Indian Wells Tennis Tournament

19 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by petersironwood in management, sports, Uncategorized

Tags

Business, collaboration, competition, cooperation, Indian Wells, life, pattern language, sports, teamwork, Tennis

This blog post is a short break from my attempts to build a “Pattern Language” of best practices for teamwork, collaboration, coordination, and cooperation. I wish to re-iterate why I feel the enterprise is important. I have been attending the Indian Wells tennis tournament and watched some amazing matches. While it’s tempting to write about the matches, I will leave that aside. What struck me about the tournament, aside from the athleticism and grit of the players, was the widespread and effective teamwork, collaboration, coordination, and cooperation that the tournament represents. This is obviously related to the Pattern Language because it gives an example of what can result from excellent teamwork and cooperation. In other words, this tennis tournament is just one illustration of why it matters.

It’s nicer in some ways to sit in your living room and watch sporting events on TV. You don’t have to deal with glaring hot sun at noon or chilly winds in the evening. You can get up to hit the bathroom any time you want and snacks are right there in the kitchen. However, you do not get a feel for just how incredible is the athletic ability of the players nor the velocity and precision of the shots when you watch on TV. More important in the context of cooperation is that when you watch on TV, every time there is a break in the action, you are treated to commercials. When you are at the actual venue, however, there is also ample opportunity for observing a little bit of the incredible collaboration and teamwork that an event like this requires. Even at the venue, all you see is the snow that dusts the surface of that tenth of the iceberg that rises above the ocean. With a little imagination, you can get an inkling of how much more collaboration must be required that you do not see.

The reason I want to dwell on this for just a little is that collaboration and cooperation permeate a healthy society. Indeed, widespread collaboration and cooperation are critical for society’s existence. Yet, it is easy to take cooperation for granted like the air we breathe. People like me, who have lived almost their lives in peaceful and kind circumstances, may easily forget that it need not be so. People have lived in circumstances of war, oppression, and slavery. We should never take cooperation for granted. Even in a very peaceful circumstances, there are many screw-ups in collaboration and while we notice the screw-ups when they affect us directly, we tend not to realize the vast interconnected threads of collaboration and cooperation that we rely on every day.

Let’s return then to the Indian Wells tennis tournament and examine just a few of the many collaborative aspects. First, there are the professional athletes, of course. Let’s return to this later, to understand a little of the massive cooperation required for there to be professional athletes in general and what’s required in cooperation to make any particular athlete operate at their amazing level of skill. What other roles are there? Possibly coaches, trainers, officials, and the ball boys and ball girls come to mind. It’s quite likely that if you watch tennis (or any other sport) on TV, one of the most salient roles is that of the TV announcers. They are a major part of most people’s experience of pro sports. Yet, when you are actually at the venue, they are relatively invisible. If we watch TV, we are cooperating in making the TV announcer a major part of our sports experience.

At the venue itself, there are many other obvious roles. There are police assigned to the area. There are hundreds of volunteers who help people park, answer questions, check bags and check tickets. There are vendors selling various wares as well as offering up a variety of food items. This is all much more obvious when you attend a sports event in person. But the cooperation doesn’t stop there. How do the clothing and food get to the venue? How are we able to eat food that is grown far away and sometimes packaged? Where did the recipes come from? Why do people share recipes? At this point in our cultural evolution, you can attend an event in Southern California and enjoy some excellent Japanese food at Nobu. Japanese speak Japanese. And Japan is more than 5000 miles away. So, somehow, through a giant network of collaborative and cooperative relationships, people in Southern California are able to produce delicious meals that reflect a cuisine developed in a different culture with a different language. Of course, Japanese is not the only cuisine represented at the venue. There are hundreds of options that originated elsewhere.

There is also clothing on offer, much of it designed in one place, manufactured in another place, and shipped via complex supply chains. You can buy it with a credit card. But how does that work? You guessed it. It works because of other giant networks of cooperation and trust. Yes, it’s true that some people steal credit cards and there are elaborate systems to minimize losses but even those elaborate systems work on trust.

The venue comprises parking, stadiums, parks, practice courts, with running water and electricity, working toilets, wheelchair access, and gates for crowd control. Again, the existence of the venue requires widespread cooperation among various levels of government, financial institutions, tennis organizations, volunteer organizations, and fans. But it isn’t even just contemporary cooperation that’s involved. These kinds of large scale venues go back in our history thousands of years. We’ve been collaboratively building best practices in city planning, architecture, crowd control, with many idea exchanges across cultures. We must remember that, by and large, the fans also cooperate. They don’t simply mob the gates to crash in without paying. The vast majority of fans are quiet during actual play, sit in their assigned seats, get up to allow others to pass and so on. This kind of cooperation also depends, in part, on widespread public education in how to be civil.

Let’s return for a moment now to consider that our society has professional athletes. Some people make a career out of playing a sport extremely well. But playing the game extremely well does not, in and of itself, enable professional athletics to exist. There have to be fans both at the venue and watching TV who pay, either with dollars or with taxes or with their attention to commercials. There are organizations who administer the sport. There are, in this example, thousands of coaches and tennis venues to develop the sport and spot prodigies early who then receive additional coaching and training. There are ranking systems and systems to seed players in tournaments. There are manufacturers who make tennis balls and tennis racquets which have evolved over time to allow more elegant play which pushes the game toward more extremes of human performance. This kind of evolution of artifacts does not happen “automatically.” It too requires communication and cooperation.

Indian Wells is just one event in one sport. If you dig beneath the surface just a little, you will see that nearly everything on the planet is the result of thousands of years of mainly cooperative enterprise. Of course, the players compete. They try their hardest to win. But they try to win within an agreed upon set of rules and regulations. If no-one followed the rules, there would be nothing very interesting to watch. If you’ve seen one bar fight, you’ve seen them all. There is no elegance and no beauty in watching thugs slug it out and waste time and resources. I dwell on this because it is critical to keep in mind that having a decent society that helps people thrive depends on having cooperation, teamwork, collaboration, and coordination. The individual human brain may be relatively large compared to an ape’s. But what really sets us apart is not our individual intelligence. Abandon a baby with a perfectly good brain into a forest by themselves and, if they survive at all, they will not behave much differently from an ape or a raccoon. They may scrabble for food and water, but they will not end up building a tennis court or constructing a tennis racquet.

It’s not turtles all the way down. It’s trust. It’s cooperation. That’s what makes us human. If we just grab everything for ourselves and lie about it, it subverts the very foundation of human life. Our human nature is to control our competition to acting within agreed upon boundaries for the good of all. If we forget that, we are not “lowering ourselves” to the level of wild animals. We are way below that. We are like a wild cat who refuses to use its hearing and fast reflexes to hunt. We are like a redwood tree who refuses to use the sun’s rays. We are like a deer in the forest who refuses to forage but instead expects other deer to bring them food. Willfully ignoring that we are a social species; intentionally lying in order to gain advantage to ourselves will never help create a bigger pie. In the short term, it can get you a bigger piece. But the cost is that you despoil what it means to be human. Grabbing all you can for yourself subverts the very essence of what makes humanity such a successful species. This has always been true throughout human history. Now, however, cooperation is more vital than ever both because we are on the brink of destroying the ecosystem we depend on for life itself and because we have even more brutally destructive weapons than ever before. We have cooperated through much of our human history. Now, we need to do it even more intelligently and more consistently — or face extinction. The earth doesn’t need us. But we need the earth. And, each other.

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

Pattern Language Overview

02 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by petersironwood in management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Business, collaboratoin, competition, cooperation, innovation, pattern language, teamwork

Pattern Language Overview

Prolog/Acknowledgement:

An old story recounts a person walking down a path and noticing two workers laying stones and cementing them into place. The walker noticed that one of the workers walked with a bounce in their step and a whistle on their lips. The other worker, however, trudged from stone pile to wall with a scowl. The walker imagined that perhaps the disgruntled worker was being paid less or was ill or had suffered a recent tragedy. Because the walker was familiar with the “Iroquois Rule of Six” however, they knew that it would be better to test their hypotheses than make assumptions about the reasons. He asked the disgruntled worker what they were doing. “Isn’t it obvious? I have to take these stones from the pile over there and lay them in that wall over there and cement them in place.” When asked the same question, the worker with the sunny disposition answered, “Isn’t it obvious? I’m building a cathedral!”

Many years ago, I read in IBM’s company magazine, Think, about a training program that IBM had provided in Kingston for people working in their chip fabrication plant. Management had decided to give an overview of the entire process to the assembly line workers. According to the story, one older worker jumped up in class and yelled, “Oh, NO! I’ve been doing it wrong! All these years!” Upon questioning, it turned out that the worker’s career had been in inspecting masks. Each mask was, in turn, used to make tens or hundreds of thousands of chips. Since so much effort went into the making of a mask, the worker had always thought it would be counter-productive to toss out masks that only had one or two flaws in them.

