Often we say when we are making decisions that we need ‘more’ information.  As Clay Shirky said in something I watched once: it’s not about more information, it’s about better filtering.  I think it’s about better perspectives, ideas and concepts.  Yes that probably is more information but it’s filtered, tailored and well suited to your problem.  Sometimes more information leads to confusion and this isn’t helpful.

What then?

More perspectives?  How about better ideas?  Why keep digging the metaphorical hole in the same place… try something else.  Get somebody from outside the problem to come in and have a look.  Quite often they will frame it in way you don’t expect.  Sometimes we are coming from the completely wrong angle… this isn’t at all helpful either.

In the long run I suppose it would be easier to say that having more information would justify the amount of weight we put on the top of a organisation.  Ultimately though, most of the time, better ideas will do.  Wherever you can find them.

I was reading this Tumblr post someone sent me recently and there is an interesting reference to ‘fencing’ at the end of it. The idea that a debate or a metaphor can provide a fence around our ways of thinking is something I had written about ages ago.  In fact large portions of my PhD work had been involved around the ideas of conceptual framing, the idea that we create reference points to refer to things we experience.   I think the ‘idea fence’ concept is much more interesting and I want to write about it.  So I did!

Idea fences mean we create a way of seeing things that inhibits us from seeing another perspective.  Someone I know would say about a problem,’Well it’s either this or that.’  My response was, ‘why can’t it be something else?’.  The idea fences we build put the issues we want to discuss in a neat little basket.  We fence them off and say, ‘this is my position and you can only enter my idea house if you are willing to open the fence of my idea gate’.   Metaphors ahoy.

I am very good at making idea fences.  I often resist changing my ideas because I like them and have grown accustomed to having them in my mind’s garden.  Yet, I know I have to do it and I hate it.   I think I know something then I find an article or somebody says, ‘have you thought about this?’ Then I hop back on the merry go round again and wheeeeeee more ideas.   Ideas also mean power in my world, ‘Oh you are the guy who wrote that paper or you are an Information Systems person aren’t you?’   Then I am fenced in by others.  This kind of fencing reinforces the fence around me, which in essence has no place in any real terms outside of my own thoughts; and creates a comfortable seat for me to sit in and contemplate.   I am fenced and fencing.

In closing this ramble tamble, let me assure that ideas have a persistent quality.  The ingredient of persistence is ‘belief’.  That’s what makes them real.  We believe they are and so they are and we act on them and it is so.  Yet, this perspective is yet another example of a fence I have built around myself and ask me in five years, if I am still alive what I think and the chances are I will have changed my mind!

I have discovered something about my brain.  If I work too hard on mentally strenuous tasks for too long my head reaches a point where it will refuse to cooperate with me.  I will sit down to write and it will say back to me, ‘no asshole, put the pen down I have had enough.’  I have actually found myself more productive when I do mundane tasks during the down slopes, and the ‘heavy’ stuff during the upslopes.  One time I started doing odd things when I worked too hard.  For example, making a coffee and putting the sugar straight in the bin or drinking the milk before putting it in.   Or how about waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep, how about that one?

I had pushed through the burn as they say and found that at the end of the road, even if I wrote something, it was crap.  Yes, more crap than usual and I would have to write the whole damn thing again from scratch.

Take it from me… don’t overwork your brain.

Susan Boyle, RATM and other things have made me realise something this morning.  The internet is no longer the realm of backwater geeks or nerds, sure I knew that and so did you, it’s now influencing the mainstream by becoming the mainstream.  You can ignore things like piracy, file sharing, email forwards (well you can ignore those) and the like because we are now seeing it finally become a mainstream thing.  This is exciting and it means I should finally get my finger out and do something with some of my ideas.  It also means that the internet is now crowded with mobs.  Boo.

A final thought for today: Things are what we make them.  Susan Boyle, RATM, Radiohead, Nine inch nails, Corey Smith… it’s up to us.  We live in a unique time where you can reach an audience via electronic means.  Making money is the hard part but people are having a go and that’s great to see.

I am off to the Zoo… it’s my daughter’s birthday!

Here’s a short thought:

Problems can only be practically solved because of the things we take to practically restrict their solving them.  People often blame politics, the environment, marketing, accounting but the biggest issue is what’s feasible or practical to do, given the known constraints.  There is a big difference between assumption and actual barrier, yet the actual barriers can be nothing else but thought in the beginning even though it may actually be a real issue that would hinder the problem solving effort.   Thinking, as someone said (sorry), doesn’t make it so.   The truth may be what happens after we do something, not sure about that; yet there is a level of pragmatism that always drives decision making in business.  We can’t do this because of that and we can’t do that because of this.   We need to think through these barriers carefully to see if they are real or a matter of our discourse.

