Build from Common Ground

25 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, psychology, sports, Uncategorized

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Tags

A Pattern Language., collaboration, Common Ground, family, innovation, life, music, religion, sports, teamwork

CHI Workshop Activity: Working Together to Create World Map (Florence, 2008)

Build From Common Ground

Prolog/Acknowledgement:

The idea for this Pattern comes from long personal experience trying in many contexts to get to solutions quickly without first bothering to try to find common ground. In addition, I am working on a project to provide a platform to support civil discussion, debate, Dialogue, and deliberations. One of the other founders has a long history with The Interactivity Foundation which also uses various methods to build from common ground.

Author, reviewer and revision dates:

Created by John C. Thomas on February 20-25, 2018

Synonyms:

Abstract:

Human beings share a large majority of their genes. Life on earth began 4.75 billion years ago. Only around 100,000 years ago people began migrating out of Africa, going to different places and evolving different cultures, religions, and languages. In addition to our long common history, people across the globe want many of the same things: freedom, food, water, safety, love, friendship, a space to be themselves, a life with some pleasure and a sense of meaning or higher purpose.

In the so-called developed world, there is an emphasis on doing things as quickly and efficiently as possible. To accomplish that, many people are extremely specialized in their education and profession in addition to whatever differences they have in culture and family background. Often, in a highly populated, highly interconnected world, people must collaborate and cooperate at a very large scale. Since some of the problems we face (e.g., preventing atomic war; preventing plagues; reducing global climate change) are vital, people are passionate about getting to solutions. They want to do this quickly. There is often a natural tendency to focus immediately on the problem as initially defined, and then to focus on differences and to resolve those differences as quickly and efficiently as possible. This does not generally work. People are invested in their own solutions which depend on their own background and experiences in their various cultures, families, education and training. Focusing from the onset on differences sets up a competitive mindset which then has everyone thinking how to “win” against their competitors. Unlike athletic competitions, people are unlikely even to agree initially on the “rules” for deliberations and debate, and often have pre-existing “positions” to sell to everyone else or force on everyone else.

Therefore, for any group trying to solve a problem collaboratively, it works better to first identify and build on common ground. Later, after some degree of trust is established, people may (or may not) find it useful to examine as well their differences as a source of ideas for how to solve the larger problem. They may choose from a variety of methods to make progress. Starting with common ground can help everyone involved to see that they are all part of one big and quite similar “in-group” with a problem to solve rather than focusing on everyone else as being in an “out-group” that needs to be defended against.

Problem:

Groups function better under a wide variety of circumstances if there is a high degree of internal mutual trust. If people work together over a long period of time, trust will usually develop if warranted. This is what happens in most (but not all) work groups, teams, standing committees, etc. However, it often happens that other problems need to be understood and solved by groups that span pre-existing organizations. For example, a town needs to collectively decide whether to sell a beautiful community park to a mall developer who promises tax revenue and convenient shopping for the town. A state needs to decide whether to legalize marijuana or to ban assault weapons. A nation needs to decide whether or not to work with other nations to reduce air and water pollution. People addressing such issues will often have to address them in combination with others that they do not already know well and may not trust.

Often such decisions as those mentioned above must be made under some time pressure. Some people will have vested interests in a “solution” that is particularly favorable to them regardless of how much it hurts others. When people begin by stating their own position and trying to “sell it” to others, an adversarial atmosphere is created so that “winning” rather than “solving” becomes the dominant tone of subsequent conversations and actions. This almost always results in sub-optimal solutions and, in addition, almost always results in reducing trust and social capital among the people deciding.

Even under the best of circumstances, with everyone committed to finding a “good” solution for all, people will tend to misunderstand each other simply because language is ambiguous and vague. People have different assumptions based on their experiences, culture, and training what process to follow as well as what constitutes acceptable rules and boundaries. If we add to these inherent difficulties the further (and avoidable) difficulty that people are focused on the ways people are different, it will tend to prevent mutual trust and prevent the emergence of new ways to find, formulate and solve the problems at hand.

Context:

Complex problems can often only be solved by groups. Even when the nature of the problem is simple enough for one person to solve, people want to feel that they or their representatives are engaged in the process if the outcome will impact them. For the group to work well together to solve problems, it is useful for them to understand each other’s situations and motivations. When in a hurry or under stress, people often perceive others and their motivations, not on the basis of inquiry into what those are but on group membership and the way that group differentiates itself from other groups.

Our nervous systems (and those of other animals) are constructed to be particularly sensitive to differences and changes. Our education and society teach us to differentiate as much as possible. We celebrate the wine connoisseur who can tell you the year and vineyard and scoff at the person who simply says, “I like all wine.” Sometimes, of course, fine differentiation is critical, particularly for an omnivore. We need, for instance, to be able to differentiate the three leaves of a wild strawberry from the three leaves of poison ivy. In biology class, we get high grades for correctly labeling 100 different parts of the earthworm and get no credit for simply saying, “Look! These are all parts of an earthworm! How cool! I had no idea it was that complex inside or that it has so many of the same parts we do!” In many contexts, being able to further differentiate things is a good thing. Even in group problem solving, there are situations where this is true. However, we typically do not ask ourselves whether this is one of those situations. We tend to dive unthinkingly into exploring differences.

Forces:

Our brains are not infinite but finite. We, along with other animals, generally focus on foreground while ignoring or presuming the background. Our nervous system is especially tuned to differences and changes, not to similarities and constancies.

Our educational systems typically focuses on teaching people to make even finer and further differentiations beyond what our senses immediately show.

Societies typically celebrate finding additional differences rather than finding additional similarities. Experts are typically defined by their ability to detect differences rather than their ability to see similarities.

People are quintessentially social animals. Therefore we tend to join groups. Each group coheres around a group identity which tends to define itself in terms of differences from other groups and seldom mentions similarities.

Each person only knows a small proportion of another person’s situation and individuality. Often, we treat each person according to their differentiating group membership(s) rather than their similarities to ourselves or according to the complexity of their individual selves.

Solution:

When a group begins to address a situation that impacts many people in various ways, and especially if people already have opinions and positions on the situation, begin by stressing, creating, or fostering their common ground before even starting any other problem solving activity.

Sharing a Meal at CHI 2008 Workshop

Examples:

1. At IBM Research, for several years, I managed a research project on the “business uses of stories and storytelling.” I worked with a small team of researchers & consultants to develop tools and techniques. One patent (Story-based organizational assessment and effect system) was originally inspired by trying to help companies involved in mergers and acquisitions deal with cultural differences between companies. The suggested technique essentially involved collecting stories from the two original companies, analyzing them for the underlying values that were expressed in the stories, finding common values in the stories from both original companies, creating new stories using the values and situations from the originals but making sure the new stories were constructed to be memorable and motivating; and finally re-introducing these stories to the people from both companies. The reason for this whole process was to stress common ground so that people from two companies could work better together.

StoryPatent

2. At a workshop at the 1992 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’92), I co-organized and co-led a workshop on “Cross-cultural issues in HCI.” At the beginning of the workshop, the participants entered the assigned workshop room to find that it had been set up in a “classroom style” with one small table and two chairs at the front of the room and all the other chairs and desks set up for the “listeners.” We wanted the room set up as a large circle. Everyone pitched in to re-arrange the room into this large circle. This physical activity provided additional common ground for the team. One outcome of the Pattern “Small Successes Early” is to provide common ground. Having people work together to perform a physical task is one way to establish common ground.

We also played a game called “Barnga.” In my introduction to the game, I explained that it was much like Bridge, Whist, or Euchre. To my surprise, none of the participants attending from Asia had any idea how to play such games or what I meant by “tricks” or “following suit.” That experience illustrates how easy it is (at least for me!) to over-estimate how much common ground exists in a group. (http://www.acadiau.ca/~dreid/games/Game_descriptions/Barnga1.htm)

In a later workshop (2008) on “Human Computer Interaction for International Development,” at the suggestion of Andy Dearden, we began by cooperatively building a map of the world from materials at hand (illustrated above) before delving into the details of the workshop. Starting with this as “common ground” we then explored some of our differences by standing on the representation of where we were from, a favorite place we had visited, a place we wanted to visit, etc.

3. Religions regularly practice rites and rituals. For practitioners of the religion, this provides common ground regardless of a host of differences among the adherents. Of course, it is a double-edged sword because differences among these rites and rituals can also separate people. One of the more brilliant scenes from West Wing cuts among scenes of people attending religions services that are variously Jewish, Muslim, and Christian while the viewer knows that there is an unsuccessful peace effort underway. In this case, the uncommented footage helps to illustrate the common ground among these three religions.

earthfromspace

4. The Family of Man was both an ambitious photography exhibit and a book (definitely worth buying) that portrays people across the world to illustrate precisely that we do have common ground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_of_Man

5. In an earlier blog post, I showed with back of the envelope calculations just how “related” humanity is in terms of genetics, experience, ideas, and matter. In fact, all of life on earth is highly inter-related and it has been for its entire 4.75 billion years.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/03/09/math-class-who-are-you/

6. In a recent episode of the TV series, Madam Secretary, the Secretary of State is trying to resolve a conflict between two nations A and B. The diplomats from A say they cannot trust B and the diplomats from B say that they cannot trust A. She suggests that they start from their mutual distrust as part of common ground. In other words, rather than treating the mistrust of A and B as two separate issues, she begins by suggesting that A and B both share two things in common: not only a desire for peace but also a difficulty in trusting the other side. Even mutual distrust can be framed as a basis for common ground. This is more than a linguistic trick. It is an important reframing. It may well turn out that a single event such as a soccer game with teams that have members from both nations may help reduce mistrust on both sides at the same time.

7. Holiday celebrations, the preparation and consumption of food, listening to music, or appreciating the beauty of nature may all provide additional ways of beginning with common ground. Of course, there are cultural differences in all of these as well so one must take some care to provide something that actually is common ground and not something that tends to emphasize the differences among people in these activities.

8. One of the plenary speakers at CHI 1989 in Austin Texas was an astronaut who had been in space. I spoke with him after and during our conversation, he claimed that all astronauts, whatever country they were from, shared the same experience of seeing earth from space; viz., that the national boundaries we typically think so much about were only political; most are not physical. He said all the astronauts were struck by how thin and fragile our atmosphere is and that the earth is the only place around that is capable of sustain the breadth and depth of life. Many of them found this realization of “common ground” the most transformative of all their experiences in the space program.

Resulting Context:

Once people experience common ground, they may still disagree, debate, discuss, or hopefully dialogue in order to identify issues and problems. Experiencing common ground makes it harder to “dehumanize” the other side. It decreases the chances that people will engage in counter-productive actions such as “name calling” or using propaganda techniques to “prove” that they are right and their “opponents” are wrong.

Rationale:

Actions are always better based on reality than on fantasy. Reality is that people share much in common. Reality is that there are also many remaining differences. The entire problem solving process (including problem finding, problem formulation all the way through to finding issues with solutions and re-solving, re-negotiating, re-designing, or re-developing a solution) is enhanced when it is based on a balanced view that includes both real similarities and real differences. We already have a culture and an educational system that focuses on differences. Focusing on common ground is a critical factor in balancing our view so that we do not try to solve problems based on the partial truth that we are all different.

Related Patterns:

Reality Check, Check-In, Small Successes Early.

Metaphors:

It is a windy day in San Diego as I write this. We have a set of wind chimes outside the bedroom. Whichever direction the wind blows; however windy it gets (within bounds); and even if the wind is quite chaotic, the sound that emerges is always harmonic and tuneful. This is because of the structure and relationships of the chimes. It would be nice if we could have a platform that encouraged and promoted civility. I think that could work because of the nature of the platform. One of the “chimes” could be Bohm Dialogue; another could be “Building from Common Ground.”

Another musical example is Jazz Improvisation. If a group of musicians who know each other get together, they can improvise some very nice music. If they’ve never met, they will almost certainly agree on a few boundaries before beginning such as style, time signature, key signature. They may well start by having the percussion set up a “beat” that everyone relates to.

