Robert Paterson: Good Books

The Lost Generation - Middle class Kids

Fri, 05 Sep 2003 09:42:13 GMT

Stuart sent me this. It is the best piece I have seen yet on why so many of our kids are in trouble

Wilfred Thesiger dead - A Noble Man

Wed, 27 Aug 2003 16:28:08 GMT

In the late 1970's I had the adventure of becoming Wood Gundy's man in Saudi Arabia. I spent 3 amazing years travelling around the Kingdom as it was in the midst of the transition from from small mud-brick towns such as Jeddah, with the Purdah wooden screened balconies facing narrow streets, and in Riyadh, where the old mud quarter and the old fort were still part of the town, to a huge building site where all sorts of modernity emerged.

My first night in Jeddah was spent in the old airport hotel, high ceilings and fans and waiters in fezzes, opposite the old airport - so close you walked from the terminal to the front door. I got some kind of skin disease on my feet from the shower floor. When I left the new airport was miles out of town and I stayed in hotels that matched any for opulence and cleanliness. I am not sure that this was better.

To prepare myself to fit into the culture, I read two books - The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and Wilfred Thesiger's account of his travels across the empty quarter. I wanted to get the cultural sense of how to behave as a westerner. I wanted to get a sense of the meaning of life even if this life was being destroyed before my eyes. Thesiger, a hawk of a man and a real warrior stood out more than Lawrence. He found the essence of the bridge between the Englishman and the Desert culture. The power of reticence and understatement - the formality which hides the feeling - the love of the landscape - courtesy - the power of holding back and letting things happen - the essence of endurance and toughness and not complaining - the power of giving one's word - the ability to listen for what is the subtext and the real agenda.

These were great lessons. I learned how to spend the day productively in the great man's audience room gradually making my way to his ear and being asked to comment throughout on other people's business. I learned how to listen for the test that would be put subtly upon me before I could return and talk about what I wanted. I learned to love the desert and would spend the weekends (Friday) in the desert with friends hunting and picnicking. A Saudi Picnic would usually involve taking lunch, a goat, out live and killing it and the cooking and eating it that evening. Knowing how to talk and how to eat was an important part of fitting in.

He died this week aged 93 a stranger in his own culture and lost to a culture that has also died. So much the pity

More on the sea and the life to be lived or not

Tue, 26 Aug 2003 00:41:23 GMT

I watched Dr Strangelove again the other night - what a great film! Sterling Hayden who plays General Ripper is not a household name any more but his autobiography - see link - is a masterpiece and is still available. Hayden started life as a schooner skipper and somehow had found his way into film. At the height of his career - he asked his kids to spend the weekend with him on his yacht and sailed off for 4 years. His estranged wife and studio were pissed. The book has always had a huge impression on me and partly gave me the courage nearly 10 years ago to go on a business strip to PEI that has not ended yet.

"To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen, who play with their boats at sea -- "cruising," it is called.

Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in.

If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about. "I've always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can't afford it." What these men can't afford is _not_ to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of "security." And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine -- and before we know it our lives are gone.

What does a man need -- really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in -- and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That's all-- in the material sense. And we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed. Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life? by Sterling Hayden From Sterling Hayden's book, Wanderer "

No safety in the familiar in a storm

Tue, 12 Aug 2003 14:56:03 GMT

Several years ago, a friend of mine came close to breaking free from the institutional life. He had a foot in each place. But frightened by the unknown, he pulled back into the world he knew - confident that he was safer there where his mastery lay. Last week he was fired.

In my own life and family too we have a recurring story, a Greek tragedy, where the pull of duty and obligation to the familiar overwhelms the preservation of self. The outcome - an early death for both my father and grandfather. It seemed to be their only exit. I thought that I was exempt from this story but find that I am well into it.

I too like my friend have a choice. The paradox is that in a turbulent time, the greatest risk is in hanging onto what seems safe. The greatest safety - to reach into the unknown. This is surely not only true for each of us as individuals but also for organizations.