Astronauts who see the earth from space see things in a new and different perspective. In some cases, it causes them to better see the inter-relatedness of all nations and the desperate necessity of working together to ensure the ecological viability of the earth.

earthfromspace

These stories illustrate that an overview, map, or vision can serve two important purposes in collaboration and coordination. First, it can serve as a motivation. Who wouldn’t rather be building a cathedral rather than merely moving stones? Second, an overview can inform people about how their work interacts with the work of others and thereby allow them to make choices that positively impact the project, product, or campaign as a whole.

I’m talking a pause from posting specific Patterns to provide a preview/overview of the proposed Pattern Language on “best practices” for teamwork, collaboration, coordination, and cooperation. There are many things that have caused me to believe we need such a Pattern Language. Among them, the most important reason for me is the recent up-tick in uncivil communication and in turning nearly every single human activity into a “competition.” I’ve also seen a continued misuse of the biological metaphor that evolution proceeds by fierce competition. Of course, competition is important in evolution. So is cooperation. So, I argue, is individual choice (See blog post: “Ripples”.)

This Pattern Language is still a “Work in Progress” so I cannot yet give a highly coherent and motivating overview, but I hope this list will at least give some better notion of where this project might be heading. I briefly summarize the Patterns for the first two months of 2018 and to preview some upcoming Patterns by presenting only their essence. Providing this overview is itself attempting to make use of a Pattern – “Provide a Motivating Map.” As you read through a larger number quickly, I am hoping that you will begin to see that these Patterns are not a set of independent disconnected parts but more like an inter-connected web of ideas. There are, I believe, a number of different ways to organize this web for particular purposes. More on that later, but so far, I have thought of at least two ways to categorize the Patterns.

First, the Patterns could be categorized into four basic classes of human needs; 1) to acquire new things or experiences, 2) to defend, 3) to bond, 4) to learn. Often a large scale human activity may have 2, 3 or even all 4 of these as goals. But, at least in terms of the focus of current activity, one of these predominates. I would argue that when having a Synectics session (a kind of structured brainstorming), the primary goal is to acquire new ideas or solutions. It may result in a product that “defends” a company’s position in the marketplace; it may well increase social bonding in the group; and participants will almost certainly learn something. But, the most relevant Patterns to the situation at hand are those whose primary purpose is to better acquire things. The primary purpose of Meaningful Initiation, however is social bonding.

A second way of categorizing the Pattern is in terms of the current stage of development of a product, service, or work one is currently in. If you are engaged in problem finding, or problem formulation, Bohm Dialogue is particularly well-suited to the current task at hand. After Action Review, however, is better suited to looking back at or near the end of a project, development, construction, or campaign. There are no hard and fast boundaries implied. These are heuristics meant to help deal with the complexity of an entire Pattern Language. One could use a slightly altered After Action Review as a jumping off place for new product idea generation. Instead of asking, “What could we do better next time to avoid making error X?” you could ask instead, “How could a mobile phone app be used to help make sure people would avoid making error X?”

A third thing to note about Patterns, is that they form an inter-connected lattice. They are not a strict hierarchy, but some Patterns are higher level than others. A higher level Pattern may have lower level Patterns as components or as alternatives. Two high level Patterns are: Special Processes for Special Purposes and Special Roles for Special Functions. Some alternatives for special purposes are Synectics for generating alternatives and stimulating divergent thinking, the K-J Method of Clustering, and Voting Schemes for prioritizing ideas to pursue. Some examples of various alternative roles include Moderator, Facilitator, and Authority Figure.

Author, reviewer and revision dates:

Created by John C. Thomas on First of March, 2018

Already Published in January – February.

Who Speaks for Wolf?

Make sure to hear from all relevant stakeholders and areas of expertise (or their able proxies).

Reality Check.

For convenience, we often use an ersatz measure that’s somewhat correlated with what we are really interested in because it’s easier. In such cases, you must check to insure the correlation is still valid.

Small Successes Early.

We like to jump right into large, complex tasks. When this is done with a large group of people meant to work smoothly on a large project, it is counter-productive. Instead, begin with a task that is fairly easy, fun and/or relevant and fairly assured of success.

Radical Collocation.

When problems are complex and the sub-parts heavily interact in unpredictable ways, it is worth having the entire group work in very close proximity.

Meaningful Initiation.

When done properly and meaningfully in the right context and controlled by appropriate Authority Figures, initiations may increase group cohesiveness.

The Iroquois Rule of Six.

Human behavior is very tricky to interpret. When you observe behavior, and generate a reason for that behavior, before acting, generate at least five more plausible reasons.

Greater Gathering.

Periodically and/or on special occasions, everyone should have a chance to get together with all of their work colleagues(and in some contexts, their families) and have some fun.

Context-Setting Entrance.

It really helps social interaction if people know what is expected of them. The entrance, metaphorical or physical, can serve a vital role in setting the mood, tone, and formality of the upcoming social interaction.

Bohm Dialogue.

Let someone speak. Listen to what they say without rehearsing your own answer. Reflect on what they say. Share your reflection. A Dialogue seeks to create some shared truth without setting into “sides” or “camps” or judging each statement made on the basis of what it means for me.

Build from Common Ground.

People all share tremendous common ground even across the entire globe. Yet, we often try to jump into resolving our “differences” without first re-affirming what our common ground is. That’s a mistake. Start with discovering common ground and build from that.

To Be Elaborated On:

Use an Appropriate Pattern of Criticism.

For example: first, ask the person for positives and how they could improve; then, ask their peers for the same; then, the Authority Figure adds their feedback in the same order.

Negotiate from Needs, not Positions.

Win/win solutions are much more likely if people negotiate from their needs than from positions. Example: Two sisters fight over the single orange. They both say they want it. At last they compromise and split the orange in half. Neither one is completely satisfied nor dissatisfied. Had they been honest about their real needs, they would have discovered that one wanted the peel for a cake flavoring and the other wanted to eat the fruit inside.

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

Give a Sympathetic Read.

Natural language is incredibly ambiguous and vague. A reader should take a “sympathetic” stance toward what they read (or hear or feel). Instead of trying to find the “holes” in someone else’s arguments, first try to interpret it so that it does make sense to you.

After Action Review.

After a significant event takes place, parties who were involved in the decision making, should all get together with appropriate facilitators to see what can be learned from the situation. This is neither a “witch hunt” nor a “finger-pointing exercise” but an opportunity to see how to improve the organization over time.

Positive Deviance.

(From book by the same title). The idea is that in any complex situation that you might want to “improve” or “fix” there are some who are in that situation and have already figured out how to succeed. Instead of designing and imposing a solution, you can find out who the success stories are, observe what they are doing, get feedback from the observed and then encourage the success stories to share what they do with the larger community.

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

Provide a Motivating Map.

Everyone would rather help build a cathedral than simply lay stones atop each other. It’s more motivating to see that you are building something greater than the sum of its parts.

Provide an Overview Map.

The purpose of this map is to let people understand how their particular tasks fit into the grand scheme. This proves useful in many situations. Sometimes, the same Map can serve both as an Overview and Motivating Map.

Collaborating Music.

There is value to be gained in terms of social capital with listening to common music, more in dancing to common music and more still in the creation of common music. Of course, many collaborative activities can create social capital, but music seems to be one of the most “whole-brain” experiences we have and is particularly well-suited to building social capital.

Making Music Together

Narrative Insight Method.

People exchange and build on each other’s stories in specified ways to create and organize insights and lessons learned.

Elicit from Cultural Diversity.

Empirical research shows that more diverse groups can produce more creative and innovative outcomes. Even if such a group cannot work together always, at least use this during divergent thinking, though there is value in diversity for convergent thinking as well. Below is a (badly distorted) map of the world showing the nations from which readers of this blog hailed so far. (Invite your friends from all over the world!)

Map of Readers of Blog

Help Desk Feeds Design.

(I really want a more general title.) People who work at “help desks” are under time pressure but there should be mechanisms in place for what they learn about customers, tasks, contexts, pain points, to be fed back to development. In a similar fashion, in any domain, whatever information is garnered from interacting face to face with uses, customers, stakeholders, friends, enemies should be fed back to people who design systems, services, products, or governance.

Queue of Communicating Peers.

In many instances, people in queue, whether physical or electronic, share certain concerns in common. (There is always common ground). Rather than have them “stand in line” staring at the back of someone else’s head, encourage them to help enhance mutual understanding among the group.

Palaver Tree.

This name comes from some places in sub-Saharan Africa where people from a village gather to respectfully discuss what concerns the whole village. Generally, this is near a big tree that can provide shade during dry seasons. In colder climates, a communal fire can serve as the focal point. There may be other special places that are conducive to this kind of Dialogue.

