project thinking from mind to management
Media reporting is still woeful. So here are a few links to sites offering better insight. Links to data embedded in graphics {here}
Dr John Campbell 5 min interview {here}
Additional info for clinically vulnerable {here}
KBO as Churchill would have said
Podcast appearance here. My thanks to Project Chatter. And to Paul Goodge, who never disappoints.
I like to think the thread of my argument is consistent. I like to think my research, consulting, and personal perspectives align. The shared discussion in this podcast was enlightening for me. I make no claims to philosophical expertise, more amateur curiosity, but I have loved gaining new insight from the little I have so far grasped. I still have to pinch myself that I get to say this stuff out loud. And in the company of such great people.
We talk in this podcast of perspectival challenge. Of communication. And of boundary lines. Over the weekend I have pushed at a few more of my own. I must admit from my first visit this weekend to Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, it has me hooked. It’s a tough read. Immediately challenging, to even the few perspectives I thought I’d settled upon. Maybe all.
No way I can offer anything meaningful yet. It’s taken me two days just to grasp the outline of his Being and Time 1927 thesis. Only reading in detail the introduction and chapter one…and only then with regular visits to Herbert Dreyfus to steer me through {here} 🤯
But he’s making much of boundaries I didn’t even think to ask were there…
I hope you check out the podcast. And that the conversation started continues and expands anon.
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My meditative practice this morning turned into a lingering abstraction over breakfast. A trap of thought I needed to write down in order to unwind. As a release of tension, or as indigestion. Both may suit. Consider this a musing. A diary entry or placeholder. A journal entry that escaped.
That he was almost right. Almost complete. But his schema fails at the boundary cases of his paradigm. Space and time, or more correctly spacetime.
The Big Bang sits as a beginning. A paradigm that sits within itself. From which spacetime emerges and is contained. It is the beginning of change and of matter. Dynamics. The temporary. The paradigm of the transitional.
Physics now wrestling with the remainder. The parts of the indivisible whole that remained when we categorised what is beyond categorical. The whole. Or the hole. The subset of a meta physics, that which has relative place in time.
Infinities of possibility. Itself an analogy of the paradigm within which we are trapped. A hint at the boundary case we cannot escape. But within which we are thereby condemned to have or to be.
To even ask what is beyond is to fall back into the trap. To not ask is to be blind to possibility. To ask what sits amidst us in the dark. Or what pulls our light in. Or what is parallel to all universal norms. All notional paradigms each informed by the limitations of our constraints. Of course we fall with Newton. A course outlined by Galileo. Our relativity necessarily coordinate and squared. Why would subatomic reality care for our boundary case of space and time? Revealing one or other but never both. The coordinate translation is our prison. And ours alone.
But that is fine to work with. I’m not sure I understand the fundamentals of anything at these extremes. Nor is it my place in space or time to download all preexisting code and add a few lines of my own. I’ve tried, and failed – so far. I’m asking much more limited sets of questions. Contained within a prison of one mind, amidst a sea of others. Each translating one to another our singular experience in shared space but across a human expansion beyond one experiential time. A unique gift to one repeating closed system that connects to others. By memory and abstraction. Change is our construct. Whether intended or not. I’m just asking the simple questions within that one paradigm.
And with that thought I feel ready to spend a day or two with Heidegger, Vygotsky, Popper, and Jasper. Starting with Being and Time. And the pollution of all these musings I have uttered, which I now need to unwind.
The weekend starts here. Last weekend was all flu jabs and Moderna boosters, grumps and study deadlines looming. This weekend starts with new business about to begin, all university deadlines met with my best efforts offered, and a really enjoyable “riffing” session via Project Chatter today (recorded episode will be out on Monday).
I was pretty excited but nervous before my podcast today. In a good way. My normal momentary doubt, not really sure which way the discussion would go, knowing I would need to be on my game to keep up, but excited to be involved. For me that means I am in the right place – difficult but potentially expansive. No better feeling than contributing to a shared dialogue that is bigger than any one person. Especially among people I admire, who I have listened to extensively, and remain a fan. {Discussion link will appear here}
After all that I am feeling revved up but mindful, and glad for a quiet few days to regroup. After 637 days in lockdown, what does a quiet day look like? Watching lectures, reading, and listening to podcasts is not everyone’s idea of downtime. But it works for me.
My latest binge watch in a long list of new subject heroes is Dave Snowden. I heard him on a Rebel Wisdom podcast a few weeks ago {here}. I found out today he has also been a guest on Project Chatter {here}. It’s a brilliant episode – one of the few I missed – one I will be watching again. His insight is exceptional, and as an influencer of the great and the good he has authoritative wisdom to impart – check out his European Union Publication “field guide for decision makers” {here} and wider consulting and blog {here}. Academic breadth, business acumen, and an engaging speaker. I am already a big fan.
