Digital Digressions

The Curious Subject of Incentives

Started reading Levitt & Dubner: Freakonomics - a great book that despite its cheesy cover has a capacity to pull together facts and figures to reveal many of the truths hidden under such phenomena like why high-school teachers cheat, why prostitutes earn more than architects, why drug dealers still live with their mothers, why your name matters more than you think and why knowing what to measure, and how to measure it, is the key to understanding modern life. If you ever read Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, which explains how little things make a big difference this will certainly be up your street. A little edgier and snappier than Gladwell's book, Freakonomics pulls together all sorts of curious facts to reveal astonishing logic to often complicated social phenomena.

Take incentives for instance. Economics is, at root, the study of incentives: how people get what they want, or need especially when other people want or need the same thing. Ironically, the founder of classical economics, Adam Smith, was first and foremost a philosopher. Smith was entranced by the sweeping changes brought about by modern capitalism sweeping the nation at the time of the publication of his book, 'The Theory of Moral Sentiments' in 1759 and particularly the way icapitalism was influencing how a person thought and behaved in a particular situation. Smith's true subject was the friction between individual desire and societal norms and how economic incentives influence how we behave in a particular situation.

We all learn to respond to incentives, negative and positive, from the outset of life. An incentive is simply a means of urging people to do more of a good thing and less of a bad thing. But most incentives don't come about organically. Someone - an economist or a politician or a parent - has to invent them. There are three basic flavours of incentive: economic, social and moral. Sometimes social incentives work better than economic ones and in other cases it is a combination of all three. A good example is the naming and shaming of prostitutes - that works better than simply a $500 fine as nobody wants to be singled out by their friends, parents or neighbours as pimps or prostitutes.

In other cases incentives, although intended to work to deter undesirable behaviour, actually end up encouraging it. Take the recent World Cup match between the Netherlands and Portugal. Here are two countries pretty well balanced in terms of skill and ability and potentially the ideal ingredients to make the beautiful game truly come alive. What happens? Due to the card(trigger)-happy referee this match collected a total of 16 yellow cards and 4 red ones - an all time record, because rather than deter players from fouls, they quickly realised that if they could frame the opponents by diving and falling, they stood to benefit. The frequent ditching out of cards broke up the game, removed difficult opponents from the pitch, opened up the possibility of a penalty shot or were a small price for injuring the opponents, preventing them from playing properly. The opposing team quickly realised the same and thus the competition was more about who they could take out than the goals they could score. A sad day in football history.

Another subject frequently on the agenda these days is the environment. All of us are aware of the effects of global warming and the primary cause of it: fossil fuels. Plenty of moral incentives to change our ways, yet we do nothing. The sales of 4x4s and gaz-guzzlers are continuing their march of triumph, regardless of the environmental damage they cause. We know what's wrong, yet we can't help ourselves. The economic incentives to change our ways are simply too lame to make us do anything and socially it is still aspirational to have a big car, so the reasons to change aren't really that big - personally we are not willing to trade the convenience of a big car with the greater good of saving the environment - if everyone else is doing it why can't I?

In some cases the incentives don't even have to be grounded in reality: an illusion is enough. The promise of glamorous lives associated with sporting heroes, movie stars and drug dealers to name but a few make people form a queue right around the block just to have a chance, forgetting how intense the competition is and the fact that only a fraction of all the willing will ever make it. That is not what we get told. Drug lords apparently revel in money, cars and women, yet we are not told of the countless footsoldiers they rely on, with a 1 in 4 chance of getting killed (which is higher than sitting on death row in Texas), peddling the drugs for less than the minimum wage per hour with no prospects of ever making it large. Nor all the countless hopefuls moving to Hollywood to try to become moviestars, ending up waiting tables and never making a decent living. The 'Cinderella' stories are more attractive than the stories of struggling through college, working one's way up the ladder and maybe making a decent living at the end of the day - the perceived economic incentives are so strong, yet bear little or no relation to the actual ones and due to culture, media and communication they have entrenched themselves in our imagination and are enough for us to keep deluding ourselves even in the face of harsh reality telling us the opposite.

Interesting book, definitely recommend for all those of you who want to uncover the reality beneath the myths we are sold.

