Thinking, sadly, is often under-rated

"Just like a fish doesn't know he's wet," David Kelley, founder of IDEO says, "we didn't realize that our real contribution was that the companies we worked for didn't think like us. And when they did, it really had a lot of advantages for them."

Fast Company's profile of David Kelley published in February of 2009, is the classic profile piece of a CEO overcoming adversity. What is odd to me, is how standard an approach Linda Tischler, the author, used to describe a guy whose thinking differently is synonymous with the value both Kelley and his firm IDEO consistently delivers.

Don't misunderstand, Linda writes well. She tells the story with authenticity, and though I'm in no position to judge, accurately. The emotional notes she strikes are appropriately toned, not too sharp and not too dramatic. There is enough variation in her prose that the composition, if written with musical notations, would sound lovely. I imagine it as a melody more memorable than easy listening but not very original or memorable.

Its the absence of originality that hit me as I began to think about the larger context and the essence of who is being profiled. David Kelley, the how and what he does is strikingly memorable. Linda's piece has made that clear. Still in spite of the time she spent with this icon of design--yes, I believe people can be icons though their thinking is probably iconic--Her style and process appears to have been unaffected.

How striking can Kelley then be if there is no enthusiasm or overt evidence in the piece? Is Kelley's essence and really just another CEO profile?  What thinking, which for me is the gist of the purpose and legacy of Kelley, is at work in her writing? Was it merely enough to synthesize a workable narrative, use her established thought processes to reinforce her existing competencies as a reporter, story teller and/or writer? But wait, this article appears in Fast Company. In spite of the originality of its conception, and the topics of content which I certainly appreciate, the magazine rarely models the very objects and findings that appear between the front and back covers. Since its founding, my own readership has varied from loyal, regular to now occasional. At present, I can't recall a single piece that demonstrated, escorted or personified the Fast or envelope pushing philosophies or ideas that they write about.

Is it any wonder that the world doesn't seem to think or understand innovation enough to actually be innovative? I'm not trying to be cranky, I'm just noticing that the mechanisms and institutions that are failing fail because they continue to apply their thinking in very limited domains. A different approach  offers a chance to capture opportunities and gain new advantages--ones that David Kelley's thinking notices and politely states is lost by many organizations who become clients.  The benefits are clear.  It may be work, but expanding our thinking activities can't hurt and David Kelley is eager to teach.

Re-imagining Schools

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Finding Needles in Haystacks

To get hired, chosen or "picked," we first must be noticed.
In order to get noticed, Seth Godin explains that we need to flaunt a distinguishing trait--that's why one one of his books is titled Purple Cow. Once noticed, the virtues of our differences are evaluated;both in relation to our peers, those that occupy our niche, and then turning on how well we are perceived to meet the needs of the evaluator.

Sometimes, the ordinary becomes important because just at the moment of need, inherent individual traits fit the bill. It is precisely why a pencil may end up as a support stick, or a piece of newsprint becomes the perfect window cleaner. In that vein, the report that enumerates the quantity of work being done readily fits our need to communicate productivity. In all cases, the availability is what made the item work, there was noting particular or special about it.

Satisfaction for our efforts is a difficult sentiment to predictably measure as well as achieve. Our satisfaction in one moment and one set of conditions does not guarantee repeat performance levels, even when circumstances are precisely replicated. Once we adjust, and we do quickly adjust to small changes, our standards also adjust and generally they adjust to a higher level.

Human nature compels us to always want more, and so our level of satisfaction with a particular heightened experience tends to wane over time. If this quarter is profitable, next quarter we promise to be even better, and so do our competitors. As fast as the purple cow appears, numerous impostors arise slowly and then surely erode the distinct advantage once enjoyed by the purple cow.

We may deploy technology to further differentiate, and maybe accelerate, our ability to generate purple cows. Caught up in the frenzy for differentiation or desire to be noticed, we fail to ask what we need. Why we set out to find those needles in the haystack and whether it is the needle or the hay that is most valued?