Click to access jbe-thesis.pdf

Talking Stick.

Often, when confronting a problem that is pressing, complex, or anxiety-provoking, everyone wants to talk at once. No progress is made because people cannot even hear what is being said in the resulting din and no-one is paying attention to anything but getting their own point heard. A Talking Stick provides a visible cue as to who “has the floor.” Only one person at a time can hold the Talking Stick and only they can talk.

Round Robin Turn Taking.

In a group, it often happens that a small group of people tend to “monopolize” the discussion if it is held in a free-wheeling manner. An alternative is to have an Authority Figure or Moderator or Facilitator make sure that every person gets a chance to speak and that every person, including the shiest are encouraged to give their perspectives.

Mentoring Circle.

It is often easiest for us to learn from people who have recently faced and solved the same problems that we are now facing. A Mentoring Circle provides a way for people to learn from other individuals and from the group.

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Levels of Authority.

As one becomes more experienced and more trusted by a group, it is normal to grant more authority to that person to act on behalf of the group and to have more access to its resources.

Anonymous Stories for Organizational Learning

Often individuals make errors that can provide a learning experience, not only for them, but for others as well. Unfortunately, the competitive nature of many organizations makes admitting to errors costly for the person who made the mistake. An anonymized story can provide a way for the organization as a whole to learn from individuals without their accruing blame and ridicule.

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Registered Anonymity.

In Amy Bruckman’s MIT dissertation (Moose Crossing), she provided a space for middle school kids to teach each other object-oriented programming. She wanted to make sure the kids “behaved” appropriately despite their being anonymous and on-line despite the fact that these conditions often spawn inappropriate and even mean-spirited comments. While using real identities could help prevent that, it could also lead to even worse behavior. Instead, she used Registered Anonymity. That is, she knew everyone’s real identity and made it clear that inappropriate behavior would not be tolerated. But the child participants were not allowed to share their real identities.

Answer Garden.

People are busy and don’t want to answer the same simple question over and over. In Answer Garden, developed by Mark Ackerman for his MIT dissertation, people with expertise claimed a part of the tree of knowledge that they were familiar with and agreed to answer questions about that specific subject area. Once the question was answered however, newcomers were expect to first look through the tree for the answer they needed. If there are no appropriate answer, they would post their question at the nearest node to the requested answer. The expert would come by and answer that question, not only for the person who initially asked it, but the tree would grow with that newly posted answer as well.

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Community of Communities.

Complex wide-ranging problems such as ensuring that the world economy is organized to sustain the ecosystem require many people to address various problems. While a very large group of people may be concerned that they leave a livable planet for their descendants, everyone cannot work on every aspect. Better is to have communities work on those aspects for which they have particular interest and expertise. In Sweden, for example, Karl-Henrik Robert (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-Henrik_Robèrt) developed a program called “The Natural Step.” This led to the development of specific communities aiding in the way they best could; e.g., lawyers for a sustainable Sweden might concentrate on legislation and regulation, psychologists for a sustainable Sweden might concentrate on methods to raise public awareness; traffic engineers for a sustainable Sweden might concentrate on making more efficient kinds of roundabouts.

Special Roles for Special Purposes.

Every culture seems to have developed this notion. There are many specific roles that have been developed for specific purposes. Below are just a few.

Master of Ceremonies.

This is literally someone in charge of a ceremony, ritual, or rite. It has come to include an entertainer who serves to welcome guests and introduce them. A closely related concept is the “Session Chair” who introduces speakers, makes sure they have what they need, keeps track of time, and moderates audience participation.

Storyteller

In many oral cultures, one person, often chosen because of interest or ability, is chosen to memorize and repeat the oral history. In such cases, the role typically lasts a lifetime, not just a project.

Stake Warrior

The idea of a “stake warrior” is that they literally pound a stake into the ground and then tether themselves to that stake during battle. They can advance, go laterally or retreat, but only so far. Conceptually, a stake warrior shows some flexibility in discussion or negotiation, but there are boundaries beyond which they refuse to go.

DeBono’s Colored Hats.

Edward DeBono has written a number of books about creativity and innovation. One of his ideas is to use colored hats either physically or conceptually to signal which role a person is speaking in. For example, a person wearing a Black Hat is judging ideas while a Green Hat is more for creativity and provocation. More empirical research is needed to validate whether using hats (even metaphorically) actually improves performance.

Moderator

A Moderator’s main job is to make sure that a group actually follows whatever rules it has set out for itself about time limits, civility, taking turns, etc. A Moderator may also adjudicate disputes between two sides.

Facilitator

A Facilitator’s main job is to keep the group moving forward. They might, for instance, suggest a different way of looking at a topic, or try to invoke a metaphor or to draw out less forthcoming group members.

Setting Expectations.

Promise a person five dollars and give them ten. They will be very happy. Promise another person twenty and give them ten. The will be unhappy about it. What’s different? They both get ten dollars. Many books on developing projects will recommend “under-promising and over delivering.” In some cases, because of science fiction, TV programs, and the popular press, people may come to think anything is possible.

Support Flow and Breakdown.

When designing a new system, there is an anticipated way for it to work, whether it’s traffic flow in a city, water flow in the plumbing or information flow in an organization. However, eventually, there will be breakdowns in any of these systems. Breakdowns are always a hassle, but they will be far less so if the possibility of a breakdown has been anticipated ahead of time and then planned for.

Ratchet Social Change with Infrastructure.

Social changes are initially subject to falling back into previous patterns. In some cases, it may help make a social change more permanent by creating an infrastructure that supports the new system. For instance, if you want to improve relations between two countries, you could fund projects jointly that have a long completion time. Or, if you wanted to divide people, you could make it harder for people to see news and information from people across that divide.

Authority Figure.

Sometimes, a decision needs to be made quickly. Or, perhaps consensus will never be reached. In such cases, it is sometimes useful to have an agreed upon Authority Figure who can be trusted to make an informed decision that takes into account all the relevant interests. Naturally, Authority Figure who makes decisions from a position of ignorance or self-interest must be removed as quickly as possible.

Celebrate Local Successes Globally.

Often a very large-scale collaboration project such as developing a new product or service, governing a country, or trying to manage a cross-cultural non-profit stands to lose coherence and motivation when compared with a small co-located team. One way to help both with organizational learning and with encouraging high spirits is to celebrate local successes with the global team. If done correctly, this can be motivating for both the successful team members and the larger team.

Special Processes for Special Purposes.

This is another high level Pattern. People have developed numerous special purpose processes. Below I review a few. The reason for having different processes for different purposes is that a process can take into account the number of people, the type of goal, the time constraints, and other conditions so that a process is particularly likely to help insure success. A process can fail if it is badly executed but it can also fail simply because it is not appropriate to the task at hand.

Synectics.

Originally, the term derived from the work of Prince and Gordon as a way to describe a suite of techniques for creative problem solving. It is similar to brainstorming in that the emphasis is on generating many ideas quickly and without taking time out of idea generation in order to evaluate and debate each idea. Also like brainstorming, people are encouraged to build on each other’s ideas. In addition, they describe various clever ways to incorporate metaphorical thinking into the process. They also allow each person to work on the “Problem As Understood” and this can be slightly different for each person. I have personally found synectics to be extremely useful. It “works” in generating many ideas, some of which can be quite useful and novel. For example, many years ago, I facilitated such a session and the foreign equivalent of the American IRS decided that increasing tax revenue was their goal but that to achieve that, there were other methods than increasing tax rates and increasing compliance.

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

Speed Dating.

Although there are actual speed dating venues, here this term refers to a way for a moderate sized group of people to get to know each other quickly by spending two minutes with one other person in the group quickly recounting their backgrounds and interests and then moving on to form new pairs.

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KJ Method.

This is a way to cluster ideas. Many people are now familiar with this as a way of clustering ideas from a brainstorming or synectics session or for clustering ethnographic observations in order to later address product features and functions to address them. Basically, a large number of post-in notes are put on a wall and re-arranged by the group, some of whom may focus on a particular area of the overall cognitive map that is being build or spend their time thinking more about the whole. This method is often used, for example, in CHI Program Committee meetings to take a first pass at developing sessions. There have also been attempts to automate such processes.

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Rating and Ranking.

Often a large number of ideas are generated but the resources available do not allow all of them to be pursued. Therefore, a variety of voting, ranking and rating systems have been developed so that the group as a whole has input into the direction taken.

Incremental Value.

It is difficult for people, either as groups or individuals, to move from a current way of doing things to a new one. Almost invariably, people will find the old way of doing things more “comfortable.” The transition to a new way will be much easier if there are incremental improvements in performance along the way rather than the mere promise of some wondrous new state at the conclusion of a long process of change.

Jump Start.

