Opposable Planets - Latest Comments

Re: Journalism Needs Subsidy

John Lundin, PhD — Tue, 01 May 2012 11:12:28 -0000

Seems that both of our discussions question the institution ability to change in both a timely and effective manner... almost to the extent that part of the definition of 'institution' is its inability to effectively change...

Re: Journalism Needs Subsidy

joshuamross — Tue, 01 May 2012 09:13:16 -0000

John Lundin, PhD - Thanks so much for this, - and pass along my best to Jeff.
Indeed the topic of how to fix news carries on unabated (and I am no exception). At its highwater mark in 2009 I wrote this: http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/... - paraphrased here for brevity:Speculation about the demise of the news business and advice about what they should do about it is everywhere. It makes for great, self-congratulatory sport but it won’t help the news industry.

Why?

Because the news industry doesn’t suffer from a shortage of ideas or possible revenue models, it suffers from a different but more acute malady: being an institution during a time of disruptive change. The failure of newspapers is not a failure of imagination or foresight nor is it a failure of individuals. This kind of failure is the hallmark of all institutions in the face of tectonic disruption. Institutions are a set of agreements that perpetuate a social order beyond individual intention or tenure. Changing those agreements is costly and time-consuming. So when the rate of change accelerates beyond the institution’s adaptive capacity - extinction follows.

The question is not “what should newspapers do?” but “how can a large institution effectively organize in response to disruptive change?” Taken thus, it is not only the fundamental question to ask of newspapers - but to ask of ourselves in relation to a host of big-ticket game-changers such as peak oil, environmental collapse and climate change that simultaneously require and defy our capacity for institutional response.

Re: On the Power of Clarity, Specificity and Persistence

joshuamross — Tue, 01 May 2012 09:02:20 -0000

@Ted Herman as a Chinese Studies major you struck a chord with Wu Wei (though your link was bollixed by the gods of the Internet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

I think the distinction here is that I am not suggesting waiting until one has a clear picture of the world outside as much as I am suggesting that having clarity of purpose from within that helps you take action despite a turbid and confusing world.

That said, I know how difficult this can be in the context of modern business. I am under no illusions also that this is far simpler for the single author of large, research-based book than it is for large teams of people operating within an institution that demands results - even if those results are more optical than substantive.

Re: Journalism Needs Subsidy

John Lundin, PhD — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:30:44 -0000

Greetings Joshua-Michele, Jeff Gaines pointed me to you after I emailed him Jimmy Kimmel's zinger at the Correspondents' Dinner in Washington last weekend...

"Some people say journalism is in decline, they say you've become too politicized, too focused on sensationalism, they say you no longer honor your duty to inform America but instead actively divide us so that your corporate overlord can rake in the profits," Kimmel said. "I don't have a joke for this, it's just what some people say."

My thought is that the media should use technology to move one step closer to the actual reader in the news supply chain and start mediating content for each individual... Here are some comments from a couple of years back... http://askdrjohn.wordpress.com...

...revolutionary times call for revolutionary measures...

One of my favorite examples is Guy Kawasaki's example of the generations of the delivery of ice to the home: how the first generation cut ice from the frozen lakes, how the second generation put the first generation out of business by freezing large blocks of ice closer to the uses of ice, and how the third generation put the second generation out of business by putting the icemaker in the home/business...

Well the news print business put the town crier out of business and the internet is putting newsprint out of business... but this does neither criticize the journalistic quality of the vessel nor suggest the lessening of demand for quality journalistic content...In this age of virtually $0 distribution cost, good journalism is in greater demand than ever before especially when there is sooooo much garbage out there (as an electrical engineer, we would suggest that the 'signal to noise' ratio is decreasing... not because there is less signal but because there is much more noise)... My suggestion is that the news organization help me filter out the noise and give me increased depth in areas where I have an interest... I would pay for that.

Re: On the Power of Clarity, Specificity and Persistence

Ted Herman — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:49:47 -0000

Once, as an experiment, I tried this discipline in a chess tournament. Before making a move, get to a mental state of clarity, with a holistic appreciation of the position and strategic plan. It was a catastrophe! Yes, Mozart was reputed to have everything thought out well, before putting the composition to paper. Yet who does not appreciate Beethoven, who in places has pasted corrections up to seven layers on the original. We're in the storm of "Data Science", but without any real clarity of what it means. Action seems, however, unavoidable. There are some situations where "Wu-Wei" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W... -- waiting for the turbidity to settle -- just isn't the right path.

Re: The Quantified Self – Health and Well-Being Become Personal

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Re: On the Power of Clarity, Specificity and Persistence

joshuamross — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:52:30 -0000

This is a fantastic addition Alex - I had not seen the Brooks article. I also agree with you; it is the discipline to find your own path that is key.

