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Why rules can’t solve everything

March 31, 2015 By Complexity, Emergence, Evaluation, Featured, Leadership, Youth 6 Comments

Recently in BC, we have a had a child die in the care of the state.  This does happen from time to time, and when it does a process is triggered whereby the Representative for Children and Youth lanuches an investigation and makes recommendations which usually result in more rules and procedures to govern the child welfare system with the express purpose of never having it happen again.

I work closely with child protection social workers in BC and there is not a single one I know of whose heart does not break when something like this happens.  Everyone wears the failure.  Social work is difficult not because of the kinds of predictable situations that can be mitigated but because of the ones no one saw coming.  The Ministry of Children and Family Development operates under a massive set of procedures and standards about social work practice.  But no amount of rules will prevent every case of child death.  Just like no amount of rules will eliminate every case of discrimination, every war, every instance of every bad thing that happens to humans.

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The Setup

March 30, 2015 By Being, Bowen One Comment

From time to time, I’ve made notes about my working set up, noticing that things change a lot over the years.  Inspired by my friend Peter Rukavina, but with substantially less detail, here is my current set up.

Infrastructure

My office is located in a dormer on the upper floor which faces south and is surrounded on three sides by windows.  to the west I can see the Queen Charlotte Channel, the waterway that separates Bowen Island from West Vancouver.  To the west is the forested slopes of Mount Collins, and in front below me are my neighbours in the Seven Hills neighbourhood of Bowen island.  In the dsitance Apodaca Ridge rises on the other side of Snug Cove.

I have a standing desk and an Ikea stool that i occasionally rest on.  Our internet comes through Shaw, a switch I made this week after months of deep disappointment in the service levels and technical assistance of Telus.

Hardware

My workhorse is a mid-2013 MacBook Air and a 1Tb Seagate external drive for back up and file storage.  I have an iPad 2 which I mostly use for reading magazines at breakfast, and as a cook book for cooking.  I have an iPhone 5c and a Kindle Paperwhite for reading.  I have gone back to taking notes in a Moleskine and photographing them for posterity.

Things get printed on a wireless Canon printer.

An old iPhone 4 sitting on a Bose system provides high quality tunes and I have a set of Bose headphones for serious listening in the evening.

Elsewhere in the house we have a XBox and an iMac, both of which are used for Netflix viewing and gaming.

Desktop software

Everything runs through Evernote.  To do lists, meeting notes, web bookmarks, pdf’s, articles and blog drafts.  Evernote is my word processor, where I compose the first drafts of anything I’m working on and is my brain.  If I need information I check there first to see if what I’m looking for is something I’ve forgotten.  Next to that Safari, MacMail iCal and Skype are my most used desktop applications.  Itunes of course for music and podcasts.

Web software

Mostly I’m off google these days with two exceptions.  Many of my colleagues and my partner use Google Docs and I run my mail through Gmail mostly for the great spam filtering ability.  I rarely use the web interface for Gmail, but am grateful for it when the laptop fails.  Dropbox is my file storage system, containing a complete backup of everything I am working on, synched to my devices.  I use WordPress on my main web site and Blogger for Bowen Island Journal.  Lately we’ve been using Weebly for quick and dirty site set up and we’ll probably be relaunching our corporate site on Weebly as well.  Inreader is my current feedreader on both the Mac and the iPhone.

Phone software

I’m a heavy smartphone user.  When I was a kid I dreamed of owning the eponymous device from the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and when I got my first iPhone I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.  Apps that get heavy time there include:

  • Mail
  • Calendar
  • Twitter
  • iTunes
  • Accuweather
  • Podcasts
  • Sticher
  • CBC Radio
  • Songza
  • Genius Scan

I’m still trying to decide what to do with my photos.  Currently they are automatically uploaded to DropBox and I periodically go through them and cull, saving the best ones in nine different folders where I have a collection of pictures of family, friends, Bowen Island, and some of the adventures I get up to, sorted by year.  I am wanting to keep these more in the spirit of how we held onto photos in the old days, and have an intention to print these out for safe keeping as hard copies.

