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~ Finding, formulating and solving life's frustrations.

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Pattern Language Summary

29 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 72 Comments

Tags

Anti-Pattern, bully, Business, collaboration, competition, cooperation, innovation, Overview, Pattern, pattern language, politics, tyrant

A fellow writer recently posted a story seed on Facebook: “The World is Made of Glass.” 

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I immediately thought: “Indeed it is. And that glass can be extremely beautiful but it is also fragile. It is called ‘mutual trust.’ We live in a globally interconnected world that fundamentally depends on that mutual trust.” 

I recall that when I was eleven years old, if my friends and I saw a bottle on our travels, we would find a way to destroy it. Before we actually destroyed it, we would discuss the most fun method. Would we chuck stones at it? Or would take turns throwing it high in the air and wait for it to crash upon the ground? One thing we never discussed: whether or not smashing the bottle was a good idea. It never occurred to us that time and effort had gone into making the bottle. It never occurred to us that someone might come along and cut themselves or their bike tires on the broken glass. It never occurred to us that a shard of glass might go flying into someone’s cornea. 

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Stupid. But I was eleven. Now, quite astoundingly, I find people who should be decades beyond knowing better want to break bottles just for the hell of it. They want to destroy the current network of agreements, treaties, compromises, supply chains, currency exchanges and replace it with … ? The goal of the pre-teen billionaires? An extremely divided society in which a very small number of people will hold all the wealth and all the power and control all the sources of information. Most people on earth will essentially be their slaves. It will be a world run by men, not laws. This “break everything and then grab all the pie for yourself” goal might succeed but I think a more likely outcome is the destruction of civilization. 

Suddenly realigning the nations of the nuclear-armed world when many of them will be headed by essentially authoritarian dictators is extremely dangerous in terms of beginning an atomic war. War and war-like rhetoric are standard tools for autocrats to consolidate their power. 

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Even if atomic war is somehow avoided, billions of people could die. No, not millions. Billions. As I’ve mentioned before, most of us know how to survive and thrive in a particular context and we’ve become largely unaware of the extent to which the adaptive habits in our brains depend on our network of friends, family, and information sources. Not only will infrastructure and supply chains falter, fray, and fail; Anti-Patterns for collaboration will prevail over Patterns. This will make life more miserable but it will also make what people do far less efficient and effective as well. 

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I think anyone can do the necessary extrapolation. Becoming better at positive collaboration and increasing mutual trust will have two effects; at least, so I claim. First, there will be a local effect: whatever work you’re doing will become more pleasurable and effective. Second, there will also be a more global effect: you are providing a model of what works for others; you are also making them feel good about working with others; increasing their trust in each other and, to some extent, in their fellow humans. Better collaboration, teamwork, and cooperation can help prevent the destruction of our glass world. 

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Needless to say, the world is hardly perfect. It does need to change. That can be done in a collaborative way that leaves people alive; respects individuals; protects important freedoms. Real improvements will not be made by isolating nations, by trade wars, by shooting wars, by reneging on signed agreements, by tearing families apart, by cruelty. 

And yet, there is reason for hope – and action. People around the world are interested in learning how to collaborate better. That’s one reason for hope!

 

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Here is an index to the Patterns and Anti-Patterns that have been presented in this blog. 

Special Spaces & Wonderful Places introduces the concept of a Pattern Language.

“Who Speaks for Wolf?” reminds us to seek the input of all stakeholders and relevant areas of expertise before making a decision.

“Reality Check” reminds us that we cannot settle for ersatz measures; at least periodically, we must make sure we understand what is really happening.

Small Successes Early suggests that before launching into a complex project, especially when strangers must collaborate, it is useful to first tackle a smaller, shorter term project so people can build mutual trust.

Small Successes Early: Metaphor & Fable is an experiment in additional, potentially useful new parts of a Pattern. Although they seemed useful in this particular Pattern, I am not certain that they should be a normal part of a Pattern.

Radical Collocation suggests that for some types of complex problems it is important to put everyone together in the same space. Particularly relevant when the structure of the problem is not completely known ahead of time.

Meaningful Initiation can be a significant source of group cohesion but if done poorly, it can become an excuse for people to act cruelly. In that case, it can backfire.

The Iroquois Rule of Six suggests that we do not glom onto the first interpretation that comes to mind when it comes to interpreting the behavior of others.

Greater Gathering is a way for people to feel connected to the larger organization that they belong to – over and above those they come into frequent contact with.

Context-Setting Entrance allows people to know how they should act once inside a physical or virtual place.

Bohm Dialogue is a way of relating non-competitively. Rather than “making points” to “prove” one’s pre-existing beliefs, people work together to build a joint understanding.

Build from Common Ground – Rather than trying to be overly “efficient” by jumping right into “resolving” differences, it works much better to begin by establishing common ground in terms of experiences, likes, values, hobbies, concerns, etc.

Use Thoughtful Group Feedback Structures and Processes in order to provide useful information in a way that maximizes its likelihood of actually being used.

Indian Wells Tennis Tournament is not a Pattern per se. The purpose of this interlude is to provide an example of complex collaboration. Often, when we use a service, buy a product, or attend an event, we fail to think about how much complex collaboration is necessary to make it happen.

Negotiate from Needs, not Positions. Often, creative solutions to negotiations can be discovered by working together to understand the situation from each other’s perspective.

Give a Sympathetic Reading. If you work together with others in good faith, it pays to do your best to interpret what others say in a way that makes sense, if you can find one.

Positive Deviance. There is always variation in the way people do things. In a large enough population, it often happens that a few people may have solved a problem that faces everyone. That information, often implicit, can improve the lives of the entire population.

Music binds people together. This post explores some of the possible reasons.

Narrative Insight Method describes techniques for gather valuable knowledge from experts through the use of storytelling.

Fostering Group Cohesion through Common Narratives is another storytelling technique: in this case, one focuses on building and disseminating stories that illustrate common values.

Fostering Community Learning via Transformed Narratives. This helps solve a dilemma. For organizational learning, it’s crucial to learn from people’s mistakes. Ordinarily though, mistakes are not just used for learning but to bar one from advancement, raises, and the esteem of one’s colleagues.

Speak Truth to Power says that those in power must hear the truth rather than simply what will make them happy. (See also Anti-Pattern: Kill the Messenger).

Find and Cultivate Allies in complex organizations. Often, necessary allies may not be immediately obvious from official org charts.

Support Both Flow & Breakdown if you want to avoid systems that crash catastrophically.

Use Diversity as a Resource. This can be especially useful in finding and formulating problems, generating ideas, synthesizing ideas, looking for bugs, finding creative ways to market and sell products, etc.

The Day From Hell: Why Does Anyone Care?  A fantasy of how the simplest most mundane things could become nightmares of conflict without cooperation and collaboration. (Not a Pattern – a motivation for a Pattern Language.)

Collaboration Patterns: A Pattern Language for Creative Collaborations. This is a pointer to a so-far unrelated attempt to build a Pattern Language for Collaboration.

Anti-Pattern: Power Trumps Good This is the first of a series of ANTI-Patterns; that is, things to be avoided. Might does not make right; but when people act as though it is, the most powerful rather than the most competent calls the shots.

Anti-Pattern: Gratuitous Push Down This Anti-Pattern describes the behavior that some people engage in of useless and unnecessary cruelty. They push people down for no reason.

Anti-Pattern: Kiss Up; Kick Down People obsessed with power for its own sake will tend to be very solicitous who have more power and show no respect for those whom they oversee

Anti-Pattern: Conjure a Common Enemy This is a common trick of tyrants. They will point first to some very unpopular group and exaggerate its influence, power, or ill intent. In some cases the “enemy” can be completely imaginary. Eventually, the “common enemy” is anyone who disagrees with the tyrant.

Anti-Pattern: Taking Credit & Spreading Blame. Another common tyrant trick is to take credit for everything good even when they had nothing to do with it and to spread blame on others even if they had nothing to do with the bad outcome.

Anti-Pattern: Kill the Messenger This is the opposite of a Learning Organization. Tyrants want to “kill the messenger” because they bring bad news.

Anti-Pattern: Cascading Betrayal Since the organization built by a tyrant does not rely on affection or competence, once power starts to crumble, people will begin to desert the tyrant. Viewed from a different perspective, some may simply decide to do what’s right rather than what’s easiest or most profitable.


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Anti-Pattern: Taking Credit & Spreading Blame.

27 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Anti-Pattern, bully, Business, collaboration, competition, Democracy, fascism, innovation, learning, pattern language, politics

man in brown long sleeved button up shirt standing while using gray laptop computer on brown wooden table beside woman in gray long sleeved shirt sitting

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Think back to the worst boss you ever had or ever observed. Maybe one stands out immediately. Or, maybe you had two so it’s hard to say which was worse. If you have been very lucky and had reasonable bosses throughout your life, then, maybe you can think back to a very nasty teacher. In either case, I’m hoping you can think of someone who was not only strict, but pig-headed, arbitrary, unfair, and liked to demean employees (or students) in front of everyone. Not only that, they would take credit for the work of others and blame others when they had actually made the mistake themselves. 

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These are the sorts of people who practice the Anti-Patterns that I’ve been writing about lately. And it occurs to me that most people have had some experience with something similar to fascism in its mildest form: having an “intolerable” boss or teacher. It’s a very mild cousin, but it  is a cousin. 

The major difference is that if you have a horrible boss: a bully, a liar, a person who uses their position to hide their incompetence and blame it on others, it bothers you at work and you may lie awake thinking about it, but you do have other things in your life. You don’t have to have it affect your personal life; it doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t have fun playing a sport or dancing or singing. But actually living under fascism is a 24×7 business. Your bosses now are in charge of everything in your life that they want to bother with being in charge of. In the post below, I describe another one of the Anti-Life Anti-Patterns that they will tend to use: Taking Credit and Spreading Blame. 

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Taking Credit and Spreading Blame. 

The basic idea of this Anti-Pattern is simple. The “boss” controls information into and out of their group. They are in a position to present the work of the group to higher management. The workers under the boss, in some corporate cultures will have little recourse when they are mistreated or their actions are misrepresented. If someone comes up with a good idea, for example, it may be ridiculed by a boss who knows less. Let’s say, for instance, a member of a research group at a camera/film company comes up with the idea of an electronic camera, the boss may well call the idea ridiculous. If it later turns out that the camera/film company goes out of business due to competition from electronic camera companies, the boss who originally pooh-poohed the idea will now claim that they were all in favor but that they had asked the employee who originally thought of it to look into it. That employee had come back with such a negative assessment of the market, that they had all convinced the boss not to pursue it. This is an example of “Spreading the Blame.” 

On the other hand, if the boss had decided to pursue it and it had made the company successful, that kind of boss would lead everyone to believe that it had been their idea all along. They might even go so far as to discredit, transfer, or fire the employee who had actually thought of it. One might be tempted to think the “truth would out” and it might, but the boss has more control over how the group and the individuals within it are perceived than the employees do.

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In an organization without any form of checks and balances, a tyrannical boss may gain a stellar reputation among higher management by the use of this tactic. This may result in promotions and an ever-expanding scope of power with which to ruin people’s lives. If you can convince the people above you that you never make a mistake yourself because you convincingly blame others; and you manage to take credit for everything that happens in your organization (and possibly even credit for some of what happens even in neighboring organizations) then you will gain more control over the information flow. 

