The Obvious?

<rant>

Foursquare just gave me extra points for having checked in at airports continuously for the last eleven weeks. This is a dubious distinction. In that time I have been to Riga, Amsterdam, most major cities in Australia, Hong Kong, Washington and Dubai. As a result I have gradually lost my grip of reality. My circadian rhythms are no longer disrupted by jet lag as they have no idea any more what they are meant to be. I have seen so many amazing things, and met so many interesting people, that life is starting to blur. It is in this context that I am awake at 4.00 am writing this rant!

My travels finally brought me to Dubai – a place that has a very dubious grip of reality. Outrageous building projects; ex-pats chasing the beach front idyll and wandering round shopping malls in their spare time; and multinational corporations and ubiquitous international brands swamping any remaining indigenous culture. A nightmarish vision of a future protecting itself and removing itself from the rough edges of the real world. 

I am clearly particularly attuned to this loss of a grip on reality at the moment due to my personal circumstances but it is also what troubles me generally about modern life. It is what troubles me about corporate culture. The gradual loss of a grip on reality, the slow anesthetization of staff through endless obsession with process, the loss of passion and true engagement. I saw this in the well oiled machine that was my hotel in Dubai. Superbly efficient systems and impeccably professional staff but soulless and inhospitable in a deeply unsettling way. While writing this blog post I have been engaged in an email exchange with the hotel reception. Despite me being on a pre-paid half board basis, and despite the provision of complementary water in their rooms, they sent me an invoice just for the water I had with my meal, They then and end their contribution to the ensuing time wasting email exchange with the salutation “be re-energized” – give me strength!

This feeling of unreality culminated in an encounter with my daughter’s ICT teacher at a school progress evening last night. It would be indiscrete to go into the details of the conversation, but both he as an individual, and those setting the ICT curriculum, have clearly lost their grip of reality. They are lost in the anesthetized world of Microsoft Office based process. This issue is endemic. He is not alone. My work for the last seven weeks has been with those involved in the provision of corporate IT in various forms and at various levels in all sorts of organisations. It was clearly “the good guys” who were going to self select and bother to turn up and hear me but their stories of working in IT left me troubled. As a community they are losing, or have lost, the plot. They are buried in process, banging on about Big Data, remote from the realities of the web based world their organisations now inhabit, and like those crazy buildings in Dubai soaking up energy and costing millions in a way that merely exacerbates our increasing divorce from the reality of the world around us. 

If we don’t find a way to recover our grip on reality we will come a cropper. Remember how in the eighties the financial sector sneered at those of us sensing the unreality of their claims to be fueling growth of the economy? Look what happened to that. We need to break out of this advertising fueled running away, this buffering ourselves from the harshness of the physical world, wrapping ourselves in psychic cotton wool, kidding ourselves that our ever more complex and ever more pervasive systems are going to protect us. They are part of the problem. They are the boiling water that the frog is sitting in. We are deluding ourselves and fiddling while Rome burns.

</rant>

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The Obvious?

I reckon I can write that title as it does feel as if I have “done” all of it – or at least a lot of it. Twenty individual events in thirty six days, four long haul flights within Australia crossing the country from all angles, and lots of small flights and car drives. 

My main reason for being in Australia was a speaking tour of branches of The Australian Computer Society, an association of IT professionals. I spoke in venues ranging from large auditoria, to offices, to even an RSL club (the Australian equivalent of a Royal British Legion Club) and to audiences that ranged from people who were still studying IT at university to others who had retired. I had many really good conversations with really interesting and committed people in all sorts of positions in IT in all sorts of organisations. In addition to the ACS events I carried out several others, including workshops, for other organisations in Sydney and Melbourne thanks to friends and connections I have made there over the years.

Due to the nature of the timetable I also had the chance to see some of the countryside in most of the places I visited – from climbing Mt. Wellington in Hobart, to trips up crocodile rivers in Kakadu, to swimming on the beaches near Perth. Actually Western Australia was the only chance I got to do this due to the warnings of deadly jelly fish, crocodiles and sharks in the sea everywhere else!

Thanks to all the wonderful people I met and who went out of their way to help me along the way. It’s been a helluva trip.

