 Serenity, by Finnish photographer Solkku on DeviantArt What I’m planning on writing about soon:
How much longer readers are going to put up with me not responding to comments and e-mails on a timely basis. What’s keeping you awake? |
February 18, 2007
Sunday Open Thread – February 18, 2007
Saturday Links for the Week – February 17, 2007
 What It All Means This Week:
Thought for the week (courtesy of Siona Van Dijk): love is a place yes is a world - e.e. cummings |
February 16, 2007
Un-Interviews, and the Conversational Nature of Blogs
 I listened to a fascinating interview on the radio the other day. What made it fascinating was that the interviewer’s voice, and questions, had been entirely edited out. What you heard was a very eloquent explanation of a difficult topic, in which the questions were tacit, unheard. Compared to most radio articles, op-eds and even interviews, this spot was tight, engaging and informative. I dubbed it (in the spirit of the term Un-Conference) an Un-Interview. I’d never heard of this reporting technique before, and it got me thinking: Do reporters waste a lot of listener/watcher time by including their questions in their final product? What skills and techniques must be applied to ensure such reports are clear and smooth-flowing ñ it seems to me a lot of editing and many re-takes would probably be necessary. But the result is definitely worth it. Could this be done in a report with more than one interviewee? There doesn’t seem to be any reason why not, and the result might be a very crisp ‘conversation’ among several people who might not ever have met or even spoken together, with the interviewer weaving their comments together and then extracting all evidence of his/her editorial and compositional wizardry in the final product. Has anyone heard of this being done? That got me thinking next about written reports: magazine and online interview transcripts and even blog articles. I find both interview transcripts and FAQs very compelling and much more readable than an explanatory article of unbroken text in one ‘voice’. Why would this be true in written media, when the opposite seems to be true in audio & video media? Is it because so much more is conveyed by the tone of voice, facial expression and body language of an interviewee in a radio or TV spot, whereas in a written article you are drawn to the boldface interviewer questions as something to break up the monotony of the expressionless text? Or is it because in most audio and video media you have to listen to the speaker from beginning to end (your only alternative being to change the channel) whereas in written media you can browse ahead, and the interviewer or FAQ questions provide convenient aids or hooks to facilitate effective browsing? Protocol in formal written articles is that, if the item is longer than a couple of pages, the author normally provides section headings to break up the text. In a web page, however, a page can be a mile long, and flipping back and forth is awkward. What’s worse, in a long article you often can’t use the section headings to browse ahead ñ usually you need to understand what’s in the early sections for the material in later sections to be comprehensible (unlike FAQs and interview questions, where each Q & A usually stands alone). So do we need a new protocol to allow browsers of long articles (say, anything more than 500 words) to jump ahead and read only the piece they are interested in? Suppose, for example, we were to create a standard of, at least every 200 words, boldfacing no more than 10 consecutive words that explained the gist of what that 200 words was about? Or, alternatively, providing a short (10 words is probably too cryptic, while 20 is probably too long) boldface header with this explanation at least every 200 words? Or should these section headers be structured as ‘questions’ to the writer, so that the blog post or article becomes a (self-)interview, a conversation? I’ve tried variations on this in this blog over the years ñ boldfacing, highlighting, even providing 50-word abstracts at the start of some posts (and in my table of contents I provide a one-sentence summary of every article). Readers seem to like this, but I confess it’s hard work. And radio and TV reporters on newsmagazine stories, don’t dare provide a commensurate up-front summary of what their stories are about, including the story’s conclusion, essential learning and required action — in case it causes you to change the station. Instead, they provide you with a one-sentence teaser, often in the form of a question, to lure you into watching a story that usually isn’t as interesting or useful as the teaser promised. Kinda like my blog article titles, some would say. This article is about 900 words. If you’ve read this far, perhaps I’m worrying needlessly about the need to provide browsing readers with section headings or abstracts. But just in case, here’s a four-sentence summary, that I might have put at the top, or in four boldface section headings above. And just below, I’ve re-written the entire article as a (self)-interview, with the questions in bold. Summary: Some radio interviews now excise the interviewer’s questions, and then edit the responses to produce a concise and articulate ‘speech’. Perhaps we should encourage more radio and TV interviewers to take themselves out of the picture and save us all time. In written material, by contrast, interviews and FAQs are more attractive and easier to browse than long text in a single ‘voice’. Perhaps writers of articles over 500 words should always provide readers with an abstract up-front, or alternatively bold-face key points that convey the gist of their argument.