 

The Art of the Start

Started a post just now, but must confess that because I'm tired and slightly fed up just now I'm struggling to convey my trademark optimism and hopefulness in a way suitable for this blog. So better hold on to that post until I can make it less cynical. Why do I bother? Because there are far too many blogs out there cynical about mostly everything and cynicism is the enemy of creativity so I refuse to go there.

Moreover, I refuse to drag all of you in there too - it's almost Friday, which means we have plenty to look forward to. With that in mind I wanted to share with you a video that cheered me up hugely today: that of my favourite blogger Guy Kawasaki doing an excellent presentation at TiECon on the Art of the Start.. watch and learn! Guy, you rock!

       

How Buying a Bicycle is Very Much Like Finding Your Ideal Job

Some of you may know that I'm currently on the roller-coaster ride known as changing jobs. It is a time full of excitement and prospects as well as it is a time of uncertainty and waiting around. So far I have approached the situation in good spirits and full of both curiosity and excitement as many possibilities present themselves and opportunities arise. You also feel daunted at times, not speaking to the right person and people making assessments about you, before you have even had a chance to give your side to the story. Very much like buying a bicycle in fact.

I'm not just talking about buying any old banger, I've got my eye on a beautiful Bianchi and went to try out a few of them today and ironically, found the whole experience very similar to my recent traipsing around meeting potential employers. Here's how:

1. Frame: On a bike it is very important to get the right frame size for you. This depends on both the length of your feet as well as your back and also a little bit on how you like to ride. Sounds straightforward enough, but sitting on something in the shop feels vastly different from what it is like racing down the road. Of course people in the shop are offering their ideas on what they think would be good for you too, but ultimately you must decide for yourself.

Same thing with jobs: Job descriptions in ads are either bigged up to sound like more, or just sound drab, or people have a pile of different needs they need fulfilling and are trying to fit a role around it. In all cases, it is a phenomenon of the 'geometry' of you, your skills and experience and how well it talks to the frame(work) of the job that is on offer. Some roles are just too big and you know you would stretch yourself too far and feel like you are more or less out of control when the pace picked up a bit, other roles just feel so cramped that you already try to start compensating even in the interview by hedging your bets and asking searching questions about long-term prospects. In both cases, it is a matter of a patient and often quite a lengthy, honest discussion to ascertain not just who you are and what you can offer, but also what the framework can give you whether it is a bicycle or a job.

2. Height adjustments: the right frame goes from perfect to awkward as soon as the seat is too high or too low. You either compensate with your hips, pedalling almost tip-toed - clambering all over the bike to find your comfort zone, but failing. When the saddle is too low you have your knees in your chin and everything feels cramped.

In jobs: again the same: you may be in your favourite field, really enjoying what you are working on,  but if you don't have the room to move, you feel stuck. Too much micromanagement and your saddle is quickly too low, too much free-form and no feedback and your saddle is too high. In both cases, it may be a field you really love, but the way the job works you still can't wait to get off. Again, couple of test-rides around the block reveals this in a bicycle and it is quick to fix, but you seldom find this out in a job interview. You may get some feelings about it, based on the characters you meet, but you seldom get the full picture until it's often too late.

3. Gear Shifters - I had my mind set on some Campagnolo shifters, the 'dream' if you like. Trying out a number of different frame sizes in the shop also introduced me to the Shimano equivalents. Didn't think much of it first, but the Shimano gears simply had a nicer feel and more secure and precise way of shifting than the feel I got with the Campys. Also the way the gear shifters are designed, meant that my ideal frame we had arrived at with the bike expert, went out the window with the Campagnolos, making the frame too long from having been perfect. So in actual fact my 'dream' shifters, didn't turn out to be the dream I had made them into after all.

In jobs: We often get tempted by roles and jobs, not so much because of the facts we know about the job, but more because of the 'dream' image we have of it and are sometimes sold at the interview. There is the classic joke about the person who had to choose whether to go to heaven or hell and decided to have a tour around both before making his mind up. Having noticed that people in hell had such a fantastic time and generally seemed to enjoy themselves much more than the angels in heaven, he decided to go to hell. Upon turning up there the second day, everything of course had changed from what he saw the day before. Hugely disappointed, he asked the Devil why none of the things he saw the day before were there. To which the Devil replied coyly: Ah, yesterday we were recruiting, today it is for real! Same thing with jobs - try to get the 'real', honest picture of the job or situation from someone who works in the same place or field and don't just go with your own illusion.