Now, imagine instead that seven random people are thrown together from seven different cultures. Each has an instrument that none of the others has ever seen. They have completely different musical experiences and expectations. Does it not make sense that they will take more time to converge on anything good? Doesn’t it seem as though they first need to discover some kind of common ground in terms of scales, rhythms, degree of repetition before achieving a good result? Or, do you think they should argue about which kind of music is best first? Do you think any of the seven will be able to convince the other six that “their” kind of music is superior? Suppose instead of having as one mutual goal making good music, instead, they are in a contest and only one of them will “win” and go on to the next round. Surely, this will only further confound any possible teamwork. Add to this, that they only have two minutes. What kind of performance would you expect now? And, yet, we seem to expect people from very different backgrounds to get on-line and instantly “make good music together.” Whether it’s 140 characters, 280 characters or a whole paragraph, it seems unlikely you will be able to sway anyone to move from “their position” to “your position.”

International sports competitions such as the Olympics provide a setting where people from around the world get together and compete. These are not random people; they are all immensely talented and skilled; however, they are also all highly competitive. Yet, the venue provides a framework for competition that provides a structure for competing within common ground. Despite being from different cultures and using different languages, the athletes push each other to amazing performances with a minimum of rancor. Every athlete realizes as well that every other athlete has also gone through a rigorous selection and training process involving many sacrifices to get where they are — more common ground. The Olympics might be thought of as a particularly interesting example of finding common ground despite people having different backgrounds, language, and goals. Sports may also be thought of as a compelling metaphor. When politics are reported in the media, they are most often treated as a sporting event. But it is a strange kind of sporting event in that such reporting seldom stresses common ground and instead focuses on strategy, polls, winning, losing, and differences. It almost never reports on common ground in politics. In reporting on actual sporting events, however, the reporting focus often does cover the common ground that athletes face; e.g., the training, the dedication, the sacrifices that families must make, the importance of coaching, etc.

References:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197193.The_Family_of_Man

https://www.johngraham.org/coach/17-finding-common-ground-negotiating-and-resolving-conflicts-part-i

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057267.2016.1206351

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1049732306289705

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221517384_Video_Helps_Remote_Work_Speakers_Who_Need_to_Negotiate_Common_Ground_Benefit_from_Seeing_Each_Other

Thomas, J. C. (2017). Building Common Ground in a Wildly Webbed World: A Pattern Language Approach. PPDD Workshop, 5/25/2017, San Diego, CA.

Thomas, J.C. & Kellogg, W. (1993). Cross-cultural perspectives on human-computer interaction: report on the CHI ’92 workshop. SIGCHI Bulletin, 25 (2), 40-45.

Bohm Dialogue

21 Wednesday Feb 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

A Pattern Language., Bohm Dialogue, Business, competition, dialogue, innovation, learning, politics

Bohm Dialogue

Prolog/Acknowledgement:

The idea for this Pattern comes from the work of David Bohm. Bohm was a quantum physicist who, later in life, became interested in human communication. He would not say he “invented” dialogue; rather, he felt it was common in so-called “primitive” societies. Indeed, it seems to have been a common occurrence in the recounting of Paula Underwood in The Walking People. I learned more about Dialogue from Peter Senge and Bill Isaacs while working in “Knowledge Management” at NYNEX and IBM.

Author, reviewer and revision dates:

Created by John C. Thomas on February 21, 2018

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Synonyms:

Campfire Reflections. Quaker meeting.

Abstract:

In a hyper-competitive society, conversations that might be related to actions that affect more than one person are framed as contests with winners and losers, much like a sporting event or a court case. Sometimes, this might be appropriate, but it is not generally a good method. An alternative method to debate and discussion is Dialogue. In discussion and debate, as soon as one person begins saying something in favor of X, others decide whether they are for or against X. Then, based on a superficial hearing of what the person is saying, they determine how to best add weight to X or detract from it. They typically want to be able to “jump in” as soon as there is the slightest gap in the conversation. As a result, they are typically rehearsing their own upcoming argument and not even listening to the other person beyond the first few words. By contrast, in Bohm Dialogue, one person says something and everyone else listens to them respectfully. After listening, everyone reflects on what has been said. Then, they might or might not make a comment. This comment does not have to be an argument pro or con. It can be an analogy, a story, a reflection, a question, an example, or an observation. Rather than dividing into “camps” or “teams” and trying to “win” an argument about whether X or ~X is better, everyone works collaboratively and cooperatively to understand the space of possibilities and consequences. In such cases, the group might end up doing X, ~X, or .5X. Or, they may decide to gather more data; they may invent Y; they might decide to experiment in a small way with X. It is a joint construction process.

Problem:

Groups consists of individuals who never have precisely the same interests or the same experiences. In some cases, people simply make their own choices. It isn’t necessary for everyone to eat the same food or read the same books. But in some cases, appropriate action requires that people agree. Do we drive on the left side of the road or the right side? Do we penalize companies for polluting the environment or not? Do we have daylight savings time or not?

In a competitive society, it is easy to fall into the trap of framing problems in terms of who will benefit and who will lose. Everyone on the “losing side” will tend to find arguments to support their position even before understanding the other side. Such a process rarely results in innovation or breakthrough thinking. In a rush to win, people tend to ignore subtleties and interactions so even the framing of the problem becomes over-simplified. If people become angry or fearful, their ability to process information deteriorates and they most often stick with something they already know. In extreme cases, people will literally “freeze” with fear and be unable to perform even a simple yet critical action such as pulling the ripcord on their parachute.

In addition, if group action is decided through a process that is framed in terms of winning and losing, those on the losing side may not fully cooperate with the group decision. Consciously or unconsciously, they may even act to thwart the implementation of the group decision.

In the rush to “win,” those on the winning side may not even listen to important concerns from the other “side” and even if the “correct” decision “wins out,” important implementational details are overlooked. In this way, the implementation of the group decision will be flawed even if everyone tries to cooperate.

By framing the group decision process in terms of “winners” and “losers,” group cohesion and mutual trust can often be lost. This is particularly true if the group process is so contentious that people use propaganda or outright lies to try to “win” the debate. This not only makes this particular problem solving exercise less than optimal; it also means that future interactions will be less cordial, less civil, and less likely to result in what is best for the group as a whole.

Context:

Complex problems and large problems can often only be solved by groups. In addition, sometimes, decisions must necessarily impact the entire group. Groups may be as small as a couple deciding where to go on vacation or tennis doubles team deciding on an effective approach to their next match or as large as all of humanity deciding on how to deal with population growth and pollution.

Groups must not only decide on a collective course of action; generally, they must also implement that decision.

Forces:

Everyone wants to protect their “own interests.”

People may think of their “own interests” at varying levels; e.g., their own body, their own belief system, their own family, their own tribe, their own party, their own nation, all of humanity, or even all of life.

The expectations of any one person are primarily based on their own experiences.

The behavior of any other person is largely based on that person’s experiences.

If one person acts uncivilly or hyper-competitively, it tends to increase the chances that others will do the same.

In some societies, competition has become the default way to interact.

Competition tends to induce high stress levels in people.

High stress levels tend to make people less willing to listen, change, or think creatively.

* Everyone is an expert when it comes to their own experience.

Solution:

Instead of having a group debate or discuss two or a few alternatives to determine which one is the winner, instead use Bohm Dialogue to cooperatively, cooly, and calmly have the group examine a situation using everyone’s experience together. Have people listen respectfully to everyone’s contribution. Have everyone reflect on what they say. It helps if people frame their contribution in terms of their own experience rather than abstract and sweeping generalities and pronouncements. Let the group cooperatively build a joint understanding of the problem. This often results in an emergent solution. Even when it does not and, in the end, a vote on X or ~X must be taken, everyone feels respected by everyone else and people are much more likely to help implement the solution.

Example:

Imagine a tribe of people sitting around a fire at the end of the day. They reflect on their experiences. One says, “I gathered acorns today. There were very few though. This is not like the other years.” Everyone listens. They reflect.

Another says, “It would be nice if we could eat the acorns as the squirrels do, without having to wait.”

Another says, “Yes, though even they do not eat them all right away.”

Another: “Are there fewer oak trees? Or, is each tree making fewer acorns?”

The first says, “I am not sure. Let me think back. Each tree has fewer than in years past.”

Another says, “Speaking of fewer, I only caught two fish today in my favorite fishing spot. And the water was shallower.”

Another adds: “This spring I gathered fiddlehead ferns. There were only a few. Odd.”

Another: “There were so many nice sunny days this spring and summer. I guess there was a lot less rain.”

Another: “It would be nice if we could make it rain more.”

An older woman adds, “It has been raining less as I’ve grown older. Less and less each year.”

Another: “How can we make it rain more?”

Another: “I don’t know how we can make it rain more. But we could save the water when it does rain.”

Another: “I like water. Sometimes the small raindrops join together to make larger ones.”

Another: “Indeed, it is the nature of water to like the company of others.” Laughter.

Another, “Perhaps we can encourage water from the big river to visit us. We can dig a trench. If we encourage some water to go into that trench, other drops may follow into our stream.”

Another: “More water in our stream would encourage fish as well as fiddleheads and oaks to visit us more often.”

To the typical “modern person,” this dialogue seems needlessly random and inefficient. But is it really?

Sure, the typical business meeting has an agenda and it seems as though it’s efficient. The meeting below is pure fiction — but it is precisely in line with my typical experiences from a lifetime of meetings in “efficient corporate America.”

10:10- 10:30 Discuss ways to get more acorns.

Chairperson: “We need more acorns. How can we get them?”

Person 1: “I need help. They are hard to find.”

Person 2: “Well, I can’t do it. I’m having enough trouble getting fish. That takes all my time.”

Person 3: “You think you’ve got troubles? I can’t find enough fiddleheads either, so I can’t help.”

Person 4 – speaking directly to Person 1: “You sure you’re really hunting acorns and not just ogling the women? Just kidding.”

Person 1: “You come gather the acorns then. You’ll see.”

Person 4: “I said I was just kidding.”

Person 2: “When can we talk about getting more help fishing? Can we put that on the agenda for next week?”

Chairperson: “It’s next on the agenda.”

Person 5: “The real solution is incentives. I hate to say it, but I just don’t think everyone is really pulling their own weight around here.”

Person 6: “The key is better metrics. Words like ‘fewer’ are very fuzzy. We need an accounting of all the acorns. And fish. And fiddleheads. Then, we will be able to quantify the extent of the problem.”

Person 1: “Who is going to count the acorns? You? I know I got fewer and it isn’t from not trying.”

Chairperson: “Hey, we’re almost out of time. Let’s table this discussion for now and put it on the agenda for next week. It seems to me, in the meantime, Person 1, you’re going to have to get up a little earlier in the morning and gather more acorns that way. Let’s vote. All in favor of Person 1 getting up earlier to gather more acorns, raise your hands.”

[Everyone raises their hands except Person 1].

Chairperson: “OK, motion carried. Person 1, give us a report next week on exactly how many acorns you got every day.”

Person 1: “Look, the acorns are largely gone now. Getting up earlier isn’t going to help.”

Chairperson: “Sorry, Person 1. Do the best you can. We need to move to the next item on the agenda which concerns fishing.”

Person 1: “I always do the best I can. But I’m telling you that there will still be fewer acorns next week.”

Chairperson: “OK, we need to take this off-line and talk about fishing. If you can’t gather acorns, we’ll find someone who can. Enough.”

What are the likely outcomes from this “efficient” meeting? First, it is quite likely that Person 1 is pretty pissed off. Second, the group is unlikely to ever realize that there is a problem with the acorn supply rather than the extent or manner in which Person 1 is gathering them. Third, the group is way far away from realizing the systemic nature of the problem and the fact that the “real problem” is a diminishing source of water, let alone making any progress toward solving that actual problem.