Here is how Herman Melville describes this in Moby Dick

"The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that's kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea's landlessness again; for refuge's sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe! " Moby Dick - The Lee Shore Chapter.

The Meaning of Life? - an impressive book - The Years of Rice and Salt By Kim Stanley Robinson

Sun, 10 Aug 2003 16:39:31 GMT

I have just finished The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. His Mars series told me more about how a world system can be created than any other source. This book, The Years, has caused me to look more deeply at my own life, my actions in it and my mortality than any other. Here is part of a review in the Independent: where you will find a synopsis as well

"Robinson can write action and adventure as well as anyone, but in the end this is an ethical fiction about the true purpose of humanity. His supple, thoughtful prose is always up to the challenge, whether exciting us with ideas, thrilling us with spectacle or presenting us with moments of elegy or quiet passion. It is not just the reader who, in section after section, recognizes the same characters in new guises. They discover each other time and time again with delight, sometimes meeting twice in a life after early death and sometimes waiting almost until old age for that fulfilment. After years of rice and salt come moments of happiness and celebration"

The book has brought forward a number of important questions for me.

Why have I met a handful of people who mean so much to me? It seems as if I have known them before. Did I? By the way this group does not include just those that are good to be with but also "enemies" who stir my stumps. At 53 I now know that I am not immortal. My father died aged 55. Is this all that there is? If so - am I living my life to the full? If not then what can I expect? What changes should I make?

I have been thinking a lot about how I will live the back end of my life. If I had read "The Years..." at an earlier time it may not have had this effect on me.

I am drawn also to the example of Siddhartha in Hesse's book and to the final character Bao in "The Years ..." Both had been in the world and had "done" a lot. But both found at the end of life, that doing the simplest things, rowing passengers across the river, baby sitting or teaching a few students, gave them the insights and a connection to eternity that a more active life had not. I am already feeling the signals. In doing the most mundane tasks that, before I had seen as chores, such as mowing, painting the shed and above all walking the dogs, I am finding that I pay more attention to the world and find myself slipping into it. Melding into it even. On a good day as I do these mundane works, my outline will fade and parts of me will fall into the larger world giving me a sense of what it may be like to be reconnected to the universe and making my death less frightening.

I also find this in teaching. As I go on, I feel more ignorant. I am the one who is getting most of the lessons! I am the one who is being rejuvenated by my students. And so I am reconnected to their energy and naivety and to their future that will outlive me.

I am only 2 years away from the age of my father's death. 3 of my closest relationships have cancer. So the question of my life has moved to the top of my list and is unlikely to go away. I feel pregnant with opportunity and ironically less afraid than ever.

It's some thing about acting simply and "seeing" the world as it is I think. Here is how Lester Noll describes the ending of Siddhartha which I think contains a great lesson for me.

"The wound (the knowledge that his son rejected him as he had rejected his own father) continued to hurt as Siddhartha ferried people across the river. But where he had felt a distance, even an aloofness from them, he now shared a sense of life with them. One day he happened to glance into the river and saw the reflection of his father in his own face. His own father had died, probably long ago, without ever seeing his son again. The river laughed at him. "Everything that was not suffered to the end and finally concluded, recurred, and the same sorrows were undergone," it told him. He went to Vasudeva, sitting in their hut weaving a basket. He told him what he had just seen. He told him, confessed to him, all that he had experienced when he followed his son to town. He felt like Vasudeva was more than a kind old man listening to his tale but rather more like the river, even like God himself. He continued to talk but he was understanding that this new realization meant an end and a new beginning.

Vasudeva took him by the hand and led him to the river. There was more to hear than the laugh. Siddhartha watched and listened. He saw his father, Govinda, Kamala, Gautama, all flowing by in the river. He heard the suffering and desires, the laughing and woe, all mixed together in thousands of voices, all flowing by in the river. And the combination of all the good and bad, the events and emotions, together, in their integration made the single sound Om.

Vasudeva saw his friend's recognition. He saw Siddhartha had surrendered to the stream of life. As he rose, Siddhartha knew his friend must leave. They bade farewell and Vasudeva walked off into the woods, "into the unity of all things," leaving Siddhartha alone, "with great joy and gravity."

In his old age, Govinda ( his friend who was always seeking the path) was staying at the pleasure garden Kamala (the mother of his son) had given to the followers of Gautama. While there he heard about the old ferryman that some called holy. He did not recognize Siddhartha. Rather, he asked if he was, like himself, a seeker. Siddhartha kindly suggested that, perhaps, the venerable Govinda was seeking too much and not seeing that what he was seeking was right in front of him. Siddhartha then revealed his identity to his old friend and invited him to stay the night in his hut. In the morning when Govinda was about to leave, he asked Siddhartha if he might tell him what his doctrine or belief was. Siddhartha reminded him that even as a young man he distrusted doctrines. He told Govinda that he has had many teachers in his life but the last and best were his predecessor, Vasudeva, and the river. "Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom." He went on to pick up a stone and explain that that stone would one day be dirt, then perhaps a plant and then an animal or a man. And a man will one day become a Buddha and, in that, God. One can love that stone, not just a stone but as all of those other things, but one cannot love words. Words can only express part of a truth, leaving the remainder either unexpressed or misrepresented. And thoughts are very much the same as words, both are unreliable. But things, Govinda interjected, are illusion, Maya. "If they are illusion, then I also am illusion, and so they are always of the same nature as myself," Siddhartha replied. He told Govinda that the most important thing in the world is love, that we are "able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect." But, Govinda told him, Gautama preached a similar doctrine but forbade his followers from binding themselves with earthly love. Siddhartha replied that is just the reason he so mistrusted doctrines.

Govinda did not fathom much of what Siddhartha had told him but he did regard him as a holy man and so, before leaving his presence, he asked that Siddhartha give him something he could understand to take with him. Siddhartha told him to kiss him on the forehead. Although this seemed an odd request he did so and when his lips touched Siddhartha's forehead he saw, suddenly and wonderfully, many things. There were human faces and animals, death and birth, experiences and sensations, in changing streams, flooding his consciousness, merging, transforming, in time and out of time. How long it lasted he was not sure but he found he had tears trickling down his face as he bowed to the ground in front of this man "whose smile reminded him of everything that he had ever loved in his life."

© Lester L. Noll
17-Nov-2001

Learning and Games

Wed, 06 Aug 2003 14:27:06 GMT

I had lunch with Dan and Steve yesterday and one of the items we talked about was why boys are so turned off by school. Our bottom line that real learning was as much about motivation as any other factor. Becoming expert at something seemed linked to motivation. Is this why boys like games so much? Is there a lesson for so called educators like me?

Jeremy Hiebert has some great stuff on learning and play.

I read last week that boys are starting to turn away from action flicks. The stated reason was that they preferred the interactivity of games and th amount of contro that they had in games.

I am old but here is a question for the young turks out there. Is there something deadingly passive about the instruction method used at school? Is there somthing about the teacher being a "Mom Clone" that pisses boys off?

Is part of the appeal of most good games that they demand real skill and that the skills cannot be learned quickly? Is another part of the attraction that the good games have compelling ladders of challenge? Is another part of the appeal that truly amazing games have all of this and allow you to compete with a large community?

Finally what if we made school more like games? Anyone read Scott Orson Card's books?

Tue, 29 Jul 2003 20:47:43 GMT

Enabling collaborative learning.

Sebastian has found Martin Terre Blanche's wonderful blog. He quotes a good post on obstacles to collaborative learning.

Students and lecturers are more familiar with a knowledge-transmission model of education and don't always understand what is expected of us in a more constructionist environment.
We have too little information about lecturers' and students' backgrounds, networks and skills - so often we don't realize that there is somebody in the group who could teach the rest of us a lot about some aspect of what we're studying.
No or very limited mechanisms for students to talk back to the lecturer and (especially) to talk to one another.
Inadequate 'course memory'. Lecturers often are the only bridge for this year's students to the knowledge created by last year's group - students don't get to see what last year's group did. There is no mechanism for students who want to stay in the group after the course is officially over (and who could be a useful resource for next year's students) to do so. [Martin Terre Blanche]

Reading through this list made me realize that the people who pioneer new modes of communication in hi-tech conferences these days are in the process of fixing these issues - through backchannelling and real-time blogging, the product of which most often gets turned into permanent, hyperlinked, googlable archives for the benefit of those who aren't there.