Sometimes, change in an organization or process needs to be “jump-started” by providing additional incentives or special organizational support in some way.

Active Reminders.

As people are learning new methods, processes, and skills, it is helpful to have Active Reminders so that people are less likely to fall into old habits. For example, in attempting to do brainstorming, many people find it very difficult to withhold judgment and criticism from ideas that others put forth. It can be helpful in such cases to have the “Rules” of brainstorming prominent displayed or to have someone whose role is mainly to remind people to build on each other’s ideas when someone critiques an idea.

Controlling Growth.

While people often want their company, non-profit, or movement to grow as quickly as possible, growth without restraint is often called “cancer.” Growth needs to be controlled so that unanticipated side-effects do not destroy the entire company, non-profit or movement. People Express Airlines, for instance, is often thought to have have tanked because their success led to such rapid growth that they could not sustain what made them successful in the first place.

Expressive Communication Builds Mutual Trust.

Studies of cooperation in games such as the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” show that when people communicate something personal and apart from the game such as sharing photos, backgrounds, hobbies, etc. it tends to increase the chances of cooperation.

These Patterns (or really, more accurately, hints of Patterns, are not meant to be exhaustive. But hopefully, there are enough Patterns in this post to give readers a better idea of the wide variety of Patterns than might cohere into a Socio-Technical Pattern Language for Collaboration and Teamwork.

References:

https://socialworldsresearch.org/sites/default/files/j-ag.final-fmt.pdf

https://www.cc.gatech.edu/fac/Amy.Bruckman/thesis/

Fincher, S., Finlay, J., Green, S., Matchen, P., Jones, L., Thomas, J.C., Molina, P. (2004) Perspectives on HCI patterns: Concepts and tools. Workshop at CHI 2004, ACM Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems.

Pan, Y., Roedl, D., Blevis, E., & Thomas, J. (2015). Fashion Thinking: Fashion Practices and Sustainable Interaction Design. International Journal of Design, 9(1), 53-66.

http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/staff/lp22/HF2000.html

Schuler, D. (2008). Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Social Change. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Thomas, J. C., Kellogg, W.A., and Erickson, T. (2001) The Knowledge Management puzzle: Human and social factors in knowledge management. IBM Systems Journal, 40(4), 863-884.

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

Thomas, J. C. (2012). Patterns for emergent global intelligence. In Creativity and Rationale: Enhancing Human Experience By Design J. Carroll (Ed.), New York: Springer.

Thomas, J. C. & Richards, J. T. (2012). Achieving psychological simplicity: Measures and methods to reduce cognitive complexity. In The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook. J. Jacko (Ed.) Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Thomas, J.(2008). Fun at work: Managing HCI from a Peopleware perspective. HCI Remixed. D. McDonald & T. Erickson (Eds.), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Build from Common Ground

25 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, psychology, sports, Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

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

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

Build From Common Ground

Prolog/Acknowledgement:

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

Author, reviewer and revision dates:

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

Synonyms:

Abstract:

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

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

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

Problem:

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

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

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

Context:

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

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

Forces:

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

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

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

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

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

Solution:

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

Sharing a Meal at CHI 2008 Workshop

Examples:

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

StoryPatent

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

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

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

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

earthfromspace

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resulting Context:

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

Rationale:

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

Related Patterns:

Reality Check, Check-In, Small Successes Early.

Metaphors:

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

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

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

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

References:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Context-Setting Entrance

13 Tuesday Feb 2018

Posted by petersironwood in management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

advertising, Business, collaboration, Design, marketing, pattern language, teamwork, Web design

Context Setting Entrance

Prolog/Acknowledgement/History:

It occurs to me that some readers would like to know more about Pattern Languages; the pros and cons; pointers to the research; perhaps, how to write (or find) Patterns. I will do that soon on the basis of my current understanding. I’d like to put out a few more examples first though. I find that concepts such as “Pattern” and “Pattern Language” are much better defined by example than by rule. In the meantime, here below are some pointers to give a better flavor of what this odd creature, A Pattern Language, actually looks like and whether it can be housebroken or used for hunting. As you can tell by the list below, I have tried this creature in many different circumstances. To me, it seems quite happy and affectionate. I think that when it comes to trying to work with Pattern Languages, it is necessary to treat it something like a puppy. Your attitude will be an even more important a predictor of your success than your cleverness or knowledge of the Patterns.

Let every Pattern be “frisky” and let each Pattern explore and check out odd corners of the domain (and each other). There are cases where a Pattern doesn’t apply and there are cases where no Pattern applies just as your puppy can’t do anything they want. And, there are a few places where Pattern Languages are not at all appropriate just as there are places where no pets are allowed. For example, some situations are well enough understood that they can be characterized by a mathematical formula. No need for a Pattern (or a puppy) there, though it could still be fun.

https://www.slideshare.net/John_C_Thomas/toward-a-sociotechnical-pattern-language

https://www.slideshare.net/John_C_Thomas/ppdd-copy?qid=2852eb5e-9639-44e0-b648-eb46defc0721&v=&b=&from_search=1

Meta design and social creativity from John Thomas

https://www.slideshare.net/John_C_Thomas/chi2006-workshop-paper-on-trust

https://www.slideshare.net/John_C_Thomas/sigchi-extended-abstractsjct

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~yangwan1/cscw2011/papers/cscw2011extendedabstractW7positionpaper-JCT.pdf

https://www.slideshare.net/John_C_Thomas/handover-jct

There are several “sources” of inspiration for this Pattern. First, I was struck by one of Christopher Alexander’s architectural Patterns because it resonated with one of my own pet peeves — modern buildings often give no clue as to where the blasted entrance is! Part of Pattern 110 – Main Entrance says the following:

“The entrance must be placed in such a way that people who approach the building see the entrance or some hint of where the entrance is, as soon as they see the building itself.”

To this, I say, “Amen!”

Being able to know where the entrance is, of course, is somewhat different from saying the entrance should give a clue as to what sort of behavior is appropriate once inside. In terms of my own experience however, this Pattern of Alexander’s set me to thinking about the importance of entrances.

At about the time I became aware of that Pattern, I was working at IBM Research and used a system that my wife and other friends at IBM developed called “Babble.” This was a mixed synchronous/asynchronous messaging system with wonderful functionality but a rather “unprofessional” look to it. Later, when she managed the group, she hired an extremely talented architect/designer and Babble was replaced with a much more beautiful system called Loops (as in “keeping people in the loop”). The functionality was quite similar but the second design was much more beautiful. Oddly, it never got quite so much use as the first system. I began to wonder whether it was so beautiful that people felt as though what they needed to be more formal, respectful, and serious when they wrote there.

At about the same time, I built a website with some nice graphics. This was a wiki meant for everyone in a community to use. Instead, what I got was email from people suggesting things I could add to the website. “No, it’s a wiki, I explained. You don’t need my permission. Just add what you want!” Very few takers. Later, I made it more “rough-looking” and people began adding material to it.

While traditions in a culture condition us to expect certain kinds of behavior when we go to a dry cleaners, a pub, or a cathedral, it seems that when it came to electronic media, cues were often missing or misleading. In a later project to improve search on www.ibm.com, I noted and then explained to management that although IBM was trying to be the high price, high quality provider, their website looked, at that time (@2000) a lot more like K-Mart’s website than it did that of Harrods or Neiman Marcus. All of these specific situations led me to believe that context-setting entrances (e.g., splash screens and portals) were not being sufficiently accounted for in the design of electronic media.

Author, reviewer and revision dates:

Created by John C. Thomas on February 13, 2018

Synonyms:

Set Appropriate Expectations

Abstract:

Human societies have widely different customs about what is appropriate behavior in different contexts. As people grow up in a culture, they learn when and where various actions and styles of behaving and talking are appropriate. When someone enters an unfamiliar setting, it is generally to everyone’s advantage that the new person has some idea about what is appropriate. Therefore, before the person even enters it is nice to provide the right emotional tone and mood appropriate to the current situation. In some cases, this can be done architecturally or musically. In other cases, people may be given a “program” which through typography, word choice, or images may set the tone for a gathering. By setting the context at the entrance, people understand better what is expected of them; it prevents their embarrassment and enhances the ritualistic aspects of the event as well as making the practical outcomes achieved more effectively.