Resulting Context:

Generally speaking, using dialogue will be more not less efficient for finding and implementing solutions to root problems than will competitive debates or discussions. The solutions arising from Dialogue will be “owned” by the entire group and it is more likely that everyone will be working together to make sure the solution actually works. In addition, the long term effect on the group is to increase mutual trust and cooperation.

Rationale:

Actions are always better based on reality than on fantasy. Yet, humans often latch onto a particular interpretation of events very quickly and with insufficient data. As a consequence, people often work within the constraints of their own limited thought patterns. Treating what is essentially and quintessentially group problem solving as a competition between people for which of two or three solutions most often results in solving the wrong problem or at best only solving a sub-problem. In addition, “solutions” arrived at in this competitive way often result in decreased effectiveness of a group over time because of growing envy, resentment and mistrust.

By contrast, Bohm Dialogue encourages people to work together with respect and to understand a problematic situation from many angles. In this way, the real or more basic problem is understood as well as how it impacts everyone present.

As Bohm points out, many people mistakenly believe the word “Dialogue” comes from the Greek word logos for truth and the Latin root di for two implying that a dialogue is a two-sided debate. Instead, “Dialogue” comes from the Greek logos and the Greek root dia which does not mean two but through. It is coming to the truth through interaction.

Related Patterns:

“Who Speaks for Wolf.” Reality Check.

Known Uses: (See the Incarnations section of the Wikipedia article on 2014)David Bohm referenced below). I have also had personal success running Dialogue sessions as Executive Director of the NYNEX AI lab and in SIGCHI meetings. If you explain the “rules of the game” people can fairly easily learn to Dialogue.

Quaker meetings are often run in this same fashion and the group does not “vote” to choose among a couple possible actions but instead reflects as a group until a consensus is reached.

Metaphors:

Bohm, as I mentioned, was a quantum physicists and he likened what happens in dialogue to having people be in a “super-cooled” and therefore “super-conductive” state. When people are “agitated” to “win,” they are bouncing around like hot molecules and conducting information among them is difficult. The more you heat up a wire, the less well it conducts current or information. Near absolute zero, the wire instead becomes “superconductive.” When people relax and do not have an “axe to grind” and are not ego-invested in a predetermined outcome, they behave quite intelligently in discovering truths.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohm_Dialogue

Bohm, D. (1996). On dialogue. New York: Routledge.

Holman, P & Devane,T. (1999). The change handbook: Group methods for shaping the future. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Isaacs, W. (1999). Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together: A Pioneering Approach to Communicating in Business and in Life. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group.

Krishnamurti, J. and Bohm, D. (2014). The ending of time: Where philosophy and physics meet. New York: Harper/Collins.

Senge, P. M. (2006). The fifth discipline: the art and practice of the learning organization. Doubleday.

Shaw, P. (2002). Changing Conversations in Organizations. A complexity approach to change. London: Routledge.

Author Page on Amazon

Greater Gathering

08 Thursday Feb 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, psychology, sports, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Business, collaboration, cooperation, coordination, innovation, pattern language, social capital, sports, teamwork, trust

Greater Gathering.

Author, reviewer and revision dates:

Created by John C. Thomas on Dec. 11, 2004

Reviewed by <> on <>

Revised by JCT on Feb. 7, 2018.

Prologue and Acknowledgements.

This pattern can be found in many teams, companies, NGO’s, families, and religious organizations. If you are interested in how this happened to strike me as a pattern, feel free to read this section Otherwise, you can skip it. I began to notice this pattern after two events happened to coincide.

While working at IBM Research many years ago, I played in an inter-company tennis league in Westchester County, New York. During those matches, I met many IBMers from outside of IBM Research. One of the people I met worked in the corporate tax department. In those days, long before Google, we used a Key Word In Context system (ITERC?) to scan for potentially useful documents. Every week, I would get a long list of abstracts based on my list of keywords. This system was not nearly so accurate as what many of us have access to today. While there were many “hits” for me, there were also quite a few false positives. For example, I was interested in the psychological process of “induction” – learning a rule based on examples. I often got abstracts, however, about “induction motors.” One day, I got one of those “false positives” about a new tax law that allowed highly profitable companies like IBM to “trade” tax liabilities with companies who were struggling like the tire companies in my home town of Akron. According to the abstract, it was in the financial interests of both companies to use this “trading” mechanism. I had little interest in it, but I liked the guy I had met from corporate and we had traded contact information for tennis purposes. I sent him the abstract. As it turned out, this was precisely applicable to IBM and saved them a lot of money.

At the same time, I was reading about the history of IBM and particularly thought it interesting that they had put so much time and effort into the 100% club meetings. This was a country-wide meeting to bring together sales people from all over the US who had met or exceeded their sales quotas. I was never in sales, but even at Research, we had “annual picnics” in which everyone in IBM Research was invited to come with their families. As I began thinking about it, I realized that these kinds of “larger gatherings” were common across many different cultures, domains, and types of groups. The tax example showed a very specific financial benefit to the IBM company but I realized there were many other potential benefits as well.

Synonyms:

Conference. Congress. Convention. Jamboree. National Holidays.

Abstract:

When moderate to large groups work to solve large, complex problems, it is often necessary for them to subdivide the work into distinct subgroups. This results in the group being more efficient and effective. However, it also means that each group comes to develop their own vocabulary, search for people who are particularly good at certain things, and in various other ways, the people within the subgroup communicate a lot, come to trust each other, and have clear common interests. They are often at conflict with other subgroups for resources. In addition, there is less trust across these organizational boundaries than within such a boundary. Often, the people themselves come to be somewhat different kinds of people. Large effective groups therefore participate at least annually in a “Greater Gathering” which allows people to meet and co-mingle across these organizational boundaries. These meetings are constructed to emphasize “common ground” within the larger group. As a result, new lines of communication are lined up; mutual trust is enhanced; sometimes, real problems are solved.

Problem:

As large, complex problems are broken down into pieces and assigned to different groups, efficiency and effectiveness increase. Not only that, the individuals within each of these various subgroups typically grow more trusting of each other within that sub-group. They learn about each other’s skills and motivations, so over time, the sub-group as a whole grows more effective and efficient.

However, this high intra-group cohesion comes at a price. People in one part of an organization consider themselves the “in-group” and may begin to limit their learning because of a lack of diversity in that one perspective. Furthermore, they may come to work so hard to solve their own sub-problem that they lose sight of the larger problem and make sub-optimizing decisions. In some cases, the ideas of various subgroups about how to handle something will differ and result in conflict. Even worse, sometimes, decisions made in Group A help them a little but make life for Group B much more difficult and make the overall objective of the group, whatever it is, more difficult to achieve and no-one ever realizes it. There may be lack of trust between different sub-groups or even outright mistrust among sub-groups. Often sub-groups that are “at odds” with each other, not only have different management chains and objectives; they may also be geographically apart; they may be from different cultures; they may be of different professions, etc. For these reasons, a suspicion may grow over time while mutual trust diminishes. Information sharing becomes strained. The overall organization is not doing as well as it might nor are the people within that organization doing as well as they might.

Context:

A group of people has been attempting to accomplish some task as effectively and efficiently as possible. In order to do this, one common method is to breakdown a large, complex task into smaller, less complex tasks. Often, those people working on a subtask naturally spend more time with others on that subtask than on other subtasks. It naturally occurs in this context that since people spend a lot of time together, they may develop common interests and also spend leisure time together as well. Sharing common sub-goals, physical contexts, and leisure activities as well as working on the same subtasks may eventually lead to an “in-group” feeling.

Over time, these subgroups develop different methods, procedures, values, customs, terms of art. They become, in a sense, different sub-cultures. But just as cooperation and communication can be trickier when two historical cultures are involved, so too, it can more difficult for, say, someone from each of the legal department, the accounting department and the R&D department to understand each other than, say, three accountants. Sometimes, various departments actually want the same thing. They simply don’t know it because they are speaking different languages.

Some degree of “antagonism” of purpose is often built in to the organization. The R&D department will ask for more money. Finance will say no. But these kinds of one-sided or even two-sided or multi-sided competitions are much healthier both for the organization and its people if they are done with respect and rules. Having completely different sub-cultures can enhance the difficulty of such negotiations.

Forces:

*People are naturally gregarious.

*People working on a common problem often bond as well.

*People working on a common sub-problem often lose sight of the larger problem.

*Social sanctions can lead to a lack of diversity of perspectives.

*All people share certain basic drives.

*Shared special events help build social bonds.

*People enjoy novel experiences and viewpoints, under some circumstances

*An expectation of what happens (based on story and experience) can help mold what does happen.

The possibility of one person harming another and not doing so increases mutual trust.
Shared experiences tend to increase mutual trust.

Solution:

All the sub-groups that need to cooperate in a larger group should get together periodically for a meeting of “Greater Gathering.” This should be periodic and structured. Activities need to be formulated that help everyone visualize and experience common ground. Eating, drinking, dancing, singing, athletic contests, and other physical activities should also be included since these are experiences people will relate to and enjoy regardless of which sub-group they belong to or which sub-problem they are working on.

Examples:

Companies generally used to have many of these events when such companies were run by people who cared about the companies and the people within those companies rather than simply caring about using companies as a tool to enhance the power and wealth of a few. For example, when I first joined IBM, they sponsored many sports leagues within IBM Research including tennis, golf, softball, and soccer. Furthermore, they participated, as in the prologue of this pattern, in sports leagues across nearby IBM locations which included sales, CHQ, Engineering, Programming and Technology, Marketing, and Advanced Ad Tech. Every year, there was an elaborate company picnic. There was a Holliday Party and fairly frequent less formal award ceremonies with refreshments. There were also numerous recognition events which were attended by people outside your sub-group.

Other examples are numerous. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts have national Jamborees. Families have extended family reunions. Sometimes, these can be at a civic level such as Mardi Gras or a local annual parade that most people work on or attend.

I’ve been very active for a long time in a group called “CHI” for “Computer-Human Interaction.” It’s a Special Interest Group of the Association for Computing Machinery. (ACM). Anyway, the people who do research in this field are scattered across the globe. They work for different university departments or companies or non-profits or governments or as individual consultants. We have full professors and undergraduate students; we have people with original backgrounds in electrical engineering, philosophy, psychology, design, architecture, fine arts, English, human-computer interaction, mathematics, mechanical engineering and many more. Some are doing research whose application is out at least 20 years and others are worried about whether their start-up will survive the quarter. Some work for giant multi-nationals and others are one person companies. Every year, we have a rather challenging conference where all of these folks are invited. The conference centers around the technical program, but there are also many things meant to provide a larger gathering; to foster mutual trust; to have a great time together so that we can better respect each other, communicate more effectively and achieve common goals.

Resulting Context:

The result of the first example above is that people throughout IBM at that time almost universally thought of themselves as IBMers rather than someone from the accounting department. What this meant was that there was a high level of trust for people from other parts of the company. I’m not saying it was perfect but it was much higher with more people honestly trying to do what was best for the company rather than what was best for them or their immediate manager. Now, that’s largely reversed. Of course, it’s hard to know how much is due to the “cutting out of all the fat” like annual picnics and sport’s leagues.

In the second example, Boy Scouts get a chance to see that people of different shades of skin, creeds, geographical locations share a lot in common.

In the third example, the CHI conference continues, I believe, to be an important reason that people in such a wide variety of circumstances can collaborate and communicate so well.

Rationale:

It is easy to imagine that people we rarely or never see are not only different from us superficially, but that they are different in essence. If you meet people from various parts of your organization in a neutral informal situation that stresses your commonality such as a picnic, a sporting even, an ice-cream social, or a walk-a-thon, you will see that you have some common ground, trust, and makes communication easier.

Related Patterns:

Conversational Support at the Boundaries.

Known Uses:

Metaphors:

Many species go to a common place at least annually. We humans attribute this to the benefits of cross-fertilization or more global competitions in survival of the fittest. Is it also possible that they are also exchanging information that is useful for the species as a whole?

