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Indigo Ocean – Currents of Mind

May 3, 2005 By Uncategorized

Indigo Ocean emailed me an invitation to answer this meme:

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
Hmmm…Am I burning? I can’t remember F451 well enough to remember what I should be here!

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Kerewin, the Maori protagonist of The Bone People by Keri Hulme

I read this book at a time in my life when I had violently lost someone I loved. Kerewin was a timely companion to see me through that grief.

The last book you bought is:
Thoreau’s Method: A Handbook for Nature Study by David Pepi

Just picked this up at a used bookstore and devoured it. Lovely work looking at a methodology for being in nature (and not just wilderness).

The last book you read:
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel

“This story will make you believe in God.”

What are you currently reading?
The Way of the Earth by TC McLuhan
Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools by JR Miller
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (with my daughter)
Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Five books you would take to a deserted island:
Flow by John Ashbery
A Poet in New York by Lorca
Cosmic Canticle by Ernesto Cardenal
Collected Poems of TS Eliot
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

(and also, could I have a CD filled with Project Gutenberg? And something to read it on?)

Lots of poetry. One could take these poets and spend a lifetime absorbing oneself in their works.

Who are you going to pass this meme to (3 persons) and why?
I think, Jon Husband because he reads more than anyone I know, Michael Herman, for the opposite reason and the first person to show up in my RSS feeder….which is…Jack Richhiuto

Wicked problems and Open Space

May 2, 2005 By Uncategorized

In the Open Space world, we talk about the four pre-conditions that make for great open space events: diversity, complexity, passion and urgency. The more you have of these, the juicier the event becomes. That is counter intuitive to most ways of thinking, because in most cases it seems that problem solving processes aim to homogenize, simplify, rationalize and slow down. If we can just get a handle on the problem, the thinking goes, we can apply the best possible solution.

This mechanistic view does not work with so-called “wicked problems.” It can generate solutions or options or ways forward which are reductionist. For me, it is the kind of thinking that arrives at one vision statement for an organization of 100 people instead of a multi-faceted vision that is inclusive and brings everyone along.

So via elearning post, today I came across this paper that looks at how wicked problems are solved by non-linear processes:

“The natural pattern of human problem solving appears chaotic on the surface, but it is the chaos of an earthquake or the breaking of an ocean wave. It reveals deeper forces and flows that have their own order and pattern. The non-linear pattern of activity that expert designers follow gives us fresh insight into what happens when we work on a complex problem. It reveals that in normal problem-solving behaviour, we may seem to wander about, making only halting progress toward the solution. This non-linear process is not a defect, not a sign of stupidity or lack of training, but rather the mark of a natural learning process. It suggests that humans are oriented more toward learning (a process that leaves us changed) than toward problem solving (a process focused on changing our surroundings).”

Designers who work this way, in the experiment discussed in this paper exhibit the following strategies:

They would start by trying to understand the problem, but would immediately jump to formulating potential solutions. Then they would go back to refining their understanding of the problem. Rather than being orderly and linear, the line plotting the course of their thinking looked more like a seismograph for a major earthquake… We call this pattern both chaotic, for obvious reasons, and opportunity-driven, because in each moment the designers are seeking the best opportunity to progress toward a solution.

I note two things about this quote. First, the fact that designers working on a wicked problem are engaged in an iterative relationship with the definition of the problem itself. Second, the pattern is “opportunity-driven” meaning that exposure to new ideas at any point in the process can contribute to breakthroughs.

This chaotic strategy is exactly the argument for Open Space Technology. We need people working in these ways to solve these problems, OST provides the space in a very short period of time to exercise the strategies that contribute to solving wicked problems. In fact, the time constraints in Open Space (1.5 hour conversations over a day or two) mean that there ISN’T time to engage in linear thinking, and this may be why OST creates the conditions for people to access the depth and resourcefulness that is needed to move forward on this tough issues.

UPDATE: Johnnie Moore liked the paper too, and found this quote:

It suggests that humans are oriented more toward learning (a process that leaves us changed) than toward problem solving (a process focused on changing our surroundings).

Fantastic.

Things out of scale

May 1, 2005 By Uncategorized

From the excellent The Blog of Henry David Thoreau:

“Science is inhuman. Things seen with a microscope begin to be insignificant. So described, they are as monstrous as if they should be magnified a thousand diameters. Suppose I should see and describe men and houses and trees and birds as if they were a thousand times larger than they are! With our prying instruments we disturb the balance and harmony of nature.”

In an era where measurement leads to management, and therefore it’s measurement uber alles, this quote reminds us that things have their most powerful place in the whole only in relation to their natural settings and scales. In organizations and communities it seems that something measureable becomes more important than those things we cannot measure, and we inflate those things to absurd dimensions to the exclusion of the synergy that arises from the tangible and intangible elements working together.

Using prime numbers

April 29, 2005 By Uncategorized

Today at an Open Space I kept saying that the muber of people present was 53. Some folks corrected me, but the truth was that the number present kept changing as people came and went, but I was trying to make a point. Fifty three is a prime number. Prime numbers are good numbers to use to estimate a group’s size in Open Space because they are not easily divided.

Ha ha.

URL ABCs

April 28, 2005 By Uncategorized

Matt made me do it…

These are my URL ABCs: