Chaordic Mind

“We can only lose what we cling to!”
– Buddha

Many of us live by a set of beliefs accumulated over the course of our lifetime.  We use these rules to navigate the possibilities of life.  Some of them are positive rules that save us (e.g. “Don’t touch a hot stove”) but some of them are limiting (e.g. “I can’t do it.  It’s too hard”).  Sometimes we have to stop and ask ourselves if the limitations in our life are self-imposed or actual.  I believe that many times the rules by which we find ourselves constrained are self-imposed.

When life appears to be unfair, when bad things happen to good people, this is when you have the opportunity to give up or to change the rules of the game.  It’s these game changing moves that enable you to conquer your fears in new and creative ways.  You can change the rules of the game in several ways, here are but a few:

1. Change your beliefs: I live by the mantra that “nothing is impossible, the impossible just takes longer.”  Why is it that we limit ourselves by what we think is impossible?  Why do we obey the rules of our belief when our opponent does not?  Why is it that we enable others to walk over us?  Only by changing your belief can you break down the barriers that you have constructed and consider the possibility of out-of-the-box innovation.
2. Change the rules: In life many of us abide by a path that we feel has been laid our for us or is predestined to occur.  We get frustrated when we feel deviations from that path in the same way we feel the rumble strip on the edge of the road.  These path barriers move us in a direction that we “feel” is the “right path.”  We cling to our path because it has been a part of us for so many years.  Only when you accept variance in your path are you free and open to new possibilities.  By accepting change and alternative outcomes we free ourselves to new futures and alternative happiness.

When we stop clinging to self-imposed beliefs and prescriptive paths we free within ourselves the possibility of the impossible.

Here are a few new rules that you may want to consider.

1. “Be the change you want to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi
2. Do Something
3. “To thine own self be true.” – Shakespeare
4. Our lives are the stories we tell ourselves.
5. Don’t live by anyone else’s rules, go make your own.

“That which does not kill me makes me stronger” (or “Quod non me destruit, me nutrit” in Latin)
– Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1888
German philosopher (1844 – 1900)

In becoming fearless, you must remember that setbacks are not bad, they only strengthen you.  These moments of fear, however real and physical, can be leveraged in the same way that martial artists leverage the weight of their opponent against them.  If you look at an event as a negative impact that cannot be overcome you have lost.  The moment you recognize the glass is still have full you have overcome that fear and are reborn as a soldier of positive thought.

Nietzsche was correct in that hard times make us stronger individuals that are better able to navigate the treacherous waters ahead.  No doubt there will be high and low points in your life, but what makes you who you are is how you react to these highs and lows in life.  Be humble during the high points and strong during the low points.

“We must travel in the direction of our fear.”
–John Berryman

If you only knew me 15 years ago.  In high school I took a required class called “speech.”  Each student needed to stand up and give a 1 minute talk, then 2 minutes, then 5, then 10, then a 30 minute talk over the course of the semester.  If you could not fill the time with words you simply had to stand there for your allotted time.

According to the Book of Lists the fear of public speaking ranks number one in the minds of the majority of people. Far above the fear of death and disease, comes the fear of standing in front of a crowd.  I remember standing in front of the class, mortified of public speaking, and having nothing to say to fill my time.

If you had told me then that my day job would involve presenting on stage for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, I would have said you’re insane.  I remember one day realizing that I needed to round out my skills by confronting those that I feared most (and did poorly).  I applied to as many conferences as I could and eventually some accepted me (call it the law of numbers).  The first few presentations were bad, but facing my fear helped me erode it.

A few years later, I was swapping entertainment and public speaking tips with friends and could not wait to get on stage again.  Today, you can put me in front of a crowd and I’ll talk continuously until you pull me off and send me home.  I’ll talk your ear off if you listen long enough.  I confronted my fear and turned it into a profession.

When you fear something, face it head on.  Do not give in.  Do not run from it.  Travel in the direction of it.

Fearless is an interesting word, for in fact, in being fearless you are not without fear, rather you are withstanding fear. You are moving forward in spite of it. Writing a very short story requires a degree of fearlessness, and I think reading one does also. I have deep respect for the very short story for many reasons, perhaps most profoundly for its fearlessness.
–Meredith Pignon

One of the things about becoming fearless is embracing your fears and adjusting to them.  If your fear is writing then you should do it more and more until you think of it as an extension of your being.  If your new fear is getting published you need to do it more and more (even if just on your blog) so you can get over the feeling of fear associated with doing something new.