Fable:

I think I will defer, at least temporarily, to that excellent fable of Norton Juster’s: The Phantom Tollbooth. In that fable, Rhyme and Reason are banished to separate kingdoms and the results are not good.

References:

Meaningful Initiation

29 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, psychology, sports, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Business, collaboration, coming of age, cooperation, coordination, Design, initiation, life, pattern language, ritual

Meaningful Initiation

Prolog:

I have mixed feelings about the phenomenon of “initiation.” I’d be very interested to hear about other people’s experiences, intuitions, and studies related to this very common social phenomenon.

Author, reviewer and revision dates:

Created by John C. Thomas on January 29, 2018

Synonyms:

Appropriate Initiation

Abstract:

Persistent social groups typically require people who want to join the group to pass an initiation ceremony, rite, or test. Some of these “initiations” include meaningful tests of skill, knowledge, or loyalty. Such initiations prevent people who are deemed unworthy or not ready from joining the group. This has several additional effects. People who pass the initiation, especially if it is severe, value the group more. The initiation also tends to prevent people who do not really value the group enough (or even seek to subvert it) from joining. In addition, people who have no interest in joining the group may also value it more highly if they know it is difficult to join. Initiations may be severe by virtue of having the test of skill itself be difficult, or by requiring endurance, pain, or embarrassment on the part of the would-be joiner.

Problem:

Groups function better under a wide variety of circumstances if there is a high degree of internal mutual trust. If people work together over a long period of time, trust will develop if warranted. However, often even a newcomer to a group can cause chaos and mistrust due to lack of experience, competence, or in some cases, intentionally. Groups therefore need some way to ensure that everyone in the group is minimally competent, values the group and works for the group’s benefit, not just their individual benefit. It’s important for the group work that everyone value the group and trust each other.

Context:

Complex problems and large problems can often only be solved by groups. For the group to work well together to solve ill-defined or wicked problems, they need to have a common way of communicating, have knowledge of what each other knows, and have a high degree of trust. At the other extreme, consider slaves chained to their oars, slaves picking cotton, or even volunteers, each of whom scans a very small pre-assigned segment of the night sky. In these cases, someone outside the group is typically “in charge” and the cooperation and coordination required among the members of the group is determined, not by the group, but by an overseer. As the problem space becomes more complex however, it becomes more and more necessary for the group to be able to re-prioritize, re-arrange how they work together, and even for fundamental values and goals to evolve. In these latter contexts, it is very important for the group members to share common experiences and trust each other.

In some cases, the normal progression of education, joining a sports league or becoming a full-fledged member of a profession has an initiation aspect even if its accidental. For instance, becoming a tennis professional will require submitting to the requests of coaches and doing a lot of repetition of the fundamentals. It may also require many hours of working out for flexibility, strength, balance, and cardio fitness. In addition, as the person gains skill, their opponents and the venues will tend to produce more and more stressful situations that must be mastered in order to progress to the next level. Similarly, to become a medical doctor requires hundreds of hours of study as well as practical, hands on experiences which will typically require higher and higher levels of skill and stress. Sometimes there are actual specific ritual initiations in addition, but sometimes the structure of the profession itself serves an initiative function.

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Forces:

If someone works harder, or suffers more pain or embarrassment to be accepted into a group, they will tend to value the group more (though this findings has not always been replicated).

For groups to work well together, they need common ways to communicate.

Common experiences tend to increase mutual trust.

For many groups, it is vital that the members of the group are selected so as to have adequate speed, strength, vision, courage, training, skill, or other characteristics.

Groups which are perceived to be very difficult to join may be viewed as being higher prestige than those which are easy to join.

Groups with higher prestige may enjoy more benefits from the larger society such as special laws, exceptions to general regulations, or a better pool of candidates.

Some people may use the excuse of an initiation in order to satisfy their own need to inflict cruelty on others regardless of the impact of that cruelty on the individual being initiated or on the effectiveness and cohesion of the group.

Solution:

Before someone is allowed to join a group, they have to “prove themselves” by undergoing an initiation. This insures they have some minimal qualifications. It also increases the strength of loyalty, social capital, and trust within the group. It may also increase the “cachet” of the group among others.

Examples:

As Royal Dutch Petroleum was nearing its hundredth year of existence, they commissioned Aries de Gues to find out whether corporations ever existed as long as a century and if so, what were the characteristics. He found that indeed, there were companies that old and they had four common characteristics. One was a high degree of mutual trust. A second was “strong boundaries.” This latter characteristic meant that it was difficult to join such companies and people tended to stay for a long time. Both these characteristics are logically related to having meaningful initiations. (The other two are not strongly related to this Pattern; Tolerance for Exploration at the Edges and Financial Conservatism).

See link for examples of religious initiations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_initiation_rites

Many so-called “primitive” cultures had initiations and rites of passage. Here are a few references.

https://www.artofmanliness.com/2015/09/30/lessons-from-the-sioux-in-how-to-turn-a-boy-into-a-man/

https://mightywrites.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/maori-ta-moko-a-ritual-of-passage-a-study-of-tattoing/

http://www.maasai-association.org/ceremonies.html

https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/us-apachegirl-pp

Resulting Context:

Presumably and hopefully, the resulting context is a self-sustaining group over time whose members trust each other, communicate well, and highly value their group membership.

Rationale:

Initiations are supposed to have these benefits: 1) The initiation screens out anyone who is incapable or not sufficiently interested to undergo bad things in order to join the group. 2) The initiation causes members of the group to value the group more highly. 3) The initiation provides a common experience that all group members can share. 4) The initiation may make the group seem more “selective” to people outside.

Related Patterns:

Special Roles; Strong Boundaries; Levels of Trust; Bell, Book, and Candle; Apprenticeships; Official Sanctions of Competency.

Known Uses:

College fraternities and sororities, clubs, sports teams, commercial groups in many settings, military groups, religious groups, and professional societies among others, all require tests and/or initiations before one becomes a full-fledged member. In some cases, such as a Ph.D. dissertation and defense, the “initiation” is mainly a test and an educational experience, but there is often an “endurance” aspect as well. While college fraternity initiations may include tests of knowledge of the participants; e.g., about the fraternity, it’s origins and members; it seems mainly to require the pledge to endure humiliation, discomfort, endurance and sometimes physical danger.

Known Misuses:

(Note: This is not a standard section in the Patterns of a Pattern Language. In this case, I think it’s important. While I do think this overall Pattern can be a useful one, it is particularly prone to misuse as well. I’d like to hear other people’s thoughts and experiences of initiations and what could be done to insure that this is a positive pattern.)

College fraternities in particular are known for so-called “hazing” that sometimes results in deaths. The most common cause of death is from drinking too much alcohol in too short a period of time.

Although part of what internships for medicine do is teaching and testing the ability of doctors to handle pressure, the schedules and attitudes often seem to include an element of cruelty and possibly even danger to the health and well-being of both interns and patients. Many professionals in other fields as well have experienced abuse of one sort or another from superiors during or associated with such tests.

In the movie, A Few Good Men, a commander orders a “Code Red” on a recruit who has repeatedly fallen short in various physical tests. The recruit dies. It turns out that his inability to perform some of the physical requirements of Marine training were because of an undiagnosed heart problem. This is at least arguably an example (albeit fictional) of initiation gone horribly wrong. Even though the fallen soldier was “in” the Marines, he was still in basic training which consists of a combination of skills training, conditioning, and repeated “initiation rituals.”

When I was a Boy Scout, my “initiation” consisted of supposedly being branded by a hot poker. Three of us were to be initiated during a week-end long camp outing. The kids who were already in the troop were in the main common room and we three were told to wait our turn in another, smaller room. The main room had a roaring fire and fireplace tools including a poker. I volunteered to go first. I was blindfolded and led into the main room where I had to lay down on a bench next to the fire. My shirt was pulled up and after a few minutes, when my torso felt hot from the fire, an ice cube was laid on my stomach. As you can easily verify for yourself, if you sense both hot and cold at the same time, it produces a burning sensation. I was instructed to scream bloody murder for the benefit of the guys still in the other room. As best I can recall at the time, I had been fairly well convinced that I was not actually going to be branded. (But either way, I thought it better to go first). For one thing, I had been swimming with all these guys and never noticed any kind of a scar that would be consistent with being branded with a hot poker. The second guy went through a similar procedure and was also told to scream bloody murder. After his “branding” the troop members took a towel and put ketchup on it to simulate blood. They took this in to show the third and last one of tonight’s “initiates.” The two of us who had already been initiated still moaned mournfully as though in pain, as per our instructions. When the boys went to blindfold and bring the last initiate in however, he completely freaked out. He not only refused; he fought as though his life depended on it, punching, kicking, biting, and otherwise wreaking mayhem on the older and larger boys who were trying to subdue him for the initiation. Realizing how extreme was his fear, they tried to intimate that he was not really going to be branded but this last boy was far too wound up to pay attention to what was being “intimated.” The troop eventually gave up on his initiation. That boy was seriously traumatized. I can’t really say whether he ever believed us that no-one really meant him physical damage, but he never looked any of us in the eye again or spoke much during the remainder of the camping trip. He never asked for another go at an initiation and, to the best of my recollection, everyone else in the troop felt very bad. Rather than increase social cohesion in the group, this misadventure backfired completely. Whatever the reason, this particular troop soon disbanded. This example serves as a cautionary tale about “initiations” because none of the people involved foresaw this particular outcome or were operating out of conscious cruelty.

Early in high school, I got a volunteer job as a “Y leader” at the local YMCA. I basically taught and supervised younger kids in basketball and various fitness tests. My manager was a young man probably in college. He said I would have to pass a “test” first which consisted, basically, of doing a chore for him; I was supposed to go to a nearby department store and pick up a shade that he had bought and paid for. I went to the department store but no-one in the drapery department had the least knowledge of this guy and the shade he had supposedly bought. I had to return empty handed and figured I had failed my “test.” He explained, however, that he hadn’t bought window shades but lamp shades. Back to the store I trudged and returned with his lamp shades. It all struck me as weird and irrelevant to my job as a Y-leader. But there was more to come.

In order to be fully admitted into this little “club” of the Y-leaders we had to go through an initiation. We had several weeks to memorize every athletic record of that local Y, as well as their times or weights or distances. There was also additional material about the procedures and the hierarchy of the YMCA and so on. Then, we came to the initiation night. I think there were four of us who were initiates. We initiates took turns and had to answer questions given by this same manager mentioned above. While doing this, we stared into a very bright light. He was behind the light so that I could only see a slight shadow of the outline of his head. He and the rest of the Y leaders called us “worms” during this little ritual. On the other hand, the initiates were supposed to begin and end each of our utterances with “sir.” Well, I hadn’t really cared much about the material and quickly got three wrong. Now, I was given a choice: I could either delay being initiated and try again next month, or I could take 40 whacks with a wooden paddle. I opted for the 40 whacks. I had been paddled before with wooden paddles, but never more than a few times.

As I soon discovered, there was another crucial difference. My other paddling had been by teachers. Although they certainly wanted to make the paddling punishment hurt, they also certainly wanted to avoid a lawsuit. Although back then, lawsuits were not so plentiful as raindrops, there were some. In any case, I don’t think any of them actually wanted to physically injure us. This paddling was done by all the boys who were already Y leaders. This paddling was done by my peers. They were not adults but young teen-aged boys. As they took their turns, a few went easy on me and most hit fairly hard — around “teacher” velocity. Two brothers, however, had some kind of sadistic streak. They took several steps forward during the “wind-up” and swung the paddle with both hands like a baseball bat. Anyway, I “passed” the initiation. My backside was black and blue however, not just on my buttocks, which I would have been capable of hiding, but also on the back of my thighs. Two of my co-initiates also received 40 whacks. The last guy had taken the task very seriously and knew an incredible amount of trivia about a bunch of local athletes. But as he answered question after question, the manager simply made the questions more and more obscure, venturing well outside the scope of what we had been told we needed to learn. I realized that the point of the whole exercise was not to have us learn anything but to get to have us paddled. At last, the last boy got three wrong, but to my surprise, when it came to the question, he said he would study again for next month.