Ultimately, the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization suffers when Anti-Patterns such as Taking Credit and Spreading Blame are employed. People will begin to see little reason to work hard or imaginatively since the boss will take the credit. People who gain pleasure from friendly and collegial interactions will work somewhere else if they possibly can. Similarly, people who are primarily motivated at work by the work itself and doing it well will tend not to thrive under such a boss and will also go work somewhere else as soon as the opportunity arises. However, people who like to be told what to do, and enjoy power themselves, might collaborate with a boss who uses Anti-Patterns because the employee may feel as though helping the boss is the best way to open a promotion for themselves as well. 

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What “Anti-Patterns” have you observed in a boss, petty bureaucrat, teacher? 

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Anti-Pattern: Cascading Betrayal

23 Saturday Jun 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, sports, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

authoritarianism, Business, competition, Democracy, ethics, Facism, life, pattern language, politics, religion, Totalitarianism

Cascading Betrayal

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A very interesting little book that I recommend is Jane Jacobs’s Systems of Survival. In it she argues that there are two systems of ethics and morality: an older one, the “Guardian Syndrome” whose values include: Shun trading; exert prowess; be obedient and disciplined; adhering to tradition, respecting hierarchy, being loyal, deceiving for the sake of the task, making rich use of leisure; being ostentatious; and taking vengeance. Most of us might recognize these from history and stories about the Middle Ages in Europe but many other kingdoms and empires of earlier times also valued such things more than most of us do today. On the other hand, a newer system of values has been developing since the Renaissance. In the “Commerce Syndrome,” people tend to value things such as shunning force, competing, being efficient, being open to inventiveness and novelty, being honest, collaborating easily with strangers and aliens, dissenting for the sake of the task, respecting contracts, investing for productive purposes. 

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In modern societies worldwide, both systems are at play and they can often be in conflict. For instance, you have friends that you feel loyalty to (Guardian Syndrome) and you work for a corporation which asks you to sign a contract that says you will not steal from the corporation and that you will report anyone who does (Commerce Syndrome). You observe your good friend taking supplies from the company storeroom for personal use. You ask the friend to return the goods but they say, “Oh, come on. The company makes billions. They can afford it. It’s just our little secret.” You can’t dissuade your friend. Now, the conflict in values causes you a conflict. Do you “betray” your friend and honor your contract? Or do you betray your contract and collude with your friend? 

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Within American society (the one I happen to be most familiar with), these values are not evenly distributed. For instance, Silicon Valley seems quite centered on the “Commerce Syndrome” while small towns, sports teams, and the Catholic Church, for example, seem more centered on the “Guardian Syndrome.” 

People whose values are almost totally aligned with the “Guardian Syndrome” will tend to stay loyal to their boss, leader, team, political party, even when the boss, leader, team or political party does something stupid, cruel, unethical, or illegal. For a time, people in positions of great power can keep their power through, for example, the dispensing of favors, defining agreed upon untruths, or taking vengeance on the disloyal. 

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Such a system is always somewhat fragile as demonstrated by the constant stream of rebellions, crusades, and wars in the Middle Ages. A state or organization based purely on the “Guardian Syndrome” is even more difficult today. If one tries to keep to a pure “Guardian System” in the midst of a highly interconnected and interdependent world, it will fail sooner and more spectacularly. 

One issue is that it is no longer possible for people not to be exposed to the actual truth. Lying to a populace in which only 1% of the population could read and write was fairly easy. Trying to do it in the computerized and recorded world of today is nearly impossible. Some people will remain loyal and refuse to call out the Emperor for having no clothes. But someone will. And, it will be caught on tape. And, the tape will be shown to vast numbers of other people who have no loyalty to the Emperor. They will all see he’s naked and have no compunction about saying so. 

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As a result, a modern “Emperor” will find it difficult to keep all but the most fanatic fans from dismissing his attempts to control through politics and pageantry. The Medieval mechanisms of dispensing favors and wreaking havoc via vengeance will largely prove ineffective. Once such an Emperor begins to lose power, more and more people will begin to realize that they are much better off to “play by the rules” of the Commerce Syndrome. As a result, people who might have stayed loyal to the death to the Emperor will instead begin to defect. As more and more people defect, this will further weaken the Emperor’s power base and make it more likely for even more people to defect. 

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Naturally, the Emperor will attempt to use whatever power they have left to prevent defections, but in our modern interdependent and interconnected world, this is increasingly difficult. Most modern countries — and their leaders — realize that material prosperity in the 21st Century depends on many of the values of the Commerce Syndrome. A society that tries to remain “closed” like North Korea, for instance, will find themselves at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to invention, comfort, prosperity, and the happiness of its citizens. What little resources such a country does have will be increasingly funneled toward weapons of war, security, police, prisons, and the suppression of truth. While these measures may serve to consolidate the power of a modern emperor in the short term, in the long term, too many people will have too little physical comforts to feel much loyalty to the emperor. Support will continue to erode and eventually everyone will see beneath the invisible clothes. An early signal of such a collapse will be a cascade of betrayals. 

By contrast, in a modern state, loyalty is earned through such virtues as fairness, competence, innovation, and collaboration. In other words, people dispense loyalty on the basis of what people do, not because of what they promise to do and not on the basis of some bogus claim to royalty based on how and where they were born. Cascading betrayal is typically a symptom of an attempt to revert to an earlier state of human social evolution. It is another descriptive short-hand Anti-Pattern. It can be avoided by allowing feelings of loyalty to grow naturally from watching someone in a role of power make and keep promises over time and by watching them do what is in the best interest of the State; not by watching them take actions which mainly enrich the emperor. 

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

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Anti-Pattern: Conjure a Common Enemy

20 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

authoritarianism, Bete noir, bully, Business, competition, Dictator, fascism, history, innovation, learning, military, pattern language, politics

Conjure a Common Enemy

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Of course, it is quite a commonly used technique among leaders to arouse people to work together by pointing to something that they all want. For example, leaders may use visions of a better future to motivate diverse people to work together to build a bridge, say, or find a cure for cancer or to put a person on the moon. And, sometimes, as when an army stands on the border about to cross into a country, the leader may call upon everyone to work to defeat that enemy. 

The difference between working together to create something and working together to destroy something is quite palpable. Working to create something tends to make people feel happy and behave and think creatively. Working to destroy an enemy tends to arouse fear and anger. It is stressful and stress tends to foster doing the same thing rather than doing something new. At the end of the day, when people work together to build something good, that may provide positive value for a long time to come. When people work together to destroy something, they feel good temporarily, but what they have at the end of the day is, at best, nothing. 

I claim nothing is the best long-term outcome for destroying a common enemy. This may strike you as odd because, after all, if you defeat an enemy, you might be able to enslave their children or sexually abuse some of the survivors. You may also be able to steal some of their wealth. I still claim that these “benefits” are worse than nothing as an outcome because they will tend to corrupt and demean everyone involved in the effort. The gold that is extracted from people’s teeth and given to you as the spoils of war is not really a benefit. The gold may not tarnish. But you will. And so will your children.

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Note however, that the title of this Anti-Pattern is not: “Fighting a Common Enemy.” I chose “Conjuring a Common Enemy” quite deliberately. These are not enemies that are about to take your life and property. These are enemies conjured out of thin air, or more accurately, out of the disappointments, fears, humiliations, and angers that people have suffered. The Anti-leader essentially claims that any failure you have experienced and all that attendant negative emotion you felt is not your fault. The disappointments of the past are not due to your own faulty actions, bad choices, bad luck, or being born into unfortunate circumstances. No, the Anti-leader proclaims that your illness, unemployment, lack of wealth, lack of a loving relationship  – they are all caused by an enemy. 

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The Anti-leader wants to make it really easy to distinguish these conjured common enemies from everyone else. They might therefore choose dress, age, gender, race, or location as “magic markers.” They are “magic” because in real life, all one finds are, at best, tenuous correlations between the markers and actual behavior. But in the conjured enemy, they are all alike. It is a magic marker of ability, motivation, or behavior. If it is too hard to tell enemies apart from the “good guys,” the Anti-leader will mark the conjured enemy. Jews might be required to wear yellow stars. The “good guys” might all wear brown shirts or red hats while they “spontaneously” destroy things. 

In some cases, leaders try to cast inanimate and abstract things as “enemies.” Thus, we have the “War on Poverty” and the “War on Drugs.” While this framing is not so nasty and despicable as a “War on Immigrants” or a “War on Jews” or a “War on Blacks,” it is still an ineffective framing. Instead of a “War” on “Poverty” it would make more sense to build a bridge to prosperity, to my way of thinking. A “War on Drugs” is just plain silly. It would be laughable if it hadn’t cost so much money ($ 1,000,000,000,000 – one trillion dollars and counting) and ruined so many lives (many more than drug misuse and abuse has). Among the important questions that a “War on Drugs” glosses over are: “What is a ‘drug’?”, “Isn’t it really drug abuse that you are against?” “Why are some powerful and addictive drugs like caffeine, alcohol, Ritalin, and nicotine deemed okay while others like marijuana deemed not okay?”

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One problem with blaming all your troubles on a conjured enemy is that, even if you do destroy this “enemy,” you’ll be left with the same set of issues that you had before. Stemming immigration to the USA in 2018, will not land you a job in 2018 or in 2019 nor in 2020. Making homosexual marriage illegal will not improve your own marriage in the slightest. Making it illegal for Buddhists to practice their religion will not make you a better Jew; making Islam illegal will not make you a better Christian; making Christianity illegal will not make you a better Hindu. 

There is also a more systemic and pernicious problem with Conjuring a Common Enemy. Eventually, a society, business, or team who never faces the real causes of their failures will never improve and will be relatively disadvantaged in any competition with similar organizations who do face facts. In addition, once people are in the habit of blaming others for their troubles, they become ever more pushed into an “us vs. them” mentality; they will be unable to see win/win solutions for what they really are.

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They may well eventually turn on their Anti-leaders the way they did on Mussolini. Since the enemies are conjured, it is also necessary to spin an illusion about them. This was fairly easy to do in ancient times or in Medieval times. With mass media and the Internet, one cannot simply assert some absurdity and have it go unchallenged. The Anti-leader will therefore tend to destroy people’s access to sources of information that might challenge his or her lies; e.g., TV news, newspapers, websites, etc. and instead try to fill people’s minds with so much doubt that they will be tempted to make the “easiest” decision; that is, simply to believe the liar and their lies.  

Comments welcome; e.g., agreements, disagreements, references, examples, suggested Patterns or Anti-Patterns. 

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Here are some of my books. Perhaps I should do the next one on Pattern Language? 

The Winning Weekend Warrior focuses on strategy, tactics, and the ‘mental game’ for all sports as well as business and life. The Winning Weekend Warrior

Turing’s Nightmares depicts possible scenarios in the world filled with Artificial Intelligence. What might that mean for humanity? Turing’s Nightmares

Fit in Bits is for anyone with a desire to stay in shape but an extremely hectic, busy, or unpredictable life. Fit in Bits suggests many ways to work various exercises into other daily activities. My own favorite is to dance while cooking or washing and drying dishes. 

Tales from an American Childhood: Recollection and Reflection. Actually, this one is related to and inspired by the Pattern: Build from Common Ground. In Tales I recount early memories and then relate them my current values and what that says to me about contemporary issues in society. I invite you to take a little of my journey, not because it is your journey, but precisely because it isn’t. Therefore, we have observed different things and then come perhaps to observe the same things differently. It is simply my recollections and reflections – not the “correct” ones. Tales from an American Childhood

All are available on Amazon from links on my Author Page. 

Collaboration Patterns: A Pattern Language for Creative Collaborations. 