I wrote these notes in preparation for my 3 minute cameo.
The Greek word analogy means ‘proportion’, e.g., 2 is to 4 as 4 is to 8. Electrons and nucleus of an atom are related much as the planets are related to the sun. The analogy of analogy I offered is that it is like a zip-file of code passing from one closed system of consciousness to the next.
That is what we humans do. We symbolise and abstractly recreate what our senses have offered. We perceive. We reformulate. We connect these abstractions. Approximate reality. This is how we think. How we communicate. And by both, we can collectively intend change.
Analogies do not help us explain projects. The notion of a project is an analogy. Analogous to the very fabric of what our projects are. Intended change. We approximate the complexity of nature, in attempt to understand change. We want to understand change because we can then influence it. We intend change, and by our shared approximations of reality attempt to control the change as we intend it.
This presents limitations. We cannot hope to receive and comprehend all by this summary. And we can only hope to summarise what we comprehend. Erroneous misunderstanding sits at every level of such conversion.
Analogy, metaphor, model, and theory each work well in describing intended change. Each is proportionally relative, limited by the range of our senses, perspectival and therefore compromised by the context of those observing it.
The notion of organisations being served by projects is also I think the wrong way around. Organisations are convenient and efficient means of putting ordered resource to work on bigger change. We can define smaller projects to reorganise that temporary organisational structure. Organisations are objectively bound. A legal convenience. They enable external processes, itself a transition state or change. Much as we can become the agent to change, biologically bound, and singularly legally culpable. Organisations are therefore the servant, not the masters of change.
I propose we change the narrative accordingly. The stories we tell enable us to be. They best approximate the processes of change we intend. Which is to the core of what it is to become the ever better contributor to the human project.
Tomorrow morning I attend a podcast with Project Chatter to discuss philosophy and if/how it applies to projects. This warms me up nicely for the dialogue to come. (Paul Goodge and Dale Fung).
| Greek ‘proportion’ | 2 is to 4 as 4 is to 8. | electrons nucleus atom as planets are to the sun. |
| perceive symbolise reformulate connect extract vs abstractions abstractly recreate | Communication is abstract | |
| Encoding | Modelling creating schema | Analogy as zip-file of code |
| IN: We only receive and comprehend a summary of reality OUT: We can only hope to summarise what we comprehend | ||
| a project analogy Intended change | Analogy Metaphor Model theory | proportionally relative sensorially bound perspectival |
| the organisation an analogy legal convenience | ordered resource process facilitators | Process Analogy of steps or change |
| Organisations are therefore the servant not the masters of change | ||
| change the narrative intended change at all scales core of what we are |
vulnerable please note…vaccine protection is not assured
Given the impending UK lockdown return and interim announcements today, it can surely only be a matter of time before someone finally starts warning the most vulnerable not to assume they are protected by the vaccine.
{Here} I am again linking the detailed account of one tragedy from misplaced assumptions of protection.
I am also repeating below a post I initially put on LinkedIn in the summer. PLEASE heed these warnings, and make sure those potentially effected are taking appropriate mitigating measures.
These recommendations landed on HM Government’s doorstep yesterday morning.
Recommendations – meaning they reflect what is not yet in place – including no meaningful guidance to the health professionals we are being directed to…
Presented today by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Vulnerable Groups to Pandemics. What I enclose below is part of the APPG letter, sent by Lord Mendelsohn to Nadine Dorries MP, as ministerial lead on vulnerable groups.
Your personal decision-making, and the decision-making being made on your behalf, should be cognisant of what this means in the here and now.
My LinkedIn post here
All Party Parliamentary Group open letter to government (four months ago). Although their own website suggests little activity since.
Not my story. Not my newspaper. But it is the warning no one seems to want to know.
Check whether you are protected. Don’t assume.
Maybe Boris can address this 300,000+ people problem…
A few quiet days post vaccines is a minimal price to pay for some added protection in casa Beardall. Essay writing and research limping along. Here is one part of a question (with only 750 words permitted) which seems nicely appropriate, all things considered:
Steven travels a short distance to a shop and then realises he doesn’t have a face mask, although current guidelines state that it is compulsory to wear in the shop. He feels a strong uncomfortable tension between going inside anyway and returning home to get a mask, but eventually he decides to go inside anyway. Subsequently he decides to stop wearing masks so often and does not feel bad about it. Use social psychology theory to explain to Steven why he might feel and behave this way.