Eventually, my parents found out (because the bruising was visible, not just on my buttocks but all the way down the back of my legs) and complained to the Y about this whole initiation. Again, this “initiation” seems to have backfired in every sense. One has to wonder whether overly powerful initiation rituals are also part of why sexual abuse and child abuse often go unreported when it occurs in certain tightly knit groups. Initiation is a tool that needs to be used appropriately, carefully, and protected from the misuse of those who are really interested in inflicting cruelty to others merely under the ruse of carrying out an “initiation.” Need initiations be “secret”? They often are and this increases the tendency for them to be subject to perversion from being what is potentially good for the group into a private exercise in cruelty.

Metaphor:

A sperm cell, whether human animal or flowering plant, must be healthy enough to traverse some distance before getting to an egg. It then has to penetrate the cell wall of the egg. While we do not expect the sperm to therefore “value” the joining with the egg, this process does perform a kind of screening function.

In some team competitions, there are a series of “rounds” before the final round. One could think of these earlier rounds as a kind of trial that has some aspects of initiation. Only the best teams continue on in further into the tournament. In addition, it probably also has the effect of increasing social capital within the team.

Apprenticeship programs often require new apprentices to perform the most menial tasks. This process of gradually assigning more responsibility as the initiate gains more skill is necessary for safe and productive work, but it also may partly serve an initiation function as well.

References:

Aronson, E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59(2), 177-181.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0047195

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hazing_deaths_in_the_United_States

De Gues, Arie. (1997), The Living Company. London: Nicholas Brealy.

Gerard, H. & Matthewson, G. (1966), The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group: a replication, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2(3), 278-287.

Walsh, A. (1990). Becoming an American and liking it as a function of social distance and severity of initiation. Sociological Inquiry, 60(2), 177-189.

Small Successes Early: Metaphor & Fable

20 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, apocalypse, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Business, Design, iterative development, life, pattern language, politics

This post is an extension to the Pattern — Small Successes Early — and trials the addition of two more sections to the traditional form of a Pattern: Metaphor and Fable.

Metaphor:

(This section is a departure from the traditional form of Patterns. It’s intent is to show how the same general principles that are embodied in the pattern also apply in other domains).

Life on earth, according to current estimates, has been around for 4.75 billion years. Evolution has had a long time to “learn” effective ways to do things. Have you ever seen an oak tree decide to migrate to a new place in the forest? Have you noticed it getting grumpy and yanking itself up by the roots and walking 30 meters to richer soil or closer to a stream and stabbing its roots back into the dirt in order to settle in its new place? (I mean apart from Tolkien’s Ents?) No, and neither have I. What does an oak tree do? It puts some energy into making acorns. Each acorn costs the tree (a tiny bit) in terms of water, soil nutrients, and sugar that it made from photosynthesis in its leaves. But it does not bet the farm on a better place. Some acorns will be scattered by squirrels onto new and better ground. If the conditions are just right the acorn will germinate and send up a small shoot and send down a primary root. Over time that acorn may grow into a mighty oak. Small successes early. Similar strategies are taken by other plants whether they propagate by runners, by seeds, or by spores. Animals typically also “start small.”

What can we learn from human practices that have evolved over millennia? For example, people have been building things for a long time. What are the practices around making a new building? People don’t just dig into a huge building project. They draw up plans; they discuss it; they typically build small scale models. If they see no problems with these models, they begin construction on the real thing. We think of these plans and models as being ways to coordinate the work and so they are. But they also serve a critical social purpose. Various stakeholders can look at the plans and models and question various decisions before there is a huge sunk cost.

What do people do when they want to put on a stage play? They don’t typically write a play and then immediately spend a huge amount of money advertising it, building scenery, making costumes and then sell tickets for the Broadway opening. No. People write a play and then do a “reading” with a small group of people. Many issues get ironed out. Eventually, people may cast the play and have people rehearse. Again, they need not do this with full costumes, make-up, and scenery. Instead, they “work out the kinks” in the play, occasionally changing lines, but very often changing the manner in which lines are said. In later stages, the blocking or lighting may change. Eventually, people have what are called “dress rehearsals” to make sure everything is working right. The producers want to insure that the scenery doesn’t fall down; that the costumes don’t rip; that people know their lines. In many cases, people open off-Broadway to give them a further chance for improvement before a Broadway opening with its potential for roasting by drama critics.

One of the longest running continuous institutions is the Catholic Church. Would you like to be elected Pope? Good luck with that. The Pope isn’t chosen by an open lottery or elected by the general populace who pick anyone they like. If you want to be Pope, you have to first pass through all sorts of “tests” to prove yourself as a Catholic; then, prove yourself as a Priest; after a long successful career, you may be eventually become a Bishop. Many professions that have had a long history developed similar though perhaps less elaborate hierarchies based on expertise and experience. They start with small successes. If you can handle lower level duties successfully, you move up the hierarchy from apprentice, to journeyman to master.

So, when it comes to biology, which has had billions of years of evolution, the tendency is overwhelmingly to use “Small Successes Early” and when it comes to human cultural evolution of roles and large scale processes that have been around for thousands of years, people use “Small Successes Early.” It is only some modern business managers who feel there is no need for such prudence because, after all, they are smart enough to foresee all consequences and therefore have no need for “Small Successes Early.”

Fable:

(This section is another addition and departure from the form of a typical Pattern. It tries to encapsulate the basic idea of the Pattern into a fable similar to those of Aesop).

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Rarin’ Rabbit hated the farmers who kept chasing him and his brethren from the gardens. The whole hutch spent as much energy going from their warren to the garden and getting chased back as they did from the occasional tasty morsel they managed to steal.

One bright day, Rarin’ Rabbit happened upon a dry creek bed filled with clover, purslane, and plantain. He immediately went back to the warren and convinced all his fellow rabbits to move their warren into the sides of the dry creek bed. Now, all they had to do for a great meal was step outside their front door! No farmers chasing them! It really did seem as though Rarin’ Rabbit had led his entire tribe to the promised land!

Rarin’ Rabbit grew immensely popular. One hot and humid day in late summer, Rarin’ Rabbit and his compatriots were munching on some wild roses that grew on the sides of the arroyo when they heard thunder in the distant hills. Some of the rabbits got nervous and began wondering if the rain drops would come down on them. Some suggested perhaps that it was prudent to stop snacking and head back to the shelter of their warren. “Nonsense!” Rarin’ Rabbit protested. “There’s no rain here! Let’s keep eating till we’re as big as elephants! You have to dream greatly if you want to succeed greatly!” Most of the rabbits stayed for Rarin’ Rabbit was indeed quite popular — right up until the flash flood came hurtling down the canyon sweeping away Rarin’ Rabbit, all his companions, and the rabbit warren. Every last one drowned.

The moral of the story is: “Dream greatly. But test out your great dreams by first trying to find small successes early.”

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“Reality Check”

16 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, apocalypse, management, Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

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advertising, Business, creativity, Design, epistomology, innovation, learning, life, pattern language, politics

This is the second in a series of blogs that present Patterns in a Socio-technical Pattern Language of best practices for collaboration and coordination in complex societies. I intend to organize these in multiple ways (e.g., type of goal; where in a typical development process the pattern is most applicable; how large a collection of people the pattern is most applicable to, etc.). I am entering them in this blog in an order that reflects current events. For example, there seems to be a movement to deny reality outright and insist everyone simply believe what the leaders promulgate. This, to me, is outright evil. But even when people are acting with the best of intentions, it is natural to take short cuts. Those short cuts can make life seem more efficient in the short run, but it can also lead to serious issues in the longer term.

Reality Check

Author, reviewer and revision dates:

Created by John C. Thomas on 4 September, 2001

Revised, JCT, 17 December, 2001

Revised, JCT, 15 January, 2018

Synonyms:

Abstract:

In developing complex systems, it is often expedient to develop feedback loops based on ersatz measures of what we are really interested in assessing and controlling. While this seems expedient in the short term, it often leads to serious problems and distortions, particularly in times of crisis or transition when the correlation between ersatz measures and actuality substantially drifts or even suddenly disconnects. Actions can be based on these measures or models of reality rather than on reality(or more complete measures) and result in negative consequences. The solution is to perform regular “reality checks” to insure that measures or indicators of reality continue to reflect that reality.

Problem:

In developing complex systems, it is often expedient to develop feedback loops based on ersatz measures of what we are really interested in assessing and controlling. While this may seem expedient in the short term, it often leads to serious problems and distortions, particularly in times of crisis or transition when the correlation between ersatz measures and actuality substantially drifts or even suddenly disconnects. Actions can be based on these measures or models of reality rather than on reality. This can result in negative, even deadly, consequences.

Context:

Many problems were partly responsible for the disaster at the Three Mile Island. One crucial problem, in particular, arose from the design of a feedback loop. A switch was supposed to close a valve. Beside the switch was a light that was supposed to show that the valve was closed. In fact, rather than having the light go on as the result of actual feedback from the valve closure itself, the signal light was merely a collateral circuit to the switch. All it actually showed was that the switch had moved position (Wickens, 1984). Under normal operation; that is, when the valve was operating properly, these two events were perfectly correlated. At a critical point in the meltdown, however, the valve was not operating properly. Yet, the human operator believed that the valve was closed even though it had failed to close in reality. His resulting actions, taken on the basis of the assumption that the valve was closed, exacerbated the subsequent problems. My colleague, Scott Robertson, has recently posted an analysis of the recent error that resulted in the nuclear missile scare in Hawaii. (See link).

View at Medium.com

In running an application program several years ago, I was given a feedback message that a file was posted. In fact, it wasn’t. The programming team of the application, rather than checking to see whether the file was actually posted, merely relied on the completion of an internal loop.

In advertising campaigns, it is difficult to measure the impact on sales. Instead, companies typically measure the “recall” and “recognition” rates of ads. This may often be correlated with sales changes, but in some cases, the ad may be very memorable but give the customer a very negative impression of the company and decrease the chances of actually selling a product.

Historically, monarchs and dictators (and even would-be dictators) often surrounded themselves only with people who gave them good reports and support no matter how their decisions impacted the reality of their realm. Eventually, the performance of such people tends to deteriorate severely because their behavior is shaped by this ersatz feedback rather than by reality.

During the “oil crisis” in the seventies, oil companies relied on mathematical models of continually increasing demand. Year after year, for seven years, they relied on these models to predict demand despite the fact that, for all seven years, demand actually went down. The results are purported to have cost them tens of billions of dollars (Van der Heijden, 1996).

In some cases, the known existence of ersatz measures directly contributes to the destruction of the utility of these very measures. For example, if management decides the “easy way” to measure programmer productivity is “Lines Of Code,” once programmers discover this, the code base may grow quickly in terms of that measure, but not in terms of actual functionality.

In America @2018, many people view money as the only legitimate value of interest for countries, companies, or individuals. Measures such as the GDP and the stock market index are taken as adequate and complete measures of the economic well-being of the society. There is a sense that, since we spend the most on weapons and health care, we must perforce be the “safest” and “healthiest” nation on the planet. This is clearly not the case. Similarly, ads talk about a person’s “net worth” when what they are really talking about is merely a person’s net financial worth. “Worth” is not the same as “financial worth.”

A large research organization that I am familiar with used to have a large number of administrative assistants who helped arrange meetings, send in expense reports, and answer telephones. At some point, most of these administrative assistants were laid off and the tasks were now done by the researchers themselves who were typically not nearly so efficient at them. The researchers took at least as long to do them as had the administrative assistants. Accountants looked favorably at all the “money they had saved” because they could easily see that the line item for administrative assistants was far less costly than it had been. Not visible, of course, was the fact that the much more highly paid researchers were now doing the same work that had been done before by the administrative assistants, but they were doing it less efficiently and at a far higher cost.