One example happened to me years ago when I tried my hand at business.  We kept making decisions because ‘we had to’ and over a period of time the direction I blissfully steered the business to failed.  Each decision was thought out, reasoned over, implemented with an eye to improvement.  Yet as complexity unfolded, new ideas emerged which reset my decision parameters and modified my heuristics, I realised I was playing a fools game.  There was no ‘right’ answer, only what was feasible and known to me at the time and with the resources that I had to use.    Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber talked about this years ago, yet in all the work I have done, I have seen little progress in this regard.  Complexity is a bitch. Scholars like the late Herbert Simon called it decision making under ambiguity, what decisions are made that don’t contain that?  Tell me if you know.

The hidden tiger of decision making and complex problem solving is complexity.  It laughs at us when we confront it with our ideas, and changes shape the minute we make a choice.  What’s known becomes unknown and what seemed ‘right’ becomes not right after the action has been taken.  Is the truth something that happens to an idea as William James said?  Maybe.  Perhaps the truth is not just what happens to the idea but the reasons why it didn’t work in the first place.  It is elusive, nevertheless.

I was watching this the other day and it’s interesting… is there a reasonable choice here or is it ‘frame’ job?

A short note today about climbing back on the horse.   I was dumping recently about the loss of IS from our Business School.  So now I need to move on to the third part of my three part rant.  How do you climb back on the horse when you fall off?

Don’t climb on for a while: The power of reflection

I think the key thing for most people who have a setback is to take time to think through the failure and ask, “what do I need to learn here?”.  I have learned that by picking a small discipline, that’s ‘fringe’ I was always at risk.   There are many others about that are the same.  The changing flux of social systems means you sometimes have to create new ways of seeing just to survive.  One only has to look at the history of recent trends with e-commerce to know what I mean.

Yet, in failure we can find reflection and that can help us learn.  When we have a setback the best thing to do is find something else to take our mind off things.  This can be helping someone with their problems, taking a course, reading a book, crying (ok that’s a little bit nasty), or simply put: doing anything that stops us from feeling like losers.  The next thing we can do once the pain has subsided enough, is begin to collect the lessons.  Think: what did I learn from that and what could I learn about better in the future?  Why did I do so poorly? Write it down and think about it.  It may help you find clarity and help you fail your way to success.

Don’t judge where you are now based on your present circumstances

The other thing we need to do to climb back on the horse, is not to judge where we are now by the way we are in our present circumstance.  Without revisting all of the cliches, I can say that stuff changes.  In my own life I have had many failures.  However, in each one of these failures, I have learned that you fail most of the time.  I like to think of it this way:   fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, win, fail, fail, win.  If life was continued success, it would be great but just about 3/10 things I try work.  Those that do, often surprise me.  You can’t ‘know’ the market or job or whatever as well as you may think.  People don’t often think the same way… there’s context to consider.

How to get back on the horse

The best way to get back on the horse, is to do this.  Start again.  When you have failed, you have one of two choices… stay down or get up.  What will you do?  Stay there lying on the floor, weeping, moaning, crying… no you have to get up.  Sure as hell it ain’t easy.  I have done it so many times that I am growing sick of it… but if you don’t keep growing you become stagnant and/or worse begin to wither.  Is that what you want?

Now you may be reading this and thinking, ‘great general advice’.  My response is, a seed of a dream is still a start.  It may take years to get back on the horse… but if it’s what you know you should be doing, then you should do it.  You just have to.  It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t sell… being true to your instincts is what matters.  What if you lose it all?  I did.  So what?  I had not much to lose anyway, sure it pissed my wife off!  I can go to my grave knowing I tried, I died and I lived another day.  All you have to do is get up and start thinking, you can do it.  I am not guaranteeing you will win next time either, you probably won’t.   Yet the taste of victory, in all it’s rarity, it’s a great thing.  It feels good to have a win.  I am still waiting for the ‘big one’.  But, I have had so many little wins by going again when I didn’t feel like it, that I felt I could honestly not handle it anymore.   What did I do?  I pissed around for awhile, procrastinated… then I got up and tried and failed again!