4. Price: The way advertising and Western civilisation works, we are all led to believe we are underpaid and overworked all the time. On bikes of course, the more money you invest the longer the bike will be with you as it will perform better and have greater longevity than a cheap one.

With jobs it's a little bit more tricky: our inclination is to always go with what pays the best, yet some of the top-paying jobs are little boxes once you are in them you can't get out. There are of course other options that long-term provide stepping stones to even greater things, and despite the smaller initial paycheck the gain in experience and confidence allows you to move to another level career-wise instead. Therefore it is a hard one to weigh up - the tangible things like money versus the intangible things like experience, challenges, opportunities to learn new things and evolve your skills and abilities to another level that jobs also offer. Some very high-paid jobs also demand a lot of personal sacrifice like travel, maybe moving around, long hours and the like and it is a difficult question to ask yourself: how much is my life worth to me? Am I willing to not have one for the (right) sum of money? I suppose it is quantifying the consequences of our decisions, where will they take you and will they make you better off financially and experience-wise at the end of the day, or is it a choice between the two if you can only have either or.

So there we are, an extremely simplified version of all the variables in finding the perfect job (bicycle) and what better advice to give you than be true to yourself, what feels right is right - make use of the expert when you need facts, make sure to define all the parameters as precisely as possible and ultimately, it's your job (bicycle) - you are the one who will be stuck with it, so make sure you are in a position to be in command of all the information you need to make the right decision. Oh and good luck! I didn't mention the role luck plays in all this, but it's worth keeping in mind that those random conversations you strike up whilst looking for the greater goal may actually end up leading you to a better goal than you imagined. As John Lennon rightly put it: "Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans".

The Secret of Happy Employees

“The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.” ~ Vince Lombardi

Whenever I travel, I have a habit of wandering across to the bookshop at the airport to have a look at the latest releases in a number of genres. What amazes me is the seemingly endless output of business writers on the subject of being a great leader, motivating your troops, being successful and managing the **** out of anything, whether it is your life, your lover, your job, department, organisation, pet, you  name it. If I was to judge the state of affairs according to most popular book titles I would say we are all out of control - business success is more voodoo than logic and none of us really has a clue of where it is all going. Hence our insatiable appetite for books that tell us how it should 'really' be done.

Mind you, I don't have a PHD in management science, or whatever the degree is called these days - so you may want to take what I say with a pinch of salt. After all, a selection of nifty acronyms after my name surely would make me sound more credible? What I'm about to propose is sadly not rocket science, nor is it very advanced thinking either, but somehow we have lost sight of those simple facts and fallen victim for an ever increasing appetite to have experts tell us what we already know deep inside anyway:

3 steps to happiness:
What makes a great workplace and happy employees? It's not countless training courses or 'away-days' or even a selection of free cakes and an office dog. It is three very simple things:

1. Respect - To be respected for who you are and what you know and to be treated decently and above all fairly in areas such as pay, benefits and job security. Nobody wants to have to keep politicking to keep their jobs and if you have to scratch someone's back to have greater job security, you really start wondering whether it is worth it.

2. Achievement - as the quote above, we need to be able to be proud of our jobs, our accomplishments and recognised for them, and we need to be able to be proud of our employer too.

3. Friends - It is infinitely more fun to come to work if you have friends there, people you genuinely like, respect for their skills and knowledge and people you have productive relationships with. Together with these people you excel beyond what you could do on your own and the camaraderie makes it all a great deal of fun.

I have been giving managers a hard time in a few posts recently, but that is not to say that they are defunct. We need managers and above all we need good ones. People who not only know what they are talking about, but are people we respect for their knowledge, skills and ability to not just deliver on the points above, but also to instill an evocative purpose to all the work. Indeed, the book Built to Last lists numerous examples of companies that have managed to raise their ethos above and beyond merely making money, and are heralded as some of the most successful companies around.