Forces:

* Organizations are often hierarchically decomposed and bureaucratic. Therefore, it is often simplest to communicate with those close to us in the hierarchy and to build systems that rely for their model of reality only on things within the immediate control span of our small part of the organization.

* While more comfortable to limit system design and development to those things within one’s own team or department, it is often precisely the work necessary to capture more reality-based measures that will reveal additional challenges and opportunities in business process coherence.

*A more direct measure of reality is often more time-consuming, more costly, or more difficult than the measure of something more proximal that is often highly correlated with those aspects of reality of real interest.

*It is likely to be exactly at times of crisis and transition that the correlation be-tween proximal ersatz measures and their referent in reality will be destroyed.

*It is likely to be exactly under times of crisis and transition that people will tend to simplify their cognitive models of the world and, among other things, forget that the proximal measure is only ersatz.

Solution:

Therefore:

Whenever feasible, feedback should ideally be based on reality checks, not solely on ersatz measures. When this is too costly (as opposed to merely inconvenient or uncomfortable), then at least design systems so that the correlation between proximal measures and their referent in reality is double-checked periodically.

Examples:

Rather than rely solely on a circle of politically minded advisors, Peter the Great disguised himself and checked out various situations in Russia in person.

As reported by Paula Underwood (who was the designated storyteller for her branch of the Iroquois), her ancestors at one point felled giant trees for long houses in the Pacific Northwest. Later, when the tribe lived in the “Great Plains”, there were no trees of that size. The tribe began to doubt the existence of trees as large as what their oral history portrayed. In order to check on this, one brave spent many years walking back to that area and seeing with his own eyes that there were indeed trees as tall as had been portrayed in the oral history and then returning to the tribe to report back.

Resulting Context:

Ideally, over time, people who actually double-check reality will come to better understand when and how these reality checks will be necessary. They may also invent methods of making a check-in closer to what is really of interest more convenient or cheaper.

Related Patterns:

System as a Whole

Convergent Measures

Drawing the Line

Who Speaks for Wolf

Known Uses:

Richard Feynman, during the Manhattan project, noticed that the bureaucracy was worried about the possibility of accidentally stockpiling a critical mass of uranium. To prevent this, each section chief was required to insure that their section did not have a critical mass. To insure this, each section chief instructed each sub-section chief to insure that their subsection didn’t have a critical mass and so on, down to the smallest level of the bureaucracy. Upon hearing this plan, Feynman observed that neutrons probably didn’t much care whose subsection they reported to!

In another incident reported by Feynman, various bureaucrats were each trying to prove that they had better security than their peers. In order to prove this, they escalated the buying of bigger and thicker safes. The bigger and thicker the safe, the more bureaucrats felt that they had made their secrets secure. Feynman discovered that more than half of the super-safe safes had been left with the factory installed combinations of 50-50-50 and were therefore trivially easy to break into!

References:

Wickens, C. (1983). Engineering psychology and human performance. Columbus: Merrill, (p.1).

Van der Heijden, K. (1996). Scenarios: The art of strategic conversation. Chichester: Wiley.

Hutchings, E., Leighton, R., Feynman, R., and Hibbs, A. (1997). Surely, you’re joking Mr. Feynman. New York: Norton.

Underwood, P. (1993). The Walking People: A Native American oral history. San Anselmo, CA: Tribe of Two Press.

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https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/02/25/the-invisibility-cloak-of-habit/

https://www.amazon.com/author/truthtable

“Who Speaks for Wolf?”

09 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Business, Design, environment, family, innovation, learning, life, marketing, Native American, pattern language, politics

This is the first of many socio-technical “Patterns” in a socio-technical Pattern Language meant to encapsulate best practices for collaboration and coordination. The common “parts” of every Pattern are displayed below in bold. A brief discussion follows the Pattern.

Who Speaks for Wolf?

Author, reviewer and revision dates:

Created by John C. Thomas on December 17, 2001

A shorter version is included in Liberating Voices by Douglas Schuler.

A longer version was published as an IBM Research Report, 2002.

Reviewed by <John C. Thomas> on <January 9, 2018>

Revised by <John C. Thomas> on <January 9, 2018>

Synonyms

Engage all the Stakeholders

Abstract:

A lot of effort and thought goes into decision making and design. Nonetheless, it is often the case that bad decisions are made and bad designs conceived and implemented primarily because some critical and relevant perspective has not been brought to bear. This is especially often true if the relevant perspective is that of a stakeholder in the outcome. Therefore, make sure that every relevant stakeholder’s perspective is brought to bear early.

Problem:

Problem solving or design that proceeds down the wrong path can be costly or impossible to correct later. As the inconvenience and cost of a major change in direction mount, cognitive dissonance makes it likely that the new information will be ignored or devalued so that continuance along the wrong path is likely.

Context:

Complex problems such as the construction of new social institutions or the design of complex interactive systems require that a multitude of viewpoints be brought to bear. Unfortunately, this is all too often not the case. One group builds a “solution” for another group without fully understanding the culture, the user needs, the extreme cases, and so on. The result is often a “system” whether technical or social, that creates as many problems as it solves.

The inspiration for this pattern comes from a Native American story transcribed into English by Paula Underwood.

In brief, the story goes as follows. The tribe had as one of its members, a man who took it upon himself to learn all that he could about wolves. He became such an expert, that his fellow tribespeople called him “Wolf.” While Wolf and several other braves were out on a long hunting expedition, it became clear to the tribe that they would have to move to a new location. After various reconnaissance missions, a new site was selected and the tribe moved to the new location.

Shortly thereafter, it became clear that a mistake had been made. The new location was in the middle of the spring breeding ground of the wolves. The wolves were threatening the children and stealing the drying meat. Now, the tribe was faced with a hard decision. Should they move again? Should they post guards around the clock? Or, should they destroy the wolves? And, did they even want to be the sort of people who would kill off another species for their own convenience?

At last it was decided they would move to yet another new location. But as was their custom, they also asked themselves, “What did we learn from this? How can we prevent making such mistakes in the future.” Someone said, “Well, if Wolf would have been at our first council meeting, he would have prevented this mistake.”

“True enough,” they all agreed. “Therefore, from now on, whenever we meet to make a decision, we shall ask ourselves, ‘Who speaks for Wolf’ to remind us that someone must be capable and delegated to bring to bear the knowledge of any missing stakeholders.

Forces:

Gaps in requirements are most cheaply repaired early in development; it is important for this and for reasons of acceptance (as well as ethics!) by all parties that all stakeholders have a say throughout any development or change process.

Logistical difficulties make the representation of all stakeholder groups at every meeting difficult.

A new social institution or design will be both better in quality and more easily accepted if all relevant parties have input. Once a wrong path is chosen, both social forces and individual cognitive dissonance make it difficult to begin over, change direction or retrace steps.

Solution:

Provide a way to remind everyone of stakeholders who are not present. These could be procedural (certain Native Americans always ask, “Who Speaks for Wolf” to remind them) or visual or auditory with technological support.

Examples:

In “A behavioral analysis of the Hobbit-Orcs problem,” I discovered that people find it difficult to solve a simple puzzle because it appears that they must “undo” progress that has already been made.

As a positive case, some groups make it a practice to “check in” at the beginning of any meeting to see whether any group members have an issue that they would like to have discussed. In “User Centered Design”, and “Contextual Design” methodologies, an attempt is made to get input from the intended users of the system early on in the design process.

In a negative case, we developed a system to help automate “intercept calls” for a telecommunications company. We tested the end users to make sure it was workable. When we went to install the system, however, we learned that the folks in charge of central offices, would not allow our software to be installed until we provided documentation in the same format that they were used to from AT&T. So, we redid all the documentation to put it into the AT&T format. At that point, our lawyers, however informed us that that format was “copyrighted” so we could not simply use it. In this case, although many stakeholders were consulted, we had left out two important constituencies. (Eventually, the system was deployed — the first in the US that incorporated speech recognition into an application on the Public Service Network.

Resulting Context:

When every stakeholder’s views are taken into account, the solution will be improved in quality and in addition, there will be less resistance to implementing the solution.

Rationale:

Much of the failure of “process re-engineering” can be attributed to the fact that “models” of the “is” process were developed based on some executive’s notion of how things were done rather than a study of how they were actually done or asking the people who actually did the work how they were done. A “should be” process was designed to be a more efficient version of the “is” process and then implementation was pushed down on workers. However, since the original “is” model was not based on reality, the “more efficient” solution often left out vital elements.

Technological and sociological “imperialism” provide many additional examples where the input of all the stakeholders is not taken into account. Of course, much of the history of the US government’s treatment of the Native Americans was an avoidance of truly including all the stakeholders.

A challenge in applying the “Who Speaks for Wolf” pattern is to judge honestly and correctly whether, indeed, someone does have the knowledge and delegation to “speak for Wolf.” If such a person is not present, we may do well to put off design or decision until such a person, or better, “Wolf” can be present.

Related Patterns:

Radical Co-location (Provided all stakeholders are physically present in the radical co-location, this tends to insure that their input will be given at appropriate times).

Known Uses:

As a variant of this, a prototype creativity tool was been created at IBM Watson Research Center. The idea was to have a virtual “Board of Directors” consisting of famous people. When you have a problem to solve, you are supposed to be reminded of, and think about, how various people would approach this problem. Ask yourself, “What would Einstein have said?” “How would Gandhi have approached this problem?” And so on. The original prototype consisted of simple animations. Today’s technology would allow one to develop a raft of chat-bots instead.

References:

Thomas, J. C. (1974). An analysis of behavior in the hobbits-orcs problem. Cognitive Psychology, 6(2), 257-269.

Thomas, J.C. (1996). The long-term social implications of new information technology. In R. Dholakia, N. Mundorf, & N. Dholakia (Eds.), New Infotainment Technologies in the Home: Demand Side Perspectives. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Thomas, J.C., Lee, A., & Danis, C (2002). “Who Speaks for Wolf?” IBM Research Report, RC-22644. Yorktown Heights, NY: IBM Corporation.

Thomas, J.C. (2003), Social aspects of gerontechnology. In Impact of technology on successful aging N. Charness & K. Warner Schaie (Eds.). New York: Springer.

Underwood, Paula. (1983). Who speaks for Wolf: A Native American Learning Story. Georgetown TX (now San Anselmo, CA): A Tribe of Two Press.

Discussion.

I have personally found this pattern to extremely useful in a variety of social and business situations. In some ways, it seems like “common sense” to get the input of everyone touched by a decision. But we live in a very “hurried” society as I earlier examined in the Blog Post “Too Much.” I’ve seen many projects hurried through design and development without taking a sufficient look at the possible implications for various stakeholders. There is currently what I consider a reasonable concern over what the impact of AI will be. But other technologies on the horizon such as biotechnology and nanotechnology also need to be thought about. As we examined in a whole series of blog posts in the fall of 2017, social media have had huge unintended (and negative) consequences.

I’ve also been involved in “cross-cultural issues” in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and in how HCI impacts people and societies in other cultures. Even relatively simple technologies like dishwashers, microwaves, and cars often have considerable unanticipated social consequences. It is not only the “fair” thing to involve everyone who will be seriously impacted; it will ultimately result in faster progress with less strife.

I’m very interested in other people’s experiences relevant to this Pattern.

Since originally publishing this Pattern, we have experience the farce of “DOGE” which really should stand for: “Destruction Of Government Effectiveness” in which a self-centered billionaire using inexperienced hackers purported to improve “efficiency” without even a cursory attempt to identify relevant stakeholders and experts.

“Turing’s Nightmares” – scenarios of possible AI futures.

Special Spaces & Wonderful Places

07 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, apocalypse, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

Design, environment, learning, life, pattern language, politics, school

When you think back to your childhood, no matter how luxurious, dilapidated, or war-torn that childhood might have been, I’m guessing that like me, you had some particular places that you loved. Perhaps they stayed secret to you; perhaps you shared only with one or two chums. Somehow, those specific places held a kind of magic for you as they did for me. I will just point out a few examples from my own childhood.