Remember buying your first house?  Remember buying your second?  Wasn’t it so much easier after you had been through the unknown once?  Easier that you had mapped out and faced those fears head on.  When it is the unknown that drives your fear, the way to overcome it is to make the unknown known.

My family and I have been going through some turmoil.  I am confident we will prevail.  I know things will get better soon and wounds will heal.  I know that “this too shall pass.”

A family member sent me an email today reminding me that whatever is happening now is not nearly the bottom.  I think of those families mourning over the loss of loved ones on 9/11 and the hard times that existed for all those who came before us.  I feel comforted by the fact that I am truly standing on the shoulders of giants.

Here is the memory (names removed or changed to protect their identity):

When things seem at their worst remember your forebears.  I’m thinking of your grandfather and great grandfather.  Your great grandfather was born in 1882 and fought in World War I.   He became very well to do running a garage in Czernowitz which changed from Austro-Hungary to Romania in his youth. The country changed and the language and government changed. From straight-laced Austria to a country where baksheesh or bribery ruled.  In 1941, when he 54, the Russians came and in two days took over all the businesses. Your great grandfather gave them the key to his shop and his home and the entire family left on two days notice with only a suitcase.

Your grandfather who was drafted into the Romanian army spent the war in an American POW camp after being wounded.  My mother did not know where he was until after the war ended.  To find him she had to walk to Linz over the Alps in the winter — crossing the border without papers from Germany to find the Red Cross headquarters that listed POWs.

When he cam back we were all on welfare from 1945 to 1952.  In Germany people on welfare have to work — his job in winter and summer was to dig up the roots of huge trees that were destroyed during the bombing of Kassel. We all lived in one room in the home of a farmer who was ordered by the town to take in one refugee family. The bathroom was an outhouse.

In 1952, my father was 39 when we came to the US — we were sponsored by a Ukrainian family.  He had to work at Domino Sugar hauling 50 – 100 bags of sugar for 40 hours a week — they told him he could not get a raise because he did not speak English.  We all lived in a two rooms with no heat or hot water — a coldwater flat.  We thought we were lucky because we had an inside bathroom for the first time and did not have to use the toilet in the hallway shared by 4 other families.

In 9 years we owned a house in Queens and he was well on his way to a BA from the local college.  He worked as a senior structural checker whose meticulously drafted plans were used for hugh earth moving machines in Chile and Arizona and everywhere huge mining complexes were build.  His disappointment in life was that he could not become a social worker and journalist — one because of the pay and the other because none of us have figured out how to write something to get published.

So remember — when you think things are tough — you come from tough people who survived war and famine; people who lost home and country and were refugees and didn’t know the language.  And they made it to the next job.

What is the difference between competence and experience within regulatory compliance?  Although these two terms are used synonymously the difference is between potential and actual ability.  Competence is a general characteristic while experience implies a deep understanding.  The difference between these two terms defines the conversation one will have about any topic.

(In German there are two different verbs for “to know”: kennen and wissen.  In German, kennen means “to know, be familiar with” and wissen means “to know a fact, know when/how.”  I feel this definition applies transitively to the English words: competence and experience.)

Competence

Many people have competence of an industry that they obtain from reading about it from various sources: news papers, conversations, and other anecdotal evidence. There are many sources to obtain information: newspapers, blogs, and our mind.  This information is more conjecture than fact.  I call these people analysts.

These individuals will converse about regulatory compliance the way that I converse about the global economy.  Sure I can talk about credit default swaps, the netting effect of them, the IMF, and trade defects around the world, but know better than to try running the Federal Reserve.

Experience

Those who have actual experience in a subject tend to talk about it in concrete terms and use statistics to back up their facts.  They discuss concepts and can apply actual evidence to support them.  They know enough about a topic to dive deep into the details instead of staying with surface level conversations.

An experienced individual has researched, installed/implemented, and taught a topic for a prolonged period of time.  These individuals have a deep understanding of the topic as well as the different exceptions and nuances to it.

The Problem with Experience

I’ve always said, “Those who know cannot always speak, and those who do rarely know the details, wherein lies the devil of truth.”  Do you work in an industry where you cannot divulge everything you know?

Say you are a police officer who understands who crime is committed and where the most dangerous parts of the city are.  You know this because you’ve walked the streets, experienced the crimes, interviewed the criminals, and participate in several criminal raids.  Compare that level of experience with someone who reads the published crime statistics or the front page of a newspaper.  That’s experience vs competence.