14 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by petersironwood in management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Business, collaboration, cooperation, creativity, Design, innovation, pattern language, teamwork

Collaboration Patterns: A Pattern Language for Creative Collaborations. 

(Takashi Iba with Iba Laboratory).

In response to a look at my on-going efforts to build a Pattern Language of ‘best practices’ in collaboration and teamwork, one of my readers suggested I take a look at the work of Takashi Iba at Keio University in Japan. I fondly recall visiting Keio University back in 1977 and giving a lecture on our work at IBM Research with John Carroll and Ashok Malhotra on the “Psychology of Design.” (See references below). In any case, I bought the book and read it and here I am recommending it to you. 

The approach taken in Collaboration Patterns: A Pattern Language for Creative Collaborations is somewhat different from the one I’ve been taking so far. The Patterns here are fairly elaborate and “wordier” while the ones in Collaboration Patterns are much shorter and more at a strategic level. They deal more with what one should do rather than how how to achieve the results. Another way to think about it is that some of the Patterns in this blog are more about mechanisms or processes to achieve many of the goals expressed in Collaboration Patterns. 

The Patterns in Collaboration Patterns are each only two pages (one of which are quotes and cartoons). You can read the book quickly and an entire group could come up to speed on using this book fairly rapidly. By contrast, understanding all the Patterns in this blog will take a longer time. Anyway, if you are in the middle of a project right now or about to start one and would like to improve your creative collaboration, I would suggest starting with Collaboration Patterns. It gives excellent suggestions for how to use the book in multiple ways. Hopefully by now, everyone sees that collaboration has always been vital for humanity to have many of the things that now exist to make life more beautiful, comfortable, and safe. I think that there is a place for these longer Patterns as well. 

https://www.amazon.com/Collaboration-Patterns-Language-Collaborations-Catalogue/dp/1312447168

Carroll, J. and Thomas, J.C. (1982). Metaphor and the cognitive representation of computer systems. IEEE Transactions on Man, Systems, and Cybernetics., SMC-12 (2), pp. 107-116. 

Thomas, J.C. and Carroll, J. (1981). Human factors in communication. IBM Systems Journal, 20 (2), pp. 237-263. 

Malhotra, A., Thomas, J.C., Carroll, J. & Miller, L. (1980). Cognitive processes in design. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 20 , 119-140.

Carroll, J. Thomas, J. Miller, L. & Friedman, H.  (1980). Aspects of solution structure in design problem solving. American Journal of Psychology, 93 (2), 269-284.

Malhotra, A., Thomas, J.C. and Miller, L. (1980). Cognitive processes in design. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 12, pp. 119-140. 

Carroll, J., Thomas, J.C. and Malhotra, A. (1980). Presentation and representation in design problem solving. British Journal of Psychology/,71 (1), pp. 143-155. 

Carroll, J., Thomas, J.C. and Malhotra, A. (1979). A clinical-experimental analysis of design problem solving. Design Studies, 1 (2), pp. 84-92. 

Thomas, J.C. (1978). A design-interpretation analysis of natural English. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 10, pp. 651-668. 

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The Day From Hell: Why Does Anyone Care? 

05 Tuesday Jun 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

anarchy, Business, collaboration, competition, cooperation, Democracy, pattern language, politics, Rule of Law, sports, teamwork

The Day From Hell: Why Does Anyone Care? 

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I oversleep. The alarm did not go off and it feels late. I glance at my watch and sure enough, I’m late. I grab my iPhone to see whether I forgot to set it. Nothing works. I cannot even turn it on or reboot it. I’ll have to deal with it later. I will be late for my tennis match or have to skip breakfast. I decide to compromise and just grab a protein shake out of the fridge. Something’s wrong. It’s not cold. In fact, the refrigerator is not cold at all. Nor did the light go on when I opened the door. I try the kitchen lights. Nothing. Power is off throughout the house. I’m sure the bill was paid on time. I’ll deal after tennis. 

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I arrive at the court for my doubles match. The other three are already there. John says, “You’re late. We’ve decided we’re playing you.” 

“What? Very funny. Yeah, I’m good but not that good.” 

“No, it’s not a joke. We’re tired of losing. The three of us will stand you.” John’s face is deadpan. I look at the others and there is no sign of japery anywhere. 

“Well…that makes no sense whatever. Sorry I’m late. My phone alarm isn’t working. In fact, my phone isn’t working at all. But I’m sure this isn’t April First. How about if Tom and I take you two on?” 

“No. We’ve decided we’ll take you on.” 

I think that sounds crazy but whatever. I’ll call their bluff. At least I’ll get a lot of exercise! “Fine,” I say, “let’s just warm up for a few minutes.” 

“No. No warm-up. We’re already warmed up,” explains Tom.

“OK, fine. Just go ahead and serve.” 

“No, you have first serve,” says Larry. 

I quickly unsheathe my racquet and walk to the baseline, one ball in each pocket and one in my left hand. I position myself near the middle. It looks really weird to look across the net and see all three of them positioned there. “First in?” I query. 

“No,” they sing out in unison. “Serve it in.” 

“What is this joke, guys?” 

“No joke. Just serve.” 

“Fine.” I think to myself, I will play along till the joke gets old. Since I’m not warmed up, I just hit an easy serve into the middle of the box to start the point. 

“OUT!” shouts Tom, who generally makes fair calls. 

“WHAT?! That was in the middle of the box! It wasn’t even close to the line! Enough’s enough.” 

“Our call,” says Larry. 

“Yeah, it’s your call, but come on. You all know that was well in.” 

Our debate, if you can call it that, is interrupted by screaming tires and a loud crash coming from the nearby street. “What the hell was that?” 

No-one reacts or answers my question. Larry says, “Second serve.” 

I shake my head. “Guys. We should go up there and see if anyone needs to call 911. I mean, it would have to be one of you. My phone doesn’t work.”

Don, still with a bland, blank look on his face says, “None of the phones work. That was just a car crash. Probably intentional. Let’s just play.” 

I know I am not dreaming. But what is going on? “You seriously think someone crashed their car on purpose? What is with you guys this morning?” 

“Yeah,” says Larry. “It’s been going on all morning. Let’s just play. Second serve. Wait. Tom! Come over here. I want to play deuce court.” 

“No way,” says Tom. “I’m already here.” 

Larry wields his racquet above his head and charges at Tom. In seconds, they are both bleeding profusely and keep swinging at each other. Don joins in the fray. They are completely oblivious to my shouts so I pick up my stuff and head for the clubhouse to call for help. Maybe someone put some kind of drug in the water? Just then, another screech of breaks, squeal of tires and a loud crash. Another car crash? 

red and yellow hatchback axa crash tests

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

By now, I am jogging through the parking lot toward the front desk at the tennis club. Something is terribly wrong. It all looks wrong. Then, I notice that virtually none of the cars are parked inside the white lines meant to indicate parking spaces. Some appear to have been left in the drive. Several are on the grass and one is in the flower bed near the gym. Many of the cars have smashed windshields.  

Collaboration? Cooperation? Teamwork? Who cares? 

I am very grateful for readers and commenters on my blog. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been cataloging “best practices” in collaboration and teamwork in the form of Patterns. I think it may be time to “take stock” and make it clear why I am doing this, in case it isn’t obvious. 

I don’t “own” these Patterns. I don’t get any money from people using them. Why should I care whether people do a good job or a horrible job at collaborating? And, isn’t life all about competition anyway? 

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There was a time, not so long ago, that I really didn’t think it would be necessary to “explain” why it was important to cooperate. There was a time, not so long ago, when I thought most people knew that life was not all about competition. But lately, so-called “civil society” has been so rife with uncivil words and actions, at least in the “United” States, that I think it’s time to re-iterate why cooperation is vital. I also want to point out that, while there is certainly competition in life, there is also cooperation. 

Why all of life is not competition. 

In the natural life of animals and plants, there are, for some species, some specific times and places for competition. That is true. And, some of those competitions can be pretty fierce; e.g., antler-smashing bucks competing for mates. And, you could say that the rabbit eats a plant and that the coyote eats the rabbit. But there are far more ways that plants and animals cooperate. 

adult and cub tiger on snowfield near bare trees

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

First, plants and animals participate in the recycling of material. Generally, plants gain energy from sunlight, and put some of that energy into compounds that are high energy and fit for consumption by some animals. In the process, plants also take carbon dioxide out of the air and replace it with oxygen. Animals breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Animals eliminate “wastes” from their food and that “waste” replenishes nitrogen and minerals into the soil. Plants use the nitrogen and minerals. And, when animals and plants die, their bodies further enrich the soil for plants. 

Cooperation within the great tree of life doesn’t stop there, however. Flowering plants often cooperate with each other and with bees to flower so that there is a more or less a constant supply of pollen. Sucker fish take parasites off large fish. Butterflies collaborate with flowering plants. Rabbits collaborate with berry bushes. When there is danger, many animals and birds cry in such a way as to warn others. 

Let’s move on to consider what cooperation means for human beings. A single human being, however smart, will die soon after birth without the aid of more adult human beings. Apart from providing physical needs for the infant such as food and water, older humans immediately begin teaching the infant and then the child much of what he or she needs to know in order to survive. People have typically hunted, gathered, and prepared food in cooperative groups. People build shelters together. Cooperation among human beings has become more wide-spread and more complex over time. Most of the people in the so-called civilized world now rely on complex supply chains for food, water, clothing, electricity, security and learning. Dancing, playing music, playing sports, business, government — all of these activities depend on cooperation. 

photography of people stacking hands together

Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

Cooperation and competition in sports. 

Right now, the French Open tennis tournament is going on in Paris. The competitive spirit of the players is amazing! In some of the matches, shot after shot looks like a sure winner – only to be returned with another difficult-to-return shot. The players push themselves mentally and physically to the very limit and sometimes beyond. They are indeed fierce competitors.

But guess what? They follow the rules. And they show sportsmanship. No-one arranges to secretly injure another player or sabotage their racquet. The players cooperate to compete. After many of the most savage hard fought contests, the contestants often fall in each other’s arms. 

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In life, there is both competition and cooperation. In a world of 7 billion people, cooperation is more important than ever. In a world that relies on international supply chains and agreements and laws, cooperation is more important than ever before. In a world with nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, cooperation trumps competition. The natural world has never been a zero-sum game; it has never been a fixed pie. Look around! Life has covered the planet largely through cooperation. To solve problems such as global climate change and the plastification of our oceans, we need widespread and effective cooperation more than ever. Of course, there is a role for competition as well. But competition is only fruitful within the bounds of cooperative frameworks. If we try to run this world under a non-cooperative and purely competitive framework, we will guarantee our own extinction. I had thought that was obvious to everyone, but apparently it isn’t. 

That’s why I’m trying to catalog best practices in collaboration and teamwork. 

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Examples of cooperation: 

http://nectunt.bifi.es/to-learn-more-overview/cooperation-in-animals-ants-case/

https://listverse.com/2015/02/23/10-amazing-cooperations-between-different-animal-species/

http://vetsci.co.uk/2011/05/16/cooperation-between-species/#

https://epdf.tips/making-democracy-work-civic-traditions-in-modern-italy.html

Putnam, Robert D. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-0304-6.

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Author Page on Amazon. 

Use Diversity as a Resource

31 Thursday May 2018

Posted by petersironwood in management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

collaboration, competition, Design, diversity, innovation, learning, pattern language, politics, problem solving, Representation

Use Diversity as a Resource

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Prolog/Acknowledgement/History: 

On the one hand, I’ve always been fascinated with biology. If you learn or recall even a little about biology, you’ll know that diversity is a fundamental aspect of life. Life repeats patterns. But it balances that repetition with variation and diversity. 

At the same time, I’ve found it much more interesting in nearly every aspect of life to seek some substantial level of variety rather than constancy. That includes everything from flowers to fields of study to people to interact with. My “favorite color” is blue. But the last thing I want is to see only my favorite shade of blue. That is, after all, equivalent to being blind. While I love eating cashews, it would be hell to have only them for every meal. 

My first job after grad school was managing a project on the “Psychology of Aging” at Harvard Med School. We focused on such tasks as reaction time and memory but I also looked into adjacent fields; for example, it was clear that “ageism,” as well as sexism and racism, was alive and kicking. True enough, there are general trends of age-related slowing and memory issues, but there are several caveats. First of all, there is huge variability within an age group. In our studies of generally healthy veterans from their 20’s to 70’s, the differences within an age group were about 2.5 x as large (roughly speaking) as the overall age-related changes that we saw. The fastest individual in the whole study of several hundred people was not in their 20’s nor in their 30’s. In fact, it was a 55-year old school superintendent who raced motorcycles cross-country on the weekend. The effect of the way various tasks were constructed was far more important than individual differences. In over-simple but basically accurate terms, age is a weak variable when it comes to “mental performance,” individual differences are a moderate variable and the conditions of the tasks are strong variables. In my experience, having individuals with a diversity of ages produces better results. (Relevant studies of aging, not empirical proof of the immediately previous statement: 9, 10, 22, 28, 31, 37 in references below). 

portrait promenade la nature homme

Photo by hermaion on Pexels.com

When I started the Artificial Intelligence Lab at NYNEX, I learned something of the history of the phone company including the fact that the telephone was invented to try to help people with special needs (in this case, hearing loss). There are many other cases where inventions that are of great use to huge numbers of people were first inspired by trying to aid those with special needs. Already aware of the possible enrichment of the field of human-computer interaction by making it more accessible to people outside of Western Europe and North America, I helped organize and run workshops on “cross-cultural issues in HCI” and as I met people from different cultures, I became even more convinced that diversity offered a resource for innovation and excellence. (Reports on a few of these activities: 2, 8, 32, 33, 36).

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Working with people in other cultures or people with special needs, in my experience, provides a much greater wealth of possibilities than sticking with only one. (Some studies of relevance that I have been personally involved with: 11, 15, 16, 27, 30, 35, 38, 39, 40, 41).

Excellent arguments have been made by many as to why supporting diversity is the ethical thing to do and I quite agree with those arguments. Here, however, I am not making an argument on the basis of what is right; I am merely claiming that it is in everyone’s interest to support diversity and use it as a resource for creativity and innovation. 

Author, reviewer and revision dates: 

Created by John C. Thomas in May, 2018 

 

Related Patterns: 

Who Speaks for Wolf?, Build from Common Ground.

Abstract: 

Human societies have widely different customs about what is appropriate behavior. As people grow up in a culture, they generally learn one (or, more rarely two) ways to dress, eat, speak, walk, and so on. Diverse groups of people, regardless of how that diversity arises, will have a wider range of skills, experiences, perspectives, and attitudes to apply to solving a problem. This diversity is a resource that can help throughout problem solving to improve the chances of solving a problem, generating a good design, or resolving an issue. Therefore, when faced with a problematic situation, improve your chances of success by bringing to bear diversity on the problem. 

Context: 

Cultures developed separately in many places around the world. Partly to adapt to specific conditions and partly by accident, these cultures developed different cultural practices. In addition, humans, like every other living species, exhibits diversity on thousands of dimensions even at birth. Beyond that, people are further influenced to develop differently based on their families of origin and their peer groups. These differences are critical in having allowed us to develop a complex, highly interconnected society of many specialists. People can become incredibly skilled at tennis or playing the piano or writing poetry or programming in LISP or fixing plumbing problems or planting trees or hunting or cooking, to name a few of the thousands of specialities that now exist. Everyone doesn’t have to do every single task for themselves. If we did, we would all be moderately good at the same relatively small set of skills. Instead, we can mainly rely on others who are extremely good at doing what they do and trade the fruits of our labors at what we are expert at for the fruits of their labors. 

All these differences mean that it often takes slightly longer to find and work from common ground; to understand each other, than it might if everyone were born and raised identically. 

Many of us live in societies that push for the fastest possible answer, solution, design, or resolution. There is an absurd push toward speed at the expense of quality. This tends to make people impatient to “just get on with it” by which they actually mean, “just get on with it the way I want to do it.” 

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Problem: 

When people push to the fastest possible solution, it tends to compromise quality in every way. One of the most important ways it compromises quality is that it pushes people not to consider a large variety of ideas but instead to pick the first one or two that come to mind. Generally, the first few ideas that come to mind are not original in any significant way. The ideas will be largely deployed or implicit in the dominant culture already. There will be very few real innovations. 

There is another problem with such an approach. Whatever the “answer” is, it will typically not appeal to everyone or even be in everyone’s interest. As a result, a design will fail to gain the widest possible audience and may instigate a backlash among those whose needs are not being met or whose needs are actually being subverted. 

In a fairly homogeneous group, it is very likely that some vital aspects of the problem or situation will be overlooked. A solution will be derived based on limited data and then marketed based on limited appeal. This failure will be surprising to the homogeneous group because they are only looking at it from one perspective; viz., their own. 

Forces:

  • Diversity of background leads to diversity of experiences.
  • The expectations of any one person are primarily based on their own past experiences.
  • The behavior of any other person is largely based on that person’s past experiences. 
  • People in fairly homogeneous groups tend to focus on their similarities rather than their differences; in some cases, they may even denigrate or make fun of other groups. 
  • Fairly homogeneous groups who focus on their similarities will further reduce the space of possible ideas to ones that are shared by the entire group. In other words, the group will work within the constraints of the intersection of their experiences rather than the union of their experiences. 
  • Ideas and approaches that appeal to those in a fairly homogeneous group will engender a false sense of universality of the appeal. It is easy to believe that the idea will be liked by everyone as much as it is by this particular group.  
  • The same unconscious close-mindedness that prevents the fairly homogenous group from generating very innovative ideas will also make it very difficult to accurately diagnose the real source of the failure.  
  • People in a diverse group will provide that group with an initial set of ideas that is far larger than the set of ideas generated by a homogeneous group. 
  • Moreover, people in a diverse group, if they see diversity as a resource, will tend to more often work from the union of their ideas than limiting themselves only to the intersection of their ideas and experiences.   
  • Ideas can play off against each other and produce still other new ideas. Thus, the diverse group who views their diversity as a strength will start off with a larger pool of ideas; will produce still more “recombinant” new ideas; and will more likely allow a look at the large space formed by the union of ideas rather than being limited by the intersection. 
  • Moreover, people in a diverse group will not only be more likely to produce an innovative service, product, or solution; they will also be more able to see how to market the idea, or specialize it, or localize it to any population represented within the group.    

Solution: 

When facing any particularly challenging situation, try to construct a highly diverse group of people to face that challenge. Respect and learn from each other’s differences. Focus on your diversity as a resource to be capitalized on rather than a handicap to be overcome. 

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Examples: 

  1. Artists as diverse as Frank Lloyd Wright, Vincent Van Gogh, and The Beatles intentionally allowed themselves to be exposed to Asian versions of their art in order to enhance and extend their own styles.

2. High level chefs who specialize in a particular type of cuisine may also become conversant in other types of cuisine to expand the palette of tastes from which to select. 

3. In problem solving, it often happens that the representation a person uses can have a huge impact on how easy a problem is to solve. Similarly, different things are often better said in different languages.  Even when it comes to advances in an entire field, they often follow new ways of representing things. For example, understanding human speech began making much more progress once the sonogram (which shows time on the X-axis, frequency on the Y-axis and amplitude as darkness) came into use as a representation (rather than the earlier representation of a speech waveform with time on the X-axis and amplitude on the Y-axis). Modern medicine today relies on many kinds of “scans” – not just X-rays, though X-rays certainly allowed a big advance over guesswork. (Studies indicating the importance of representation: 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 13, 18, 19, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26).  

Resulting Context:

Generally speaking, when diverse groups work together and view their diversity as a resource, the result is a better product, service, solution, or resolution. In addition, it typically happens as a kind of side-effect, that the roads to marketing in diverse markets are also opened up. Finally, everyone within the group learns from the others in the group. Inclusion and diversity have another very powerful positive impact. Everyone sees that what one does is the basis for reward rather than what one is or who they know. (Studies on the impact of diversity on team performance: 7, 12, 17, 42). 

This is a huge win for teams, groups, companies, and nations. If people feel that they will be rewarded based on what they do, then people are incentivized to do the best they can. If people feel that they are rewarded based on their age, race, sex, national origin etc. — that is, things over which they have no control, then no-one is motivated to do their best. Those in the out-group feel it is fairly pointless and those in the in-group feel it is unnecessary. 

Of course, there are many other factors besides diversity that impact creativity and innovation. The latter depend on leadership, organizational context, process, support, incentives, etc. In the short term, if people are under time pressure, some may perceive that they haven’t been as productive even if they have if there more ideas and more varied ideas are discussed. Arranging the context so that people are motivated to do well rather than do quickly will be critical to success. 

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References: 

[1] Bellamy, R., Erickson, T., Fuller,B., Kellogg, W.,  Rosenbaum, R., Thomas, J. and Vetting Wolf, T (2007) Seeing is believing: Design visualization for managing risk and compliance. IBM Systems Journal 46:2, 207-218.

[2] Best, M., Deardon, A., Dray, S., Light, A., Thomas, J.C., Buckhalter, C., Greenblatt, D., Krishnan, S., Sambasivan, N. (2007). Sharing perspectives on community centered design and international development.  Human-Computer Interaction, INTERACT 2007. New York: Springer.

[3] Carroll, J. and Thomas, J.C. (1982). Metaphor and the cognitive representation of computer systems. IEEE Transactions on Man, Systems, and Cybernetics., SMC-12 (2), pp. 107-116. 

[4] Carroll, J. Thomas, J. Miller, L. & Friedman, H.  (1980). Aspects of solution structure in design problem solving. American Journal of Psychology, 93 (2), 269-284.

[5] Carroll, J., Thomas, J.C. and Malhotra, A. (1980). Presentation and representation in design problem solving. British Journal of Psychology/,71 (1), pp. 143-155. 

[6] Carroll, J., Thomas, J.C. and Malhotra, A. (1979). A clinical-experimental analysis of design problem solving. Design Studies, 1 (2), pp. 84-92. 

[7]Chow, I. (2018) “Cognitive diversity and creativity in teams: the mediating roles of team learning and inclusion”, Chinese Management Studies, 12 (2), 369-383, https://doi.org/10.1108/CMS-09-2017-0262

[8] Dearden, A., Dunckley, L, Best, M., Dray, S., Light, A. & Thomas, J.C. (2007).  Socially responsible design in the context of international development. Panel presented at INTERACT 2007, Rio de Janiero, BZ,

[9] Fozard, J. L., Thomas, J. C., and Waugh, N. C. (1976). Effects of age and frequency of stimulus repetitions on two-choice reaction time. Journal of Gerontology, 31, (5), pp. 556-563. 

[10] Fozard, J. and Thomas, J. (1975). Psychology of aging: Basic findings and some psychiatric implications.  In J. Howells (Ed). Modern Perspectives in the psychiatry of old age. NY: Brunner/Mazel.

[11] Friedman, B., Brok, E., Roth. S. K., Thomas, J. C. (1996). Minimizing bias in computer systems. SIGCHI Bulletin, 28(1), pp. 48-51. 

[12] Kurtzberg, T. (2005). Feeling creative, being creative: An empirical study of diversity and creativity in teams. Creativity Research Journal, 17(1), 51-65.

[13] Malhotra, A., Thomas, J.C., Carroll, J. & Miller, L. (1980). Cognitive processes in design. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 20 , 119-140.

[14] Malhotra, A., Thomas, J.C. and Miller, L. (1980). Cognitive processes in design. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 12, pp. 119-140. 

[15] Srivastava, S., Dhanesh, K., Basson, S., Rajput, N., Thomas, J., Srivastava, K. (2012). Voice user interface and growth markets. India HCI conference.

[16] Srivastava, S., Rajput, N, Dhanesha, K., Basson, S., and Thomas, J. (2013). Community-oriented spoken web browser for low literate users. CSCW, San Antonio, TX, 2013.

[17] Stahl, G., Maznevski, M., Voigt, A., and Jonsen, K. (2009). Unraveling the effects of cultural diversity in teams: A meta-analysis of research on multi-cultural work groups. Journal of International Business Studies, 1-20. 

[18] Thomas, J.C. (1991). The human factors of voice interfaces. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 80 (3), 138-151. 

[19] Thomas, J.C. and Schneider, M. (1982). A rose by any other alphanumeric designator would smell as sweet. Behavior and Information Technology, 1 (4), 323-325. 

[20] Thomas, J.C. (1978). A design-interpretation analysis of natural English. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 10, pp. 651-668. 

[21] Thomas, J.C. and Carroll, J. (1978). The psychological study of design. Design Studies, 1 (1), pp. 5-11. 

[22] Thomas, J. C., Fozard, J. L. and Waugh, N. C. (1977). Age-related differences in naming latency. American Journal of Psychology, 90(3), pp. 499-509. 

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

[24] Thomas, J. (2015). Chaos, Culture, Conflict and Creativity: Toward a Maturity Model for HCI4D. Invited keynote @ASEAN Symposium, Seoul, South Korea, April 19, 2015.

[25] Thomas, J. (2014). Mobile Systems for Computational Social Science: A Perfect Storm. Invited keynote address at UbiComp workshop, Sept. 13, 2014, Seattle, WA.

[26] Thomas, J., Diament,J., Martino, J. and Bellamy, R., (2012). Using “Physics” of Notations to Analyze a Visual Representation of Business Decision Modeling. Presented at VL/HCC 2012 conference in Salzburg, Austria.

[27] Thomas, J. C. , Basson, Sara H., and Gardner-Bonneau, D.  (2008 & 1999) Universal access and assistive technology. In D. Gardner-Bonneau (Ed.), Human factors and voice interactive systems. Norwell, MA: Kluwer. 

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

[29] Thomas, J. C. (2001). An HCI Agenda for the Next Millennium: Emergent Global Intelligence. In R. Earnshaw, R. Guedj, A. van Dam, and J. Vince (Eds.), Frontiers of human-centered computing, online communities, and virtual environments. London: Springer-Verlag. 

[30] Thomas, J.C. (1997). Steps toward universal access in a telecommunications company. In B. Friedman (Ed.), Human values and the design of computer technology. Stanford, CA: CSLI. 

[31] Thomas, J. C. (2017). Old People and New Technology: What’s the Story? Presented at Northwestern University Symposium on the Future of On-Line Interactions, Evanston, Ill, 4/22/2017. 

[32] Thomas, J.C. (2007). Panelist, Meta-design and social creativity: Making all voices heard. INTERACT 2007, Rio de Janeiro, BZ, Nov., 2007.

[33] Thomas, J.C. (2007).  E-learning: An opportunity to meld modern technology and ancient wisdom? Panelist, E-learning.  INTERACT 2007, Rio de Janeiro, BZ, Nov. 2007.

[34] Thomas, J.C. (2005). Patterns to promote individual and collective creativity.  Presented at the Human Computer Interaction International, Las Vegas, NV, July 27, 2005.

[35] Thomas, J.C. (1996). Invited panel presenter at the National Research Council’s workshop: Toward an every-citizen interface to the national information infrastructure, Washington, DC., August 23, 1996.

[36] 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.

[37] Trewin, S., Richards, J., Hanson, V., Sloan, D., John, B., Swart, C., Thomas, J. (2012). Understanding the role of age and fluid intelligence in information search. Presented at the ASSETS Conference, Boulder CO.

[38] Trewin, S., Bellamy, R., Thomas, J., Brezin, J., Richards, J., Swart, C., and John, B.E., (2010). Designing for Auditory Web Access: Accessibility and Cellphone Users.  The 7th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility, W4A.

[39] Trewin, S, Richards, J.,Bellamy, R, John, B.E.,Thomas, J.C., Swart, C.Brezin, J. (2010). Toward Modeling Auditory Information Seeking Strategies on the Web. CHI Work In Progress. 

[40] Trewin, S., Bellamy, R., Thomas, J., Brezin, J., Richards, J., Swart, C., and John, B.E., (2010). Designing for Auditory Web Access: Accessibility and Cellphone Users.  The 7th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility, W4A.

[41] Trewin, S, Richards,J.,Bellamy, R, John, B.E.,Thomas, J.C., Swart, C.,Brezin,J. (2010). Toward Modeling Auditory Information Seeking Strategies on the Web. CHI Work In Progress. 

[42] Yap, C., Chai, K. & Lemaire, P. (2005). An empirical study on functional diversity and innovation in SMEs. Creativity and Innovation Management, 14 (2), 176-190. 

Support Both Flow & Breakdown

21 Monday May 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

collaboration, contextual design, Design, environment, error messages, HCI, human factors, learning, pattern language, pliant systems, politics, usability

Support Both Flow & Breakdown

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Prolog/Acknowledgement/History: 

Only a few days after moving into our San Diego home (with a beautiful drip-irrigated garden), I glanced outside to see a geyser sprouting about ten feet into the air. San Diego can only survive long term if people conserve water! Yet, here we were — wasting water. I rushed outside to turn off the sprinkler system. As I ran to the controller, I noted in passing that the nearby yard lay soaked with pools of water. I turned off the sprinklers — except for the geyser which continued its impersonation of “Old Faithful.” I tried turning the valve on that particular sprinkler and did manage in that way to completely soak myself but the water waste continued unabated. We called the gardener who knew and explained the location of the shutoff valve for the entire house and garden. Later, he came and replaced the valve with a newer type. The old type, which had failed, failed by being stuck in the fully ON position!

Often in the course of my life, I have been frustrated by interacting with systems — whether human or computer — that were clearly designed with a different set of circumstances than the one I found myself in at the time. In a sense, the Pattern here is a specific instance of a broader design Pattern: Design for Broad Range of Contexts. The specific example that I want to focus on in this Pattern is that design should support the “normal” flow of things when they are working well, but also be designed to support likely modes of breakdown.

During the late 1970’s, I worked with Ashok Malhotra and John Carroll at IBM Research on a project we called “The Psychology of Design.” We used a variety of methods, but one was observing and talking with a variety of designers in various domains. One of the things we discovered about good designers was a common process that at first seemed puzzling. Roughly speaking, designers would abstract from a concrete situation, a set of requirements. They would then create a design that logically met all the requirements. Since we were only studying design and not the entire development process (which might include design, implementation, debugging, etc.) it might seem that the design process would end at that point. After all, the designer had just come up with a design that fulfilled the requirements.

What good designers actually did however, at least on many occasions, was to take their abstract design and imagine it operating back in the original concrete situation. When they imagined their design working in this concrete reality they often “discovered” additional requirements or interactions among design elements or requirements that were overlooked in the initial design. While unanticipated effects can occur in purely physical systems, (e.g., bridges flying apart from the bridge surface acting like a wing; O-rings cracking at sufficiently cold temperatures), it seems that human social systems are particularly prone to disastrous designs that “fulfill” the requirements as given.

woman in white wedding gown near orange car

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The Pattern here specifically focuses on one very common oversight. Systems are often designed under the assumption that everything in the environment of the system is working as it “should” or as intended. This particular type of breakdown was featured in an important theoretical paper authored by Harris and Henderson and presented at CHI 99. That paper claimed systems should be “pliant” rather than rigid. A common example most readers have had with a non-pliant system is to call an organization and be put into an automated call-answering system that does not have the appropriate category anywhere for the current situation but still does not have a way to get through to a human operator.

A telling example from their CHI Proceedings article is that of a paper-based form that was replaced with a computerized system with fixed fields. So, for example, there were only so many characters for various address fields. When someone needed to make an exception to the address syntax with a paper form, it was easy. They could write: “When it’s time to ship the package, please call this number to find out which port the Captain will be in next and ship it there: 606-555-1212.” In the computerized form, this was impossible. In fact, there were so many such glitches that the workers who actually needed to get their work done used the “required” “productivity-enhancing” computer system and also duplicated everything in the old paper system so that they could actually accomplish their tasks.

As part of the effort (described in the last blog post) to get IBM to pay more attention to the usability of its products, we pushed to make sure every development lab had a usability lab that was adequately equipped and staffed. This was certainly a vital component. However, usability in the lab did not necessarily ensure usability in the field. There are many reasons for that and I collaborated with Wendy Kellogg in the late 1980’s to catalog some of those. This effort was partly inspired by a conversation with John Whiteside, who headed the usability lab for Digital Equipment Corporation. They brought people who used a word processor into their usability lab and made numerous improvements in the interface. One day he took some of the usability group out to observe people using the text editor in situ in a manuscript center. They discovered that the typists spent 7 hours every day typing and 1 hour every day counting up, by hand, the number of lines that they had typed that day (which determined their pay). Of course, it was now immediately obvious how to improve productivity by 14%. The work of this group seems to have been inspirational for Beyer & Holtzblatt’s  Contextual Design as well as the Carroll & Kellogg (1989) paper on “Artifact as Theory Nexus.”

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Author, reviewer and revision dates: 

Created by John C. Thomas in May, 2018

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Related Patterns: 

Reality Check, Who Speaks for Wolf?

Abstract: 

When designing a new system, it is easy to imagine a context in which all the existing systems that might interact with the new system will operate “normally” or “properly.” In order to avoid catastrophe, it is important to understand what reasonably likely failure modes might be and to design for those as well.

Context: 

For people to design systems, it is necessary to make some assumptions that separate the context of the design from what is being designed. There is a delicate balance. If you define the problem too broadly, you run the risk of addressing a problem that is too intractable, intellectually, logistically or financially. On the other hand, if you define the problem too narrowly, you run the risk of solving a problem that is too special, temporary, or fragile to do anyone much good.

In the honest pursuit of trying to separate out the problem from the context, it happens that one particular form of simplification is particularly popular. People assume that all the systems that will touch the one they are designing will not fail. That often includes human beings who will interact with the system. Such a design process may also presume that electrical power will never be interrupted or that internet access will be continuous.

Systems so designed may have a secondary and more insidious effect. By virtue of having been designed with no consideration to breakdowns, the system will tend to subtly influence the people and organizations that it touches not to prepare for such breakdowns either.

Problem:

When the systems that touch a given system do fail, which can always happen, if no consideration has been given to failure modes, the impact can be disastrous. Most typically, when the system has not been designed to deal with breakdowns, the personnel selection, training, and documentation also fail to deal with breakdowns. As a result, not only are the mechanisms of the systems unsuited to breakdowns; the human organization surrounding the breakdown is also unprepared. Not only is there a possibility of immediate catastrophe; the organization is unprepared to learn. As a result, mutual trust within and of the organizations around the system are also severely damaged.

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Forces:

  • Design is a difficult and complex activity and the more contingencies and factors that are taken into account, the more difficult and complex the design activity becomes.
  • Not every single possibility can be designed for.
  • People working on a design have a natural tendency to “look on the bright side” and think about the upside benefits of the system.
  • People who try to “sell” a new system stress its benefits and tend to avoid talking about its possible failures.
  • It is uncomfortable to think about possible breakdowns.
  • When anticipated breakdowns occur, the people in relevant organizations tend to think about how to fix the situation and reduce the probability or impact of breakdowns for the future.
  • When unanticipated breakdowns occur, the people in relevant organizations tend to try to find the individual or individuals responsible and blame them. This action leaves the probability and impact of future breakdowns unimproved.
  • When people within an organization are blamed for unanticipated system failure, it decreases trust of the entire organization as well as mutual trust within the organization.

* Even when consideration of support for breakdown modes is planned for, it is often planned for late in an ambitious schedule. The slightest slippage will often result in breakdowns being ignored.

Solution:

When designing a system, make sure the design process deals adequately with breakdown conditions as well as the “normal” flows of events. The organizations and systems that depend on a system also need to be designed to deal with breakdowns. For example, people should be trained to recognize and deal with breakdowns. Organizations should have a process in place (such as the After Action Review) to learn from breakdowns. Having a highly diverse design team may well improve the chances of designing for likely breakdowns. 

Resulting Context:

Generally speaking, a system designed with attention to supporting both the “normal” flow of events and likely breakdown modes will result in a more robust and resilient system. Because the system design takes these possibilities into account, it also makes it likely that documentation and training will also help people prepare for breakdowns. Furthermore, if breakdowns are anticipated, it also makes it easier for the organization to learn about how to help prevent breakdowns and to learn, over time, to improve responses to breakdowns. There is a further benefit; viz., that mutual trust and cooperation will be less damaged in a breakdown. The premise that breakdowns will happen, puts everyone more in the frame of mind to learn and improve rather than simply blame and point fingers.

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Examples: 

1. Social Networking sites were originally designed to support friends sharing news, information, pictures, and so on. “Flow” is when this is what is actually going on. Unfortunately, as we now know, social media sites can also not work as intended, not because there are “errors” in the code or UX of the social media systems but because the social and political systems that form the context for these systems have broken down. The intentional misappropriation of an application or system is just one of many types of breakdowns that can occur.

2. When I ran the AI lab at NYNEX in the 1990’s, one of the manufacturers of telephone equipment developed a system for telephone operators that was based on much more modern displays and keyboards. In order to optimize performance of the system, the manufacturer brought in representative users; in this case, telephone operators. They redesigned the workflow to reduce the number of keystrokes required to perform various common tasks. At that time, operators were measured in terms of their “Average Work Time” to handle calls.

In this particular case, the manufacturer had separated the domain into what they were designing for (namely, the human-machine interface between the telephone operator and their terminal) from the context (which included what the customer did). While this seemed seemed like a reasonable approach, it turned out when the HCI group at NYNEX studied the problem with the help of Bonnie John, the customer’s behavior was actually a primary determiner of the overall efficiency of the call. While it was true that the new process required fewer keystrokes on the part of the telephone operator, these “saved” keystrokes occurred when the customer, not the telephone operator, was on the critical path. In other words, the operator had to wait for the customer any way, so one or two fewer keystrokes did not impact the overall average work time. However, the suggested workflow involved an extra keystroke that occurred when the operator’s behavior was on the critical path. As it turned out, the “system” that needed to be redesigned was not actually the machine-user system but the machine-user-customer system. In fact, the biggest improvement in average work time came from changing the operator’s greeting from “New York Telephone. How can I help you?” to “What City Please?” The latter greeting tended to produce much more focused conversation on the part of the customer.

Just to be clear, this is an example of the broader point that some of the most crucial design decisions are not about your solution to the problem you are trying to solve but your decision about what the problem is versus what part of the situation you decide is off-limits; something to ignore rather than plan for. A very common oversight is to ignore breakdowns, but it’s not the only one.

black rotary telephone beside beige manekin

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3. In a retrospective analysis of the Three-Mile Island Nuclear Meltdown, many issues in bad human factors came to light. Many of them had to do with an insufficient preparation for dealing with breakdowns. I recall three instances. First, the proper functioning of many components was shown by a red indicator light being on. When one of the components failed, it was indicated by one of a whole bank of indicator lights not being on. This is not the most salient of signals! To me, it clearly indicates a design mentality steering away from thinking seriously about failure modes. This is not surprising because of the fear and controversy surrounding nuclear power. Those who operate and run such plants do not want the public, at least, to think about failure modes.

Second, there was some conceptual training for the operators about how the overall system worked. But that training was not sufficient for real time problem solving about what to do. In addition, there were manuals describing what to do. But the manuals were also not sufficiently detailed to describe precisely what to do.

Third, at one critical juncture, one of the plant operators closed a valve and “knew” that he had closed it because of the indicator light next to the valve closure switch. He then based further actions on the knowledge that the valve had been closed. Guess what? The indicator light showing “value closure” was not based on feedback from a sensor at the site of the valve. No. The indicator light next to the switch was lit by a collateral current from the switch itself.  All it really showed was that the operator had changed the switch position! Under “normal” circumstances, there is a perfect correlation between the position of the switch and the position of the valve. However, under failure mode, this was no longer true.

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4. The US Constitution is a flexible document that takes into account a variety of failure modes. It specifies what to do, e.g., if the President dies in office and has been amended to specify what to do if the President is incapacitated. (This contingency was not really specified in the original document). The Constitution presumes a balance of power and specifies that a President may be impeached by Congress for treasonous activity. It seems the US Constitution, at least as amended, has anticipated various breakdowns and what to do about them.

There is one kind of breakdown, however, that the U.S. Constitution does not seem to have anticipated. What if society becomes so divided, and the majority of members in Congress so beholden to special interests, that they refuse to impeach a clearly treasonous President or a President clearly incapacitated or even under the obvious influence of one or more foreign powers? Unethical behavior on the part of individuals in power is a breakdown mode clearly anticipated in the Constitution. But it was not anticipated that a large number of individuals would simultaneously be unethical enough to put party over the general welfare of the nation.  Whether this is a recoverable oversight remains to be seen. If democracy survives the current crisis, the Constitution might be further amended to deal with this new breakdown mode.

5. In IT systems, the error messages that are shown to end users are most often messages that were originally designed to help developers debug the system. Despite the development of guidelines about error messages that were developed over a half century ago, these guidelines are typically not followed. From the user’s perspective, it appears as though the developers know that something “nasty” has just happened and they want to run away from it as quickly as possible before anyone can get blamed. They remind me of a puppy who just chewed up their master’s slippers and knows damned well they are in trouble. Instead of “owning up” to their misbehavior, they hide under the couch.

Despite the many decades of pointing out how useless it is to get an error message such as “Tweet not sent” or “Invalid Syntax” or “IOPS44” such messages still abound in today’s applications. Fifty years ago, when most computers had extremely limited storage, there may have been an excuse to print out succinct error messages that could be looked up in a paper manual. But today? Error messages should minimally make it clear that there is an error and how to recover from it. In most cases, something should be said as well as to why the error state occurred. For instance, instead of “Tweet not sent” a message might indicate, “Tweet not sent because an included image is no longer linkable; retry with new image or link” or “Tweet not sent because it contains a potentially dangerous link; change to allow preview” or “Tweet not sent because the system timed out; try again. If the problem persists, see FAQs on tweet time-out failures.” I haven’t tested these so I am not claiming they are the “right” messages, but they have some information.

Today’s approach to error messages also has an unintended side-effect. Most computer system providers now presume that most errors will be debugged and explained on the web by someone else. This saves money for the vendor, of course. It also gives a huge advantage to very large companies. You are likely to find what an error message means and how to fix the underlying issue on the web, but only if it is a system that already has a huge number of users. Leaving error message clarification to the general public advantages the very companies who have the resources to provide good error messages themselves and keeps entrenched vendors entrenched.

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References: 

Alexander, C., Ishikawa, S., Silverstein, M., Jacobsen, M., Fiksdahl-King, I. and Angel, S. (1977), A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. New York: Oxford University Press.

Beyer, Hugh and Holtzblatt, Karen (1998): Contextual design: defining customer-centered systems. San Francisco: Elsevier.

Carroll, J., Thomas, J.C. and Malhotra, A. (1980). Presentation and representation in design problem solving. British Journal of Psychology/,71 (1), pp. 143-155.

Carroll, J., Thomas, J.C. and Malhotra, A. (1979). A clinical-experimental analysis of design problem solving. Design Studies, 1 (2), pp. 84-92.

Carroll, J. and Kellogg, W. (1989), Artifact as Theory-Nexus: Hermeneutics Meets System Design. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York: ACM, 1989.

Casey, S.M. (1998), Set Phasers on Stun: And Other True Tales of Design, Technology, and Human Error. Santa Barbara, CA: Aegean Publishing.

Gray, W. D., John, B. E., & Atwood, M. E. (1993). Project Ernestine: Validating GOMS for predicting and explaining real-world task performance. Human Computer Interaction, 8(3), 237-309.

Harris, J. & Henderson, A. (1999), A Better Mythology for System Design. Proceedings of ACM’s Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York: ACM.

Malhotra, A., Thomas, J.C. and Miller, L. (1980). Cognitive processes in design. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 12, pp. 119-140.

Thomas, J. (2016). Turing’s Nightmares: Scenarios and Speculations about “The Singularity.” CreateSpace/Amazon.

Thomas, J.C. (1978). A design-interpretation analysis of natural English. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 10, pp. 651-668.

Thomas, J.C. and Carroll, J. (1978). The psychological study of design. Design Studies, 1 (1), pp. 5-11.

Thomas, J.C. and Kellogg, W.A. (1989). Minimizing ecological gaps in interface design, IEEE Software, January 1989.

Thomas, J. (2015). Chaos, Culture, Conflict and Creativity: Toward a Maturity Model for HCI4D. Invited keynote @ASEAN Symposium, Seoul, South Korea, April 19, 2015.


Author Page on Amazon

Find and Cultivate Allies

14 Monday May 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

allies, Business, collaboration, cooperation, HCI, IBM, organizational change, pattern language, politics, teamwork, usability

Find and Cultivate Allies

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Prolog/Acknowledgement: 

The idea for this Pattern comes from personal experience although I am sure there must be many other writers who make a similar point.

Author, reviewer and revision dates: 

Created by John C. Thomas in May, 2018.

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Abstract: 

Human beings are highly social beings by nature. We work more effectively in groups (for many tasks) and it’s also more pleasurable. In a group of any size and complexity, people will have a large variety of goals and values. To achieve a goal, including but not limited to change within the group itself, it is useful to make common cause with others within the larger group. Whenever it becomes useful to promote social change of any kind, it is important to seek out and then cultivate allies. You will achieve greater success, enjoy the process, and learn much.

Context: 

Complex problems and large problems can often only be solved by groups. Within a large group, there will be many sub-groups and individuals whose motivations, expertise, and values are partially different from those in other sub-groups or from those of other individuals. In order to achieve any kind of goal including but not limited to changes within the group itself, a great deal of knowledge must be brought to bear and a large number of actions will be required. Generally, an individual or a small group will not have the knowledge, power, or resources to take all of these actions.