Grandpa’s basement, for instance, though dark and dank, held a printing press made of cast iron. Although he cautioned me not to play with it because, he insisted, it was not a plaything but an important tool, I nonetheless found opportunity to move the gigantic heavy four handled wheel, having first carefully noted the exact position in order to return it just as I had found it. In some way beyond my comprehension as a child, I knew this press was something magical. It was, after all, involved in printing. I recall years later seeing a picture of Benjamin Franklin with just such a printing press. And, even as a very young child, I knew that printing held great power. Beyond that, the object itself loomed and commandeered that entire corner of the basement. I knew it was heavy beyond imagining, and not just in the epistemological sense. I could judge the weight of the entire machine from how hard it was to turn the wheel which, though heavy, comprised only a small fraction of the entire press. Cast iron also has this magical texture which seems to inhale light out of the surrounding region like a giant beast. Perhaps best of all, and what appealed to the engineer in me, the machine’s form and function flowed beautifully together. Compare that with a modern automobile, for instance. What it actually does is largely hidden in the design. This goes along with branding, and advertising, and customer loyalty and so on. A modern car does not typically marry form and function nearly so nicely as did that printing press.

On the “side yard” of our house on North Firestone Boulevard, three tulips shot up every spring, so colorful and perfect, not to mention mysterious. Where did they come from every year? How could this rounded plant of petals have a three pointed star inside!? On more than one occasion, I caught sight of a butterfly feasting on the pollen within. This place was cool patly just because adults always seemed hell-bent on the next task or chore. So, while this tiny patch of ground technically belonged to the whole family, in fact, I’m the only one who enjoyed it for more than a casual glance. I smelled and touched and explored every vein in that tulip. I watched butterflies do their drunken dance and tried (and largely failed) to predict when and where they would next alight.

At David Hill Elementary School, the sandstone retaining wall provided another special place. With a lot of work, kids like me could turn sandstone into sand. And we did. With work, we even made tunnels. At one point, we stuffed a grasshopper into a tunnel, covered the entrance, and watched for him until he eventually hopped out ten feet away! For a long time, none of the adults seemed to pay much attention to the fact that we were slowly but quite assuredly destroying the retaining wall which kept our school and its landscaping from falling into the playground below. Sadly, at some point, the gravely voice of the principal, which always seemed to be enveloped in the black death robes of a priest at a funeral, informed us that we were now forbidden to play in or on the wall.

When we moved to Ellet, these special places disappeared from consideration but were immediately replaced by a much grander array of them. Right behind our house lay a forest! That forest sported a spring of fresh water coming right out of the ground, two gigantic elm trees wrapped in thick hair cables of poison ivy vines, an oak with a swinging grape vine and a creek. Eventually, I came to know the special places of the creek where you could put in bark “boats” and have the longest races ad the places where you could cross with the least chance slipping on a loose stepping stone and dousing your entire body. Depending on the temperature, that might or might not be all that uncomfortable, but it would inevitably be followed by something that was definitely uncomfortable — being punished by your parents for getting your clothes all wet. Now, it must be said, that when I had done this terrible deed of getting my clothes all wet, the first thing they did with those clothes was to put them in the washer where, yes, they would get wet. Hmm. Part of what makes these some of these special places special is that they radiate event streams outward into your lives. And, the feeling or inspiration or information or decisions that come from these special places need not be confined there. We draw comfort from them, even if we know we will never visit them again.

We all know that some places “feel right” – there is something about them that seems mysterious, beautiful, awe-insipring, calming, or exotic. But what makes a place “good” or “special”? Partly it is individual experience, no doubt, but partly it is the environment itself. So what is it about form and texture and organization that makes a place special? That is an interesting question that seems to have intrigued Christopher Alexander as well. Alexander and a team of collaborators looked at places that “worked” from around the world. The result was a book called “A Pattern Language.” They formalized, to a large extent, intuitions of what makes a place “special”; what makes it “work.”

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Each actual pattern is pretty elaborate, but I can give a few examples to illustrate the point. One of the Patterns is called “European Pub” which has activity around the edges and large tables. This helps people socialize. The activity around the edges gives people an excuse to circumnavigate the room. The large tables mean that there is room for “legitimate peripheral participation.” If I’m new in town, I can sit somewhat away from everyone but still within earshot. When someone says something I can relate to, I jump into the conversation. This arrangement is much more conducive to socialization than many American bars which feature stools all facing a TV. This does not encourage interaction.

Another Pattern points out that a small town near a big city should put its “center” placed eccentrically toward the city. This makes it more convenient for a larger number of commuters to stop at local stores on their way to the city and back.

These are both gross over-simplifications of the actual patterns, but I think they convey something of what is being aimed at. There is a belief that these patterns would generally “work” in any religious, cultural, geographic, or political context. These patterns are really meant to focus on the invariants across a large number of details. In that way, they make design problem solving more effective. You will be less likely, so goes the claim, to be exploring parts of the design space that are far removed from optimal if you think about things in terms of these patterns.

A “Pattern Language” purports to take a useful middle ground. The patterns are abstract enough to be widely useful but narrow enough not to be meaningless. A “Pattern” is the named solution to a recurring problem. A “Pattern Language” is a lattice or web of Patterns that largely covers a field. Christopher Alexander coined the term after he and his colleagues went around the world to see what “worked” in terms of city planning, house design, building design, neighborhood design, the building process and so on. I think nearly everyone will find “A Pattern Language” a fascinating book.

The impact of A Pattern Language, however, extends far beyond architecture and urban planning. People have found the concept of a “Pattern Language” useful in many other domains. Perhaps the best known such domain is in Object-Oriented Programming with the so-called “Gang of Four” authoring many of the original books on the subject. Other domains which have been addressed with “A Pattern Language” include pedagogy, human-computer interaction, change management, e-business, sustainability, and how society might evolve.

I became interested in Pattern Languages at least 20 years ago and have since co-organized and co-led a number of workshops on patterns in “Computer Human Interaction” as well as “Socio-technical Patterns” including working on patterns for “Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution” and chapter 19 in John Carroll’s book on design rationale, “Patterns for Emergent Global Intelligence.”

In 2017, I recounted in this blog childhood memories and how they relate to what is happening in today’s world. To summarize briefly, we have great opportunities as a species but we are also in a train wreck of trouble! We seem trapped in a nightmare of a comic farce, but one which has tragic consequences of potentially epic proportions; e.g., atomic war or having the USA walk away from the Paris accords on climate change. Is anything to be done?

What I want to accomplish in the first half of 2018 is to generate interest in the beginnings of a socio-technical “Pattern Language” that can help us get back on track again. I’ll post some of the ones I know about, but I’d be very interested to work with people on other suggestions. In most cases, even when I post patterns it will be the case that I did not “invent” the patterns from first principles or construct them myself. In the same way that Christopher Alexander and his team main observed what worked and only then attempted to codify generic best practices into a “Pattern Language,” I also found many of these from observation or reading other sources or both. For example, the patterns, “Who Speaks for Wolf?” and “The Iroquois Rule of Six” are not by any means my inventions. I learned about them from the works of Paula Underwood. She was the “designated storyteller” of her branch of the Iroquois and provided an English transcription of the oral history of that branch in The Walking People. Indeed, I have argued that the “Walking People” basically developed a kind of pattern language in their oral history.

https://www.amazon.com/Walking-People-Native-American-History/dp/1879678101

https://www.slideshare.net/John_C_Thomas/the-walkingpeople

https://www.slideshare.net/John_C_Thomas/walking-people-analysis

A Pattern Language is a difficult business. For maximum utility, each pattern has considerable thought behind it and is written into a specific form. In fact, at one CHI workshop, we developed an XML specification for patterns in Human Computer Interaction called (Pattern Language Markup Language) PLML (pronounced “pell mell”). I will not be quite this formal with the form of my patterns but will adhere as closely to it as practical. I do think that the form of the Patterns within a Pattern Language is important. Each of the parts serves a purpose and it is handy to know what role each part plays. For example, each Pattern has at least these parts: A Title, (possibly subtitled), synonyms, a Version history, one or more Authors, an Abstract, a statement of the problem, a statement of the context in which the problem and solution arise and are appropriate, an analysis of the “Forces” at play, the Solution, Examples, the Resulting Context, Known Uses, Related Patterns, and References. For many people, having such a complex structure seems to be too much “baggage” but we must remember that design problems are themselves inherently complex. In addition to textual elements, the Patterns of Christopher Alexander include both photographic images to “set the mood” and, typically, at least one diagram to illustrate the general nature of the pattern.

The domain I am most interested in developing a Pattern Language for is perhaps most often labelled as a “Socio-technical Pattern Language.” These would be a collection of patterns that would help people cooperate, collaborate and solve problems together. Although the fabric and texture, perhaps even the scent, of endeavors would depend on culture, the field, current events and a host of other factors; however, the form of these solutions to recurring problems would remain roughly constant.

Next up: An Example. “Who Speaks for Wolf?”

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https://petersironwood.wordpress.com

Happy New Year!

01 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, apocalypse

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advertising, civility, cooperation, greed, innovation, life, media, religion, social media

It’s not really the champagne or the fireworks that make New Year’s special.

Many people around the world, in their own time zones, celebrate New Year’s. Precisely when depends on where you live and to a large extent, the major religion in your area. Some people tend to celebrate in the Spring; others in the Autumn; many around the winter solstice; and a few traditional cultures celebrate the new year in the summer. Some of the traditional calendars are based on 12 lunar cycles which does not make a full year so their “New Year’s Day” shifts over time relative to the Gregorian calendar.

It’s easy to get lost in the details of the differences among traditions, cultures, and religions. But what I find remarkable about New Year’s is not the fact that there are differences across the world. What I find both remarkable and heartening is that many different cultures in many different countries have some kind of “New Year” celebration; that people across the globe recognize that time has a cyclical as well as a linear aspect; that people everywhere recognize the importance of new beginning and that special events are “marked” in some way and that these celebrations are shared by scores, thousands or millions of people across the planet.

What I find even more wonderful is that people across the globe are able to learn something about other people and cultures. Right now, at the beginning of 2018, there are some few extremely greedy people who want to play on your hate and fear of anyone and anything that is different. They want to enhance your ignorance and play on your negative emotions for one and only one reason — to cheat you out of your freedom and therefore your life. Make no mistake about it. There really are dangers in the world and for best results, you really do want protection from those dangers — protection for you and for your family. Some of those people who threaten you do speak different languages or do practice or profess different religions. But some don’t. Some people who are threats may dress differently or eat different kinds of foods. But some don’t. Basically, all those people across the globe are very much like you. And, just like you, they too need to understand that some of their leaders are also trying to steal things away from them and in order to do that, they want to make their followers believe that you and your kind are the threats and dangers.

Chances are much greater than 50-50 that if you were suddenly set down in the middle of a completely different culture, you would eventually be accepted and even welcomed. Why? Because people are fundamentally similar. However, people “getting along” is not in everyone’s interest; it’s only in the interest of the vast majority of human beings on the planet. Those who have positions of power and no real leadership skills to help “grow the common pie” will instead try to arouse your feelings that other people are trying to steal your piece of pie. If you cede your freedom to such power brokers, they promise they will protect you from these “others” who are trying to steal your pie. Instead, it is these very people in power who are out to steal your pie and add it to their considerable stack of pies — more than they could ever possibly eat.

Here’s a secret though. The people who are inventing new pies; the people who are sowing wheat to make new flour for pies; the people growing the berries; the people actually baking pies — we are all very similar regardless of dress, language, religion, or customs. People in power are absolutely terrified that the rest of us will all discover the extent of the emperor’s nakedness and call it out for all to see. Those in power would hate to see a true meritocracy because they have very little skill when it comes to any aspect of actually making pies. By and large, their only skill is to make you fear that others are out to steal your pie. If everyone else becomes friends and colleagues across the globe, there is no more reason for the power-hungry to rule you.

