The twin myths of consistency and justice

There are two things in which we all believe, although we may not realise that we do: that things happen for a reason; and that there is a power of justice at work that rewards the good and punishes the bad ... in the long run.

The first belief is important for our sense of consistency, which ties together our fragmentary worlds and our delicate sense of self; this consistency edits our own histories to ensure that we have always believed what we currently believe, have always, deep down, been supposed to be doing what we are doing now; this consistency says we make our own luck and "unlucky" people are simply failing to see the opportunities around them, while good fortune is a natural end product of endeavour; and that the world is not random and, deep down, there is some force that keeps us safe ...

The second belief, in justice, is important so that we do not scream in blind, impotent rage when we see people do bad things and misfortune strike people who are doing good. These are temporary diversions and, in the long run, people get the right punishment and reward. Just you wait. Any minute now. Soon. Well, maybe in the next life, then.

There are various ways of dealing with these myths. They can be accommodated in some religious systems; they can simply be accepted as something that affects Other People But Not Me; or they can be a prompt for a more considerate approach to people doing well and others doing badly. There, but for the grace of God ... and, if you do not believe in God, and even if you do, there is a need to accept that someone down on their luck may not deserve their misfortune, that successful people may be bad and greedy, that the team that wins the match did not 'deserve their victory' simply because they scored more goals, that Little Dorrits do not escape every time. Consistency and judgment are desirable myths, reassuring and universal constructions, without which most people have difficulty in being optimistic.

We do our best not to think for ourselves, but, instead, to follow those heuristic rules of thumb that save us effort; to use processes when we should be exercising judgment. Recognising that consistency and justice are desirable is good, but we need to recognise that they are not hidden hands watching over us. We do not make our own luck, but we do identify our own opportunities, using our own judgment (and sometimes there are no opportunities, so we sit and wait). Our successes are not simply due to effort, or desire; and our failures are sometimes beyond the vision of a seer. Our own misfortunes are usually seen as temporary setbacks, even as tests of our fortitude, and we all hope that people will evaluate us for our potential rather than our success when we feel unfulfilled; contrarily, people will ask to be evaluated on their trappings of success when they have simply stumbled upon good fortune.

Let us be stoical and recognise our own selves are not simply a reflection of the randomness of the world around us. A person's character is independent of their fortune. Let us judge ourselves accurately and then be prepared to value others in the same way.

Tummy ache

I met someone recently who was working too hard and no longer trusted their own judgment. In particular, the stresses of the job, the range of responsibilities, were making everything a source of tension: so much so that they were getting a tummy ache simply thinking about the tasks in hand.

Tummy aches are a wonderful indicator of what we should be doing. Our intellects can find the value in a number of tasks; but our bodies can tell us quite clearly that this is not something we should be doing, either because it is not in keeping with our real interests or because it is morally wrong. We want to expand our horizons, take on new tasks, grow into new roles and responsibilities, and it is right that we should be nervous about such unknowns. But there is a difference between apprehension and dismay, between wondering whether we are up to a new task, whether we can learn enough and fast enough, and that Kafka-esque state where we can rationalise the most uncomfortable situation which is not in our best interests.

Too much work and responsibility overwhelms the indicator, makes everything too much, so that a tummy ache ceases to point to any direction and, instead, suggests we should lie down for a while and relax.

Gatekeeping should never be a process

I keep finding situations where creative solutions are denied because the gatekeepers are managing a process and not evaluating the situation as unique. From publishing to management to job recruitment, it seems the process constantly gets in the way, ensuring that the solution boils down to more of the same, more of what we already know and what we already have. That is what process delivers. Is that what is required?

Harry Potter was rejected by many publishers because it was about boy wizards and there was no market for books about boy wizards because the publishers didn't publish any. I saw an Internal Communications Management job advertised by a Recruitment Agency where their best fit would be someone with the same understanding of internal communications as them - limited, restricted and ineffectual. I see organisational innovation programmes that are so process driven that they run counter to their objective. And I see customer service where the individual nature of the customer is denied by the proscribed process.

Organisations do not trust their staff to make judgements. So they should train their staff and take risks. Processes are never going to provide the best answer.