What do you think? Does the summary, or the revamping as an interview below, add any value to the article? Would it be worth it to readers if every writer of online articles accepted such a convention? Don’t we in the media owe it to our readers, listeners and viewers to save them time any way we can?  Un-Interviews, and the Conversational Nature of Blogs (Take Two) A Conversation with Dave Pollard Q: You say that some radio interviews now excise the interviewer’s questions, and then edit the responses to produce a concise and articulate ‘speech’. Can you give us an example? A: I listened to a fascinating interview on the radio the other day. What made it fascinating was that the interviewer’s voice, and questions, has been entirely edited out. What you heard was a very eloquent explanation of a difficult topic, in which the questions were tacit, unheard. Compared to most radio articles, op-eds and even interviews, this spot was tight, engaging and informative. I dubbed it (in the spirit of the term Un-Conference) an Un-Interview. I’d never heard of this reporting technique before, and it got me thinking: Do reporters waste a lot of listener/watcher time by including their questions unnecessarily in their final product? What skills and techniques must be applied to ensure such reports are clear and smooth-flowing ñ it seems to me a lot of editing and many re-takes would probably be necessary. But the result is definitely worth it. Q: Are you saying we should encourage more radio and TV interviewers to take themselves out of the picture and save us all time? A: I think so. I’m even wondering: Could this be done in a report with more than one interviewee? There doesn’t seem to be any reason why not, and the result might be a very crisp ‘conversation’ among several people who might not ever have met or even spoken together, with the interviewer weaving their comments together and then extracting all evidence of his/her editorial and compositional wizardry in the final product. I’d be interested in knowing if anyone has heard of this being done. Q: In written material, by contrast, interviews and FAQs are more attractive and easier to browse than long text in a single ‘voice’. Why are the ‘questions’ a detriment on the radio and TV, but a valuable addition in written work? A: That’s an interesting question, and it applies to magazine and online interview transcripts and even blog articles. People love interview transcripts and FAQs, and surveys suggest they are more often read than similar content in a single text article. Why would this be true in written media, when the opposite seems to be true in audio & video media? Perhaps it is because so much more is conveyed by the tone of voice, facial expression and body language of an interviewee in a radio or TV spot, whereas in a written article you are drawn to the boldface interviewer questions as something to break up the monotony of the expressionless text. Or it may be because in most audio and video media you have to listen to the speaker from beginning to end (your only alternative being to change the channel) whereas in written media you can browse ahead, and the interviewer or FAQ questions provide convenient aids or hooks to facilitate effective browsing. Protocol in written articles is that, if the item is longer than a couple of pages, the author normally provides section headings to break up the text. In a web page, however, a page can be a mile long, and flipping back and forth is awkward. What’s worse, you often can’t use the section headings to browse ahead ñ usually you need to understand what’s in the early sections for the material in later sections to be comprehensible (unlike FAQs and interview questions, where each Q & A usually stands alone). Q: Are you suggesting writers of long articles always provide readers with an abstract up-front, or alternatively section headings that convey the essence of their argument? A: Perhaps we do need a new protocol to allow browsers of long articles (say, anything more than 500 words) to jump ahead and read only the piece they are interested in. We could create a standard of, at least every 200 words, boldfacing no more than 10 consecutive words that explained the gist of what that 200 words was about. Or, alternatively, providing a short (10 words is probably too cryptic, while 20 is probably too long) boldface header with this explanation at least every 200 words. Or these section headers could be structured as ‘questions’ to the writer, so that the blog post or article becomes a (self-)interview, a conversation? I’ve tried variations on this in this blog over the years ñ boldfacing, highlighting, even providing 50-word abstracts at the start of some posts (and in my table of contents I provide a one-sentence summary of every article). Readers seem to like this, but I confess it’s hard work. And radio and TV reporters on newsmagazine stories, don’t dare provide a commensurate up-front summary of what their stories are about, including the story’s conclusion, essential learning and required action — in case it causes you to change the station. Instead, they provide you with a one-sentence teaser, often in the form of a question, to lure you into watching a story that usually isn’t as interesting or useful as the teaser promised. Kinda like my blog article titles, some would say. What do your readers think? Does a summary, or revamping the article as an interview, add any value to it? Would it be worth it to readers if every writer of online articles accepted such a convention? Don’t we in the media owe it to our readers, listeners and viewers to save themtime any way we can? Category: Communications Technology
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February 14, 2007
What’s Holding Us Back?
