Thinking outside the box

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

Attributed to Martin Mull (and several others), this simile conveys the point well and even tempts you to try to express yourself this way.

On the other hand, today I heard:

In order to think like a graphic artist you have to think outside the box. 

Think outside the box is a cliche and, as such, expresses thinking within the box and not even your own box, at that.

Think outside the box. What does it mean anyway? If you want to say unusual, unconventional, abstract, counter-cultural, experimental or imaginative, then say so. Words have a clean, freshly-minted quality about them. Hackneyed phrases have baggage. They look the part and then you notice the tired lines under make-up.

Think outside the box. Starting with that phrase.

Two thoughts separated by 140 years

In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.
- Ivan Illich 1973

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,-

These three alone lead to a sovereign power.
- Alfred Lord Tennyson 1833

News flash: Cat mops don't work.

"Chindogu", are the weird and wonderful inventions from Japan. They provide solutions that are simultaneously ingenious and ridiculous. The creativity is admirable, but you wouldn't really do it that way...would you?

Wrong. People, in fact, many people, really do. When bad practices produce spectacularly observable bad outcomes, they get fixed. If the outcome is bad but not spectacularly observable, it is remedied with a shrug of the shoulders. Plane and train crashes lead to commissions of inquiry. Office workers sitting in uninspiring meetings do not.

As organisations form and grow, the design, storage and sharing of information are left to the information technologists. While IT provide many excellent solutions, it doesn't end there. Users should optimise their interaction with all of the IT solutions they are using. Many don't know how to do this.

If the additional IT solution is one or two or more too many, it creates additional work without additional productivity. If it results in a pilot or a train driver crashing, it gets fixed. We have processes for that. But in your office...(shrug shoulders now).

My Information Coach is about promoting understanding and providing practical solutions to how you perceive, process and interact with the world. The focus is not on information or software, but on you. With the right training tools and techniques, your results will be better. Moreover, you won't be using "cat mops" to clean your floor!

Remembering what it is like to not know

One problem about becoming proficient is that you lose knowledge of what it is like to not know. This knowledge is critical to include when instructing or informing others, because you may overlook the very things they need to be told. It is critical when introducing innovation into organisations, because addressing concerns are critical...but which ones?

Take, for instance, the telephone. If you were to teach someone to use one - what would you include? This link to Chris Wild's excellent Retronaut blog shows you some of the things you could include. Did you include "Find The Number First" or "Concentrate While Telephoning"? Probably not.

If some of the suggestions - specifically "Starting a Telephone Talk" - seemed quaint, consider this: "When the telephone appeared in the 1870s, people worried about receiving calls from people to whom they had not been properly introduced. And what should one say when picking up the receiver? Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, suggested “Ahoy, ahoy”. But as in many other respects, his ideas lost out to those of Thomas Edison, who preferred “Hello”, an expression that was rarely used before the telephone but is now ubiquitous."

"In 1903 the trade journal Telephony reported an elderly woman's complaints about her niece, who received a phone call from a male friend while dressing. “The two of them stood talking to one another just as if they were entirely dressed and had stopped for a little chat on the street! I tell you this generation is too much for me,” she grumbled."*

When informing or innovating, close collaboration with the ignorant may be your best resource.

* Source: The Economist Print Edition 13th December 2007.

A small tip to save large amounts of time

You have two versions of the tip: a quick version followed by the slow version:

"The News"

The tip: set a goal for your day before you open your e-mails. Be aware of the automatic processes that will take place and think about what your reaction is likely to be. Remember, you don't have a choice about these, they happen automatically. Now think about what action you want to take - you have a choice on this one. Make sure the action you choose relates to your goal.

"The Mini-Series"

The biscuits on the conveyor belt provoke several simultaneous thoughts. One focuses on the manufacturing process and the neat lines and the other, not quite expressed in words, but if they were, would mean: "hmmmm...I wonder if anyone would mind if I ate one?"