Problem:

Groups function better when the people in the group behave within a set of norms. For example, at a golf match, there are specific roles for contestants, caddies, audience members, officials, vendors, and the press. Each of them is expected to play a particular role with respect to the tournament. In addition to that however, there are expectations about the appropriate style. In golf, as in tennis, it is expected that the audience be quiet during actual play. Baseball and football players as well as professional fighters talk trash to each other but tennis players and golfers typically do not. If people use the “wrong” norms for the occasion, they may be embarrassed as well as upsetting the rest of the group. In some cases, such as a church service, prom, funeral, wedding, or legal proceedings, failing to follow the norms may even tend to thwart the social binding purpose of the event. For example, many things that would be “appropriate” at the bachelor or bachelorette party right before a wedding would not be appropriate as part of the post-wedding toasts. Because there are “rules” even if just one person follows those rules, it diminishes the feeling of group cohesion for everyone. In some cases, violating the norms could also have considerable practical consequences. For example, if a small town has a barn-raising event and there are assigned roles and responsibilities, someone simply “winging it” or following some completely different process of home building could be frustrating, counter-productive, or dangerous.

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. There are many cultures around the entire world who celebrate e.g., successes, conceptions, births, deaths, marriages, divorces, graduations, birthdays, coming of age, etc. Aside from rituals and special events, there are also particular places where one is expected to behave in a certain way or certain people such as royalty who are supposed to be addressed in certain ways. There are also particular holidays that precipitate particular behaviors, moods, rituals, etc.

To insure that everyone in the group or community knows what is expected of them, more experienced members of the group or community might conduct training, provide written materials, to the less experience or perhaps even put some information on a “cheat sheet” of some kind.

Yet, there may always be the possibility of those without the training or instructions to become involved in a social situation with demanding rules. In such cases, it helps to set the context by the words, shapes, colors, music, architecture and thereby let people know what the proper tone should be for the occasion .

People find it very difficult to operate in a sea of ambiguity and therefore seek to find explanations and clarity very quickly. Unfortunately, people therefore tend to jump to a conclusion about someone else and that conclusion can then blind them to further information about that person, particularly when the new information is at odds with the initial impression. So, when someone behaves “badly” — too informally or too formally, for instance, many immediately think badly of them. And, they, in turn, through being embarrassed, think less of the group, event, ritual, etc. than they would have if they had simply been “clued in” as to what was expected.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Forces:

Everyone comes to expect certain forms of behavior from others in a specific context.

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 are particularly influenced in their perception of something new by their first experience.

Because modern cultures are often quite fluid, it often happens in the real world that people enter a Holiday, special event, ritual, building, or website that they are unfamiliar with.

When a person seems to be too uptight or too loose for the situation, we tend to make (and stick with) negative attributions about them.

When someone attempts to “fit in” to a new group or situation and fails because they couldn’t tell how they were supposed to act, they will tend to reject the group, event, or medium.

There are numerous clues that can be used to set a mood or predispose people to behave in certain ways.

Solution:

When designing a website, application, building, party, or basically anything at all, use cues at your disposal to let people know what sorts of behavior and what styles of behavior are appropriate.

Examples:

1. Motion picture use both imagery and music at the beginning to let the audience know what this movie is about and even presage how it will turn out. Consider for a moment the difference between the beginning of The Sound of Music and Jaws. In both cases, the imagery and the music are quite appropriate to the overall dramatic arc.

2. You enter a restaurant. Even before you are seated or look at a menu, based on the noise level, background music, architecture, how crowded it is, and how the people are dressed, you generally have a fairly good idea of what is appropriate and inappropriate conversation and behavior as well as what the price range is likely to be.

3. You see a book at the bookstore or on-line. Before buying the book, or indeed, even reading a few pages, you already have an impression based on the cover, the size and age of the book, the blurb, and the author’s profile what type of book this is to be. For example, and hopefully, the cover art of Turing’s Nightmares says: “This is science fiction” and “The world is going to be quite different.” The tone will be somewhat surprising and unpredictable On the other hand, the cover of The Winning Weekend Warrior” is going to be about victory and is set in the real world. The tone will be fun and happy. The dust jacket of Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language, looks to me quite formal and serious. It seems rather tome-like because of the sparseness of cover imagery, the typography and the presence of so many authors on the cover.

4. When it comes to social media, of course, a large part of what people “see” in the “entrance” are the posts, blogs, tweets, comments of other participants. If one wanted, for instance, to increase the chances that users were respectful, polite, or rude, one could alter the first few posts, blogs, tweets or comments that a new user saw and that could serve as a model for what was deemed most appropriate.

Resulting Context:

Generally speaking, a context setting entrance will help people behave more appropriately. This will result in less friction, fewer outcasts, greater group cohesion, and greater social capital. It may also help people choose more appropriately among various possible churches, movies, restaurants, movies and on-line venues.

Rationale:

Most people most of the time wish to act appropriately. Letting them know what that is increases the chances that they will be able to.

Related Patterns:

Special Events. Greater Gathering.

Known Uses:

Metaphors:

The strongest metaphor that leaps to mind are various “warnings” in the plant and animal kingdom; e.g., brightly colored poisonous snakes and tree frogs as well as “attractors” such as flowers use to attract bees and birds and fish use to attract potential mates.

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.

Thomas, J. (2015). The Winning Weekend Warrior: How to succeed at golf, tennis, baseball, football, basketball, hockey, volleyball, business, life, etc. CreateSpace/Amazon.

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

Greater Gathering

08 Thursday Feb 2018

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

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

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

Greater Gathering.

Author, reviewer and revision dates:

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

Reviewed by <> on <>

Revised by JCT on Feb. 7, 2018.

Prologue and Acknowledgements.

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

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

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

Synonyms:

Conference. Congress. Convention. Jamboree. National Holidays.

Abstract:

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

Problem:

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

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

Context:

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

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

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

Forces:

*People are naturally gregarious.

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

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

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

*All people share certain basic drives.

*Shared special events help build social bonds.

*People enjoy novel experiences and viewpoints, under some circumstances

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

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

Solution:

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

Examples:

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

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

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

Resulting Context:

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

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

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

Rationale:

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

Related Patterns:

Conversational Support at the Boundaries.

Known Uses:

Metaphors:

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

Fable:

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

References:

The Iroquois Rule of Six

03 Saturday Feb 2018

Posted by petersironwood in management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Barnga, collaboration, cooperation, coordination, Iroquois Rule of Six, Native American, pattern language, teamwork

Iroquois Rule of Six

Prolog/Acknowledgement:

The idea for this Pattern comes from the work of Paula Underwood who was the designated storyteller for her branch of the Iroquois (See references below). Of course, even she would not claim to have invented the pattern which grew out of long cultural experience.

Author, reviewer and revision dates:

Created by John C. Thomas on February 2, 2018

Synonyms:

Don’t Jump to Conclusions, Sympathetic Reading, Give Others the “Benefit of a Doubt,” “Look before you leap!” “See the Whole Elephant”

Abstract:

Human beings are very complex and we only see snippets of someone else’s behavior. Yet, we are trained that it is important to quickly interpret why someone else is doing something. By the time we’re adults, when someone does something that violates our expectations, we tend to come up with an “explanation” very quickly. Furthermore, we tend to treat this explanation or interpretation as fact when, in many cases, we have only a very small amount of actual data to depend on. A misinterpretation of someone’s motivation can quickly cause bad feelings on everyone’s part. Therefore, according to the Iroquois “Rule of Six,” before you act on the basis of your initial interpretation, you are advised to think of at least five other interpretations and try to gain evidence about these six or more hypotheses before taking action.

Problem:

Groups function better under a wide variety of circumstances if there is a high degree of internal mutual trust. If people work together over a long period of time, trust will develop if warranted. While we sometimes know some of what’s going on in someone else’s life, we only know a very small proportion of what is going on, even if it’s someone we are very close to and spend a lot of time with. In work groups or teams, the proportion of the whole of someone else’s situation that we see is very small indeed. This is even more true when we are trying to work in a new or ad hoc group. We feel it’s important to understand the motivations of others and what they are likely to do. Often, we therefore jump to conclusions about others that are far from the truth. When we act on such incorrect premises, it can derail progress toward solving a problem and damage trust and relationships for the future as well.

Context:

Complex problems and large problems can often only be solved by groups. For the group to work well together to solve ill-defined or wicked problems, it is useful for them to understand each other’s situations and motivations. We generally come to expect others to do certain things based on logic, authority, agreement, trust, the current situation and other factors. In fact, it’s often hard to understand even our own motivations or to predict what we ourselves will do in novel situations.

People are often in a hurry to make progress on solving problems. Thus, when someone does appear to violate our expectations, we are tempted to come up with a “reason” for their behavior. However, because people are complex and situations that require cooperation and coordination are also complex, we seldom actually know why a person does something. There are things about them that we may be unaware of such as their physiological state (e.g., tired, sick, on drugs, low blood sugar). There are also things about their situation that we are unlikely to know about (e.g., time pressure, lack of appropriate training, unusual experiences, knowledge beyond our ken).

Forces:

Everyone comes to expect certain forms of behavior from others in a specific context.

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

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

The behavior of another person can also be heavily influenced by that other person’s situation.

Each person only knows a small proportion of another person’s situation.

