It's always a pleasure to witness the moment that someone decides to come over to leave the darkside of the force. More of that later, first some reflections on a week in Australia which has ranged from workshops, thought an accreditation course to an interview for the What I'm Reading section of Boss Magazine.
It is also a part of a rather frantic five weeks of travel which started in Copenhagen, moved onto Pretoria and now Australia. Next week is Washington, Atlanta and New York followed by Hong Kong (with a nice bonus at the end) and hopefully a massive celebration in the middle, although one could do with more loyal supporters.
The week has been a long one in Sydney and Canberra. Monday was an all day workshop (and I was still hungover to some degree), then three days solid teaching including an evening session plus a presentation to ActKM. The course was full and Canberra was hot! We had a lot of government and defense people and it went very well. Its always nice to present to Australians, they are not afraid to provoke and they don't mind you fighting back! We spent some time on getting techniques such as Six Sigma properly bounded, further developed thinking on crews and saw a great set of exercises with lots of energy looking at issues relating to water supply. ActKM and the the New South Wales Knowledge Management forum provided an opportunity to meet old friends physically as well as the more normal virtual interactions. The KM community here, unlike most of the rest of the world is vibrant and that makes for an educated audience.
Back to the Boss interview. To start with this provided some entertainment for the inhabitants of Sydney as photographs had to be taken on the corner of Pitt Street with lights and all. I hadn't been expecting that so was dressed very casually for the flight with the Prince of Wales feathers prominently displayed and hair badly in need of a Barber's attention. The format was an interesting one, and I found it useful in that it allowed me to situate my story in the story of others. I choose a set of books in advance and that was used by Catherine Fox as a entry into an extended conversation. I will post the article when it comes out, but for the moment here is the list of books I provided.
Stephen Donaldson : Fatal Revenant (Volume 8 in what will be 9 in all)
Rachel Cusk : Arlington Park
Paul Cilliers (ed) Thinking Complexity Vol 1 of Complexity & Philosophy series
John Niles: Homo Narrans
Walter Freeman: How Brains Make up their Minds
So back to the Dark Side: On the final day of the course, Viv finally reached the end of her tether with XP's need to be booted and rebooted on a near constant basis. She leaves for a project in Singapore tomorrow and will return, transformed with a Macbook Pro. Another one bites the dust ....
Comments (5)
The Cilliers paper looks interesting but seems to be part of an academic plot to bury Gerry Weinberg's 'An Introduction to General Systems Thinking'. His description of what was clever about Newton's analysis of planetary motion is matchless, and his analysis of types of systems with respect to methods of thinking has less pretension and more insight than the likes of Cilliers.
I am really on the look out for resources on people who don't 'get' systems and complexity; is it personality (i.e. they are lost souls) or can they learn to think about disorder and emergence? Given the distaste for Myers-Briggs in some quarters, any suggestions from the network would be invaluable; it is a real and present problem in the engineering world.
Posted by Brian Sherwood Jones | March 14, 2008 8:58 AM
Posted on March 14, 2008 08:58
Can I share a Mac story? While finishing a seminar last week, a participant came up to me and told me I'd cost him $3500. Apparently he saw me using the Mac at previous presentation and was impressed with the things the Mac does impressively. He then went out and bought an IMac and accessories. Loves it.
I hadn't "sold" the Mac, but if you put attractors out there.....
I am delighted that you wore your rugby colours for the interview but, given some earlier comments, wouldn't you prefer to have an displayable alternate to the three feathers. This artifact was not overly prominent at Ray Gravell's funeral but the Welsh flag, the flag of St Davids and the Standard of Owen Glendower were.
Interestingly, the folks at the Millenium Stadium wanted to ban the Glendower and St Davids flags from sporting events deeming them to be too political (sic). A campaign by the Western Mail reversed the decision thus allowing a pattern to emerge and be observed.
Dave, I'm a recent viewer of the blog, and really enjoying the content.
Thank you
Iwan
Posted by Iwan Jenkins | March 14, 2008 2:36 PM
Posted on March 14, 2008 14:36
Brian,
You might look at some of the work by Kirton (www.kaicentre.com) whose work concentrates on pre-dispositions to problem-solving styles.
He would state that high innovators would have a comfort in being able to see patterns and an ease with concepts, whereas high adaptors have a greater comfort with fact-based analysis. (NB styles are independent of processing ability or level).
It would seem, therefore, that high innovators are better able to deal with complex problems, and high adaptors with the simple or complicated. This might also explain why most senior managers in organisations are ESTJ in Myers-Briggs, and those comfortable with ambiguity and complexity, the N and P's are often outliers who are occasionally tolerated. Just a thought
Iwan
Posted by Iwan Jenkins | March 14, 2008 8:07 PM
Posted on March 14, 2008 20:07
Hey Dave as an Aussie to a Brit I notice you are using American spelling - for example Defense. Is this further evidence of the MacDonaldisation of the world? Has Wales great patriot given in and decided to conform? I hope not - a conformist Dave Snowden would be a frightening thing!
or maybe it should be
Regards Graham
PS. I enjoyed dinner. You managed to scare away our NICTA "collegue". I think the thinking challenge was too great!
Posted by Graham Durant-Law | March 14, 2008 9:00 PM
Posted on March 14, 2008 21:00
Once again it was excellent to hear your thoughts in person, Dave, so thank you for making yourself available for the early morning session on Friday.
My interest was spiked by the two [separate] points of crews and teams, and the mention of human preference for drawing conclusions from lots of fragments of information. Lots to think about there.
Also, I'm amazed that you got back in time for the rugby!
Alex
Posted by Alex Manchester | March 17, 2008 7:28 AM
Posted on March 17, 2008 07:28