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.

Other people's point of view

Everyone claims that they can see things from other people's point of view - and then become frustrated that other people do not believe the same things as them. Recent sociological changes are increasing the rate of fluidity in society: the traditional conformity ensured by location, family, class and profession is undermined by moving people around geographically, increasing the number of jobs that people have and the kind of work they do, increasing the range of people that everyone meets.

This acceleration could lead, on the one hand, to a greater appreciation of diversity. However, what seems to be happening is that this diversity means that everyone can find someone who supports their point of view, no matter how shallow or local. The traditional interactions that are forced on society by family ties, by church, by community and so on are gone so that there is greater freedom to create a personal identity and less pressure to ensure that this identity has merit. One result of this is that other people's point of view becomes more threatening, as if there is a small voice inside that wonders on the validity of how we see ourselves, how we have created our own point of view.