Ask yourself what your business really needs, Don't merely laud yourself when the numbers are all up, look a little deeper and specifically whether the measures you use are delivering absolute, not merely relative value

Balancing individual safety and freedom of choice

Valuation as a topic has been on my mind of late and so when I hear or see it as a topic of discussion I'm easily drawn in.  Today it was a story, actually an interview by Steve Inskeep, on NPR with Raj Patel who recently wrote The value of Nothing and "says that cheap, market prices let us avoid paying the true costs of things."

His argument goes beyond referencing including the price of externalities--it's one of indirect consequences of how we may enjoy something and yet not recognize the potential for harm it comprises.  His example is about potato chips or other foods and the consequence of eating too many resulting in diabetes and obesity and the subsequent impact on all of our health care costs.  I haven't read the book, but I have been reading Deborah Stone on the Policy of Paradox and recognize that there is some natural contradictions in freedom of choice.

In other words, if we eat the potato chips freely do we also freely accept that it may lead to obesity and perhaps diabetes?  Stone makes a far more elaborate argument on basic principles such as liberty, security and how to negotiate that line between intervention to avoid harm and preservation of what in America we believe to be fundamental inalienable rights...

To quote from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Obviously,  how these things get balanced is very much a function of how Safety and Happiness are determined.

re-organizing

As I found myself ripping out of the New York Times, Paul Samuelson's lengthy obituary for future reference,  I found myself forced to confront old habits and my laggard adaptation of new technologies.  After all I am a creature of habit, and I continue to derive comfort from perusing the NY Times in its concrete fully delivered at my doorstep version.  I also enjoy the choices that the editors have made on story placement, including the choice of break in its continuity that forces me  put my interest into pause while I determine the level of my interest to either immediately flip further into the newspaper to resume reading or to glance about the rest of the page for further opening paragraphs before continuing on.


I've had an online subscription to the NYTimes for over a decade, and it's true that when my time is limited it's an easy way to get a glance at the news...but in spite of their offers to permit me to customize my home page or the digest that I receive daily to include topics of interest, I haven't.  I enjoy the serendipity of reading the paper as laid out by the editors.  Why you ask, especially if you've been to my home and noticed that I'm reluctant to throw away the paper until I've had a chance to at least peruse it, which means it inevitably piles up and creates a backlog, similar in size to the unread New Yorkers, that are also available to me online. 


In preparation for my family's descent I was forced to clear space and thus pack away my fully arrayed scribbles, magazines opened to specific articles and books that I've been reading as part of my ongoing research.  I organize globally very reluctantly, once put away or separated neatly I find it difficult to re-access. The ubiquity of new tools and technologies on the web offer solutions and repositories simple enough to use permitting both easy retrieval, tagging or reminders as to the contents' topics, and most advantageous ability to share these with others.

When I first explored delicious and digg, I honestly didn't fully get a good feel for its future value.  In part, because my scepticism exceeded the perceived value of the benefits.  After all how many times had I relied on a technology solution only to have it fully displaced and rendered obsolete and all the infromation lost. For example, I'm not talking about storing data on floppy disks though I could, I'm talking about diskettes that stored some very valuable code that I'll never be able to read in part because I didn't realize that the disk itself would in time be unreadable.  I didn't want to risk storing tags and precisous articles for future reference in a website that would disappear? 

Well Delicious seems to have had some stability and the benefits are now clearly flattening my skepticism.  I've been tagging much more actively and what's even better is having my own personal library at my fingertips.   Though the NYTimes prefers that you use their own storage files for articles, I routinely move them to delicious as I prefer one repository rather than multiples.  I'm not likely to give up tearing articles out of the paper, but you can bet that I'll also be tagging them.  I've also recognized that for sharing with various teams articles of interest, emailing them is ridiculous.  I have embraced using wikis and ushering as many of my ad hoc network committees to utilize a shared site.  I was able to instantly index using my tags on delicious to find articles of interest to share on collaboration and post them on a wiki site for further consideration of the group.  Using this shared workspace will allow us to keep track of comments and decisions without having to keep a stack of emails.  The technology is now got my attention and I'm doing what I can to give it more traction as ultimately it will save me from having to re-organize later. 

story sharing

I dropped into the IIT ID Design Research Conference for the express purpose of listening and learning and seeing what new strategies for myself might emerge.
I was not disappointed though I didn't get an opportunity to listen in on the talks, I did catch up with a couple of friends who summarized what I missed.
My intention was to talk to students in order to prepare for teaching in the winter. I wanted to learn firsthand what ideas were exciting them and to hear the language they use to express their own thoughts.