The problem is that the police officer cannot always divulge details of what they know.  One of the things I’ve learned about any topic or organization is that the more you know the more you realize you are yet to learn.

How we get our news

Combine this surface level awareness of a topic with the way in which news is currently reported.  I had lunch the other day with a reporter who told me that he published 2-3 stories a day, and many of his colleagues publish 5-7 stories a day.

Wow!  I asked how he is able to research, verify facts, identify sources, and really get to the heart of the story.  “We don’t,” he said, “many times we look at other publications such as the Financial Times or Associated Press and write a story based on that information.”  And this is how we get our news.

I once debated for several months about regulatory compliance with a well known and respected analyst.  After sitting down and discussing the topic in person for an hour he said to me, “thanks, I didn’t know that [about the topic].  Most of my information came from [another analyst].”

(That being said, there are many well respected reporters and analysts who do research every story and who do have credible conversations with experienced sources.  Sadly, there are not enough of these out there.)

Where is the Truth?

I’m sometimes shocked how hard it is for truth to swim upstream against the flow of misinformation.  The recent iPhone SMS vulnerability was publicly disclosed at a conference a few months back.  Unfortunately the reporter covering the story misquoted the researchers (Collin Mulliner and Charlie Miller) saying that the vulnerability could be used to take control of the iPhone.  This story was published and syndicated, covered again and again.  The reality is that the researchers could only crash the phone and not actually use the exploit to control the iPhone.

Many times we need to read deeper, talk to the individuals, discuss the topic with others until we find the truth.  Why?

Polarity

The incentive for any writer/speaker is always page views and eyeball imprints.  How does one get people to read their content?  Polarize the issue!  I cannot tell you the number of articles I’ve read that start out with outlandish claims, only to have the writer interviewed later and then caveat their message.

Making grandiose claims, especially those that challenge the current hegemony and support an orthogonal ideology, will in fact get people to read your stuff.  Claiming that the world is ending will make people ask why.  Trying to explain the difference between nuances of a topic can put people to sleep.

Conclusion

I wish that those with competence would reach out to those with experience to better their argument.  I wish that reporters and especially analysts would stop talking to each other and start looking at the data and interviewing those who have experience.

I also wish that those with experience could disclose more of what they know.  The tides are changing and more data is being released, but what the analysts will do with this data is still unknown.

Have you ever walked down the street and looked up to see young 20-somethings wearing the same blue or green or logo-ed t-shirt on each of the four street corners, holding clip boards and asking you to donate money to save the underprivileged peoples/animals of somewhere?  Yeah, they smile and time their sidewalk elevator pitch just right so they can finish the last word as you maneuver around them.

I really hate the idea that just because someone it trying to save the pandas or the water supply that I should give my credit card number, expiration date, name, and zip code to a complete stranger.  If the people are legitimate members of the organization they claim to be, then the transaction is relatively safe.  But if some teenager looking to swipe a few credit card numbers decides to sport a wilderness t-shirt and a clip board — well, it turns into a 419-scammers wet dream.

I sometimes want to tell these people to go get a job and donate the money they make from that job to their cause of choice.  I don’t know anyone who gives their credit card number out on the street and so employing these volunteers in actual paying jobs seems to have a higher ROI than them standing there giving me the guilt trip.

I held that view until I realized that they are not looking for money as much as they are looking for members.  And not just any member, but one that is cares enough for their cause to give their credit card out on the street to someone they do not know.  These are your core, life-long supporting members folks!  These are members who will not just donate the $25 there on the spot, but will probably donate to the cause for the rest of their life – and at higher monetary levels.

Since it’s the connection they want, not so much your money, I think they should be asking for your name and address instead of just money.  They want members they can send targeted requests to for the rest of their lives.  If they asked for monetary donations and contact information it would be even better.  Strangely, I’ve never spoken to one of these volunteers who wanted anything other than my credit card.  They should at least take my name and number so they can have a point of contact.

If what they want is a touch point then why not collect contact information as well as credit card numbers?

In conversations with people I often find myself tangenting from the topic of security to that of organizational structure.  I am not referring to the hierarchical structure that exists in many businesses, but instead something closer to the chaordic structure that Dee Hock had in mind when he formed VISA.

When I start the conversation about organizational structure, it has to start by tearing down the traditional frameworks and models that exist in peoples’ heads.  Most people think that organization works best in a top-down system where everyone knows their role and responsibility, but as Dee Hock mentioned in an interview, this is not how organisms exist, evolve, and more importantly survive!