When faced with another person’s violation of expectations, people tend to quickly generate an explanation of why that person did what they did.

Because of “confirmation bias,” once a person comes up with an explanation of anything (including why someone did something), they tend to look for evidence to support their initial explanation.

Solution:

When a person comes up with an explanation of someone else’s behavior, they should generate at least five other hypotheses and then seek evidence for and against all six hypotheses before taking action.

Examples:

1. A babysitter is put in charge of an infant. The baby cries and the babysitter assumes it is hungry and feeds it. Yet, the baby keeps crying. The babysitter assumes it is still hungry and tries to feed it more but the baby refuses food and keeps crying any way. She tries a variety of foods but the baby doesn’t seem to like any of them. Rather than assuming that the baby is hungry and keep trying to find a food the baby will like, according to the Iroquois Rule of Six, the sitter might consider other hypotheses; e.g, the baby might have gas, have a wet diaper, be sick, miss her parents, or (as was actually the case) have a diaper pin stuck through her skin.

2. You have an important project meeting with Jerry Jones on your calendar for 10 am in room 435. You are sitting at the table but Jerry Jones is nowhere to be seen. The clock on the wall says 10:10. Still no Jerry Jones. You think to yourself, “Well, okay, fine. Obviously, Jerry doesn’t really care about this project.”

That kind of thought is a normal human reaction. Unfortunately, once the thought occurs to you, it is easy to now treat your interpretation of events as a fact about Jerry’s commitment to the project.

The Iroquois recognized this tendency and the “Rule of Six” suggests that before taking any action, you should first generate at least six interpretations, not just one. In this particular hypothetical case, several come to mind.

Jerry doesn’t care about the project so he’s not coming or doesn’t care how late he is.
Jerry comes from a culture where 10:10 is not actually late for a 10 am meeting.
Jerry was unattainably delayed.
You wrote down the wrong room for the meeting.
You are not actually in room 435.
You are in room 435 but in the wrong building.
You wrote down the wrong time.
The clock on the wall is wrong.
You wrote down the wrong day for the meeting.
10. Jerry sent you email asking to change the meeting time but you didn’t check your email.

3. You and your tennis doubles partner are in a crucial match. Your partner keeps serving up weak second serves and your opponents both keep running around their backhands and zinging heavy forehand shots at your body. You’ve already been hit twice because you cannot react quickly enough even to defend yourself. You conclude that your partner must be trying to get you killed and you tell them so. In this case, despite your interpretation, it seems exceedingly unlikely that your partner is literally trying to get you killed. If they are, this is a singularly ineffective way to do it. In fact, despite your having said this to your partner, it’s unlikely you really even believe it yourself. But even thinking this may have several bad effects. First, having told your partner this is bound to make them trust you less. Second, it will make your partner more up-tight and probably make an even worse serve or double fault more likely. Third, it prevents you from finding out what might really be going on. For some odd reason, even though you know in your heart that it is not a likely explanation, the mere having of the thought (and even more so telling your partner) actually makes it less likely that you will try to find more reasonable interpretations. Fourth, it keeps you from working with your partner to find a solution. Other (and, in this case, much more likely partial explanations) include:

Your partner wants to avoid having you hit at the net so badly that they keep trying to hit an ace on their first serve.
Your partner wants to avoid a double fault at all costs so “powder puffs” their second serve.
Your partner has a sore shoulder.
Your partner thinks your opponents like pace and that a slow serve will throw off their timing.
Your partner thinks your opponents are overhitting the returns of their second serves and that the balls would fly way long if you would just duck or get out of the way.
Your partner knows that you want to improve your net game and thinks you will enjoy the challenge of hard hit balls and eventually improve your net game.
Your partner is really being bothered by the sun right now and is finding serving very difficult because, no matter how they try their toss is right in the sun.
Your partner knows that you want both of you to be at net as soon as possible and is therefore concentrating to hard on rushing the net that they are not paying enough attention to first finishing the service motion itself before charging to the net.

In this tennis example, imagining your partner wants to kill you does not suggest any appropriate action to fix the problem. Possible actions that might help you win the tennis match could include getting your partner to hit a slightly less aggressive first serve and a slightly more aggressive second serve, making sure that they know that even thought it’s obviously not desirable to double fault, it’s not the world’s greatest sin either; asking your partner if they are okay physically and if not, coming up with a different plan; playing back on the second serve; moving more at the net to distract your opponents during the return; lending your partner your sun glasses; playing Australian (squatting near the center of the court and signaling your partner which way you will go right before they serve); making sure that your own serve is as different as possible from your partner’s serve thereby making both your serve and theirs more difficult to return; at the outset of the next set, test out more carefully which of you should be serving into the sun.

4. Although generally conceived of as a useful “best practice” in teams or groups, this “rule” can also be applied when it comes to problem solving in general. In particular, it could be particularly useful when resolving issues among two different groups, tribes, companies, or countries. While you pretty much know that the idea your tennis partner is trying to kill you is silly, if you’re part of a group of people who repeat such preposterous stories to each other enough, you will strongly come to believe such stories as the only possible explanation. Thus, a negotiator may try to bring about peace, or at least a ceasefire, between two warring parties, A and B. A thinks to themselves, “OK, I’ll sit down and talk but I know damned well B’s real purpose is to destroy me.” Meanwhile, of course, B is thinking, “OK, I’ll sit down and talk, but I know damned well A’s real purpose is to destroy me.” Ideally, you would like each side to consider the Iroquois Rule of Six. In fact, although this will be discussed in much more detail later, the very fact that they both distrust each other so much could be the initial starting point for finding common ground. Perhaps applying the Iroquois Rule of Six is something they could work on together. They might agree that there could be other motivations for X to fight Y aside from X trying to destroy Y and vice versa.

5. In a workshop I co-organized on “Cross-Cultural Issues in Human Computer Interaction,” we used a card game called Barnga (http://www.acadiau.ca/~dreid/games/Game_descriptions/Barnga1.htm)

In this game, much like Bridge, Whist, Eucher, people play a car in turn face up and the one with the “highest” car wins that “trick” (those four cards). The participants are shown a brief description of the game but not allowed to talk (to simulate the difficulties of cross-cultural communication). This is meant for groups of at least 12 in which case you would divide the 12 into 3 tables of four each. Each table plays for awhile and then the winners and losers move respectively “up” or “down” one table. So far, the participants at each table have been playing by the same set of rules. However, the three tables have three different sets of rules. For instance, at one table there is no trump. At another table spades are trump. (The 2 of a trump card beats any non-trump card). At another table, aces are the lowest car in the deck rather than the highest. Now, people who have learned and operated under different sets of rules try to play together. Well, of course, two people will both reach for the same “trick.”

What is interesting in the context of the Iroquois Rule of Six is that people almost always had one of two first thoughts: “What is wrong with that person? They’re so stupid!” or “What is wrong with that person? They’re such a cheater!” Remember, that these were people who had come together from around the world precisely to talk about cross-cultural issues! And, yet, not only was their first interpretation wrong, it impugned the other as being evil or incompetent. Most people from every culture do follow the rules of that culture. Rules often differ from culture to culture. Thinking about the Iroquois Rule of Six may help you remember that.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Resulting Context:

Generally speaking, the application of the Iroquois Rule of Six will tend to greatly lessen the chances that teamwork will be disrupted by bad feelings. In addition, if one takes the time to consider and gain evidence about alternative hypotheses, one will learn more about others and base decisions on fact rather than fantasy. Having a wide range of hypotheses, even when it is difficult to gather enough evidence to prove conclusively which one is correct, will greatly widen the scope of consideration of various solutions. In adversarial situations, the Iroquois Rule of Six might at least move people to consider bargaining on the basis of actual needs and desires rather than pre-established positions based on misinterpretations of another groups motives.

Of course, I do not mean to suggest that all conflicts are based on misperceptions of someone else’s motives. In some situations, a finite resource may be in contention by multiple parties. (Even here, it’s possible for the three to agree on a scheme of determination; e.g., rotation, lottery, third-party adjudication, etc.).

Rationale:

Actions are always better based on reality than on fantasy. Yet, humans often latch onto a particular interpretation of events very quickly and with insufficient data. The Iroquois Rule of Six reminds people to generate alternative hypotheses and gather evidence before acting.

Related Patterns:

Reality Check, Check-In.

Known Uses:

Science often approximates doing business in a similar spirit. Scientists are subject to the same sort of “jumping to conclusions” as is everyone else. During their training however, mentors, colleagues, students, professors, and journal editors will constantly be asking the fledgeling scientist to consider various other hypotheses and not simply be satisfied with the first one that pops into mind. In addition, the scientist will be shown how to find evidence capable of disproving their hypothesis.

