I just finished reading Gesundheit! by Patch Adams, and it’s left me totally high. I saw the movie Patch Adams starring Robin Williams a while ago, but I never realized that there was a real doctor by that name, striving to create a totally revolutionary hospital – the Gesundheit Institute.

Patch Adams is mostly known for introducing humour in the treatment of his patients, but this book reveals that his philosophy goes way beyond that. It is about the whole person. This is hardly a new notion, but it is certainly waaaay different from how medicine is practiced in most places today. For example, when a new patient arrived, rather than conducting an interview in an office, Patch would take that person fishing or for a walk in the woods, depending on what that patient enjoys doing. The interview would cover symptoms and medical history but would also include talking about the persons hopes and dreams, spirituality, upbringing and much more.

Some parts of the book that really stuck in my mind are:
* Fun death. Why does dying need to be an unpleasant experience? Sure you want to postpone it as long as possible, but is it impossible to create an environment in which dying is as much a part of life as everything else, and is appreciated as such? Patch writes at one point that “Dying is that process a few minutes before death when the brain is deprived of oxygen; everything else is living”.

* A description of a hypothetical patient og the Gesundheit Institute, a 37 year old man with an ulcer. The treatment would consist of he and his family staying at the institute for a week or ten days. While he gets treated, the family can enjoy the nature and generally have fun.

* Patch on greed: “Greed is one of society’s worst malignancies, and it appears to have metastasized to every corner of the earth… Certainly one of greeds most devastating symptoms is cynicism… We believe that a society must care for its population enough to take care of its need.”

* On loneliness: “I remember an eleven-year old girl who had a huge bony tumor of the face with one eye floating out in the mass. Most people found it difficult to be with her because of her appearance. Her pain was not in the dying but in the loneliness of being a person others could not bear to see. She and I played an joked and enjoyed her life away.”

Patch is still working to raise the funds that will allow him to build the institute, and I’m simply flabbergasted that he hasn’t yet succeeded. Having read the book, it is obvious to me that his way of practicing medicine is not only better for the patient, it is also better for the medical staff (who suffer hard from burnout today) and (incredibly) more efficient and cheaper than todays bloated health care system. If I ever get sick, I certainly want to be treated the Gesundheit way!

Dr. Felton Earls has done research on the roots of crime, and has arrived at the following insight, quoted in this NY Times article:

Dr. Earls and his colleagues argue that the most important influence on a neighborhood’s crime rate is neighbors’ willingness to act, when needed, for one another’s benefit, and particularly for the benefit of one another’s children. And they present compelling evidence to back up their argument.

Well, duh! It seems obvious to me, that a neighbourhood in which people are actively engaged would be a better place to live and show lower crime rates, and it’s wonderful that Earls now has scientific data to back this up. Great work, that has the potential to significantly change todays policies.

And of course the notion that people taking responsibility for their own neighbourhood can make a difference sits VERY well with me.

Richard Feynman was a very clever guy. Apart from his work in physics (specifically quantum electrodynamics which got him a nobel prize in 1956), he was also an accomplished safe cracker, samba drummer and all-round liver of life as described in the wonderful biography “Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman“.

In april 1963 he gave a set of lectures on the role of science in the world, adressing questions like “what is science”, “what is the value of science” and “can a scientist believe in god”. These lectures have been collected in the book “The meaning of it all“, from which stems the following quote:

“Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted the rest of the world agree with them… I want to maintain here, that it is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn’t get confined, permanently blocked, as it has som many times before in various periods in the history of man.”

The underlying theme of much of the lecture is that science is not about knowing, it’s about not knowing, about doubting and about asking questions. This is an excellent foundation for inquiry into anything, and thus also an excellent basis for dialogue.

In my opinion, dialogue can only arise when the participants are willing to entertain the notion that they semselves may be wrong. The interesting thing is, that this position is contagious. If you’re willing to admit to your doubts, to admit that you may be wrong, you make it easier for other participats in the dialogue to do so themselves. Of course, as we have all experienced at some point, the reverse position is also contagious. Entering into a coversation knowing that you’re in the right, and just need to convince others about your position, will probably only lock them into the same position and make true dialogue difficult.

The main tool for expressing your doubt and willingness to reconsider your own position is of course to ask questions preferably very open-ended questions. This kind of question also marks the main difference between dialogue and discussion. Dialogue is filled with questions (many of which may go unanswered), where as discussions are filled with answers (many of them to questions that were never asked). You might say that questions open, where answers close.

Give me a good question over a good answer any day!

Thanks Chris for the wonderful welcome.

I’ve been following the discussions here on jazz and improvisation in project management and it reminds me of one of my favourite tools these days: eXtreme Programming.

