I have let my mind wander a bit of late. Synchronicity often seems to punctuate ideas. And so, 6 days before the start of a another festival in the Nevada desert, I am contacted by an organization dedicated to clean water. The day before I was reminded of the simple joy of dealing with competence. These events usher in the end of summer in the United States. Although the sun will face the northern hemisphere for another month, the start of the school year effectively ends it for a large section of the population.
All of these thoughts congealed this morning. I have often spoke of the power of individuals. However, humans are social creatures and their potential is not lessened by the presence of their fellows. I have often found myself in the presence of a group that negatively effects its members. Metaphors involving sheep often come to mind. Labor unions, focus groups, and Congress often cater to the "lowest common denominator". As these groups become large, their expressed opinions can cause us to think poorly of their members. Group members can become so concerned with agreement or "unity" that they lose focus. A critical part of group dynamics is exclusion. "Splinter groups" need to be exactly that. They need to be separated out from the other members. They can then be considered allied groups. but this separation allows for actual unity or purpose.
In addition, a group needs a goal. Forming groups simply to form groups or to reach agreement is a pointless activity. I will not get into a discussion regarding the psychology of groups, "group think", or "brainstorming". Individuals can ask others for ideas and have done so for millenia. This process has not been improved upon by having less organized meetings.
Working smaller groups are well known to many. Organized sports would not exist without them. A "herd" of baseball players would be useless. There is no omnipresent coach. A quarterback may call a play but all planning ends when the ball is snapped. Yes, I just used a football metaphor.
Although I personally believe all groups benefit from a leader, all an effective group needs is someone to point in a direction. Every year thousands of individuals gather in festivals throughout the country successfully and do amazing things. Groups reroute rivers for irrigation. Groups raise walls. Groups build roads. All of these things happened countless times without definitive leadership. Families may adopt leadership structures but many work effectively without one.
In truth, a successful group is easy to create. I have done it many times. I ask others for aid with a task. They either agree or refuse. If they agree, we are a group. If that task is living together, that group is referred to as a community and the task is ongoing. People leave the group or join. If the task is completed (whether successful or not), the group dissolves.
And so, although I believe humans are amazing creatures individually, we are also amazing in groups. I would not live apart from my fellow humans. I do not need to control them to interact with them. I am a member of several communities. I have watched dozens of groups perform what the individuals involved could not.
The next time you help someone move you have already solved dozens of problems that plague large corporations. You have already proven that we can live together and work together. You have proven that there is hope for us; that we can band together and make things better. Congratulations!
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
A light switch away...
I have often thought to myself that all of this is much more fragile than people realize. Humans like to assume that things will not change. Considering what we are and how we got here, that supposition is silly at best.
We are change. We are a monumental force that struck this planet. Merely a few hundred thousand years ago, a biped was able to control fire. Since then we have changed the entire landscape. Our caves becoming more elaborate. The fire burning different fuels.
I am the child of an age of abstraction. My income generated by pressing buttons. The buttons sending inputs that are translated dozens of times into a visual representation. That visual representation again interpreted and leading to more button pressing. I send portions of my income to others that then push more buttons telling valves and switches to open or close. Eventually through all the layers of abstraction, I gain heat and light.
But, there are layers of abstraction, and those layers are susceptible to the variance of the physical world. A storm knocks over a tree... A tree falls on a power line... The power line breaks or disconnects... Suddenly, everything changes. The buttons are no longer connected. The fuel no longer reaches my fire. My cave is no longer a haven.
Now, the layers of abstraction are not truly gone. There are methods for reconnecting layers. Fire is still my birthright. I can still will it into existence. However, the ability to control it effectively has been lost. I can use another fuel to either power the control mechanisms or provide another source of heat and light. I can find other caves. Caves where the fire is still well controlled. All of the layers of abstraction are still in place, I am simply disconnected from them.
The truth becomes clear quickly. If we take away the grid, my place in the world must change dramatically. We would return to open hearths and candlelight. We would return to telling stories by the fire. We would return to schedules based around the sun. It is a world I have visited countless times, but it is not a world I can live in. It is not a world where I can provide food for myself and those I care for. It is a world where I have few skills of worth.