In Rational-Emotive Therapy, the therapist often tries to get the client to consider alternatives and consequences. Among the alternatives that need most to be encouraged are attributions about other people’s motives.

In Gerri Spence’s highly recommended book, How to argue and win every time, he suggests that when someone in your family is angry with you, rather than getting angry back, instead, you “follow the hurt.” Try to discover what is hurting them. This is not precisely the same idea as The Iroquois Rule of Six, but it seems a cousin. Your initial reaction to anger is often anger. Along with that emotion typically goes some negative attribution about the other person; e.g., “What an A-Hole!” “You’re such an idiot!” “I didn’t put your sweater back? Yeah? How about the time you wrecked my bike?” Rather than sticking with these first impressions, try to uncover what’s really going on. By focusing on the real problem, rather than being blinded by your own emotional reaction, you’ll be more likely to work on a team to solve the underlying problem.

Metaphors:

The strongest metaphor that leaps to mind is life itself. No form of life continues to make unaltered copies of itself forever. There is always variation in the next generation. Life never “sticks” to only one hypothesis.

The second metaphor is human learning. Although it’s annoying that I cannot ever seem to “perfect” my tennis stroke, by the same token, human motor behavior always has some “variation” in it. As we learn to gain more and more skill, we tend to keep those variations that are better. (There are limitations to this approach, but in the current context, the point is that we are not robots and never stick to precisely one way of doing things).

References:

Spence, G. (1995). How to Argue and Win Every Time: At home, at work, in court, everywhere, every day. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Underwood, P. (1993). The Walking People: An American Oral History. San Anselmo, CA: Tribe of Two Press.

Underwood, P. (1994). Three Strands in the Braid: A Guide for Enablers of Learning. San Anselmo, CA: Tribe of Two Press.

Me Too!

27 Sunday Aug 2017

Posted by petersironwood in America, driverless cars, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

conformity, diversity, driving, learning, life, teamwork, traffic

earthfromspace

One of George Carlin’s routines captures well our attitude toward our own driving vis-a-vis other drivers on the road. Basically, we think anyone who wants to drive more slowly than we want to drive is an idiot while anyone who wants to driver faster than we do is an a**hole. We can all relate to being stuck behind someone who seems to be going much more slowly than necessary for the road conditions and traffic. It’s frustrating! We need to get somewhere! We might think, “Why do I have to be stuck behind this slowpoke?!” On the other hand, just as we are mentally or vocally swearing about the slowpoke in front of us, seemingly out of nowhere, some jerk comes careening out into the passing lane on a hill or blind curve and zooms around three or four cars. This time they were lucky. No semi was coming the other way and they lived — this time — despite their erratic driving and general a**holiness.

Driving is an ever-present paradox in cooperation and individuality. In many areas of the world, people rely on public transportation such as rail and busses to commute to work or see relatives and friends. That is not unknown in the US, but it is rare. If we can possibly afford a junker, we do so that we can have the “freedom” to take our own path. Yet, that freedom comes with a high cost. Not only do we have to pay for a car, insurance, gas, oil, taxes and upkeep. We have to follow a set of conventions and laws about traffic in order to minimize traffic accidents and even deaths.

According to Fortune, there were about 40,000 deaths in America in 2016 with 4.6 million people suffering severe injuries. The overall cost of traffic accidents, in terms of lost productivity, medical and property damage is estimated at $432 billion for 2016. The USA is far from the “deadliest” place to drive. Many other countries have far more accidents per mile driven. It is estimated that world-wide, there are about 1.25 million deaths per year from road accidents. Sadly, in the US, traffic fatalities often strike down young people in their prime. They are both less experienced and less cautious. Often, young people do dangerous things in order to “prove themselves” or “be accepted” by their peer group. Any such act, including texting while driving, puts at risk their own lives, the lives of their friends, and usually the lives of total strangers as well.

The monetary costs associated with accidents do not include lost productivity due to traffic jams. According to an article published in Money magazine, this was estimated to be 124 billion dollars in 2013 for the USA. This is a considerable amount of money. I am pretty sure, that’s way more than in my wallet right now. Let me check. Yep. Not even close. You know the old saying, “A billion here. A billion there. Pretty soon, you’re talking about real money.” These cost estimates do not even include the stress and strain that being stuck in “stop and go” traffic puts on the people stuck, the kids that get yelled at as a result, or the impact that higher blood pressure has on people’s brains, kidneys, and hearts.

What if I told you that George Carlin’s skit depicting people’s reactions to other drivers is only an accurate description of how people currently choose to react to traffic? What if I told you that you may well be subjecting yourself to stress and inefficiency in the way you handle stop and go traffic?

To begin with, let’s think back to your days in “Driver’s Ed” classes in high school. Or, perhaps you were lucky enough to have attended a “defensive driving” course more recently in order to reduce your insurance rates or because a judge ordered you to. In any case, one of the basic concepts taught in those classes is that you stay an “assured safe distance” behind the car in front of you. In my informal polling, many people seem to have completely forgotten about this concept and, when asked, offer absurdly short distances as “safe” when it comes to how far behind the driver in front they need to be; e.g., at 70 miles per hour, some people think they should be one or two car lengths behind the car in front. That, my friends, is way off. You should be seven car lengths behind the car in front at 70 mph, not one or two. There are almost zero reasons you can be safely closer than that and having “really good reflexes” is not one of them. If you are going up a very steep hill, you can get a little closer. But there are many more reasons why you need more distance. These include poor visibility due to curvy roads, low light, fog, smoke or smog. They also include bad brakes, going downhill, a wet road, a snowy road, or an icy road. They include anything that is distracting you the driver such as kids, conversation, sleepiness, even the slightest bit of alcohol, or having the car in front of you following the car in front of them too closely. If your brakes or tires are the slightest bit compromised, you need even more distance for safety.

But following the assured distance for safety is not necessary the “best” distance; it is only the minimal distance for safety. If you are interested in driving “efficiently” — and having the traffic around you being more efficient, there is more you can do. If you are interested in driving without adding to your personal stress as well as adding to the stress around you, there is more you can do. Watch closely as you consider your current strategy for driving in stop and go traffic and an alternative strategy.

Let’s say that a car length is about 15-18 feet though obviously a stretch limo stretches for a lot more and a mini-cooper is much less. Now if you are traveling in traffic that varies from 70 mph to 0 mph, your minimum car length would also vary from 18 x 7 = 126 feet to 18 x 0 = 0 feet. When you are stopped, you might be near the rear bumper of the car in front of you. When you are going “full speed” you might be 126 feet away. If you do this, in stop and go traffic, what you will experience is a long series of frustrations. For awhile, everything will go smoothly, and you’ll go zipping along at 70 mph. But then, for no discernible reason, everyone will suddenly come to a screeching halt. You sit there for a few seconds or a few minutes, one of many people bumper to bumper with the a line of other cars. Eventually, people will start to go slowly. But then, they will all stop again. Or, perhaps they will speed up again and then stop. The traffic may even speed up to 70 mph again and then stop again, and once more, for no discernible reason whatsoever. You may find such phrases as “What the h*** is wrong with people!” caroming off of your cranium and rattling round in your brain. You try to figure out how you can minimize your time in this awful traffic. You look for tiny spaces. The lane next to you appears to be moving! Ah, there’s a space! Slam into it quickly. You do. Your lane is moving! Yay! All it once it comes to complete stop. The lane you just got out of now appears to be moving better. Just your luck! Wait, you can get back in. No! Some a**hole just got into that space from the other lane! Damn! Wait, everyone’s moving again.

This is a very frustrating way to drive — particularly if you are late, or just an impatient person or both. You are stopping and starting all the time. Your hour commute now stretches like taffy (or traffy) into two hours. And worse than that, per se, is that this all seems senseless. And worse than that is that you are sending your blood pressure through the roof and even that magnificent sacrifice on your part seems to have zero effect on clearing up the traffic jam. And, even worse than that, in the long run, is that your experience is causing you to think very uncomplimentary things about your teammates. Teammates? Yes, your co-drivers — every last one of them — are potentially your teammates. But if you drive in traffic the way I’ve been describing, you don’t see them as teammates at all but more like competitors. And we all know what our job is in a competition, right? To win!!

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That same exact objective physical situation can become a completely different experience. And, to make the transformation is simple. I didn’t say it was easy. But it is simple. The key is to stop focusing on keeping the minimum safe distance between you and the car in front of you and instead keep a much longer distance between you and the car in front. The key is to stop focusing on your commute and your goals and instead to think of the traffic as a whole moving efficiently. The key is to stop driving as fast as you possibly can and instead to try to match your speed to the average speed of the traffic ahead of you. If you do those three things, something amazing happens. You get to the same place in the same time but you will hit your brakes and accelerator far less often. Furthermore, you will feel far safer and less frustrated. You will be able to see a much larger picture of the traffic in front. You will notice that, yes, leaving a large space in front of you does make it possible for other drivers to zip in front of you. But you will also notice that most of the time, these drivers will zip back out of your lane a few moments later.