Ongoing essay
I will blog about this at a later date, because the wider subject matter here is fascinating and relevant to much besides. I would not give it justice today. Plus, I suspect it would be bad form to present too much on live and graded homework.
Instead, a little mindfulness share. Day 6 of advent, and this note is one of those I remember through the year and seems to grow in resonance each advent.
With jabs and fevers on the wain, maybe I’m started to feel a hint of Christmas. Back with more cheer tomorrow.
If England had won the European Cup Final in 2020, people may well have died. So says the findings of the Baroness Louise Casey report into the events surrounding England fans shameful scenes around Wembley stadium last year. BBC article here. What a sentiment that is. Conclusions based upon “up to 6,000 people planning to storm the stadium at full-time to celebrate as the gates opened”.
The report suggests there were preparation failures. Failure to plan for “foreseeable risk”. Indications that additional strain on resources from Covid19 related issues played a role. But ultimately concluding that a large number of people’s behaviours were fuelled via externally sourced chemicals (alcohol and cocaine I assume), not internally generated excitement for an event. No great surprise there, perhaps. At least not to anyone who has visibility of what normal is deemed to be for many revellers in 21st Century Britain.
The report’s recommendations are mainly behaviourally focused:
My own view on these recommendations is they represent a misunderstanding of social psychology. They also mistake unpredictability of behaviours and the possibility of control. In this mis-placed behavioural assessment, I think we just invite rhetoric without real change. Much as other reports into other incidents fall into this same trap.
Three of these recommendations are based upon the temporal interface between prior planning and real-time adaptability. Visibility of a plan is best supported by the shared nature of its creation. This is communication in advance, the sharing of expected range of possible outcomes, and the collaborative nature of what is to be implemented. The empowerment element here then offers a change to the constraints, or better awareness of what they are, and what the systems of control are thereby intended to manage.
But none of these measures are relevant unless the planning is backed up by training and practical empowerments at ground level in real time. This is what the High Reliability Organisation (HRO) reflects. Increased visibility of the bigger picture based upon clarity of goals, clarity of roles and responsibility, and empowerment of those closest to the situation to act. It is also empowerment to act whilst accountability remains at the senior positions that have overseen the development of both plan and the control environment that contain all. Itself an expectation on leadership to serve, be authoritative rather than just have authority, and a shared understanding that pushing upwards rather than demanding more downwards, requires more understanding of layers of leadership intent on serving, not being served.
The “sea-change of attitude” of fans is a nonsense. It is a wishful remark with no actionable end. The only attitude that can be managed is the attitude of authority to be more cohesive, collaborative, and accountable for the functionality of control. I am all for addressing wider changes of attitude. But this is a societal level aim, and cannot possibly be targeted simply in the name of an event.
These same sentiments can be examined at other scales. I look at the Grenfell aftermath with the same concerns for what is now being challenged. I look at the sad, sad, story of Arthur Labingo-Hughes. Sitting alongside a ridiculous fiasco of failed safety controls behind Alec Baldwin’s “it just went off in my hand, guv” defence.
We can always find someone or something to blame. But for me we keep coming back to a failure of control. A failure to adequately contain, and the permission of authority to look away. Not because of the event, but because of the manner of constraint, empowerment, colloquial interest, and evasion of accountability by those not motivated to think beyond themselves.
Every single one of us fails this test each time we look to an individual entity to shoulder the blame. If we are serious about a “sea-change of attitude” that puts us all in the frame.
I think we should be expecting more challenge to the infrastructure of control, when it is shown to have failed. Otherwise, what trust should we have that controls are now better placed to adapt. We should be asking “what is now different” so that it will be better contained, when it inevitably happens again…
Here is an excellent summary of current guess work regarding the soon to be globally dominant variant of SARS-Covid 19. This is Dr. John Campbell again, making good use of the scientific community to reflect on immediate knowns and unknowns. In summary
Watch the link I attached for the more technical and expert view.
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I am suddenly reminded of the War of Worlds ending. HG Wells, 1897. Plus The Matrix observation that suggests we humans behave more like a virus than we do other animals. If this virus wants to co-exist its going to have to find a way to keep us healthy – maybe omicron is that move. Seems a reasonable message from the planet to us too.
Did you know mega comes from omega, to mean large? In Ancient Greek, omega and omicron both sounded the same when spoken, but the letters O, o (omicron) and Ω, ω (omega) represented small and large, respectively (source here). Perhaps our earth crisis is our omega yet to face, once our omicron is resolved.
