Orbiting the Hairball is not Painting by Numbers

I have just finished reading Gordon MacKenzie's 1996 'classic', Orbiting the Giant Hairball and highly recommend you do the same.

Messages

MacKenzie closes with a chapter on painting by numbers.  He talks about the artwork that we are all uniquely able to create with out lives.  On the other hand, social expectations lead us towards filling our canvas with brushstrokes that are only superficially ours - we are lead to follow in the footsteps of others, meeting normalised and derivative ideas of success. It's quite simple, if subtle, but it really made me sit back and take note - it's possible to feel like you're creating something worthwhile, but only realise well down the track that it was nothing of the sort.  It is a little tangential to the book's key points, but I think it's a rather clever metaphor and a good prompt to get out there and do something with what you've just learnt.

The book revolves around the metaphor of the 'hairball' of a (corporate) social environment - 'an entangled pattern of behaviour'. (Interview @Fast Company.)  To maintain vibrancy in this environment we must understand and play off the rules in that space, but keep a sufficient distance to avoid becoming trapped, and losing perspective and the freedom to move.

It's no wonder that government driven by rules and compliance will struggle to find creative, new solutions to deal with shifting issues.

One of MacKenzie's provocative points is that if you're to be creative, you can't know what will eventuate - so focusing on outcomes is counter-productive.

The Book

The book is driven by a series of anecdotes that make it an engaging, light read.

What I love most is the way it's illustrated and presented, with lovely use of sketches and typefaces. It leaves me feeling - nay, demanding! - that more books should be like this. It's made me think about how I present my own thinking as well.  Even if you don't read it, take the chance to pick it up and flick through it.

I will write a longer post soon, synthesising some of my thoughts from the book - about how we think about 'organisations'.  In the meantime, see if you can't find a copy to have a look at.

www.jsbaxter.com.au
@JohnSBaxter

Productivity rediscovered

In parallel with rediscovering how to think, I'm rethinking what it means to be productive.  (This unemployment thing seems to be starting a series...)  It's very much the same theme - let's be less busy, and do stuff better.


I'm thanking the chaos of the Freshly Hacked weekend for this one.  It's amazing on an intensive weekend (like a startup weekend or the design jam that kicked this whole thing off) how chaos and productivity are combined - or at least amazing for someone who aligns productivity and busyness.

Beautiful post on chaos not quite so lovely

The melee


It's not just that chaos promotes creativity, because realistically most of what is achieved, in my experience, is not 'creative'.  Most of the good work is refining, turning the indefinite into definite, synthesising diverse sources into coherent solutions, and diverse voices into a simple message.  A lot of the creation has happened before the weekend, with the backgrounds people bring, and is just teased out.


With a dedicated focus and pressure-cooker time restrictions, prioritisation is ruthless.  Deciding what not to do or include, or when to stop, seems tougher and more important than working out what to do in the first place.  Testing, refining and iteration are more effective ways to chart a course through the chaotic uncertainty than a busily refining linear approach.


Working better


The main message I took is that being productive requires not to work harder, longer, or to do what I'm doing more efficiently - but to work better by doing better things, and doing them properly.


Personally, I need to learn to not just do things that are 'better' themselves, but understanding when to do things, by having a better sense of my mood and motivations.  I also need better focus on what I'm doing, which will hopefully flow on from the first point, so that I can dedicate myself properly the first time.  'Smarter, not harder' - it's not new.


I'm good at planning, and much of the time it's very useful, but it does break down sometimes.  I need to stop finding myself doing things because they're on the todo list, and making the todo list instead match what I should be doing.  When my time was more constrained it seemed to make sense trying to manage my motivation, but in the meantime I've lost some of my ability to listen to it, and with more unstructured time it seems increasingly important to get that back.


I think in part this is because motivation, energy and inspiration are far more important resources than time. Time is handy, but only when these can be applied to it.


Productive chaos


A lot of time is spent chasing false solutions, working unproductively, realising you've just gone way too far, or too far off the mark.  It seems over the course of the weekend that a lot of your time was 'wasted' - but you know that what could have been avoided in hindsight nevertheless needed to happen.  I got home at after midnight on Saturday and spent around three hours doing a presentation that got scrapped, and redone from scratch on Sunday - in about half an hour.  But the final version was so beautiful it hurt, and would never have happened without the first one. (And I'm now a prezi pro, to boot.)


Despite so much time going anywhere but forward, you look back over a weekend and it seems amazing how far you've come.  As it turns out, being really productive is composed mostly of activity that is 'unproductive' itself.




And then, I get back into the real world, and need to make these realisations work for me on an ongoing basis.  It's easy to work differently for a weekend, but hard to effect lasting change.  You'll have to wait and see how that turns out.