I owe a couple of thanks.
one to serendipity...it's never enough to think by merely being in a place at a given moment that something will come. Rather, so much of life and conversation is owed to how much we are willing to expose our thoughts, probe beyond the surface level of noise, whether visual or tactical and purposefully engage in a conversation.
secondly my hats are off to the student organizers who quite willingly were able to put me in touch with other students. I was able to determine that I could readily establish some common ground, engage in active listening and discovered great joy at the prospect of deepening relationships with the diversity of students attending IIT ID.

But this is all filling time and space and though I could go on, I want to share the art of questioning.

I met a series of students who asked logically, rationally what was my preferred methodology.
Since I don't have a design methodology and rather than use the canned answer "it depends," I opted to explore the question. I talked about collaboration, and found myself expressing what is often a barrier to collaboration...individuals need to be right and therefore unwilling to give up ground or to actual present a position. Conversely, if we were to openly listen to someone's tweak, question and challenge of our position, we might find new ways to incorporate the new aspects or dimensions of their input and arrive at a new shared understanding/new position.

But something more interesting ocurred. I listened to the students and asked if they really meant what they said about story...and of course one covered for the other making an honest apology for the other's misstatement. But as we deconstructed the comment, the other began to understand that story is too easy a metaphor and as a result not very evoking of a greater understanding. we than pondered story in a variety of genres and that's where it became clearer what and why story really is about for the individual ...the natural narrative.

learning in decision-making

People sometimes stumble upon the truth, but usually they pick themselves up and hurry about their business....Winston Churchill

For the last few days, I've had the pleasure of revisiting the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, research I first experienced as a graduate student studying with Hillel Einhorn. Thus, the reason I include the Churchill quote. Check out the article I wrote on this topic for smartpeople magazine

How and whether we make sense of information when presented is a function of the length and care exercised when we engage BOTH of our thought systems--the intuitive and the reasoning portions. The rapidity in which we reach a conclusion or recognize a person, situation indicates the likely absence of a full evaluation of all the information received as input. In contrast if we tried to more fully process the multitudes of input we acquire in any given moment, we would be momentarily paralyzed, incapable of making any decision irrespective of its magnitude. Plenty of our natural responses are involuntary..for example, walking while talking. One explanation of autism, expresses the inability of the brain to invoke the automatic response resulting in the inability of the brain to filter or suppress inputs based on their familiarity.

But when the input is a little less familiar, or we seek to engage our internal reasoning additional time and reflection is needed. It is also why feedback and engagement from more than one sensory input helps us further distill and draw deeper value from the information presented. Multi-sensory engagement, not mere passive input further aid and thus enhance our decision making ability.

Our rapid fire automatic response capabilities are often quite useful. Then again, the first answer, judgment or expectation that our brain provides may cut short the full contextual evaluation that may serve us better. By taking a few more moments, days or even weeks to evaluate the fit or association of the information we've obtained relative to the the context in which we encountered it may lead to a more robust "rational" decision.

Gut instincts represent an ability to think and process information quickly. In the case in which they reflect responses learned over time , they enable an autopilot function. In a crisis or emergency, the automatic, rather than the delayed, engaged information process is critical. For example, the nurse who recognizes heart attack symptoms quickly, the firefighter who can unconsciously react to subtle cues not overtly apparent to the casual observer or the inexperienced firefighter.

Acquiring experience is inevitable, but learning from the experience is not.