In a similar way, the "conveyor belt" of information that feeds our senses provoke several simultaneous reactions. The red brake lights of the car in front immediately warn us to slow down and we reduce speed. When letters and words are shown, we habitually read them and this triggers a thoughts that strongly influence our thoughts, immediately and automatically. For instance, quickly read at the list below and say out loud the colour of the word:

RED  BLUE  YELLOW GREEN PURPLE

Then read this text:
"I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too."

In each case, a reaction is triggered automatically. In the first it may have hindered you, while in the second case it may have assisted you.

The first task many people do on arrival at work is to read their e-mails.

The task starts as a brief task to assemble a plan for the days work, but often this intention is derailed when your automatic reaction to content of each e-mail causes you to take the wrong direction. I will check my e-mails (five minutes) becomes I'll answer each one now (one hour) or "how dare he write that about me? I'll show him!" (two hours).

The tip: set a goal for your day before you open your e-mails. Be aware of the automatic processes that will take place and think about what your reaction is likely to be. Remember, you don't have a choice about these, they happen automatically. Now think about what action you want to take - you have a choice on this one. Make sure the action you choose relates to your goal.

David Hockney on the Influence of Technology on Picture Making

An article from the Financial Times on the influence of technology on picture making at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e613f3d2-1b9a-11e2-ab87-00144feabdc0.html (free registration required to view article).

Interesting reading in its own right, and included here because the effects that technology have on the recording and expression of ideas are often imperceptible to those under the influence.

Authenticity: the Key to Public Speaking

Over the last two months, I have been training a group of people in public speaking. Many speakers don't lack what is required to present effectively, rather than inhibit what they do possess.

"I'm not going to be Steve Jobs, so I had better not speak."

"I have an accent so I am not going to sound like Churchill."

Remember: in making a connection with the audience words are only a small part of the delivery. The example - a master class - from Viktor Frankl demonstrates this effectively.

ThinkBuzan Licensed Instructor

I recently returned from Cardiff where I attended an excellent course and became a ThinkBuzan Licensed Instructor. Four days of excellent tuition and inspiration.

ThinkBuzan is the company that arose from Tony Buzan's invention: MindMaps. I am pleased and proud to be an endorsed instructor and will bring the learning and materials to my work with customers and clients.

I first used MindMaps just before my 20th birthday. Like many for whom MindMaps "click", I wish I had learned about them sooner. Since then I have been a regular user. Here are a number of observations I have made over the intervening years:

1. MindMaps are a thinking interface between your mind and the world. They work, because they record and present information and ideas in a way that delights your mind. Delight sparks creativity and memory.

2. MindMaps are "taught" in schools these days. My impression is there is a wide variation in the degree to which it is taught. Some schools do a thorough job and demonstrate the technique, encourage learning and guide students in the correct application of the MindMap principles. Others outline the technique, familiarise students, but don't persist in guiding or encouraging students in applying maps to their work. The result: poor teaching leads to poor technique. Poor technique leads to frustration in creating maps that don't work, frequently because the maps are not MindMaps. The result is the opinion: "I tried it and they didn't work for me".

Sad really. Many people hate cricket and when you find out why, it wasn't the game itself, but the way it was taught. A long afternoon spent at Fine Leg in the burning sun (no batting nor bowling) is not conduisive to a happy childhood sporting memory.

The real pity is that poor teaching is like an inoculation. You introduce a feeble strain of the disease so the body recognises it and is taught to reject it. Feeble strains of mapping lead to the recognition and rejection of proper MindMap techniques.

3. "Use Your Head" was first published in 1974. This was the book in which Tony Buzan outlined the MindMap idea and explained its uses. Since then there have been many advances in knowledge about the brain and the mind. The MindMap as a technique has been validated by these changes in our knowledge.

4. In the workplace, some organisations use maps, others don't. Many people in the workplace are familiar with mapping, endorse the benefits, but don't act. The persistence of linear interfaces and materials and their widespread use demand compliance. The use of MindMapping is silently ostracised by culture.

5. There are many mapping softwares available. Some are good in what they achieve, but many do not produce MindMaps. The only software that applies the MindMap principles is ThinkBuzan's iMindMap.

