have to endure today, or to be so hungry that the acid in your stomach feels like it's boring a hole through your flesh. They haven't felt the shame that peels away layers of your self-esteem, exposing jarring insignificance in the face of those who have the goods and the power. They haven't been there, where out of sheer fright and desperation you get on your hands and knees and beg not to be shot, or burned with a cigarette lighter, because you've failed to deliver a stash of drugs between dealers. In bed at night, between clean, soft sheets they contemplate, as a child is entangled in night terrors and wakes up to the humiliation of having wet the bed again. It's the lack of proximity to the abused child that is generating institutional maltreatment.

I sense a massive disconnect between the dry, reductionist language of policy and the truly traumatic experiences of those it is meant to serve.

Trances

There seems to have been a lot of political leaders looking foolish lately. We look at their actions and explanations and wonder how they ended up there. I guess because they got into a trance where they were simply missing the cues that might warn them to change tack.

Viv and I coined the term teacher trance to describe the presentation and training version of this.

I think improv games are an awesome way of exploring trances. When we get tripped up in a game, it's often because we've gone into our head and settled into seeing the world through one particular pattern. A lot of the most satisfying moments in performance can be seen as interrupting the trance of the audience. I think a lot of learning happens when trances are broken. It's a shame so much education seems to be about maintaining trances, not challenging them.

Reframing economics

Andrew Revkin looks at how some young people want to reframe economic debate. Here's how one puts it:

The dominant narrative says that environmental restraint must be limited and gradual, while social spending must be contained, otherwise the economy will not grow and we will all suffer. This kind of thinking is pervasive, dangerous, and outdated. Infinite growth in a finite world is impossible, growth based on speculative finance is unstable, and since the 1960’s, GDP growth and self-reported well-being have been completely uncorrelated phenomena. In this sense holistic, deep-reaching change of both thought, education and practice is needed. Indeed, we were brought together by an increasing realization that our global economic troubles aren’t just a few bad apples; the problem is indeed the apple tree.

Hat tip: Harold Jarche

Leading and not leading

Gianpiero Petriglieri proposes treating careers as works of art.

Success in art is not just making a living, or being famous and acclaimed. Those are consequences. Success is moving and being moved. It is opening vistas. Unsettling the status quo. Peeking beneath the veil of convention.

He reflects on what this means for leadership:

I witness the same mixture of excitement and anxiety among people who aspire to craft careers centered on their passion. Especially when they are faced with the prospect of becoming a "leader." It is as if leading in a world in flux amplifies the dilemmas of living in a world in flux. We expect leaders, more than anyone else, to express their authentic concerns and desires and, at the same time, to give voice to the concerns and desires of those they aspire to lead. We expect them to be fully committed to a purpose and community ― but also to be constantly pushing for change.

Living in the space where there is both excitement and anxiety is an interesting challenge. I think it might be where life really is. Petriglieri puts his finger on a real paradox of leadership; it reminds me of the moment in meditation where you suddenly realise you're in the gap, and in the realisation, you slip out of it. The moment you flatter yourself that you are leading, you aren't.

Bonus link: another good piece by him: A lesson in engaged artistry

Leaders are most inspiring when their message is deeply personal and yet touches shared concerns―when what they do is intertwined with who they are and resonates with what followers are ready to hear and able to appreciate.

Hat tip: Suzan Grey