“Most people have a rope that ties them to someone, and that rope can be short or it can be long. You don’t know how long, though. It’s not your choice. [Older divorcÈe] Maureen’s rope ties her to [her retarded son] Matty and is about six inches long and it’s killing her. [Divorced, middle-aged, washed-up talk show host] Martin’s rope ties him to his daughters and, like a stupid dog, he thinks it isn’t there. He goes running off somewhere…and then suddenly it brings him up short and chokes him and he acts surprised, and then he does the same thing again the next day. I think [young unsuccessful rock star] JJ is tied to this bloke Eddie he keeps talking about, the one he used to be in the band with. And I’m learning that I’m tied to [older, accomplished, inexplicably missing sister] Jen, and not to my mum and dad — not to home, which is where the rope should be.”
This passage is spoken by Jess, the troubled teen in Nick Hornsby’s A Long Way Down. The novel is about four would-be suicides who meet by chance and then form a kind of wacky support group. In my earlier review of the book, I asked whether these ropes, these people and things and circumstances that hold us back, are imposed on us or are self-imposed lifelines. I have often written in these pages We do what we must, then we do what’s easy, and then we do what’s fun. Hornsby’s thesis, which is consistent with this idea, is that those who are going to commit suicide are going to do it, and those who aren’t really up for it will not, no matter what others might do or not do to try to influence that decision. I have argued that the modern world is in many ways a prison, and we are tugged along within its walls for most of our lives by a tension between three forces:
Our fears pull us towards the Centre, our instincts pull us back towards the Edge, and our exhaustion pulls us towards Disengagement, and giving up. Play by the rules, make your own rules, or drop out of the game entirely. Few of us spend our whole lives in any of these three places or states. When we are driven by insecurity (especially when we are raising a family) we gravitate to the numbing safety of the Centre, though those who are deeply insecure may spend much of their lives there, looking in vain for appreciation that that is the place they belong. During rebellious youth, and often again in reflective old age, we retreat to the Edge, try to find our own way, prove in vain that we don’t need anyone else, or at least don’t need the Man. On the cusps of these shifts we may slip into despair or nihilism and be drawn in that third direction, disengagement, hardly a part of the real world at all. This is not surprising behaviour in a prison: When there is no chance for parole, the prisoner is likely to vacillate between acceptance (“this isn’t so bad when you get to know your way around and move up the pecking order”), resistance (“they will never do that to me again”), and despair (“I just can’t take this any more”). My sense is that we largely create our own ropes, our own lifelines, which keep us from going too far in any of these directions. Instincts and idealism keep us from falling too far into the Centre and being eaten up by the system. Realism keeps us from sliding too close to the Edge, since if we over-estimate our self-sufficiency in this crowded world of dependence and scarcity we can easily fall off. And hopefulness keeps us from falling into a genuinely self-destructive state. We have been endowed with all of these qualities of human nature ñ if we were not, Darwin’s law would have made us into mindless robots, antisocial anarchists, or suicides, and our species would be extinct. We see pockets of all three in modern society, but our nature keeps most of us from emulating them. Our nature, not liberal education, keeps us from falling irretrievably into the Centre. Our nature, not moral upbringing, keeps us from falling off the Edge. Our nature, not religious prohibition (or psychological healing), keeps us from just ending it all. Hornsby’s novel implies that it is we ourselves, not the systems and people around us, that construct our lifelines. Nature would never rely on human social constructs to keep us walking that delicate balance between the three extremes. She has programmed us to walk that balance intuitively. So when we do something that surprises us, or when we fail to do something that we think, rationally or emotionally, we should be doing, this is not a result of social pressure, procrastination or other human ‘weakness’. We are simply doing what we must, then what is easy, and then what is fun. We are holding ourselves back. Another Hornby novel, How to Be Good, is about a couple who, in different ways, sever their own lifelines, the self-restraints that are holding them back. The novel’s hard-working liberal wife embarks on a dangerous and tumultuous affair, and her husband, a cynic under the recent influence of a strange faith-healer, undergoes a metamorphosis, gives away all his money and vows to live a completely unselfish and generous life. The wife, seeing her bitter husband transformed into the man she once loved (except perhaps more so) is filled with remorse for her indiscretion and then filled with renewed anger at her husband for his lack of self-control. Their marriage survives as both characters pull themselves (not each other) back from the brink. What is telling (and what makes the book funny) is that the swings to extreme behaviour