Do we really think that maximum output originates from top-down commands vs organic collaboration?  You see, everything is live is about trade-offs and this is one such event.  In a top-down social structure we tend to get very predictable and specific, let limited, results. For many people who like to measure progress this is an easy metric to put in place.  The problem with this structure is the death rate of the organism, something companies call turnover of employees.  The death rate, or turnover, in companies is sometimes higher than it needs to be because people often feel stifled by their inability to affect change within the organization.

Imagine if you needed to issue a command every time you wanted your heart to beat.  Of course, such an organism would not last long less they forget or fall asleep and stop breathing.  Instead, we look to a more organic collaboration that works much like the autonomic nervous system.  With this system, the body has created a framework for the individual components and organs that make up the body to participate in a much greater process.  There is a very small barrier to entry for these organs to participate and each only contributes a small amount but results in the greater gestalt of ones health.

In an organic organizational structure we tend to get more networked and integrated communication and collaboration. The down side of this is that the output of this group is not as easily measured and not nearly as predictable.  The organic structure requires one to stop thinking in terms of processes and start thinking in terms of frameworks.

A process is a documented, repeatable, series of events.  A process is something that can be tasked out and completed in a measured amount of time.  On the other hand, a framework works as an incubation unit for ideas.  It provides the home, resources, and food for ideas to grow and evolve, as well as a space for individuals to collaborate.  A framework has the potential for generating much higher output than any one process, but to achieve this requires a change in the way we foster and grow organizations.  The required change is that companies stop thinking about growing organizational charts and start growing individuals.  The shift implies a movement away from Procrustean box and towards embracing the social collaboration ether around us.

What really is a framework?

A framework is a platform that enables content creation and collaboration.  Wikipedia, YouTube, and CraigsList never made it big because a few people decided to, on their own, write an encyclopedia, create videos, or post adds.  Instead these websites became popular because they created a framework for a Do-It-Yourself culture to create the content for them.

Traditional companies such as GE, Microsoft, and Ford Motor company have a hard time embracing the social collaborative framework because the Procrustean boxes already exist.  The question of who “owns” this new “product” begin to emerge.  Does it belong to research and development, marketing, external communications, or sales?

The answer is that a framework belongs to the company and should be a tool that each of these departments utilizes and leverages to the extent they want.  Unfortunately, many times chaordic collaboration falls into the hands of only one of these groups and we see the marketing department creating a social game to promote the brand while the research and development team struggle to create a new product the company can sell. This is the medical equivalent of the digestive system deciding that it controls the autonomic nervous system and hijacking it for a very narrow purpose.

An effective framework should lower the barrier to entry for people to participate, share, and collaborate on information in projects, while keeping the information organized enough to be useful.  These are busy times and we are busy people who don’t want to spend out free time writing an encyclopedia, but we are willing to contribute and correct entries that are of interest to us.

To really view what chaordic development can do by reducing the barrier to participation and opening up the framework of knowledge development, we have the following statistic:

At a rate of 600 words a minute, twenty-four hours a day, a person could read nearly 27,000,000 words in a month. In the month of July 2006, Wikipedia grew by over 30,000,000 words. Given this, it is unlikely for any single reader to read all of Wikipedia’s new content. Reading the current incarnation at that rate would take over two years, and by the time they were done, so much would have changed with the parts they had already read that they would have to start over.

How this impacts every area of your business

What does this mean for my company?  The net-net is that companies need to stop thinking about creating white-papers, marketing materials, and position statements that result in highly polished cannon fodder that nobody ever reads.  Having glossies/slicks in front of your convention booth is par for the course but an entirely necessary evil.  The absence of them implies you have no information, but never have I heard someone say they do anything but throw this material away.

Even if the white-paper you write is highly polished and read by a few people, how much content can you individually create?  Using the Wikipedia statistic above, imagine if you could write 600 words a minute (an impossible feat as that is 10 words a second) for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.  Now imagine that those words you are typing never require editing and are well written (another nearly impossible feat.)  Even then you could not create the content, with the expertise and attention to detail that happens in Wikipedia.

Every minute members of YouTube upload over 13 hours of video.  It would take well over 400 years to view every YouTube video clip.  Even if the majority of that content is nothing but mental fodder, those videos that go viral empower the marketing that drives value in the site.  In addition, YouTube has capitalized on the long-tail approach towards market ownership by building a framework that all segments of the video creation spectrum can participate in.

The next time you decide to create a process, ask yourself if a framework would be a better fit.