This article by the Harvard Business Review, provides some great insights on how to create a culture through good management, which addresses the issues above. It has been brought to my attention that the list I had been sent and was using in this post before, was in fact an indirect infringement on copyright, so for the real McCoy, follow the link above! My sincere and humble apologies!

The Elusive Concept of Success

What is success? Is success about money, a sense of purpose, seeing the smiling faces of one's children, or a flash career? Seems the further we travel on the road of life and career, the more this question occupies our minds, having a nagging doubt in the back of our minds that all the vestiges of success we have been striving to acquire are essentially hollow. We want something more, but struggle to understand what that something could be.

"The basic problem with the flow of success is that life can look very good when it really isn't," writes Harvard Business School's Joseph L. Badaracco Jr. His new book, Questions of Character, uses literature to look closely at issues of leadership. Below is an excerpt of an article on the book:

In his novel I Come as a Thief, Louis Auchincloss introduces us to Tony Lowder, a lawyer in his early forties. Tony has a promising political career ahead of him—in a recent election, he almost beat a heavily entrenched incumbent. Tony makes two extraordinary decisions. First, he commits a serious but brilliantly undetectable crime. Next, despite the advice and pleas of everyone around him, Tony goes to the authorities and confesses, which destroys his professional life, throws his family into chaos, and puts them in physical danger.

This story confronts us with one of the oldest and most perplexing themes in literature—the hazards of success. The basic problem with the flow of success is that life can look very good when it really isn't. In Tony's case, he is making money, building a business, and establishing a reputation. He also treats others with respect, sensitivity, and thoughtfulness. To understand why Tony is impelled to commit a serious crime, we have to look beyond external signs of success and try to understand his mind and heart. Tony is living the life of a wind-up toy, going through the motions of being a good father, a loving son, a good husband, a charming politician, and a resolute friend. He can say just the right things in just the right way, but he often doesn't grasp what he is actually saying.

First, Tony is chronically busy. In a world of smart, competitive people, success takes long hours and unremitting effort, and Tony is trying to succeed in a wide range of activities. As a result, his life resembles the vaudeville act in which a juggler has a large number of sticks standing upright on a stage and tries to keep a plate spinning on top of each. While the performer is spinning one plate, some of the others get wobbly, so the juggler has to run over and spin them again—but then other plates start wobbling. The juggler has no time to reflect on what he is doing, and neither does Tony, as he hurries from one commitment to another.

Another problem, perversely, originates in the fact that Tony's life is full of purpose and progress. His calendar is filled with meetings, and there are usually urgent phone calls to return. Tony is also accomplishing a lot, and success brings its own elation, satisfaction, and rewards. He doesn't seem to have any problems—at least, none that his very bright future couldn't take care of. But, by staying in perpetual motion, he is able to substitute a stream of successes and satisfactions for the hard work of grappling with bigger questions about his life. Of course, Tony isn't a robot, and he senses, semiconsciously, that something is wrong, but he never has the time or impetus to find out what it is. To some degree, Tony is afraid of the answers, and his frenetic activity is a way to avoid them. He is the kind of person the painter Edward Degas had in mind when he said, "There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic." Almost everyone has colleagues who seem to fit this description: their energy, focus, and productivity are extraordinary—they are the first in the building and the last out—but even their admirers sometimes wonder if they are running from something.

Tony's third problem is his steadily eroding autonomy. To others, he looks like an extraordinarily independent, active man, but his own experience of day-by-day life is very different. He feels he has few degrees of freedom because so many other people have a big stake in Tony being Tony and need him to fill certain roles. The needs of almost everyone around him help keep Tony in his world of busy, helpful, but emotionally empty achievement. Tony has become a virtuoso performer in a role created by the people and society around him. In this respect, he resembles an increasing number of talented people today. After his crime and confession, Tony describes the problem by saying, "there had always been a noisy grandstand of friends and family to applaud success, or the appearance of it, or even boo in a friendly way at failure."