But wait! There’s more! When you stop putting your brakes on so much, it gives other people a completely different impression of the traffic. If a person is on a divided highway (with four each way) and only sees 4-8 cars ahead of them (because everyone is jammed together) and every single one has their brakes on, they will come to something of a screeching halt, particularly if they have been driving right behind the car in front of them. If, however, they look up and see only 7 of the 8 visible cars with their brake lights on (because yours are not on), they will be far less prone to slam on their brakes. Furthermore, they may well be able to see more of the traffic ahead because of the space in front of you. It no longer looks jammed so their behavior will be less erratic. If they are behaving less erratically, that will be true of the people behind them as well.

But wait! There’s more! People who drive mostly look forward, but they also hopefully glance in rear view mirror on occasion. This means that the people in front of you will also have a somewhat different perception of the traffic conditions based on the fact that you are not driving erratically and that you have a large space (=not stop and go; not crowded; not bumper to bumper) in front of you. You won’t have as much influence on the people in front of you as you will on the people behind you, but you will have some. You will also have a subtle influence on the people beside you. Why? Because they also see that large space. This puts them in a more “traffic is moving” frame of mind than a “traffic is stop and go; Crap!” frame of mind. Not only can they see the large space, they can see through the large space. They are able to see a greater number of cars diagonally ahead through your lane. They can see whether the tail lights are on. They can see perhaps 16 cars instead of just 4-5. The impression when you see all four cars stopped in front of you with their brake lights on is quite different from the impression formed when you see, say, 13 cars stopped and 3 cars moving. So, the cars beside you will also drive less erratically.

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But wait! There’s more! This means that the cars in back of them will also drive less erratically. And that’s swell news for you and everyone else because — since people do look in their rear view mirrors, the impression of moving traffic will be even stronger in the drivers ahead of you. This in turn will ripple through the entire set of drivers and tend to be a virtuous cycle instead of a vicious cycle. In other words, just you, yes you, you one driver can have a significant effect on the entire set of drivers around you. I know it sounds too good to be true, but give it a try!

But wait! There’s more! Of course, very few people have only one commute in their life. Human beings have memory. If you are in “stop and go traffic” and stay smooth with a large space in front of you, a few other people will notice and decide to try it for themselves. Eventually, it may dawn on them that “despite” your large buffer space in front of you, you are making just as much progress as they are. They may think, “Me too!” If those people try it and succeed in having a better experience for themselves and others around them, that will tend to cause other people to try it as well, not only in this traffic jam, but in future ones as well.

Driving exemplifies the paradoxical nature of the human condition. We all want the freedom to be ourselves and we want to feel a part of the group. But some paradoxes have solutions. In this case, as I said, the solution is actually simple. You decide that the best way to be a team player is to be different. You stop playing the game of making sure there are no “unused spaces” in traffic. You stop playing the game of switching lanes to zip into the smallest “unused” space. You stop staring into the taillights of a few cars and back off to where you can see a much larger sample of cars. You stop playing the “me, me, me, it’s all about me” game and instead make up a different game which is matching your speed to the average speed of the traffic ahead. You stop worrying if someone zips into the lane in front of you. Just ease off the gas a bit and relax. And, by being yourself, and playing this different game, you will actually make all the traffic around you work better. You are a better teammate by being different.

The traffic is a lot like free market capitalism operating without much analysis, foresight, or insight. To the extent that people see an opening, they vie for it. Having two people do this at the same time, of course, causes a near miss, a sideswipe or a 20-car pileup. But generally speaking, the person who manages to gets into open space feels wonderful. OMG, I pulled it off! Not quite like winning the Superbowl but in that ballpark, so to speak. Chances are, the lane-switcher finds themself temporarily ahead of the people who had been next to them confirming that their act of private “heroism” had a practical impact as well; it was efficient by plugging up that damned hole.

This may be related to the line of thought so common in business that if you are really being efficient, every single minute of your calendar should be booked a week in advance. Gaps are anathema. Gaps are viewed to be even be worse than double-booked time. If word gets around I’m double booked all the time, everyone will know I am important. Well, important to some, in the same way that jeetos are important to some not despite their ghastly orange hue and anti-nutritional value. Having space in your calendar means you have time to learn, to observe, to think about what is going on, who is your customer, how can you do better, how can our company do better, and so on. It’s no accident that IBM’s motto was “Think” and that it was so successful for so many years in a dramatically ever-changing world of technology.

You might just give the alternative strategy a try, both in business and in driving. Oh, I know. It seems impossible that one person’s behavior could have much impact when there are 7 billion people on the planet. Imagine that instead of using the 7 billion teammates as an excuse not to change because, “it won’t make any difference,” you thought: “Wow! Seven billion people on the planet! That’s potentially seven billion people who could change, even a little, in the direction of greater cooperation.” What if, instead of thinking of yourself — or you plus a small number of similar people — as being in competition with a much larger number of people worldwide, what if you thought of 7 billion as the astounding number of teammates you have? You might not influence all of them, but you can influence some and they can influence others. Nearly all of those seven billion people use language. Think about that. At some point in our distant past, people did not use language. Now, they do. How did that happen? At some point in our past, people did not have power over fire. Now they do. How did that happen? At some point in my lifetime, no-one had a mobile phone or a personal computer or access to the internet. Now, billions do. Can you hear the music of people working together?

For several years, in the 1990s, my wife and I attended the Newport Folk Festival with John and Clare-Marie Karat. We heard an amazing array of great bands in a beautiful outdoor setting. I particularly like outdoor concerts because of the room it affords for dancing. I find it very difficult to sit still in the presence of stirring music. This concert was held in late summer and the weather was generally, hot, humid, and sunny or hazy. Although, as I said, the weather cooperated most days, one particular morning looked ominous. A particularly cool, hazy sprinkling morning warned us to wear clothes in layers and bring rain gear. An optimist, I wore my speedo underneath in case the weather cleared so I could dance in the sun which I hoped would soon appear.

When we arrived on the island, as usual, Wendy and Clare-Marie sprinted ahead with a blanket to get a prime spot for watching the stage while John and I lagged behind carrying the clutter and clatter of chairs and coolers. The music inspired as always but the weather was not cooperating. Everyone was huddled down in their rain gear, under their umbrellas. The thing about rain gear and umbrellas is that they are typically designed for keeping you dry temporarily in the rain. After sitting there with ten thousand other people, huddling and shivering in the cold rain, I finally decided enough was enough. I stripped down to my speedo and began dancing. After all, I thought, that’s what I came there to do! And, while most people dance to the beat of the music, I let the music dance through me. I don’t have some set moves that are done to the beat. Rather, every note impacts what my body does.

Now, the situation had changed. Instead of ten thousand people huddled under umbrellas getting wet and cold, there were only 9,999 people huddled under umbrellas getting wet and cold and there was one person, namely me, joyously dancing in the rain. As a matter of fact, I felt warmer dancing in my speedo than I had sitting still under layers of soaking clothes. Yeah, people stared at me a little. So what? Michelle Shocked commented on how well the crowd was holding up in the horrid weather and gave a particular shout out to the guy “dancing nude” in the middle. Just for the record, I was not dancing nude (not even in my “tights”). There was a large umbrella right in front of me, and it might have looked as though I was nude from the stage. In any case, I kept dancing and I was having a great time. Then, a strange thing happened. A few more people got up, shed varying amounts of clothes and joined me. Now a half dozen people were dancing in the rain. Then, a dozen people. Then, two dozen. The rain continued and the cold continued, but the number of dancers grew and grew till it was probably over a thousand. Each person discovered for themselves, as had I, that it’s actually warmer and more comfortable to dance in the rain with a little clothing than to sit in a puddle of soaked clothes — not to mention, one hell of a lot more fun!

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When we first sat down in that cold rain, everyone looked around and saw that everyone else was coping with the rain in the same way. Everyone they saw had raincoats, umbrellas, or both. They looked at this spectacle and thought, “Me too!” But now, a few hours later, many people looked around and saw folks joyously dancing in the rain and thought, “Me too!” Indeed, “Me too!” is a double-edged sword. Use it wisely, whether it is dancing in the rain, leaving lots of space in stop-and-go traffic or taking the time to think in your job. You may be very pleasantly surprised at the results, both for you and your 7 billion planet-mates.

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

http://fortune.com/2017/02/15/traffic-deadliest-year/

http://time.com/money/3511481/traffic-jams-cost-americans-124-billion-time-money/

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

The Dance of Billions

petersironwood

~ Finding, formulating and solving life's frustrations.

Tag Archives: teamwork

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Me Too!