Friday, 14 March 2003

Converting Leaders OK, now to what I was going to write about tonight. Yup, the red wine (Alkoomi 99 Cabernet Sauvignon) has kicked in, I hit terminal tiredness a while back, so there's no holding me back. Now, if y'all will excuse the rather deep nesting, Joi Ito posted this comment on the Dee Hock email I mentioned last night. He quoted part of Sébastien Paquet's entry The Challenge of Converting Leaders. Go read the whole thing; it's not long. Joi quoted this fragment: Reading this helped me pin down precisely what makes me uneasy about David and Doc's World of Ends piece. They're trying to do exactly that, make current executives and the ilk streamline themselves, instead of targeting, giving hope to, and helping organize those who have little to lose. I suspect that the attitude shift that David and Doc are hoping for is only going to materialize once this groundwork alternative organization effort is well underway and pretty much everybody has woken up and smelled the coffee. Now, Sébastien actually refers to the same bit of Dee Hock's email that I quoted. Joi responded with: Yes... my precious... This is what I was trying to talk about in my entry about the lust for power. It is really difficult to ask the people who have power to give it up. Even if they are your friends. Telling them may even tip them off to your strategy and allow them to more easily resist it. How do you organize a more grassroots, "lets just get on with it" attitude? It is important to have a message and a framework that is easy to understand, but we have to make sure that we target the people and empower the people instead of targeting power and trying unpower them. (Not trying to say here that World of Ends is wrong. It is just that some people are asking, "who are you talking to?") Now, this I can absolutely relate to. I've seen it on a small scale, seen it fail to happen I should say. Here's the story, briefly because I'm tired and starting to shut down. A coupla years' back, 2 chaps I know partnered with 1 more and launched a new company: a consultancy specialising in Business Intelligence (no comment). I was in a bad situation professionally, and they offered me a contract that sounded better than where I was. So I signed up. As a contractor; I must make that clear. A little later I referred to them a close friend and they subsequently employed her. Now, my friend and I, and a few other recruits, had pretty much the same thinking: this is a brand new company with no baggage to carry. We joined up because we've had it with normal companies; they're all the same. They pay lip service to empowerment, open communication and the rest of it, but it's all the same in the end. It's all top-down, command and control, us and them. But we thought this really could be different. We had visions of something totally open, where the company books were available to all, where everyone was empowered to talk to prospective clients on behalf of the company, where we all could drive the thing in a mutually beneficial way, where we all felt a sense of ownership. We tried for a while; we called it Operation Stealth. We engaged the principals as often as we could. We took them to lunch. We lent them books. I wrote email after email. I said over and over again: "people need a sense of ownership, need a stake. You want commitment, but what are you offering in return? How about equity stakes for everyone? Yes, your slice of the pie gets smaller, but the whole pie is only going to get bigger." Do I bother with the rest? Of course it didn't happen. OK, they did try a little: for example they were brave enough to put up a slide at each monthly meeting with a graph of net revenue. And one of the 3 directors, by virtue of his open nature, did tell us a lot about what was going on higher up. But, in my reading -- I stress, my reading -- of the situation at least, their inability to change their set ways caused pain and unhappiness and dissatisfaction among the employees. I found yesterday a 'phone list from December 2001; there were around 2 dozen staff. A year later, they still had 2 dozen staff, but around half of the names on that list were no longer with the company. That kind of turnover is a clue that something is possibly amiss. And finally, early this year, they made redundant a number of people -- including my dear friend -- and took pay cuts and refocussed their strategy, etc. Because the market is so poor right now. And there's no arguing that the market isn't poor right now, and it's been that way for 18 months or more. Consider though that my friend made 2 'phone calls and was able to choose from 3 jobs within days of leaving, and could have made a couple more calls with similar results. The point is that the way the directors chose to operate meant that they couldn't harness her ability to so easily find work. All they had to do was open up some, let go some, involve people some. But they couldn't see it. I must say here that I'm not casting nasturtiums on the health of this company, or the integrity of its directors. Absolutely not. What I'm saying is that they missed the chance to create something that, by my definition, woild have been very different and amazingly cool. And reading Joi's comment, my slow brain now realises why we didn't get anywhere. Read it again. But did these people suffer A Lust for Power? I'm not convinced. Instead, I think they honestly thought they were doing things in the best way, even if that way is predicated upon some rather negative assumptions about the capabilities and motivations of anyone not-a-manager. But ultimately, for whatever reason, they would not let go of the power that they had. Put it another way: for me, the necessity of openness, involvement and direct communication is a self-evident truth. That's my reality. For them, either their definitions of these things differ to mine, or they do not hold the same truths to be self-evident. Their reality is different. Just as, I imagine, the music-industry execs will never operate in a reality where cheap CDs, all-you-can-eat online music services, and free downloads are the only way that they'll ultimately stay in business. I suppose I have 2 questions here: If people in power can't persuaded to let go of power for the sake of greater glory for all, are they different people to rest of us who are trying to persuade them? Or would we react the same in the same circumstance? Joi thinks that power does tend to go to one's head in the end, but that it can be resisted. So, are the managers, the music moguls, the politicians, are they fundamentally different animals to the rest of us? OK, I'll take a position here and say, "Yep. I think so." This gets back to the old joke, though I'd argue it's axiomatic, that the very desire to be in power should disqualify one from actually being permitted to achieve it. Um, after having popped off for a shower, my question is: what was my second question? Oh dear :-( "Anyway", he said briskly, moving right along, "let that be a lesson to you all. And hands above the desk Master Smedley. Oh yeah, I remembered! I want to know what kind of organisational structure, be it 2-bit company or national government, can we build that mitigates against this kind of us-and-them divide? Commie? No. Cooperative? Yes. Ideas please. 11:56:06 PM    comment []