6. As technology increases, many look to "bells and whistles" to improve their lot. The technology depicted in the movie "Minority Report" is often cited as the next step and some mention systems that can do this. I believe that a person can gain more traction by understanding how they interact with information, learn how they process it and then apply what they learned to design and shape their world. They can become more efficient and productive. MindMaps are a cheap, easy and simple step to take a major step on this road.

To go to the ThinkBuzan website, click here.

Worried about the future?

Starting a new topic for a class of tertiary students, I set the scene with an exercise.  What was life like in the past?  Small groups summarised the main factors at different times: 200, 100, 50, 20 and five years ago, followed by a discussion of the results.  The groups then speculated as to what life would be like in the future at the equivalent distances in time.  In discussion, it became clear that the incremental progress and improvement of the past would not continue.  The discussion of the future could be summarised as "Fewer opportunities, higher taxes and less pay in a crowded, polluted world".

If this is your outlook, I would recommend you read "The Shift" by Lynda Gratton.  This book discusses the themes and forces that affect our world and provides a solid framework to make sense of it and plan for the opportunities that will undoubtedly arise.  The power of the book is not that it provides "the answers" as much as it guides you to find the answers that apply for you.  There is a free accompanying workbook that can be obtained through: http://www.hotspotsmovement.com/ ("Resources", "The Shift", "Download The Shift Workbook") in which you can put your ideas into action.

The bleak and pessimistic future reminded of a story in John Watson's excellent book "A Terrible Beauty. The People and Ideas That Shaped the Modern Mind".  In the Introduction, he wrote:

"Interviewed on BBC television in 1997, shortly before his death, Sir Isiah Berlin, the Oxford philosopher and historian of ideas, was asked what had been the most surprising thing about his long life.  He was born in Riga in 1909, the son of a Jewish timber merchant, and was seven and a half years old when he witnessed the start of the February Revolution in Petrograd from the family's flat above a ceramics factory. He replied, 'The mere fact that I shall have lived so peacefully and so happily through such horrors.  The world was exposed to the worst century there has ever been from the point of view of crude inhumanity, of savage destruction of mankind, for no good reason,...And yet, here I am, untouched by all this,...That seems to me quite astonishing'."

You can view the full interview here.

Stop worrying - it may never happen.

Everything is Miscellaneous*

In organisations, large amounts of time can be wasted transferring information between people and functions.  Information is passed sometimes as a tangible object and sometimes as an intangible.  Often not enough thought is given to the difference between the two.

The tangible objects include documents, policies and spreadsheets.  The transit of these tangibles can be observed and measured.  Information in its intangible form include aspects that are harder to observe and measure, such as understanding, commitment and intention. 

You can see if tangible objects go missing or become damaged in transit.  You can tell if they are double-handled or applied incorrectly.  On the other hand detecting the loss, damage, double-handling or misapplication of intangible information is much harder.  You find out when it is too late, such as following a mistake.

For thousands of years, accountants have been aware of the problem and have applied techniques such as double-entry book-keeping and balancing to uncover damage to information in transit.  Other actors have had less time to become aware of, and deal with, the problem.  Often they are unable to perceive the problem for what it is and conclude the problem with the phrase: "we need to communicate better."  It doesn't explain how or when we will communicate better, or it may impose a high cost in terms of time or effort to do so.  The phrase is inconclusive because it does not address the source of the problem.

One source of the problem is that many of the tools we use were developed for a world of physical objects.  Many of these tools are less appropriate for our times, but many people have not grasped it.  In this entertaining Google "Tech Talk", David Weinberger explains how outdated methods impose severe limitations on thought, ideas and information:

Many individuals and organisations would benefit by increasing employee awareness of the problem and by providing training in and applying updated techniques.

*My blog post heading taken from the book "Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder" by David Weinberger.  An interesting and rewarding book.

Making an effective presentation

The next time you are considering using PowerPoint for your presentation ask yourself whether the slides add to, or detract from, the message.  Here's a demo:

Listen to The Gettysburg Address (read by Gregory Peck):

Click here for the slides and ask: "do these slides improve the message?"

Point made. Be brave. Don't rely on slides if you want to present a compelling message.

[Gettysburg Address slides created by Peter Norvig]