The thing that really makes XP interesting is, that it’s been designed for a changing world. Remember tat big project you’d been working on for months, really giving it your best with your team mates, when suddenly the requirements changed, or the customer changed his mind or your boss got a new idea or… In many projects this would mean that a lot of work will be lost, but the XP methodology was designed not to function in spite of this – XP was designed for a world where this kind of thing is inevitable and will happen all the time. XP projects eat unscheduled changes for breakfast.

Extreme Programming was defined about six years ago by Kent Beck, and though it is nominally a method for structuring softare development projects, it has applications way beyond that. I used to be a software developer, and have tried the method in it’s intended field where it is a true revolution compared to the way we used to do things. These days my interests are in making people happy at work, and in crafting an organization of people who work for this purpose, and I find again and again that the lessons I learned from eXtreme Programming (or simply XP) can be used here also.

This is possible because XP is based on a number of rules, and here are a few of my favourites:
User stories. This means, that instead of writing long pages of specifications about your system, you write stories about the users, and how they use the systems. This is essentially a narrative approach, one which is much more in tune with how our minds work. Stories can give you a less precise but much more robust understanding of the goal you’re trying to achieve.

Small releases. Rather than aiming for one big release of your system in six months, you aim to deliver something every 1-3 weeks. This keeps you focused on the specific job ahead of you, rather than on some problem that may or may not arise in a few months.

Move people around/pair programming/collective ownership. Nobody does just one thing, and nobody works alone. In XP projects you see two programmers at every computer, because every task is tackled by two people working together. This means that no area of the system is known or “owned” by only one person, making your project much less vulnerable.

Simplicity. My favourite. XP states that you should always do the simplest thing that could possibly work. This is practically my mantra these days and it’s immensely liberating. Don’t think ahead six months. Achieve your current goals, then move on to something else.

These are just my favourites, there are many more rules in XP that you can explore yourself, and almost all of them can be translated from the world of programming into almost any kind of project.

Also there are obvious parallels between XP and Open Space Technology like Common ownership, Simplicity and meetings where project participants stand in a circle. Also XP is essentially open source, meaning anyone can buy the book and run their own XP projects.

My friend Alex Kjerulf is a wonderful guy.

I say my friend, like I know him really well, but the truth is that I met him online in the summer, linked to his blog, Positive Sharing and then carried on a bit of an exchange with him. Turns out that he and I have a lot of similar interests, including Open Space Technology, a simultaneous reading of Crptonomicon and a love of fun. In fact, he does a lot of work with laughter and is currently writing a book about happiness at work. It’s in Danish, so I have no idea how good it is. But I consider him a friend, and I enjoy my communication nwith him, whether passively reading his blog, over email, or face to face. He has a sneaky sense of humour.

Last year, at the Practice of Peace conference, I met Alex face-to-face. He helped me to hang some prayer flags at the Whidbey Institute that were sent by Michael Herman when he was in Nepal. I liked Alex immediately, and although I didn’t get much time with him, I watched him at work admiringly as he led a group of about 30 people in a whole series of amazing laughter exercises. He documented them too.

Last month, Alex proposed something really interesting. He suggested that we switch blogs for a week. I agreed although I have no idea why. I don’t know what I’m about to learn by doing this (he wondered if it would be like sleeping with each other’s partners…metaphorically of course!) but I wonder if it has to do with online identity.

I’ve been online since 1992, starting with BBSs and freenets and the graduating to the web in 1996. I’ve participated in a number of online forums, including chat rooms, email lists and group blogs. I leave comments at other people’s websites and weblogs, and so I’m used to seeing my words published under a different template. In fact, recently I have been thinking that I should consolidate this thinking a little more, and as I publish some comments in people’s weblogs that represent a leap in original thinking for me, I have been re-posting them here. The recent thread on improvisation is an example. Nineteen comments as of today, while the topic has dropped out of site at gassho where it was originally posted. I don’t think I’m really tied to my online identity, but this experiment may prove otherwise. At any rate, I have a nagging feeling about having my stuff appear at Alex’s place, like somehow cyberspace is full of discrete territories rather than connections and ends. This is already challenging my emotional connection to webspace.

I wonder too if it will seem like our blogs are opening up a bit more by having another brain adding to them. In this respect I’m excited because I like Alex’s work and having some of it published here will be cool. In the meantime, I’ll take some of my stuff over to Positive Sharing and see what effect it has there.

Rather than sleeping with each other’s partners it actually feel more like we’re working on each other’s cars, with our own tools, diagnostics systems and ways of doing things. Hopefully I don’t completely dismantle his engine. I fully expect him to put a little of his high octane gas in mine.

Anyway, join me this week at Positive Sharing and keep your eyes on this spot for Alex’s contributions. At the end of the week we’ll talk about what we learned.