[I am writing this on the plane to Hong Kong where I am doing a couple of workshops and then off to Washington for a meeting of The World Bank's Knowledge Management Commission which isn't really on the way home!! Fours days to try to make amends to my family then off to Dubai. I must be mad!]

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The Obvious?

I sit on boards for a couple of organisations and therefore have to read what I would call conventional paperwork. More often than not I struggle with this. Not that I can’t read the words but that I can’t for the life of me work out what they mean, what the story is behind them.

The possibility of an alternative is what I find so exciting about the use of blogs in business. The way you can string together multiple perspectives on a topic. The way topics can be covered obliquely and in passing rather than in an attempt to provide a definitive version. And the way you can use rich context to help determine meaning.

Meaning matters.

This moving passage is from the wonderful Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer and is from his grandmother’s explanation of her attitude to food:

“The worst it got was near the end. A lot of people died right at the end, and I didn’t know if I could make it another day. A farmer, a Russian, God bless him, he saw my condition, and he went into his house and came out with a piece of meat for me.”

“He saved your life.”
“I didn’t eat it.” ….
“You didn’t eat it?”
“It was pork. I wouldn’t eat pork.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?”
“What, because it wasn’t kosher? ”
“Of course.”
“But not even to save your life?”
“If nothing matters, there’s nothing to save.”

I struggle with this, to me, arbitrary meaning but am humbled by the strength of conviction behind it. Humans seek out and cling to meaning – even in the most adverse circumstances.

What a shame we have sanitised meaning out of so much of our communications. Wouldn’t business be more exciting, and more effective, if we sought more meaning and got better at expressing it?

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The Obvious?

I sometimes wonder what it is that bugs me. What is it that drives me to do the work I do – because it does feel driven, something I am passionate about. Who or what am I reacting to? What windmills am I tilting at? What itch is it that I am scratching?

A heavy clue lies in the fact that my favourite book is Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness and my favourite bit in that book is when he portrays a company man, a bureaucrat, who runs the operation at the head of the river the narrator is about to travel along into the heart of darkness.

“I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe. He, don’t you see, had been planning to be assistant-manager by and by under the present man, and I could see that the coming of that Kurtz had upset them both not a little. He talked precipitately, and I did not try to stop him.

[and later]

You know I hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies—which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world—what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do. Temperament, I suppose.

I often think of that man, the papier-mâché Mephistopheles. I used to think of him a lot when I worked in a large bureaucratic organisation, I think of him often when being shown around client organisations. I once teetered on the brink of becoming like him out of a fear of being different and a desire to fit in. On a bad day I can still envy him.

Sometimes not wanting to be like him feels like running away. Trying too hard to be different, finding too much fault with the norm. When I first read the book as a teenager I wanted to be Kurtz. I wanted to scare myself and others by going deep inside – seeing and understanding things that others backed off from. But Kurtz, who the narrator eventually meets deep in the jungle, has been running away in his own way – indeed has gone mad running away.

My big fear for myself, and my sadness on behalf of others when it happens to them, is the risk of becoming that hollow shell. Being the company man who relies on the outward trappings of power – the title, the office, the salary – and who has lost his soul in the process. But like the narrator in the novel I want to protect myself and others from the heart of darkness, to avoid the chaos and terror of losing all grip of reality.

This might seem gloriously disconnected from the world of blogging but it is not … trust me. Social tools allow us to navigate along the river, to keep talking to each other as we leave the hollow men behind. To build a collective narrative as we go inwards and loosen the grip on a normality that is already crumbling behind us. With any luck it will also help us to stop short of losing our grip, falling apart and not finding our way back.

But who knows – we have a way to go yet …

View Rainmakers Bio »
Go to Source »

The Obvious?

I sit on boards for a couple of organisations and therefore have to read what I would call conventional paperwork. More often than not I struggle with this. Not that I can’t read the words but that I can’t for the life of me work out what they mean, what the story is behind them.

The possibility of an alternative is what I find so exciting about the use of blogs in business. The way you can string together multiple perspectives on a topic. The way topics can be covered obliquely and in passing rather than in an attempt to provide a definitive version. And the way you can use rich context to help determine meaning.

Meaning matters.