Re: On the Power of Clarity, Specificity and Persistence

Alex Bowles — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:16:07 -0000

David Brooks echoes the "discipline is not what you think it is" thought nicely.

"Think about the traits that creative people possess. Creative people don’t follow the crowds; they seek out the blank spots on the map. Creative people wander through faraway and forgotten traditions and then integrate marginal perspectives back to the mainstream. Instead of being fastest around the tracks everybody knows, creative people move adaptively through wildernesses nobody knows...Now think about the competitive environment that confronts the most fortunate people today and how it undermines those mind-sets."
He goes on to note that competitive and creative environments are fundamentally different, and opting for one usually means opting out of the other. Caro has clearly chosen creative. But more importantly, he does what he does because he can.

The discipline is in resisting the astonishing pressure our hyper-competative society places on doing things the wrong way long enough and successfully enough to find your own feet. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04...

Re: The Problem with Exceptionalism – and Seeking Common Cause in Organizations

Hastings Hart — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 16:06:09 -0000

My favorite quote on the subject, from Carl Jung: "Any large company composed of wholly admirable persons has the morality and intelligence of an unwieldy, stupid, and violent animal. The bigger the organization, the more unavoidable is its immorality and blind stupidity." (The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious, p. 100-101 in The Portable Jung)

To answer your question in a nutshell, I suggest the methods of metrics-driven organization development.

I see two levels to this problem: individual and structural. Some mid-level managers can manage to transcend the problem on the individual level, but then they encounter cultural and structural incentives for exceptionalism. Unless change is driven from the top, it is nearly impossible to change a culture, especially when it has its roots in human psychology.

An effective tool for mid-level managers and consultants to drive change is metrics, because numbers are hard to argue with. You mention examples of product concepting and design, marketing, and back-office services as possible areas where big may not necessarily be better. There must be a way to measure the ROI of using smaller teams for these activities and compare it to analogous functions in large organizations.

Re: The Problem with Exceptionalism – and Seeking Common Cause in Organizations

joshuamross — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 04:03:41 -0000

Hastings -
Absolutely. A great book on this subject is Why Great Leaders Don't Take Yes for an Answer. You also remind me of one of my favorite quotes from Voltaire: "Doubt is uncomfortable but certainty is absurd."

Concerning the thrust of your argument, the question for me is how do you get that type of philosophically inclined character built into a large (more than 20,000 employees) organization? After all - the issue I have with exceptionalism is that it is taking place in this invisible middle-layer of the organizations that I work with.

This is just one of the issues that has led me to consider the viability of many large institutions over the next 50 years. The benefits conferred by size has historically been economy of scale (you can mass produce and object at lower cost), distribution (you have access to markets) and the capital to fund both research and development and marketing (costly TV ads, direct mail, point of sale materials etc.).

Fast forward to our current day and age: I can design a great new product, send a CAD file to China (or many other locations) for manufacture at any number of on-demand manufacturing facilities. In terms of distribution I can tap into social networks (Facebook has a billion connected people) etc. if my product is remarkable and I can market my product online and tap into the largest market ever (anyone online with the ability to purchase). I can cheaply tap into a variety of services to handle back office stuff such as shipping and logistics (Amazon, Yahoo, UPS etc.). I can also do this with a very small, passionate team of people. I realize that there are still many fields where you need serious size and capitalization (biotechnology, big budget entertainment, chip manufacturing, healthcare etc.) - but in the ones where you aren't as reliant on size anymore (say for example, consumer electronics, durable goods, low-fi entertainment etc.) what is to stop small passionate teams that share the same vision and beliefs from crushing those large companies that no longer can defend themselves with the old advantages?

Re: The Problem with Exceptionalism – and Seeking Common Cause in Organizations

Hastings Hart — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:09:59 -0000

I think that a good antidote to exceptionalism is the study of history and philosophy. It's too bad those disciplines aren't a bigger part of business-school curricula and ongoing managerial education.

For example, a course I took on decision-making taught lessons from famous business and military decisions. It gave me the sense that there are very few fundamentally new problems in our everyday business life and that how well you manage people is more crucial than how much information or power you have. And research indicates that the best way to manage people is by creating teams that operate according to the values you describe.

The practice of philosophy, if done properly, should leave us with a natural skepticism of our own certitude and a default openness to the experiences of others.

Re: What Fans Want? A Skeptics View.

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Re: The Quantified Self – Health and Well-Being Become Personal

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Re: What Constitutes a Unique Community?

joshuamross — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 04:52:58 -0000

Hi Nicholas,
Fully agreed. Considering the underlying reasons people would want to form a community is crucial. Thanks for the comment.

Re: What Constitutes a Unique Community?

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Re: Wells Fargo / Wachovia Blog: Lessons On How Blogs Are Still A Powerful Tool

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