The variety of goals, values, experiences, and scope of power of various individuals and subgroups within a larger group can be viewed as a resource. The interactions among such individuals be a source of creativity. In addition, in order to accomplish some goal, you may seek and find among these individuals and groups those whose goals are compatible with yours and whose power and resources allows them to do things you cannot do yourself.

Individuals are subject to a variety of perceptual and cognitive illusions and these may be exaggerated by being in a large group. Changing a group, team, organization, corporation, NGO may be even more difficult than changing an individual even if the change would benefit the group, team, organization, corporation or NGO. Within any organization, there come to be entrenched interests that are orthogonal to, or even antithetical to, the espoused purposes of the group.

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Problem:

Over time, organizations eventually begin to behave in ways that are ineffective, inefficient, or even antithetical to their purpose. Whatever the cause, an individual who recognizes these infelicities in the organization will typically not, by acting alone, have the power to change them. Force of habit, custom, the culture, and the entrenched power of others will tend to make change by an individual extremely difficult or impossible despite their pointing out that the current way of doing things is counter-productive.

Forces:

  • People who wield local power in an organization are often afraid that any change will weaken their power.
  • Changing one part of the organization generally means that other parts much also change, at least slightly.
  • What works best for an organization must necessarily change over time because of changes in personnel, society, technology, competition, the environment, and so on.
  • Organizations typically codify the way they currently work by documenting procedures, providing training, incorporating current processes into software systems, floor layouts, and so on.
  • Each person in an organization is typically rewarded according to the performance of a small area of the organization that centers on or near them.

* People within an organization of any size will exhibit large variations in knowledge, skill, values, goals, and the resources available to them.

* In many organizations, a valid reason for continuing to do X is simply to say, “That’s the way we’ve always done it.”

* It is not considered a valid reason for change from doing X to doing Y to simply say, “We’ve never done it this way before.”

* Organizations are therefore prone to continuing along a path long after it is a fruitful, ethical, or lawful path.

Solution:

If a person wishes to change how a large organization does things, they need to find and cultivate potential allies within the organization. Allies may be people who can be convinced that the change is best for something that is best for that individual, their department, the organization as a whole, for society or for life on earth. These allies will have crucial information, power, friends, or resources to help make the change possible.

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Example: 

For two years, in the early 1980’s, I worked in the IBM Office of the Chief Scientist. My main mission was to get IBM as a whole to pay more attention to the usability of its products. No-one worked for me. I had no budget. I did, however, have the backing of the Chief Scientist, Lewis Branscomb. Among his powers, at the time, was the ability to “Non-Concur” with the proposed plans of other parts of IBM. This meant that if other IBM divisions did not have usability labs or adequate staff, the Chief Scientist could block the approval of those plans. Lewis himself was a great ally because he had a lot of personal credibility due to his brilliance. Having the power to block the plans of other divisions was also critical.

IBM at this time already had some Human Factors Labs who had done excellent work for years. However, there were large areas such as software that were mainly untested. In addition, most of IBM’s users were technical people and many of the usability tests had been done on other technical people. This had been appropriate but with the extension of computing into other areas of life, many of IBM’s “end users” were now people with little technical computer background. This included administrative assistants and clerks; even chemists, physicists, MD’s, lawyers and other people with advanced education found IBM products hard to use. None of these fairly new groups of users had typically used computers much or had been taught their use in their schooling.

I needed to find allies because the changes that were necessary to IBM were widespread. One important ally was already provided: Tom Wheeler had a similar position to mine within another corporate staff organization called “Engineering, Products, and Technology.” Tom could also get his boss to non-concur with the plans of divisions who were unwilling to “get on board” with the changes. But I needed more allies.

One obvious source of allies were the existing Human Factors Groups. Where they existed, they were typically staffed and managed by excellent people; however, they were often understaffed and often brought in near the end of the development cycle. In many cases, only their advice on “surface features” or documentation could be incorporated into the product. This was frustrating to them. They knew they could be more effective if they were brought in earlier. Often, this did happen, but typically because they had developed personal reputations and friendships (allies) within their organization. It was not mandated by the development process.

Who else would benefit from more usable IBM products? There’s a long list! A lot of “power” within IBM came from Sales and Marketing. The founder, Thomas J. Watson was himself primarily a sales and marketer. Most of the CEO’s had been from this function of the organization. Many in Sales and Marketing were beginning to see for themselves that IBM products were frustrating customers. Finding people within such organizations who were willing to stand up and “be counted” was critical. It was especially useful to find some allies in Europe who were on board with suggested changes. In many countries in Europe, there were various social and legal constraints that gave even more weight to having products that did not cause mental stress, repetitive motion injuries, eyestrain, hearing loss and so on.

In many parts of IBM, there were also “Product Assurance” organizations that required products to be tested before final release. In this case, two simple but crucial and fundamental changes needed to be made. Again, people who worked in Product Assurance wanted these changes to be made. First, we needed to convince development to work with Product Assurance earlier rather than later so that any problems would not be the cause of product announcement slippages (or ignored). Second, we needed to convince Product Assurance to test the procedures and documentation with people outside the development teams. Current practice was often for the Product Assurance people to watch people on the development team “follow” the documented process to ensure that it actually worked. The problem with this process is that language is ambiguous. The people on the development team already knew how to make the product work, so they would interpret every ambiguity in instructions in the “proper” way. IBM customers and users, however, would have no way of knowing how to resolve these ambiguities. Instead of making sure that the documentation was consistent with a successful set-up, the process was changed to see whether documentation actually resulted in a successful set-up when attempted by someone technically appropriate but outside the development team.

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People within IBM product divisions did care about budgets. Adding human factors professionals to existing labs or, in some cases, actually setting up new labs, would obviously cost money. We needed to show that they would save money, net. Some of the human factors labs had collected convincing data indicating that many service calls done at IBM’s expense were not due to anything actually being wrong with the product but instead were because the usability of the product was so bad that customers assumed it must not be working correctly. In most cases, fixing the usability of products would save far more money than the additional cost of improving the products.

In some cases, developing allies was a fairly simple business. For example, IBM had a process for awarding faculty grants for academic research relevant to its technologies and products. These were awarded in various categories. Adding a category to deal with human-computer interaction required a single conversation with the person in charge of that program. Similarly, IBM awarded fellowships to promising graduate students in various categories of research. Again, adding the category of human-computer interaction resulted from a single conversation. It should be noted that the ease of doing that resulted much more from the fact that it was known throughout the company that usability was now deemed important and the fact that I worked for the well-respected Chief Scientist than from any particular cleverness on my part.

In at least one case, an ally “fell in my lap.” Part of how I operated was to visit IBM locations around the world and give a talk about the importance of usability for IBM’s success. Generally, these talks were well-received although that did not guarantee any success in getting people to change their behavior. When I gave the talk to the part of IBM that made displays, however, I got a completely hostile reaction. It was clear that the head of the division had somehow made up his mind before I started that it was complete nonsense. I had no success whatever. Only a few months later, the head of this division got an IBM display of his own. He couldn’t get it to work! He did a complete 180 and became an important supporter, through no fault of my own. (Of course, there may have been additional arm-twisting beyond my ken).

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There were also two important, instructive, and inter-related failures in lining up my allies. First, it was very difficult to line up development managers. An IBM developer’s career depended on getting their product “out the door.” Not every product development effort that began resulted in a product being shipped. Once the product was shipped, the development manager was promoted and often went to another division. So, from the development manager’s perspective, the important thing was to get their product shipped. If it “bombed” after shipment, it wasn’t their problem. In order for the product to be shipped, it had to be forecast to make significant net revenue for IBM. No big surprise there! However, these predictions did not take into account actual sales, or the actual cost of sales, or the actual service costs, or even the actual production costs. The only thing that was really known were the development costs. So, for every additional dollar the development manager spent during development, there was one dollar added to the development costs, but also an additional dollar added to predicted service costs and predicted manufacturing costs. Moreover, there were an additional five dollars added to the predicted sales and marketing costs. If they spent an extra dollar doing usability tests, for example, it added not just one but eight dollars to estimated overall costs. Moreover, since IBM was in business to make a profit, an increase of 8 dollars in costs, meant an increase of nearly 20 dollars in projected price. This meant fewer predicted products sold.

In actuality, spending an additional dollar to improve usability of products should reduce service costs and sales and marketing costs. But that is not the formula that was used. The logic of the formula, corroborated by correlational data, was that bigger, more complex products had higher development costs and also had higher service, manufacturing and sales costs. When one compared a mainframe and a PC, this formula made sense. But when used as a decision tool by the development manager, it did not make sense. (By analogy, there is a strong correlation between the size of various species of mammals and their longevity. This, however, does not mean that you will live twice as long if you double your own body weight!).

Recall however, that the development manager’s career did not much depend on how successful the product was after release; it mainly depended on showing that they could get their product shipped. Development managers proved to be difficult to get “on board.” In some cases, despite the organizational pressures, some development managers did care about how the product did; were interested in making their products usable; did spent additional money to improve their product. Making such allies, however, relied on appealing to their personal pride of ownership or convincing them it was best for the company.

Some development managers suggested that perhaps I could get the Forecasters to change their formula so that they would be given credit for higher sales to balance the projected increase in price (and attendant reduction in sales volume forecasts). It would have been an excellent leverage point to have gotten the Forecasting function as an ally. I was not, however, sufficiently wise to accomplish this.

The organizational payoff matrix for the forecaster was quite skewed toward being conservative. If they used the existing formula and ended up thereby “killing” a product by reducing the sales forecast because of the money spent improving usability, no-one would ever find out that the forecaster might have erred. On the other hand, if I had convinced them by giving them evidence (which would necessarily be quite indirect) that the product, by virtue of its being more usable, would therefore sell many more units, there were at least two logical possibilities. First, I might be right and the product would be a success. The forecaster would have done the right thing and would keep their job (but not be likely to receive any special recognition, promotion, or raise). Second, I might be wrong (for a variety of reasons having nothing to do with usability such as unexpected competition or unexpected costs) and the product might tank. In that case, the company lose a lot of money and the forecaster might well lose their job. While I occasionally found development managers I could convince to be allies because I could get them to value making the most excellent product over their own career, I never was able to gain any allies in the Forecasting function. In retrospect, I think I didn’t take sufficient time to discover the common ground that it would have taken to get them on board.

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Resulting Context:

Finding allies will often enable the organization to change in ways that will benefit the organization as a whole and most of the individuals and sub-groups within it. If done with the best interests of the organization in mind, it should also increase internal mutual trust.

There is a related Anti-Pattern which is finding allies, not to change the organization in a positive way, but to subvert the organization. If, instead of trying to make IBM be more effective by making its products more usable, I had tried to ruin it by finding allies who, in the process of ruining IBM would also profit personally, that would have been highly unethical. Such a process, even if it ultimately failed, would decrease internal mutual trust and decrease the effectiveness of the organization. Of course, one could imagine that some competitor of IBM (or of a government or team) might try to destroy it from the inside out by favoring the promotion of those who would put their own interests ahead of the company or its customers. Finding allies may be likely ethical when it is for the best interests of the overall organization and all its stakeholders and if is a known initiative (as was the case for improving the usability of IBM products).

References: 

https://gps.ucsd.edu/faculty-directory/lewis-branscomb.html

Branscomb, L. and Thomas, J. (1984). Ease of use: A system design challenge. IBM Systems Journal, 23 (3), pp. 224-235.