This moving passage is from the wonderful Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer and is from his grandmother’s explanation of her attitude to food:

“The worst it got was near the end. A lot of people died right at the end, and I didn’t know if I could make it another day. A farmer, a Russian, God bless him, he saw my condition, and he went into his house and came out with a piece of meat for me.”

“He saved your life.”
“I didn’t eat it.” ….
“You didn’t eat it?”
“It was pork. I wouldn’t eat pork.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?”
“What, because it wasn’t kosher? ”
“Of course.”
“But not even to save your life?”
“If nothing matters, there’s nothing to save.”

I struggle with this, to me, arbitrary meaning but am humbled by the strength of conviction behind it. Humans seek out and cling to meaning – even in the most adverse circumstances.

What a shame we have sanitised meaning out of so much of our communications. Wouldn’t business be more exciting, and more effective, if we sought more meaning and got better at expressing it?

View Rainmakers Bio »
Go to Source »

The Obvious?

I sometimes wonder what it is that bugs me. What is it that drives me to do the work I do – because it does feel driven, something I am passionate about. Who or what am I reacting to? What windmills am I tilting at? What itch is it that I am scratching?

A heavy clue lies in the fact that my favourite book is Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness and my favourite bit in that book is when he portrays a company man, a bureaucrat, who runs the operation at the head of the river the narrator is about to travel along into the heart of darkness.

“I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe. He, don’t you see, had been planning to be assistant-manager by and by under the present man, and I could see that the coming of that Kurtz had upset them both not a little. He talked precipitately, and I did not try to stop him.

[and later]

You know I hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies—which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world—what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do. Temperament, I suppose.

I often think of that man, the papier-mâché Mephistopheles. I used to think of him a lot when I worked in a large bureaucratic organisation, I think of him often when being shown around client organisations. I once teetered on the brink of becoming like him out of a fear of being different and a desire to fit in. On a bad day I can still envy him.

Sometimes not wanting to be like him feels like running away. Trying too hard to be different, finding too much fault with the norm. When I first read the book as a teenager I wanted to be Kurtz. I wanted to scare myself and others by going deep inside – seeing and understanding things that others backed off from. But Kurtz, who the narrator eventually meets deep in the jungle, has been running away in his own way – indeed has gone mad running away.

My big fear for myself, and my sadness on behalf of others when it happens to them, is the risk of becoming that hollow shell. Being the company man who relies on the outward trappings of power – the title, the office, the salary – and who has lost his soul in the process. But like the narrator in the novel I want to protect myself and others from the heart of darkness, to avoid the chaos and terror of losing all grip of reality.

This might seem gloriously disconnected from the world of blogging but it is not … trust me. Social tools allow us to navigate along the river, to keep talking to each other as we leave the hollow men behind. To build a collective narrative as we go inwards and loosen the grip on a normality that is already crumbling behind us. With any luck it will also help us to stop short of losing our grip, falling apart and not finding our way back.

But who knows – we have a way to go yet …

View Rainmakers Bio »
Go to Source »

Mark’s Daily Thought – Ideas from Mark Fritz to help you Get Ahead, Stay Ahead and Be Successful

Success is really contagious. When you are around successful people, you naturally pick up their words and behaviours…it’s contagious. If that’s so, then being around unsuccessful people can do the same, but in the opposite way. (Your people choices are key!)

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Mark’s Daily Thought – Ideas from Mark Fritz to help you Get Ahead, Stay Ahead and Be Successful

Everyone gets frustrated at times, and if we do nothing about it; everything begins to frustrate us. The key is to find those positive ways for us to vent our frustration. What’s the best way for you?…and then use it when you feel you need it.

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Mark’s Daily Thought – Ideas from Mark Fritz to help you Get Ahead, Stay Ahead and Be Successful

You won’t like or get along with everyone in your life, but often you need to work with these people. In many ways, you appreciate them more and work together more smoothly when try and find something you value in them first.

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Mark’s Daily Thought – Ideas from Mark Fritz to help you Get Ahead, Stay Ahead and Be Successful

Leaders who achieve long lasting success are focused on a cause bigger than their own personal gain. They have focused themselves on “making a difference” in something, and when you make a difference in others in a big way…the personal gain is just a byproduct.

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