I would adapt. After all, I am human. I would begin reconnecting the layers. I would strive to bring us back... perhaps with some changes, but still to a world where I can press buttons. Where those buttons create signals and those signals can travel anywhere. I can live as my ancestors did. However, the truth is I won't.
We are change. We are a monumental force that struck this planet. Merely a few hundred thousand years ago, a biped was able to control fire. Since then we have changed the entire landscape. Our caves becoming more elaborate. The fire burning different fuels.
I am the child of an age of abstraction. My income generated by pressing buttons. The buttons sending inputs that are translated dozens of times into a visual representation. That visual representation again interpreted and leading to more button pressing. I send portions of my income to others that then push more buttons telling valves and switches to open or close. Eventually through all the layers of abstraction, I gain heat and light.
But, there are layers of abstraction, and those layers are susceptible to the variance of the physical world. A storm knocks over a tree... A tree falls on a power line... The power line breaks or disconnects... Suddenly, everything changes. The buttons are no longer connected. The fuel no longer reaches my fire. My cave is no longer a haven.
Now, the layers of abstraction are not truly gone. There are methods for reconnecting layers. Fire is still my birthright. I can still will it into existence. However, the ability to control it effectively has been lost. I can use another fuel to either power the control mechanisms or provide another source of heat and light. I can find other caves. Caves where the fire is still well controlled. All of the layers of abstraction are still in place, I am simply disconnected from them.
The truth becomes clear quickly. If we take away the grid, my place in the world must change dramatically. We would return to open hearths and candlelight. We would return to telling stories by the fire. We would return to schedules based around the sun. It is a world I have visited countless times, but it is not a world I can live in. It is not a world where I can provide food for myself and those I care for. It is a world where I have few skills of worth.
I would adapt. After all, I am human. I would begin reconnecting the layers. I would strive to bring us back... perhaps with some changes, but still to a world where I can press buttons. Where those buttons create signals and those signals can travel anywhere. I can live as my ancestors did. However, the truth is I won't.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
What we are, what we were, what we can be...
I was reminded recently of a tendency in Americans. Multiple individuals pointing out the same phenomena. We don't accept the word "No" for an answer. Many times in our history, we were told things were impossible. The Panama Canal, dredging the Mississippi, winning a war on two fronts, sending a man to the moon and returning him safely to earth. Our response as a collective, "We can do it."
We have traveled far. In many cases, we have gone astray. In some cases we are prone to delusions. But the truth is that whether or not the rest of the world likes to admit it, we are the best hope. One may view this as "ignoring the facts" or "tragically optimistic" or a dozen other things, but in the end I believe most of the world would agree with such a description of Americans.
As I've said before, we are the center of the empire. The only threat to us being the internal decay that happens to all empires. We must adapt to survive. In some ways, we do this extremely well. However, we have some obvious failings. This is the country of Microsoft, Google, and Apple. However, it was also the country where Atari rose and fell. It is the country that built and destroyed IBM
For we are a country that was built on rugged individualism. Many cynics will indicate that we were founded by wealthy slave owners. This is true, but they did not build this country. The first 2 years of our founding Revolution were fought by militias. An organized army and intervention by the French brought it to an end, but it was started by a bunch of farmers standing before the line of trained soldiers. We now use terms like "guerrilla" and "insurgent" and forget our birth.
Our story continues from there. We as a colony declared our independence. We declared war on our owners. We spent years as an uprising. We spent years as a "problem" that Great Britain had to deal with. Then we presented a legal argument for separation. The nerve.
We have stumbled, but ever since then we have looked upon the "impossible" and labeled it "difficult". By 1900, people such as Nikola Tesla were coming to the United States. Two American bicycle mechanics, not an Oxford trained physicist, developed controlled flight. The Victorian era ended with, whether the continent of Europe would agree with me or not, the rise of a new empire. An empire with territories that spanned half the globe.
We have allowed ourselves to fall in recent years. Our rise too meteoric not to end with some decline. However, our errors are obvious and can be easily corrected. Carnegie built U.S. Steel regardless of who changed the name. When it was sold to a financier, its demise became inevitable. Atari destroyed itself by turning on its founder. Apple rose and fell and rose again with Steve Jobs. Bill Gates built Microsoft, Steve Balmer presides over its decline.