One of my life goals was to get into a particular journal.  Twice before I had been told NO (once after three revisions… that sucked ass.  Eventually a time came when I got in and alas I made it!  Now, will I get a payrise from this?  No.  Will I get a new house?  No.  What did I get?  I got what I wanted?  How long did it take? 5 years!  Actually, I told my current employer that I would publish in this journal when I started.  Which was stupid, yet it set the agenda and I did get it.  Sure, it means nothing but something important to me and my co-author.  Yet I did it!  It felt good getting the acceptance letter.  It seems trivial but that letter showed me that if I am willing to try and believe, I can acheive anything I want to.  Even if people and institutions stop supporting me.  You can do it.

Let me encourage you today by saying this: if you died and your greatest desire wasn’t fulfilled would you be sad?  Yes you would!  What if you died trying?  Went down in flames as it were?  Then you died trying, that’s 90% better than what most of us do.  Be the die trying person… I dare you!

If you are out there and you are a father… Happy Fathers Day!

Hope you have or are having a great day!

Recently I watched this video with landscape photographer Alain Briot.  He takes an interesting view on goal setting by saying that we should set low-expectations more frequently that set big goals less frequently.   I think during times when personal growth is required, perhaps the best way to tackle it is to make serious choices about what actions to take.  This tricks your mind into focusing on the small picture, while you gradually build the bigger picture.  Nothing new… just interesting I thought. For example, we could give into pressure and quit or we could make the way slowly by changing our expectations.

Changing your expectations

The beautiful thing about that video is that you don’t need to think beyond what it says in order to do it.  All you really need is to set a very small goal and then once you achieve that set a slighter bigger one.  My main problem is that I have set stupid goals and not got there and then got discouraged.  Perhaps it’s easier to set a smaller goal, achieve it then do the next thing.  There is however a catch with this way of thinking.

The catch

As it says in the video you need to make sure that you can do what you can, if it’s a small thing.  For example, Alain speaks of how when he was working as a grad student that he could exchange doing that for making money in photography.  The older you get, the harder this seems to be.  Nevermind, people keep telling me that it’s never too late to start.  But start what you say?  Well you have find the music in you and build on it.  Watch for my up-coming post on craftmanship that will deal with this.

Rather than say a lot more I would encourage you to watch the video (at least the first 10 minutes anyway – to get the gist) and reflect on what you are doing now.  The usual excuses apply of course… children to feed, rent/mortgage to pay.  This is why I have to think about sidebusinesses and the like!  However, keep an open mind as you watch this, the sheer brilliance of simplicity is very interesting.

Even the most productive workers are vulnerable to time sucks when certain triggers interrupt their day. One of the most popular of these triggers is the Internet, and social media sites, e-mail and blogs become addicting fast. But the key to maximizing the time you spend at work is to learn how to defend yourself against those traps and use the Internet in a more constructive way. First you’ll need to identify the websites that tempt you the most every day. By becoming more disciplined, you’ll be able to balance out the distractions along with your list of things you need to finish up before heading home. Keep reading for some popular ways that the Internet sabotages your workday, and what you can do to defend yourself.
•    Social media sites: Now that social media sites are for business networking as well as connecting with friends, they’re not always blocked on work computers and may even be encouraged. But logging on can also result in hours of procrastination as you click through pictures and update your own profile. To strike a balance, limit yourself to visiting only one social media site while you’re at work, and make sure it’s an account that you use for professional networking only. Set a timer or only log on during lunch to keep your Internet use to a minimum.
•    E-mail: Set up a separate work account than your personal account for organization’s sake and to keep yourself focused on work. Don’t subscribe to any shopping alerts or RSS feeds on your work account, either. If you’re still addicted to checking for new messages every few minutes, close your e-mail and only check it every hour or half hour. Many e-mail servers allow you to set up alerts whenever you receive an e-mail from a specified person, so you can still stick to your schedule and not have to worry about missing something important.
•    Blogs and websites: We all have our list of daily must-reads, from celebrity gossip sites to techie blogs. If you can, check these sites from your BlackBerry or iPhone on your way to work or during lunch. Consider them extra reading material. You wouldn’t open up your copy of your favorite John Grisham instead of prepping for a meeting, would you? Just because it’s on the Internet doesn’t mean it’s not separating you from what you should be doing.

*This post was contributed by Megan Jones, who writes about the online college degree. She welcomes your feedback at Meg.Jones0310 at gmail.com