The Art of Writing Something odd is at work here. I like to write, I really do. You see, I have the tortured soul of an artist, the need to express and create -- as do most of us I suspect -- but I also have all the artistic ability of a gnat's left bollock. This causes me unbelievable amounts of misery and frustration. If only I could paint or photograph. The only arenas in which I ever manage to successfully express a little art are programming, and writing. Just, just, oh-so occasionally, I manage a paragraph or two that I feel proud of. And those times that I do manage it, I did it without trying; the words simply flowed onto the screen, almost without conscious thought. By contrast, the harder I try to write, the more contrived, turgid, dysrhythmic it is. Bleagh! Which is all perfectly in order and in accordance with our human nature. I remember an article in New Scientist some time back on the superior reflexes and decision making of the unconscious self. I think that when we achieve that state known as flow, we must lose the conscious self to a large degree. So, for a few nights' running now, I've sat up late and read blog after blog. And as midnight approached, and I was so fuzzy of eye and brain that I could neither read nor comprehend very much anymore, I started to write. And the words flowed, even if I had to squint out of first one eye, then the other, to read them. I even flew without a spell checker. OK, it ain't art. BUT I WROTE. And one or two people have even been moved to praise. And here's the great hope: if I do enough of this, relentlessly day after day, and go back and read it later which, strangely, I quite enjoy, perhaps it'll become easy. Perhaps, just as I can now rattle off in minutes the kind of Oracle SQL that one sees in advanced sections in texts and has support dudes quietly reaching for the manual, perhaps I'll be able to do the mechanics of writing quite without conscious thought. And then perhaps I'll be able to express the ideas flashing through my chaotic mind as they come to me, not spend an entire day trying and failing. Like happened today with my idea for a killer disruptive technology. Stay tuned. 10:01:10 PM    comment []

Nothing to Add It's near midnight already. I've been reading and reading today; so many blogs, so many lucid, eloquent, thinking dudes. I have one or two grand thoughts in a year; these people are dishing them out on a daily basis. Maybe I should be reading instead the outpourings of teenagers and offer worldly advice from 20 years in their future. Instead, I feel as though I'm wandering through a coming together of giants, me looking up in astonishment, almost keeping up with what's being said, but not knowing how to begin to enter the conversation without looking like a prize yokel by compare. Actually, it's not dissimilar to the mildly-drunk-at-the-party feeling. At these times, I try to remember to trust my guts. I see things that most of my peers don't, I know what is universally true when I hear it and what isn't; I can do that. But I can't articulate very well the why of it. Anyway, I've been writing comments on other peoples' blogs today. Liz, you were right: "commenting is much easier than creating original content". And maybe even these super-clever, A-list dudes like some genuine, personal feedback too: "Hmmm, 4,321 hits today. Well happy with that I suppose, but nobody commented. Oh well, obviously the mindless saps all agreed with me totally." Erk, midnight! And I'm rambling. I did have some stuff I wanted to talk about, mostly this whole inexorable movement to ubiquitous networks, P2P, WiFi, Emergent Democracy, etc. And an astonishing paragraph in Dee Hock's email to Joi Ito: I wonder if you realize that a dozen or two people like yourself with the right combination of communication, technological and organizational skills could design and implement a global government without the consent of any present form of organization and provide it with the neural network to insure its success. A government that could continually evolve to ensure that no matter affecting the public good or the health of the planet fails to be disclosed, examined and understood. Or that any existing organization could escape being confronted with synthesized opinions and alternatives that would swiftly emerge. Such an organization based on rights of participation and withdrawal and consent of the participants could be something entirely new in this tired world. Now that would be something truly worthy of the best within us and the best among us. And a great deal of fun in the bargain! It would, in the fullest sense, be far from democratic since the Internet remains largely a tool of the privileged and technologically savvy. That, we can hope, will change in time. One must always begin somewhere, remembering that the sages tell us our responsibility is to succeed in the world as we find it if it is ever to become the world we wish it to be. But it's been another day of rather more elemental existence, of being with my children, the eldest off school with chicken pox, while my dear wife sleeps off whatever viral nasty is making her feel so sore and tired. I have nothing intelligent to say right now. Perhaps tomorrow. I have good vibes about tomorrow. 12:17:37 AM    comment []