Meanwhile, people across the planet collectively have a huge amount of power. In some places, there are still free elections and those can be one way to change the world and exercise your own power. But it is not the only way. Whatever wealth you have, you will have some choice about where to spend it. What if everyone rewarded companies that are ethical and punished companies that do unethical things by refusing to spend money on their product and services? What if people refuse to give up the hours of their lives for working for companies that act unethically? Would you be willing to take a 5% pay cut to pay for a company that believes “ethics” is not just a training exercise for underlings but also applies to the top executives of the company as well? How about 25%? Would you be willing to blow a whistle on corporate crime? Would you be willing to buy local product and support local services unless and until large multi-nationals behaved like good citizens? Are you willing to refuse further increases in productivity until there is a plan in place to share the gains in productivity between workers and those who own the companies? A world-wide or national strike would cause people to take notice and eventually change business practices.

Last year, I wrote a long series of blogs about some of the root causes of divisiveness in America — though much of it applies equally to other countries in the world. There can be changes to social media, for instance, that could make it more of a force for unity and good and less a force for maximizing advertising dollars. Yet, none of the three social media companies I use most: LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter have asked me (or, so far as I know, any other user or citizens in general) what I would like to see different about their policies, procedures, and principles. We don’t have to wait for them to ask though. We are their users and their customers. Right now, they mainly care about their advertisers because advertisers are very vocal about policies if it affects their pocketbooks. But you and I can be just as vocal about policies that impact our society as are the advertisers. Ultimately, the advertising dollars depend on you and I using these social media.

For instance, check out the “Terms of Service” for these social media. It’s not always clear what constitutes a violation, but it does seem very clear that these social media are free to use the content you created for their own profit and that includes any clever things you say, photos, videos and music tracks. On the other hand, if you post something that you don’t have legal rights to, you and you alone are responsible. The terms of service are not “negotiated” with you; they are a “take it or leave it” affair and they are aimed at protecting the company, not at protected our democracy or humanity in general.

https://twitter.com/en/tos

https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms?_rdr=

https://www.linkedin.com/legal/user-agreement

But we can change that. We can collectively pressure social media to make changes that we feel are in the best interests of humanity. And this does not just apply to social media companies. It also applies to Walmart and Apple and Amazon and every other large multinational. We don’t have to be purely passive recipients of what others deem is the most profitable way for them to do business. We can change the commercial world so that products and services work better, are safer, and that the profits of productivity do not just accrue to owners but to workers as well. Yes, we can.

And that would indeed be a Happy New Year.

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The Blog in Review

28 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by petersironwood in America, family, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

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competition, environment, history, index, innovation, life, military, politics

Year End Summary (2017) and Index of Peter S Ironwood Blog. (Several readers mentioned that the wordpress navigation structure may leave something to be desired. Hopefully, for some readers, the following index may be helpful). Many of these blog posts are not meant as the “final word” on these subjects. I am hoping people can use them as a “jumping off place” for conversation with their neighbors, students, and colleagues.

Trumpism is a New Religion.

Astounded that more than 15 people voted for Trump, the year began with my attempts to understand my error(s). It was about this time that I saw more and more evidence that many Trump supporters were impervious to his most outrageous, incompatible, or nonsensical acts, tweets, and pronouncements. My explanation is that for some, Trumpism is really more of a religion than a political movement. This still seems correct to me. Others, have completely different reasons for voting for Trump. For some, for instance, I really think they have seen zero change in their lives regardless of who is President and they have seen promises never kept by both parties. As a result, for them, the President is seen as “Chief Entertainment Officer” and Trump provides plenty of that. In terms of a religion, Trumpism is much more compatible with the values inherent in modern day business than is Christianity. In essence, in fact, Christianity is incompatible with business values. So, it’s quite understandable that Trumpism has become popular.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/01/09/trumpism-is-a-new-religion/

The Crabs are Biting.

The next blog post returns to a retrospective look at some of my childhood experiences and thoughts about how these experiences shed light on current events. In this case, I recount various “fishing” experiences and how seriously children think about the world. Are fish the only animals that can be caught with bait?

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/01/17/the-crabs-are-biting/

Parametric Recipes and American Democracy.

A parametric recipe is my term for recipes that allow for a variety of ingredients. I like to make omelets, for instance. There are many different vegetables and cheeses that can be incorporated. The exact ingredients and proportions don’t matter. But there are things you would never want in any omelet – toxins, poisons, and things that simply make you sick to your stomach. Have we forgotten what is unacceptable in a democracy?

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/02/11/parametric-recipes-and-american-democracy/

Big Zig-Zag Canyon.

This post begins with a recounting of a hike on Mt. Hood, near Portland, Oregon (which coincidentally is one of my favorite cities). The post is about how one’s expectations can be wrong about just how hard things can get — over and over.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/02/20/big-zig-zag-canyon/

The Invisibility Cloak of Habit.

With experience we learn. That’s the good news. In some cases though, our previous experience leads us astray. In fact, in some cases, our previous experience just about blinds us to what is going on right before our eyes.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/02/25/the-invisibility-cloak-of-habit/

City Mouse and Country Mouse.

At least in the USA, I know that a spectrum of political opinions occurs everywhere but that one of the greatest correlates of differences is whether a person lives in a rural or urban area. I don’t believe one of these venues is, in every way, superior to the other, but it does seem that the different situations should logically lead to different values that work well in that venue.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/03/04/city-mouse-and-country-mouse/

Math Class: Who Are You?

It strikes me that part of what feeds pathological greed — and perhaps as well the greed that we all fall prey too — is partly the result of a serious misconception about who we are and our relationship to the rest of the living earth. Here are some back of the envelope calculations to put things in a more reasonable perspective.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/03/09/math-class-who-are-you/

The Great Race to the Finish!

Every human activity has both an instrumental/extrinsic value and an experiential/intrinsic value. In most cases, doing something as quickly as possible reduces its intrinsic value. It may or may not increase its extrinsic value although the financial interest behind the “Captains of Industry” always assume it does. Most of us are in something of a hurry most of the time. Why? Does it really make our lives more pleasurable? And, where are we rushing to?

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/03/24/the-great-race-to-the-finish/

Ripples.

Our decisions have long-lasting, perhaps eternal, consequences. Even mechanical ripples last a long time, but another human can multiply the input given a hundred fold so that the effect of any action can increase over time. Individual decisions can actually impact the evolution of the species as well.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/ripples/

Family Matters: Parts One, Two and Three.

A three part series exploring how the happenstance of our birthplace (over which we obviously have no control) has a huge and lasting influence on our lives.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/04/30/family-matters-part-one/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/05/11/family-matters-part-two-garlic-cloves-and-puffer-fish/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/05/27/family-matters-part-3-the-whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts/

Claude the Radioman.

Claude refers to a toy soldier whose function was communication. As a small child, it was my least favorite because it had no weapon. As an adult, I think he has the most powerful one of all.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/05/28/claude-the-radio-man/

Citizen Soldiers: Parts 1, 2, and 3.

A three part series on the premise that, like it or not, we are all soldiers. Of course, it’s different to be in the actual military and be at a front. But, we are soldiers in the sense that we are at risk pretty much everywhere mainly from other human beings. We are soldiers as well in the sense that our actions are important determiners of the outcome. We need to be smart as well as loyal.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/06/07/citizen-soldiers-1-early-enlistment-no-retirement/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/06/16/citizen-soldiers-part-two-boot-camp/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/06/24/citizen-soldiers-3-galoshes-in-the-gutters/

Pies on Offer: Rhubarb & Mincemeat.

Are you focused on grabbing the biggest piece of pie you can? Or, are you more interested in baking more pies and inventing new kinds of pies?

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/07/20/pies-on-offer-rhubarb-mincemeat/

What if … ?

A speculation that in reality, Americans have much much more in common with each other than they think they do. The politicians and the media both have a vested interest in making people think they are farther apart on more issues than they really are.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/what-if/

If Only…

This is a work of “pure fiction” however — the protagonists and their “back stories” are true. This is a story that takes place in a nearby but parallel universe.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/07/28/if-only/

Only You…

An examination of our responsibilities and the impact of our actions.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/08/08/only-you/

You Fool!

A recounting of some of the many ways in which we humans are subject to being fooled.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/you-fool/

Fool Me!

Mainly, this post focuses on the power of stories. There is an ethical difference, at least to me, between presenting a fascinating or inspiring story and presenting the same story as fact.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/08/24/fool-me/

Me Too.

This post is about the natural tendency of people to want to be part of a larger social action. Most people drive in stop-and-go traffic in a non-optimal way. This offers a better method.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/08/27/me-too/

Too Much!

Human productivity does not go up monotonically with increasing stress. Studies have been around for decades showing that people are more productive working 30 hours a week than 50. Why do so many companies then push for 50 or more hours a week?

https://petersironwood.com/2017/09/03/too-much/

Much Lost.

Why do we grieve at the loss of another? Why do we even get attached to objects?

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/09/10/much-lost/

Lost Horizons.

Have we modern humans lost our ability to make decisions based on a very broad, very long-term look? Doesn’t it seem natural for every generation of every species to try to make life better for the next?

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/09/17/lost-horizon/

Horizons University.

What would it be like to build a University that focused on expanding a person’s horizons in every dimension they would be interested in? What if it focused on finding, and formulating as well as solving problems using existing knowledge and procedures?

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/horizons-university/

You Know.

Which wolf do you feed? The “bad” wolf or the “good” wolf. Of course, sometimes, decisions involved complex trade-offs, but sometimes we “know” what the right thing to do is and instead do the convenient or selfish thing.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/10/02/you-know/

Know What?

The first of a series of blogs that considers how various aspects of social media, combined with anonymity, not having face to face communication (with its abundant affordances), the concentration of much of the media control in a few very large multi-nationals, the filtering and bandwagon algorithms of social media, and other factors all conspire to further divide people.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/10/08/know-what/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/10/16/whats-new/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/10/23/new-fools/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/10/31/fools-gold/

Gold Standard.

Every age has its pluses and minuses. Some folks today seem to feel we’ve moved too far too fast and that we should “rewind” to a better time. Interesting, but there hasn’t been a better time. The world today is hugely complex and inter-dependent. That’s the way it is. If we try to obviate all that interdependence, we will not go back to 1950 or 1890 but back to 5000 BC. Instead, what can we do to encourage civility and to distinguish news versus fake news?

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/11/07/gold-standard/

Standard Issue.

What are some ways that social media could be changed to encourage greater civility?

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/11/13/standard-issue/

Issue Resolution.

Perhaps the experience of others was different, but I learned very little in formal school classrooms about ways to resolve conflicts. Yet, much is known beyond simple compromise, using external authority or force of arms. This posts focuses on some of those with pointers to longer descriptions of the techniques.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/11/19/issue-resolution/

Resolution: Create!

This post encourages a more creative look at issue resolution. I believe that more progress can be made by people working together than by even a 10x increase in Facebook posts to convince everyone else that they are wrong.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/11/26/resolution-create/

Create Peace.

First of a series of blogs about the pros and cons of war and peace. Spoiler alert: war is a horrible option. We really need to get our act together to do better. People sometimes have trouble reaching agreement, but that process should be facilitate by diplomatic experts and leaders who are looking at the big picture. Some so-called “leaders” are intent on consolidating and extending their own power. Historically, that’s when power-hungry people declare war. Some might label such people SHRUGS – Super-Hyper Really Ultra Greedy Swindlers.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/12/05/create-peace/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/peace-love-part-one-casualty-count/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/12/14/peace-and-love-part-2-shrugs-shills/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/12/16/peace-love-3-shrugging-off-the-shrugs/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/12/20/love-all/

All…what?

Where are we headed? Is there any hope? I would say yes though we are in dark times. The light will return, if not today or tomorrow, some day.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/12/25/all-what/

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