immediately strike the reader as such unnatural behaviour, not just in the context of the protagonists’ previous behaviour, but for any human. What is holding us back? What is telling us not to walk away from a struggling marriage, not to have a fling with that new person who so delights us with their attentions and appreciation of us? What is telling us not to quit our jobs and go on a trek to Nepal or Nashville, or sign up to work with the terminally ill or the masses in struggling nations? What is keeping us from blowing up dams and fire-bombing SUV dealerships and kidnapping Exxon & Monsanto execs to hold for ransom for a trillion dollars in renewable energy and permaculture investment? What is it that will have us tomorrow doing much the same as we did today, instead of pursuing our lifelong dream, our passion, or instead of ending it all? It is, I think, those survival lifelines we have crafted for ourselves. Our instincts are telling us we need these lifelines, these anchors, and that this is the wrong time (and perhaps there never will be a right time) to do the thing we’ve always dreamed of doing. Weare taught to distrust our instincts, but somehow we know better, and we do what they tell us. And what happens when we lose our self-constructed lifeline? Exactly what happens now: We will do what we must. Things are the way they are for a reason. As Jess says, It’s not our choice. Category: Being Human
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February 13, 2007
From Simplistic Thinking to Embracing Complexity
 You’ve seen it all too often. Some expensive executive or high-paid consultant stands at the front of the room talking to you about the New Vision for the organization. About the need for engagement, the competitive challenge, the need for innovation, to be a champion of essential change. About how greater integration, responsiveness, synergy, efficiency (“cost-effectiveness”) and collaboration must and will be achieved. And then you will hear how this is going to be accomplished. This will involve ‘cascading down’ the new messages and processes. Embracing and communicating the sense of urgency. Rigorous new metrics that will monitor progress. An internal marketing and communication program. Perhaps some new training. Stronger controls. A rebranding. A reorganization (most often a shuffling of existing managers). Possibly a modest devolution of authority (read: more responsibility). You can’t be blamed for being cynical. You’ve heard it all before. Five years after the last comparable drumroll, nothing has really changed, or if it has, the changes have nothing to do with the last Big Change Project. Most likely, the changes have entailed squeezing more out of fewer people, by downsizing, outsourcing, offshoring, doubling-up workloads, cutting benefits, replacing older people with cheaper, younger ones. There’s probably some new technology left over from the change that didn’t help anyone and is now little-used. Profits are up, so the shareholders are happy (for now), but while ‘productivity’ and ‘efficiency’ are up, effectiveness is down: There is no time for anything except routine, grinding work, fighting fires, squeezing customers. There is no time for innovation, for learning, for improving effectiveness. There is no time to think. Things are the way they are for a reason. The executives and outside ‘experts’ who sponsor all these simplistic over-hyped programs are not interested in understanding this reason. They don’t have the time. They probably couldn’t understand what’s really going on even if they took the time. They care about short-term bottom-line results. Profits. Revenues. Efficiency. Cost reduction. Risk reduction. They don’t care how they’re achieved or whether they’re sustainable. They don’t care about the fallout ñ burned out workers, disengagement, unthinking obedience, lost loyalty, long-term vulnerability, lack of innovation, lack of new skills. The job of the lineman is to hurt the opposition in the very next play, and in so doing make the quarterback look good. What was done in the last play is forgotten, unimportant. What will be done in the next quarter is irrelevant. Block and tackle, do your job, and better keep doing it better all the time or you’re off to the minors. How? Thatís your problem. Just make sure that you do it, and at the same time do what you’re told. Follow the Game Plan. Doesn’t matter if it makes no sense, or if it makes no difference to the game. The real problem with this lunatic approach to management is that, for awhile, it works. And management is only evaluated on what they do for awhile. Once they retire or get promoted, they don’t care what shambles they leave for the next incumbent. It’s a fiercely political, competitive environment. It’s prevalent in almost every large organization, because it works for awhile, and because if you spend enough time in it, and ‘succeed’ in it, you start to believe it’s the only way to run an organization, and that it’s effective. In fact, it’s dysfunctional, unsustainable, self-destructive, simplistic, unfair, demotivating, and ineffective. There are ten things to remember about complex adaptive systems (which include all social and ecological systems):