Strong-willed individuals allowed this country to rise. Committees, boards, and focus groups have chipped away at it for decades. Private industry has tried to model itself after government instead of the other way around. I am certainly not saying that publicly controlled organizations cannot grow and flourish. They just do not do so here. A strong-willed individual is by definition someone that does not fit in with the crowd. Groups, collectives, and societies are able to do good things. However, it is my opinion that only individuals can have the singular vision to do great things.
The founder of a company will always be referred to as such. He or she is the individual with vision. Now as none of us can continue a task indefinitely, the titles of Chairman, President, CEO, etc. are passed on, but the title of Founder cannot be. A founder creates something. We often find founders simply leaving companies after they have reached stability. They are inventors. They are visionaries. Their replacements can be well chosen. The do not seem to have been often in the last 50 years. A venture capitalist should never be involved in day-to-day operations. An accountant should only run an accounting firm. An investor should be bought out as soon as possible. Money does influence many things in our culture and many will say that the purpose of business is simply to make money. If this is the case than "businesses" are lifeless things that will never create or adapt.
Money keeps the doors open so you can do what you do. The moment an organization forgets that, it has resigned itself to failure.
We have traveled far. In many cases, we have gone astray. In some cases we are prone to delusions. But the truth is that whether or not the rest of the world likes to admit it, we are the best hope. One may view this as "ignoring the facts" or "tragically optimistic" or a dozen other things, but in the end I believe most of the world would agree with such a description of Americans.
As I've said before, we are the center of the empire. The only threat to us being the internal decay that happens to all empires. We must adapt to survive. In some ways, we do this extremely well. However, we have some obvious failings. This is the country of Microsoft, Google, and Apple. However, it was also the country where Atari rose and fell. It is the country that built and destroyed IBM
For we are a country that was built on rugged individualism. Many cynics will indicate that we were founded by wealthy slave owners. This is true, but they did not build this country. The first 2 years of our founding Revolution were fought by militias. An organized army and intervention by the French brought it to an end, but it was started by a bunch of farmers standing before the line of trained soldiers. We now use terms like "guerrilla" and "insurgent" and forget our birth.
Our story continues from there. We as a colony declared our independence. We declared war on our owners. We spent years as an uprising. We spent years as a "problem" that Great Britain had to deal with. Then we presented a legal argument for separation. The nerve.
We have stumbled, but ever since then we have looked upon the "impossible" and labeled it "difficult". By 1900, people such as Nikola Tesla were coming to the United States. Two American bicycle mechanics, not an Oxford trained physicist, developed controlled flight. The Victorian era ended with, whether the continent of Europe would agree with me or not, the rise of a new empire. An empire with territories that spanned half the globe.
We have allowed ourselves to fall in recent years. Our rise too meteoric not to end with some decline. However, our errors are obvious and can be easily corrected. Carnegie built U.S. Steel regardless of who changed the name. When it was sold to a financier, its demise became inevitable. Atari destroyed itself by turning on its founder. Apple rose and fell and rose again with Steve Jobs. Bill Gates built Microsoft, Steve Balmer presides over its decline.
Strong-willed individuals allowed this country to rise. Committees, boards, and focus groups have chipped away at it for decades. Private industry has tried to model itself after government instead of the other way around. I am certainly not saying that publicly controlled organizations cannot grow and flourish. They just do not do so here. A strong-willed individual is by definition someone that does not fit in with the crowd. Groups, collectives, and societies are able to do good things. However, it is my opinion that only individuals can have the singular vision to do great things.
The founder of a company will always be referred to as such. He or she is the individual with vision. Now as none of us can continue a task indefinitely, the titles of Chairman, President, CEO, etc. are passed on, but the title of Founder cannot be. A founder creates something. We often find founders simply leaving companies after they have reached stability. They are inventors. They are visionaries. Their replacements can be well chosen. The do not seem to have been often in the last 50 years. A venture capitalist should never be involved in day-to-day operations. An accountant should only run an accounting firm. An investor should be bought out as soon as possible. Money does influence many things in our culture and many will say that the purpose of business is simply to make money. If this is the case than "businesses" are lifeless things that will never create or adapt.
Money keeps the doors open so you can do what you do. The moment an organization forgets that, it has resigned itself to failure.
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