Auchincloss shows us that despite all the busy, purposeful activity, Tony feels dead inside. Tony's crime is a self-administered shock treatment. It wakes him up and makes him feel alive. The prospect of living two lives—as the dutiful Tony and as a crook—thrills him. In an odd way Tony's decision to commit a crime is his first moral act. The physicist Wolfgang Pauli once derided a colleague's idea by saying that it wasn't even wrong. Similarly, Tony's previous life was neither good nor bad. It was submoral because it was on autopilot. The bribe is wrong, of course, but by taking it Tony finally does something that has moral standing. He chooses and commits, and this gives him the sense that his life has finally begun. Most people who have just committed a serious crime would feel guilty and fearful of getting caught, but Tony is exhilarated. He had been living as if everything were just fine, but his was an "as if" life, not a genuinely or deeply satisfying one. One test of the seriousness of an illness is the severity of the treatment it requires. For Tony, the bribe, with all its dangerous risks, is strong, self-prescribed medication. The flow of success had masked and exacerbated his illness and, to some degree, even caused it. Tony has a deep need to start acting and stop reacting, to feel he is alive, and to end his "as if" existence. The right answer, he concludes, is not more success, but risking everything.

I/O Brush - The Coolest Thing Since the Invention of Photoshop

I don't know about you, but the longer I live on this planet the more it takes to surprise me. Also, to get me really excited, on par with those childhood WOOOOW moments when you learn something amazing, find the toy of your dreams or get told you are going on your dream holiday - it really takes a lot, and sadly, it doesn't happen that often. Recently, however, I did have that moment again as a dear friend of mine from the MIT passed me information about the fantastic I/O Brush. I have managed to get hold of a video, explaining how it works so without further ado: let's see if you have the same reaction as I did when I saw this ..

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In Search of the Specialist..

Some time ago I wrote about a phenomenon I chose to call I have reportees therefore I am, a way of thinking which is based on the notion that we are more important, or valuable to an organisation the more people we manage. It seems people often counter this fork in their career path - to learn more about their chosen subject area (and become a specialist) or to move into a role with more people management responsibilities instead. For some warped reason the latter is invariably more appreciated and better paid, than the former.

However, what most businesses need is not more generalist manager-types with a dwindling understanding of their field as their knowledge is gradually tweaked in favour of an increasing number of management courses. Thus, it is very possible to end up a manager with very little or no clue of the specialism of the individuals one is managing. To me that is the recipe for bad managers, but it is also the recipe for an increasing amount of overhead costs and waste within a company, when more and more individuals are not concerned with generating income for the company, but simply adding to the cost of overhead. Or as Jeremy puts it in his comment to the most excellent post on How not to lead geeks :

The problem isn’t bad management, it’s the whole concept of management: the idea that decision making can be separated from the actual work. It’s ludicrous when you think about it, and the whole mythos of the managerial class is to give us the illusion that management is adding value..

A pretty damning comment, but I quote it again because it hits the nail on the head. Why is it that being a specialist is equated to being a grunt? That one is not rewarded for excelling in doing one's job, but according to the number of people one manages? Why is managing people more attractive rather than being a really good [insert career here] - is it really all about money or is it that it gives us more power, makes us feel more important?

In fact I believe the conversation needs to move on further than that. It comes down to our definitions of what makes a generalist and a specialist. It is often thought that a generalist knows a little about a lot of things, but not a lot about anything and that the specialist often knows a lot about a particular subject and to the detriment of seeing the big picture. The accepted truth seems to be that you need both in your team and that a 'generalist' manager is what you need to head up the team.

I beg to disagree. In today's increasingly inter-connected world where companies compete tooth and nail with each other to provide better value, more meaningful experiences, better products - none of these can be achieved without both a deeper understanding of the specialism of the company as well as a broader view of how to deliver these benefits to the consumer. To be able to deliver these solutions we not only need to know our own area of specialism intimately and deeply, we equally need to understand how other disciplines are needed to support our own and how all of them working in tandem deliver the superior value our consumers are willing to pay for.

Me, I'm a designer. My specialism lies in not only understanding manufacture, design, materials, art direction, play features (as I design toys), children's psychology, but equally in understanding marketing, communications, business cases, on-line content - you name it. I'm both a generalist and a specialist at the same time. My specialism allows me to add value to the product development process through the knowledge and abilities I bring to it and my generalism allows me to respect, appreciate and better work with specialists from all the other disciplines to make it all come together into an award-winning product. I believe this is valid for any profession, which requires more than one person to deliver the final product.