If more of the people who would have us sit through their decks of powerpoint bullet-point slides would make the effort to understand complex adaptive systems, instead of relying on the ‘accepted wisdom’ of management and change management, we might finally be able to start breaking down large organizations, in both the private and public sectors, into small, empowered, autonomous units that actually work. I get the sense that those under 25, and women, get this better than the rest of us. Unfortunately, these are exactly the people who are most likely to get bored, frustrated and disengaged by large organizations, and leave them to the fools that keep trying to implement what has never worked, and never will. Category: Complexity and Discovery
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February 12, 2007
If Women (or Men) Didn’t Have the Vote
 Something strange happened around 1980 in the US and Canada, and perhaps in other countries as well. Women of all ages, who had previously been more conservative than their male cohorts, crossed over and became more liberal, both socially and economically, on almost every issue. Prior to that, if women hadn’t had the vote, we might have had more liberal regimes (e.g. a majority of men voted for JFK; a majority of women for his opponent, Richard Nixon). But men generally get their way, and for the most part women’s votes haven’t made a difference to the final outcome. Since 1980 the men=conservative, women=liberal gender gap has steadily widened. What’s really interesting to imagine is what the world would probably have been, and would be like today if men didn’t have the vote:
The chart above shows (red dots) the US gender gap in political and economic worldviews. The gender gap for Canada is very similar, except the dots are proportionally further left and further down. Michael Adams explains this gender gap in his books Fire & Ice and American Backlash (from which the above chart is adapted) which look at the even larger gaps between the US and the rest of the world’s affluent nations, and between the young and old in the US. A report by three Canadian universities provides a more detailed look at the gender gap. While it’s dangerous to generalize, these studies suggest that:
I’m hard put to know what this means, and why it is so pronounced and so recent. What’s your theory? What has happened over the last fifty years to create and then widen a gender gap that, if either gender were deprived of the vote, would make such a profound difference in the present realities and futureprospects for our world? Categories: Frames, Left & Right
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February 11, 2007
Sunday Open Thread – February 11, 2007
 Picnic with my granddaughter, June 2002, photo taken by my daughter What I’m planning on writing about soon:
So what’s on your mind this week? |
February 10, 2007
Saturday Links for the Week – February 10, 2007
Now What’s Going On Out There?:
Cartoon by Wiley Miller from the strip Non-Sequitur. |
February 9, 2007
Victimless Crimes?
 What do you do when you witness a near-accident, something that might well have caused an accident but didn’t, yet?
You probably conclude that there’s nothing you can do. We face this every day when we get behind the wheel and witness close calls and hazards that are almost always gone before we can react. Too often, when an accident occurs, it might have been averted if the dangerous, careless or illegal behaviour that caused it had been reported earlier. On a not atypical day this week, during one 45-minute early-rush-hour drive, I witnessed the following:
None of these actually caused an accident, at least not that I saw. So what to do? The traffic news radio stations don’t want to hear it. It’s not enough to warrant a 911 call. I asked a couple of people I knew what they would do. They told me that they had been told:
Our community has a unique program called RoadWatch that provides a citizen report form for dangerous, careless and aggressive driving, which requires you to hand-deliver or (once they get to know you) fax in the form to the local police, regardless of who has jurisdiction on the road. But I suspect they don’t want to see reports that occurred once you crossed the municipal border, and if anyone knows where the closest police station is to every point in their travels it’s time they got a life. So this is better than nothing, and I plan to use it, but it’s a local solution and far from perfect. My guess is if I turned in five reports in one day like the day I described above, I’d quickly be blacklisted. We need something better. How would you design it? It needs to be simple and quick (i.e. something like a four-digit cellphone speed dial number), and there needs to be a way to get it out to others in the area so they can avoid and/or confirm the hazard, potentially reducing accidents and giving the police multiple reports to get the offenders off the road. It needs a mechanism to avoid abuse. And it needs to work across jurisdictions. It doesn’t even necessarily have to involve the police directly (though they would probably benefit from monitoring it) — it could just as easily be a peer to peer solution. Any imaginative ideas? Category: Miscellany
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February 8, 2007
No Time to Think
 My current contract entails a lot of hours at ‘the office’, something I have become unused to. As I build new relationships with my client I am finding myself being given more and more responsibility mainly because, being new on the job, I am not yet inundated with routine tasks and regular emergencies to cope with. I still have time to think about things.