Social infrastructure

I get out everyday here on Bowen.  Regular morning espresso at The Snug, and lunches at Rustiquie, The Snug or Artisan Eats.  Sometimes I bring my laptop and work through email.  At some point I like to get out for a walk or a paddle.  I like to end my day when I can with something marking a threshold.  Sometimes this is an hour of contemplation and meditation at Rivendell, a pint at the pub or a walk with my partner around the lake here on the island.  I try not to work evenings when I’m home, saving that time for cooking, hanging out with the family or socializing with friends.  I exercise by walking and hiking, and it’s no trouble for me to walk the two miles round trip to thew Ruddy Potato for fresh food for dinner.  I’ve been trying to travel less the last few years and making the most of my time when I’m here at home is important to me.

I love working from home and working as a consultant, but I do miss having a regular schedule.  I play in a local co-ed soccer league and sing with a couple of choirs as well as making music with friends when I can.  I find myself too often turning down invitations because I’m travelling or working, and have to work hard to limit my commitments.  Recently I’ve been appointed to out local Economic Development Committee so that is where I am putting my volunteer attention these days.

The only regular commitment I have in Vancouver is to the Vancouver Whitecaps FC, with whom I have been a season’s ticket holder for four years and a dedicated member of the Southsiders supporters group.  Otherwise I try not to leave here unless someone else picks up my ferry fare.

That’s the set up.  It all makes my work possible. What’s yours?

Understanding where you are, not where you think you are: some tips and a process

March 25, 2015 By Art of Harvesting, Art of Hosting, Collaboration, Complexity, Design, Emergence, Evaluation, Facilitation, Featured, Learning, Organization, Stories 3 Comments

A couple of good blog posts in my feed this morning that provoked some thinking.  These quotes reminded me how much evaluation and planning is directed towards goals, targets and patterns that cause us to look for data that supports what we want to see rather than learning what the data is telling us about what’s really going on.  These helped me to reflect on a conversation I had with a client yesterday, where we designed a process for dealing with this.

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One wonders….

March 18, 2015 By Uncategorized 5 Comments

From a piece of unsolicited email I got this morning comes an absolutely exquisite piece of writing.  I’m sure this makes sense in some contexts, but it is reason number one why you should not have your all star business analyst write marketing copy:

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The Taoist farmer and SWOT analysis

March 11, 2015 By Complexity

Do you know the story of the Taoist farmer and his son?

There once was a Taoist farmer. One day the Taoist farmer’s only horse broke out of the corral and ran away. The farmer’s neighbors, all hearing of the horse running away, came to the Taoist farmer’s house to view the corral. As they stood there, the neighbors all said, “Oh what bad luck!” The Taoist farmer replied, “Maybe.”

About a week later, the horse returned, bringing with it a whole herd of wild horses, which the Taoist farmer and his son quickly corralled. The neighbors, hearing of the corralling of the horses, came to see for themselves. As they stood there looking at the corral filled with horses, the neighbors said, “Oh what good luck!” The Taoist farmer replied, “Maybe.”

A couple of weeks later, the Taoist farmer’s son’s leg was badly broken when he was thrown from a horse he was trying to break. A few days later the broken leg became infected and the son became delirious with fever. The neighbors, all hearing of the incident, came to see the son. As they stood there, the neighbors said, “Oh what bad luck!” The Taoist farmer replied, “Maybe.”

At that same time in China, there was a war going on between two rival warlords. The warlord of the Taoist farmer’s village was involved in this war. In need of more soldiers, he sent one of his captains to the village to conscript young men to fight in the war. When the captain came to take the Taoist farmer’s son he found a young man with a broken leg who was delirious with fever. Knowing there was no way the son could fight, the captain left him there. A few days later, the son’s fever broke. The neighbors, hearing of the son’s not being taken to fight in the war and of his return to good health, all came to see him. As they stood there, each one said, “Oh what good luck!” The Taoist farmer replied, “Maybe.”

This morning I was in a conversation about SWOT analysis and strategic planning. I told this story as an example of why SWOT analysis has extremely limited application to planning.  Contexts change so fast that what was a threat one moment is an opoortunity the next.  What seems to be a weakness can become a strength.

I think SWOT analysis might apply in situations of extreme complexity, right close to a crisis situation.  You need to do a quick assessment of where you are in order to act.  Beyond that though it becomes dangerous to rely on an assessment that was accurate in one context but is useless when the context changes.

I don’t know why or how this became a key part of strategic planning, especially in non-profits, but it’s probably time to retire it in favour of better sense making and strategy.