Why is it then that we still persist with a kind of Fordian view of how to split up the process of adding value into modules, which cannot function on their own, when we should in fact be perfecting our skills, acquiring deeper knowledge of our specialism to continuously strive to become better, more capable and more valuable to the process? Being a generalist only is a cop-out and people who believe they are a generalist are failing to understand where their strengths and talents lie. Or perhaps our job descriptions need updating? In fact, not just the job descriptions, but also our reward structures!

Word of Inspiration

So here we are in June and now exactly a year since I made the voluntary decision to commit myself to coming up with (hopefully!) insightful posts on somewhat regular basis. It has been a year of roller-coaster rides to say the least - in the Autumn I had to relocate to Denmark for 4 months and practically bury myself with work and as a consequence both the frequency and quality of my posts took a tumble. Back in January this year I then went for the bold move of deleting all my less-than-brilliant posts and trying since then to adhere to a strict discipline of content creation. Now of course I'm back in roller coaster land as I'm in the process of changing jobs and consequently as my stress levels have been eking up, my blog posting frequency has been going down. Apologies to all of you for this.

Also this year has been an opportunity to get to know many of you, dear readers and many thanks for all your feedback and supportive comments - it has made a great difference! Thus, below are a set of quotes I find very inspirational myself and wanted to share with you -

• "There is no failure. Only feedback.” - Unknown            
• “The crisis of yesterday is the joke of tomorrow.” - H. G. Wells 
• “A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.” - Hugh Downs             
• “If you’re going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it, you might as well laugh about it now.” - Marie Osmond             
• “The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.” - Unknown             
• “Remember that happiness is a way of travel, not a destination.” - Roy Goodman             
• “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you are right.” - Henry Ford             
• “It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you’re not.” - Unknown             
• “If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.” E. Joseph Cossman             
• “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” - William Shakespeare   
• “Too many people miss the silver lining because they’re expecting gold.” - Maurice Seitter
• “In the long run the pessimist may be proved right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip.” Daniel L. Reardon             
• “Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out.” - John Wooden        
• “Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere”Unknown             
• “One of the secrets of life is to make stepping stones out of stumbling blocks.”- Jack Penn
• “What we see depends mainly on what we look for.” - John Lubbock

For more visit World of Inspiration

 

The Essence of Intelligence is in the Ability to Understand Others

I believe the title is a slight paraphrasing of one of my favourite philosophers: Baruch Spinoza. In it's simplicity it contains a wealth of wisdom and can potentially explain a whole host of different aspects to what it means to be an intelligent human being. We know that albeit animals can feel pain and also learn to avoid situations where previously pain has been experienced, animals are not able to imagine another animal's pain. They may sense it and comfort each other, but prior to an event, they are not able to consider the potential pain they might be inflicting and thus abstain from it on the grounds of compassion for their victim.

Ironically, there are some people out there with similar tendencies. Almost like children, they are blissfully unaware of how their behaviour is perceived by others around them and when things happen to them personally, they behave as if nobody ever, anywhere as experienced something similar. This makes them alone in their suffering, but chances are that in exhibiting this behaviour, they have revealed they are not particularly intelligent either.

Understanding others ultimately allows you to see yourself through the eyes of others and learn about communication, perception, sensitivity, politeness, receptiveness, supportiveness, being a good lover, partner, friend, employee, citizen - you name it. These are difficult subjects to explain and sometimes even harder to define, why?, because the definitions in some cases vary from person to person or situation to situation. It is this discrepancy which makes it impossible to read up all the definitions in a book in advance and go about one's life adhering to one rigid set of behaviours, oblivious to the changing needs of the surrounding world.

It is true that in some cases religion and ethics can provide useful guidelines, but without applying some very careful thought of our own to these matters, and above all compassion - which is ultimately what the ability to understand others is all about, our behaviours become hollow and perhaps even judgemental to others. In that scenario religion, regardless of type, becomes an instrument of oppression, judgement, separation - rather than a tool to make the world a better place.

Understanding others means we put ourselves in their situation, try to understand what led them to behaving like they do, being where they are and rather than saying - ah, it's because they are stupid, or poor or whatever - it is a genuine realisation of the difficulty of life and often a realisation of our own fortune. People who wish they were someone else have no idea what that person has gone through and thus no appreciation for their own accomplishments either.