Intelligence and communications

There can be no intelligence operation without communication and I am frequently frustrated at the restrictions that organisations place on their internal communications, narrowing the range of subjects in focus and reducing information on those subjects to a trickle - and then negating the whole operation by disseminating what is known to the wrong people.

However, the hardest question in establishing an intelligence operation, it seems to me, is the first question: what do you want to know? For that question assumes pre-knowledge of the subject and the issues, the threats and the plots, the ripples that will become waves and the waves that are ebbing away ...

Anyone starting a successful business does so because, in part, their business emerges, fully fledged, with the requisite intelligence for its initial operation, usually derived from the experience, vision, insight and contacts of the founder. But that founder's knowledge cannot extend to the developments and changes in the environment and frequently the business flounders because the big picture is always the same picture, touched up and re-framed occasionally.

The more I think about advising organisations on their intelligence, the harder it is to find a process that will enable the people at the top to understand and address that question. How do you know what you need to ask?

The gang of four

A recent news item covers the ability of fish to count to four. Which got me thinking.

I've always been fascinated about the preference to group things in four, whether psychological profiles, dream characters or business models. I am put in mind of research into the infant brain, which demonstrates the in-born ability to see circles, triangles and squares.

If we have the natural propensity to recognise squares and triangles, it seems to me, then we do not need to count until after four. One to four is something we can handle without numbers. We have in-built mechanisms that can group and identify two, three and four and differentiate between them without recourse to numeracy.

Maybe fish are the same. It would be interesting to see what shapes and notions come hard-wired into the piscine brain!

Creative futures, again

I perceive a dark future for people earning a living through creativity, but others do not agree. The two extreme views I have met can be summarised as: just try harder; and so what?

Just try harder suggests that changes in distribution patterns present new opportunities for creative selling, whereas I argue that the changes shift the balance of income disproportionately to the distributors, especially in an age when anyone can produce a photograph or a piece of music or an article - small payments that are now made for most creative output now encourages people to give their work away for free or nearly-free in the hope of Getting Noticed, after which, it is hoped, other people will do their marketing in the expectation of large sales.

The so what? argument is a different kind of threat. Great creative output available in the market for next to nothing - that's great for consumers! I do not think it is sustainable. For sure, there will no longer be any premium paid for the ordinary - the competition in photo libraries ensures that anyone searching for a picture of a dripping tap is not going to have to pay very much - but people learning and perfecting their arts need that income to sustain themselves.

Maybe this is it, then. We are reverting to the mean for the arts: they are a luxury, to be funded on the whims of Kings and Corporations.

And behind it all is the real fear: that this is a sign that the Systems Thinkers are really taking over everywhere and the future for the individual is bleak.

Funny thing, truth

So how did the Universe begin?, I am rarely asked. What is the truth of the matter?
And I would reply that matter is the simple aggregation of composite energy in three dimensions of space and one of time; that everything began with energy in a pure, undifferentiated form that was so pure that it needed neither dimensions of time nor space; that such purity could not exist so that it cooled and slowed and created dimensions; and, in that diminution, the energy became stretched and split over different dimensions of space and time; and that the cooling soup of energy in our bubble of dimensions collided and collated to form basic proto-leptons and quasi-quarks that recombined and were charged and so on and so on; and that our dimensions intercept the planes of other energy from the creation but that this energy is on only two dimensions of space and two of time; and that there are other interactions; and that quarks formed in different parts of the universe at different times will be different; and that most of the energy from the creation is in the other dimensions; and that there is a lot more but I lost your attention long ago.

And the point is? For us to regard something as true, we must regard that truth as having some utility. So it will be years before anyone realises that this definition of physics is useful. And, in the field of corporate communications, the necessity of effective communications is often regarded with the same raised eyebrow as someone explaining their theory on the origin of the Universe.

Communication at a distance

How do you trust communication at a distance? How do you ensure co-operation when the other party can cancel all future interaction? It has never been easier to walk away from obligations, to fail to return phone calls, to communicate only through anonymous email addresses and then not communicate at all. So what do you do when the other party does not fulfill their part of the agreement? Perhaps the blog becomes the social conscience of us all, with search engines noting the names of miscreants and liars ... except that this, too, becomes open to abuse, with individual reputations easily targeted by people eager to cause mischief for financial gain or childish expressions of ego.

The new model of social interaction is opening up new opportunities for bad behaviours.