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John Baxter
www.jsbaxter.com.au
@JohnSBaxter

Rediscovering thinking

One of the great things about hitting the road again has been rediscovering thinking.

The expectations of working and being productive tend to lump on us the need to be think-doing certain sorts of 'productive' (aka 'busy') things.  For someone who want to get lots of things done this means I'm typically think-doing well beyond 9-5. When you have so little time outside work and life's necessities, you really need to squeeze those last couple of hours a day.  I suspect I'm not the only one who pulls out their phone whenever they have a five minute wait for the tram, so they can cram it with something useful, like checking emails, or twitter, or just mindlessly flicking through notes.

I'm still pretty busy for the time being.  I got back from Adelaide last thing Thursday, barely in time for a full weekend at Freshly Hacked, and there are lots of bits and pieces to get on to. I'm way behind regular things like the news, events, blogging and my emails.  But things are different - I feel more relaxed regardless, I feel like I have time to do things like think.

Having a lot of unstructured time gives everything a different flavour.  Especially when you can't use it for busydoing.  Being on the bike in particular is great for that.  It's always been meditative, but at the moment it is also very productively contemplative - I noted down a couple of thoughts when I stopped every hour or two, not for the sake of doing something, but because the thoughts were worth following up on.  And mostly the sorts of generative, creative or insightful thoughts that busywork prevents you from having.

What I'm getting at is the value of different ways of thinking.  We know we have different personality types, but I haven't really appreciated different ways I myself think in different contexts - probably because of an overvaluation of busythinking.

Even today, on a day of 'doing things' I've taken a much less orchestrated approach.  I'm not doing it very well yet, but I'm learning.  It's never too late!

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John Baxter
@johnsbaxter
www.jsbaxter.com.au

Responsibility in a complex world

Happy Australia Day!  I hope you all survived okay.
Many of you will be familiar with my philosophy on responsibility - essentially that we are responsible to do what we can, whatever that may be.  I like to reflect on this on Australia Day, and what this means as an Australian citizen.

I've been thinking lately about how responsibility and leadership work in a complex world.


Leadership often comes up in discussion of 'Australia' - usually bemoaning a lack thereof.  The leadership we can't see is that from the top.  The sort of nationalism-building narrative Paul Keating might praise, and demand from our political leaders.

ENS

But do we really need more leadership from the top, from a professional politician?


Innovation isn't effectively generated from the top.  The organic mess of local interactions is needed to generate the new ideas and understanding required.  Outside of the usual 'filtering up' philosophy, people study the generation of innovation in distributed systems.


Leadership in distributed systems is much less widely considered, but it's no less important.  Ideas are just potentials until something actually happens as a result, and you need leadership to deliver.  Sometimes you will be able to filter the idea up to someone else to lead - maybe your manager, or theirs.  In a complex world this isn't the best approach. When life gets challenging, the best point of action is likely not the top, but somewhere nearer the source of the idea.  Leadership needs to be distributed too.


And my point?  An increasingly complex world requires distributed innovation and leadership.  A system of distributed leadership requires us all to take responsibility.  Not for playing follow-the-leader with those above us, but for local leadership.


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John Baxter
www.jsbaxter.com.au
@JohnSBaxter

Initiating a personal employment policy

Employment is a tricky beast.  It is weighted against us and our autonomy in many subtle ways.  The world is moving on from oppositional industrial relations.  But the institutions of employment are stronger and more oppressive than any boss’ own authority, and it is the individual that loses out.  This post is about the personal employment policy I am developing - a tool I hope to be a modest first step towards retaking some ground.

The panopticon, a traditional ideal example of institutional oppression



The context - a sick irrigation system



Employers still set the agenda.  It might not be a manager, the CEO, or anyone in between, but nevertheless the institution drives employment arrangements. Everything from your position description to your dress code is likely set before you get the chance to comment.  Within the things you have influence over, there are subtle ways your own decisions are taken away from you, like the relatively sparse information you have about any potential new workplace.



http://informedfarmers.com/irrigation/



Outside any given employer, the broader ecosystem of institutions weights so many of our choices that it takes monumental courage to really stand up for ourselves.  Think about how financial systems, education, and the social status of employment are structured to guide you down certain pathways and into a nice little digestible box we might call a ‘job’.  Think of a river dammed and channelled for productive irrigation - but at the expense of the health of the river itself.





The response - a tool to develop a thriving river



The idea behind an employment policy is that it gives you a bit of solid ground to approach employment relations in a more equal (co-creative) fashion and to help you make better decisions for yourself, rather than simply being presented with an institutions’ preferred option.