Treat others as you wish to be treated yourself is a timely reminder of the value of compassion and understanding others and the importance of a conscience. Western culture has put an enormous emphasis on understanding ourselves through psychology, self-help and through the continuous emphasis on the importance of material wealth we have began to practically obsess about ourselves, to the detriment of our understanding of others. There doesn't seem to be a place for it - we are too busy looking after number one. What we don't realise is the enormous influence our own behaviour has on the surroundings, the people we meet and the situations we find ourselves in. If we can instead apply a fraction of our mind to trying to understand others, their needs, being compassionate in our approach, mindful in our behaviour we can truly call ourselves intelligent and ultimately also successful.

None of Us Are as Smart as All of Us

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will have noticed that I regularly comment on business, creativity and how to manage the two. Why? Mainly because as a designer I refuse to accept the status-quo and like to challenge things, and secondly because too much management invariably kills creativity.

Some time ago I wrote about the importance of catalysts in my post on the Conditions for Thriving Innovation and although catalysts sounds like a fancy title, essentially they are people who like to work together, network across departments and find joy in creating unusual connections between things, people and situations. They make stuff happen. And they are immensely rare in the grand scheme of things, because the way most businesses operate - it is a skill which is not valued or recognised much in the way our roles are organised.

Invariably what happens is that a business, regardless of industry, will identify a selection of goals to strive towards, devise a set of projects that supposedly will take them there and then staff the projects accordingly. Sounds straightforward enough. What goes wrong is that these projects invariably end up being organised according to departments and department superstructures instead of being staffed with a holistic idea in mind (because departments are easier to manage and keep track of their deliverables than a mixed bunch of people representing a range of different departments and disciplines) and there are little or no initiatives to bridge it all together, to make things more efficient, transparent and effective.

Instead turf wars develop between departments and disciplines, things get split up according to department lines rather than logic and ultimately people get frustrated because those who do realise the value of collaboration aren't rewarded for their efforts and those who dig their heels in get away with it, because being a good networker and collaborator is seldom part of anyone's job description or bonus scheme, but makes for infinitely more smooth dealings with people if you come across one. Companies sometimes try to remedy this with frequent organisational reshuffles, but after the initial upheaval, the dust settles very quickly and things return to the old ways if there are no mechanisms in place to support and encourage a different way or working.

People who are kind and compassionate have great pre-requisites for being good collaborators. They do things not for selfish reasons, but because they genuinely want to improve things. Thus the objection of a colleague is an opportunity in disguise to learn more about how this person would like to change the situation/idea to make it better. People who can set aside their selfish pride and strive to listen and take on board the criticism with an genuine desire to use it to improve things can achieve not only great things, but also unprecedented support and commitment from their colleagues. People want to help when they feel they are listened to, not taken advantage of.

This is where management could make a real difference. Instead of championing a command-and-control culture completely out of date with today's increasingly interconnected, interdependent world it should empower people to decide for themselves, wherever possible, what is the best way to react or solve a problem. Or as Jeremy puts it in his comment to the most excellent post on How not to lead geeks :

The problem isn’t bad management, it’s the whole concept of management: the idea that decision making can be separated from the actual work. It’s ludicrous when you think about it, and the whole mythos of the managerial class is to give us the illusion that management is adding value. The problems with management are the same problems in any organization hierarchically structured where information flows between relatively more powerful and relatively less powerful people - because the jobs are on the line, and management is always playing catch up to the true situational picture, managers are simply told whatever they need to hear in order not to be fired much of the time. There’s a delay involved as well as a fundamental case of rose-colored glasses. It’s easy to see why somebody like Ken Lay could argue he didn’t know what was going on - in fact, I fail to see how any manager who isn’t getting his hands dirty on a project could possibly claim a knowledge of the project sufficient to judge it.

So there we are - working together beyond the lines of department structures and locations can add perspective, meaning and value to almost everything we do. Moreover, things will have more impact and we find them more meaningful too, but it requires us to challenge things, structures, habits 'we've always done it like this..', use our own initiative and determination to find those across the organisation, who can bring valuable insights, experience and ideas to anything you are working on and make it stronger. The joy of seeing the results is half of the joy of working together.