Thomas, J. (1984) Organizing for human factors. In Y. Vassilou (Ed.) Human factors and interactive computing systems. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Thomas, J.C. (1985). Human factors in IBM. Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 29th Annual Meeting.  Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors Society. 611-615. 

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Author Page on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/author/truthtable

Speak Truth to Power

10 Thursday May 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Business, collaboration, cooperation, ethics, learning, organizational learning, pattern language, politics

Speak Truth to Power

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Prolog/Acknowledgement: 

This is a well-known phrase and also served as the subtitle to an on-line course I took recently on political consulting. I thought it would be useful as a follow-up to the last blog post which comprised the Anti-Pattern: Power Trumps Good. It is all well and good to say that one should speak truth to power. But how exactly does one go about that? Most people realize that exercise is good for them and eating lots of refined sugar is not; but knowing that is not enough to make those lifestyle changes happen. It is easy to forgo exercise; it is easy to get hooked on sugar; it is easy to “go along” with whoever is in power and accept or acquiesce in whatever they say. Hopefully, the pattern Speak Truth to Power can help motivate people but also provide some guidance in how to go about it. The result will be organizations that are more effective and efficient as well as being more life-promoting to interact with or belong to. That said, if you are like most people, it will be uncomfortable initially to speak truth to power just as it will be uncomfortable to start an exercise program or stop your sugar addiction. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

A committed individual can accomplish a lot. In many cases, however, an organization can accomplish a lot more. Most organizations have some kind of power structure. In order to collaborate and cooperate most effectively, it is important to understand, not only how to be an outstanding individual contributor to the goals of that organization; it is also important to know how to help the organization as a whole meet its goals. The next few Patterns should help with being effective in your work for and with organizations: Speak Truth to Power; Find Allies; Seek Forgiveness, not Permission; Servant Leadership; Prioritize; Seek to Work Down, not Up the Chain of Command.  

Author, reviewer and revision dates: 

Created by John C. Thomas in May, 2018

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Synonyms: 

Be Yourself. Be Honest.

Abstract: 

Human beings often need to form large groups in order to accomplish great things. In order to coordinate the actions of a large group, the most commonly used mechanism is to form a hierarchy of power and control. In the best of circumstances, information flows up such a chain of command only so far as it needs to; decisions are made; these decisions are carried out through the chain of command. Such “command and control” structures can be efficient, but they are subject to the difficulty that people in positions of power may use their power, not to achieve the goals of the organization but instead use the organization only for their own ends. People in power may concoct a rationalization or story or outright lie that makes it seem as though they are doing things for the common good when they are only doing things to consolidate their own power or to make themselves comfortable. People in power may discourage subordinates from giving them honest feedback about the effects of their decisions. As an antidote, it is important for everyone in the organization to speak truth to power. That is, you must find a way to insure that important information, including “bad news,” is made available to the organization.

Context: 

Complex problems and large problems can often only be solved by groups. In many cases, these groups have considerable structure including, importantly, a hierarchical control structure which gives some people the power to make decisions. Often, these decisions are not just about the appropriate course of action for the group as a whole; they also include decisions about the other people in the group; e.g., who to promote, give a raise to, fire, okay a transfer, write a recommendation and so on. Hopefully, the person “in charge” of a group or team within a larger organization knows or makes sure to learn a good deal about the domain as well as the people he or she works with. Ideally, people use their power to gather information, facilitate fruitful discussion, and make decisions that people within the group understand even if they don’t always agree. However, as point out in the Anti-Pattern: Power Trumps Good, it is also possible that the person “in charge” uses power primarily for their own benefit; in extreme cases, they will use it for sexual exploitation, to blame others for their bad decisions, to take credit for things they didn’t do and so on. Such bosses often only want to hear about the good that comes from their decisions. They only want to hear data and arguments that support their positions.

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Problem:

Groups function better if decisions are based on facts. Yet, sometimes the person in charge does not want to hear facts that argue for a different course of action from the one they want or if the facts show that a previous decision turned out to be a bad one. People who work for such a boss may well know these “uncomfortable facts” but the boss has the power to promote them, fire them, give them a raise, and so on. This puts pressure on those who work for such a boss to tell the boss what he or she wants to hear so as to stay in their good graces. If a bad decision is made it is generally bad for the overall organization, the team, and at least some of the individuals on the team.

Forces:

  • Having power tempts many people to abuse that power.
  • A person in power can bestow positive and negative sanctions based on obedience and compliance rather than competence.
  • People in an organization know they are supposed to be working for the best interests of the organization as a whole.
  • If a person in power signals (implicitly or explicitly) that they will use that power to put everyone under them in compliance with their wishes rather than what is best for the organization, it is tempting to be compliant.
  • When faced with an ethical dilemma, if people do what is expedient rather than what is right, they can generally find a way to “rationalize” their unethical decision.
  • An organization that runs on personal power as the driver for decision making will make inept decisions that are often at cross-purposes.
  • An organization that runs on personal power will tend to attract and keep the kind of person who will fail ethical tests.
  • If some people in an organization are willing to forgo the facts in order to please the boss, it will tend to encourage others to do the same.
  • If some people in an organization are willing to speak truth to power, it will encourage others to do the same.

 

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Solution:

Speak truth to power. There are many ways to do this. Depending on circumstances and the character (or lack of character) of the person in power, it may help to be bombastic, quiet, rational, emotional, respectful, or find a way to demonstrate that taking facts into account is in their interests as well. In many traditional and highly hierarchical Japanese companies, the workers always defer during working hours and publicly. After hours, a junior person may “unfortunately” get drunk and “accidentally” let the truth out to his superiors. Later, after sobering up, they apologize. In the Middle Ages, the Court Jester might tell the King truth. However you do it, speak truth to power. And, if you are in power, encourage everyone to speak the truth to you.

Examples: 

  1. To understand this example, it takes a while to set the stage. You need that background in order to understand how necessary it was to speak truth to power. For a time, I was the Executive Director for an AI lab. The company that I worked for was having a problem with their credibility. Fewer than 15% of the union people trusted top management. The figure for people in management like me, was even lower. The CEO called in a top consultant who told them about what Sam Walton did (who, at that time, enjoyed high trust among his employees). Every week, he had an hour long conference call. Each of his 700 store managers were on the call. Each manager had a chance to describe in one minute, a problem that he or she had encountered and how they had solved it. Part of the reason this process worked for Sam Walton was that he already had a lot of credibility. He would spend fully half his time traveling the country in jeans and a pick-up truck with two dogs in the back. He knew each of his store managers personally. Beyond that, while clearly some problems are local, any given store manager might very well have a solution to a problem that the other 699 could use.

By contrast, in the company I worked for, at this time, there were 70,000 “managers” in the company. The range of jobs among these 70,000 was tremendous. Some, like me, were in R&D. Others were telecom engineers or personnel counselors or accountants or software engineers. Our CEO at that time was definitely not someone wear jeans nor to ride around in a pickup truck with dogs in the back. He definitely was someone who “stood on ceremony” and expected others to do the same.

Management realized that 70,000 was far too many for everyone to speak about problems and solutions, but they still thought it important to make this weekly experience interactive. So, they decided that each week, the CEO would talk at the 70,000 managers for an hour about something important such as that they had a clear understanding of their precise role and duties. After the talk, each of the 70,000 managers would be asked to react with the touch-tone keypad. In this example, they were supposed to indicate on a 10-point scale how much they had a clear understanding of their precise role and duties. The basic structure of this had been decided. They came to me, because I was an “expert” in human-computer interaction. They wanted to know whether the “0” key should be used to indicate a “ten” or whether it was better to use “9” as the top of the scale and “0” as the bottom of the scale.

cuts

Wow.

I made it very clear that this plan was a disaster waiting to happen and would do nothing to improve trust between people in the company and top management. After explaining this as clearly, yet politely as I could, the person from Corporate who presented the plan said, in essence:

“Well, when my boss asks me what the best way to do something is, it isn’t my job to tell him that it’s a bad idea. It’s my job to figure out the best way to do it.”

I said, in essence:

“Well, if my boss asks me what sort of chain saw he should use to trim his  hair, I think it is definitely my job to tell him that trimming his hair with a chain saw is a really bad idea.”

The guy from Corporate was not pleased. Eventually, however, before implementing this plan, they did run some focus groups and I am happy to report that this plan was never implemented.

Of course, it’s uncomfortable to be a nay-sayer, particularly when the CEO of the company has already been involved in choosing (what I saw as) a disastrous course of action. But the alternative would have been to dishonest. The alternative would ultimately done a disservice to myself, my work colleagues, the stockholders of the company and, indeed, to the CEO himself.

In my opinion, you should always be mentally prepared to lose your job even before you accept the job offer. You should be prepared to be fired for insubordination, laid off for no reason, or suffer at the hands of someone in power who is not really doing what is best for the organization. Then, when you are surprised by someone making an absurd request, you already know where you stand.

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2. In the 1990’s, I became intrigued with the idea of a “Learning Organization.” The idea is simple in essence but non-trivial to implement. Just as individual animals (including humans) learn, so too can an organization be set up so that lessons learned by a few can be shared by the many. (Some of the Story Patterns just posted are meant to encourage just that). Working with consultants, my colleague Bart Burns and I made the outline of a plan to help turn our company into one that was a “Learning Organization.” In order to modify this plan appropriately and ensure its acceptance, it would be necessary to get the CEO’s backing. (FYI, this was a different CEO than in example 1). I decided that I wanted to present this to our CEO directly. This is, of course, not how things are typically done. Good manners would be to convince my boss. If I convinced him it was a good idea, I would still have to convince him to try to convince his boss. And, not only would I have to convince my boss to convince his boss; I would have to convince him to convince his boss to convince his boss. And so on. I knew the company. I knew it would never happen. The further up the management chain you went, the more conservative the people were about “shaking the boat.”

Instead, I set up an appointment with the CEO directly, went to the meeting, made the pitch. I immediately told my boss what I had done and why. It was a gamble, but my boss was a smart man. He realized I was right that it would never go up the hierarchy to the CEO. Furthermore, even if I had convinced my boss, he might still appear foolish to his boss, or his boss’s boss. Basically, by not telling my boss, I had actually saved him some potential embarrassment and hassle. This is not a method I would try many times in a career and you’d better be ready for consequences. In this case, I felt that the transformation that it might have made to the organization was worth the risk. The “truth” here was not something that could be proven with the kind of certainty we have about, say, global climate change. I could not “prove” that being a Learning Organizations was a good idea. So, it was speaking my truth to power, not an objectively provable truth.

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3. In The Shawshank Redemption, a crucial turning point in the movie occurs when the main character, Andy, overhears one of the prison guards talking about some tax problems. He asks the guard whether he trusts his wife. The guard is ready to kill him, but Andy persists. If the guard can really trust his wife, Andy can show him how to avoid the taxes by putting everything in the name of the guard’s wife. This allows Andy to begin working for all he guards and indeed making lots of money for the prison officials. He eventually uses the information to his great benefit. In this plot, Andy was taking a chance. It would have been easier just to keep his head down and say nothing.

Resulting Context:

Speaking truth to power tends to help an organization be effective. It tends to prevent people in power from trying to dictate truth to suit their private agenda. In addition, when people speak the truth, it makes for a more creative, more peaceful workplace. People can concentrate on finding out what’s what and doing what’s correct, not dwell on what the likes and dislikes of the next person in the hierarchy are or how to curry favor with them. “The truth shall make you free.”

Related Patterns: 

Reality Check.

References: 

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

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

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

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

 

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