Environmental Works Services



It is not about setting yourself up in opposition to an employer, but about being able to come to mutually beneficial arrangements - a healthy ecosystem combining the thriving of the river with the benefits of production.



My current draft policy includes a long-term vision and objectives for my next employment arrangement, including areas I am looking to develop, and the characteristics of employment that I value.  A few different headings, but in essence it is quite simple - feel free to check out my first rough version (Dropbox hosted pdf).

Nevertheless, once refined I think it can be quite powerful.  I expect to trial using it to

• align my short term approach to employment with my own long-term objectives and take a more strategic approach that puts me at the centre, rather than the expectations of other institutions
• articulate these things to help identify opportunities and assess my options
• articulate, negotiate and potentially formalise employment arrangements
• communicate my position to those able to help

The challenge - how to redesign a dam with a whisper

Being something new to me, the idea is to start quite basic and to refine along with my professional adventures.  Once I get comfortable with the policy as a tool it can be updated periodically as things changed, and used to review how well my employment situation meets my needs.

• I would love feedback, but there are so many things worth getting advice on.
• How do other people achieve what I’m aiming for?  Or on reflection, how could you?
• How should I use a tool like this?  Will I scare employers off by seeming too demanding?
• What do you think of the policy, about what should be included or left out, or how it should be presented?

Do comment or contact!  I think tools like this are sorely needed to help people to forge their own paths.  I would love to think that I can refine this approach and be able to share something of value with others.

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John Baxter
www.jsbaxter.com.au

Resolutions

Happy New Year!

Do you do the whole New Year’s Resolutions thing?

I did in 2011, and I am now for 2012.  They worked very well last year.  While they weren’t specific (so I couldn’t tick them off) they were good guidance - they’re probably not what others would think of as resolutions. The key, personally, was not to leave them hanging.  You may know I plan things pretty extensively, so for me it is just a matter of making sure my plans for the year incorporate my resolutions.  You don't need all those details, but here is 2012 resolutions in brief!

Presumably Calvin Hobbes is written by someone but I found this here

Resolutions

·         Pioneer: push myself of the bank of career certainty, make myself into a doer

·         Engage: speak up, connect, and make real what I have learnt

·         Develop broader skills: collaboration, acting in uncertainty, design, entrepreneurial, strategic planning...

·         Develop personally: become a helpful, valuable, connected person, develop niche (value-add) expertise

What to do?

The resolutions are like a vision statement, just with a specific timeframe.  Now you can either state them and hope that by osmosis you’ll do them, or you’ll articulate how this will happen.  I do lots of things by osmosis, but nothing I can identify that matters.  I do have more specific plans around these, but in short, for 2012 I will:

·         Get an online presence that fosters engagement with others, particularly in an area of expertise (e.g. blog on economic thoughts or public admin)

·         Get involved in exciting extra-curricular projects (tbd what exactly), and develop a practice of pursuing my own ideas

·         Find a new workplace that better supports my 2012 objectives

·         Develop my ‘brand’ of expertise in public admin systems (to a point of public recognition, e.g. being invited to present or write)

·         (Ir)regularly review the resolutions to determine whether these actions will get me there

Checking in

In organisations reviews tend to happen when people need to justify doing what they are accountable for.  They don’t happen very often otherwise.  I know I’m not overly accountable for these, but I think reviewing has value for anybody looking to develop and learn from where they’ve been.

I sit down and have an informal review every* quarter against the year’s plan, and reframe activities in the meantime.  This wouldn't normally be documented, but I may post thoughts here if they are of value.

Good luck with your resolutions and intentions for 2012!

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John Baxter
www.jsbaxter.com.au

Some things you might want to start with

Things you may or may not know if we haven’t been in regular contact recently.

Source: from soneone's blog

I have informally given notice of leaving the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office where I work.  I call myself an analyst of public administration systems (public transport) - my title is ‘analyst’.

Am looking to pivot my experience towards something more focused on innovation and understanding how to manage systems, particularly systems of public administration (e.g. regulation, social services), to deal with what the future will be throwing at us.  Particularly interested in design-focused innovation types like TACSI.  So yes, I’m looking for work!

Have been inspired by some of my recent experiences like the global sustainability jam, and a few others that I’ll look to post about over the next couple of months...

Am trained in literature and mathematics, and have a particularly analytical approach to understanding systems.  I’d be suited to economics, if only economic theory wasn’t so void of accuracy or moral value - soapbox posts to come on this no doubt (though I’m thinking of a separate blog along the lines of Economic Philosopher - how’s the ring?)

Currently live in Melbourne, but I'm not wedded to any location.

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John Baxter
www.jsbaxter.com.au