My observation, throughout my career, has been that as businesses become more ‘efficient’ (i.e. they lay more people off and load the work onto fewer and fewer workers), there is less and less time to think. Most of the CEOs I have known openly lament that they have no time to think at all. I suspect that’s why they like mission statements and strategic planning sessions — they are forced, briefly, to get above the day-to-day crises of operation and think about what they are doing and should be doing and how and why to do it. Unfortunately, these often turn into rushed, uninformed, sterile exercises that are totally disconnected from what’s actually happening in the organizations — because the people who participate in these exercises don’t have time to find out what’s really going on (and generally, no one on the front lines is foolish enough to tell them). The result is that these organizations become completely dysfunctional. A few overpaid people make uninformed, thoughtless decisions and impose them on front-line people who must then find workarounds so they can continue to do their jobs reasonably effectively despite what they are told to do by management (usually ignorantly), told to achieve by management (usually unrealistically), and told to provide to management (usually pointlessly). This isn’t unique to organizations. Most of us fill our days so full (or have them filled for us) that we have no time to think, until we’re too tired to think. Thinking is a skill, and like any skill it takes considerable and continuous practice. My sense is that those of us who are paid to think are mostly pretty rusty at doing it. It’s a holistic skill in many senses: it entails both deductive and inductive reasoning. It synthesizes conscious and subconscious knowledge. It requires recalling and drawing on a lot of ideas and information from many different sources. It entails imagining, opening oneself up to and carefully considering novel approaches, perspectives and alternatives. It requires digestion, perception, provocation, attention, and avoiding preconception. Many of us do puzzles or play games of intellectual skill to try to exercise our brains so we can continue to think effectively. But that’s not really thinking practice — these exercises are generally pretty prescriptive. Real practice involves using everything you know and everything you can do well, and sometimes things you do not so well. It requires stretching, challenging yourself. It’s hard work. And it takes time. There’s a reason why some of our best thinking comes after we’ve ‘slept on it’ — consciously or subconsciously we are finally investing time in thinking. Not only are too many of us becoming too unpracticed at thinking, I believe many of us no longer have the breadth of useful information, or the generalist experiences and competencies of our ancestors, or the diversity of experiences, or the introspective, meditative, peaceful, uneventful moments, or the unhurried and pensive conversations to draw on, all of which comprise the raw material that effective thinking depends on. I’m not sure how we can change this — it’s pretty naive to think we can just slow down and take the time it needs to re-learn and practice to think effectively. It requires a completely different management mindset — setting realistic goals, assigning sensible roles, establishing useful processes by consensus and where necessary, and otherwise staying out of the way. By listening to and observing staff instead of telling them, we empower them to learn more about what works and how it fits with what others do and need. And it frees up management time for thinking. One person can’t do this alone — it requires an entire workforce that can self-manage and function in a flat and largely unsupervised environment. Do this with the wrong staff and you’re a goner — the power vacuum will be filled by the (probably unqualified) person with the biggest ego, as others willingly allow him/her to take the fall for all the incompetent decisions that ensue. But in the right organization, self-management can produce amazing results. An organization whose people all have the time and capacity to think effectively, and the authority to act on that thought, will trounce their competitors. Who knows, they might even create a model for a better workplace, and go onto change the world. Aha! Category: Advice for Entrepreneurs
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