Here are some more obstacles elicited from one of Martin's readers.

[Seb's Open Research]

So good to have Seb back blogging again. The ideas in this post are dear to my heart as I teach online at UPEI. I have found that effective teaching online demands a really different pedagogy from the sage on the stage model of content transmission. I laugh when some e of my colleagues in the faculty worry about their content being stolen when I have found that what works best is dialogue, By about week 3, I hardly post at all and the class have taken over.

What I find works is to have a big idea for a class - This term we look at how businesses that use the principles of the Natural Step are not only doing good but doing well. Thus solving the paradox of the supposed choice between the planet or jobs which seems to paralyze movement.

We have at the core of the class 2 books The Ecology of Commerce by my old mentor Paul Hawken, who comes here to PEI on August 13-14th, and The Natural Step for Business by Brian Nattrass and Mary Altomare. Each week we have a series of questions that we use as a formal structure and we have assignments which are posted for all to see. So far it looks pretty conventional. But 40% of the mark goes for participation judged on quality and quantity. I have found that this feature gets the juices going. With a class of 20 we get about a 1,000 posts in a 6 week half semester. Very soon we shift gears up from the abstract to how each of us can make a difference. We leave the world of the case studies and we look at ourselves. By week 4, we have lost the academic voice and we are in Cluetrain territory where all of us are revealing a great deal about who we really are as people. The material has become an excuse to explore our lives.

If we are lucky a student goes very deep and this stimulates the rest of us to open up as well. So the content is really only a catalyst. We have gone back to the Socratic method and it is hard to tell the prof from the student. We use WebCT which is very clunky but we mainly just use the discussion tool. I would love to use Groove which I find very smooth and has great features such as images and drawing tools. I have found that it is the quality of the conversation that counts the most. Asynchronicity is a popular feature with both me and the students. I get up very early and many of them work and post late. I have even taught while on vacation in Thailand! There is huge resistance to this type of approach from most faculty because they know no other way of teaching. Many of the younger students have a problem too as they have come from school, and also know no other way of learning. I have found that my adult students fit best as they have long ago left school and are very comfy with taking a leading role themselves. They also want o lear so that they know something new while many of kids take a course because they need the credit - very different.

A lot more has to change before this approach is commonplace. School itself is a huge barrier as it en-cultures the kids to be passive learners.

Gods and Generals - A Review

Sun, 20 Jul 2003 12:53:04 GMT

This very long film film, 223 minutes, has just been released in DVD (July 2003). Most of the formal reviews have panned the film. I have now seen it twice and I feel compelled to make a case for it being actually a great film. I don't mean to use the adjective lightly. I mean great in scale and in its humanity: it addresses mythic material in an epic form. The initial reaction to the film was poor in the mainstream press. It was too long. It contained many subplots and themes that could have been excised to increase the pace. It did not pay enough attention to the evils of slavery. That the religiosity of Jackson and the pedantry of Chamberlain were jarring.

I think that these are criticisms of those that are so entrenched in their "modern" world view, that they cannot access the most moving of all forms of human communication- the Homeric Epic.

When I was a boy I read the Odyssey and Moby Dick. At the age of 9, these appeared to me to be only adventure stories. I think that most of the reviewers of Gods and Generals used this type of lens to "see" the film. I am going to be a bit mean now, but maybe this is the only level that they were prepared to experience life? One reviewer complained about the lack of blood! One thought that the subplot with Jackson and the little girl had pedophilic undertones? Many complained that not enough had been done to show the evils of slavery - they wanted more cruelty on the screen. In particular, many felt exceptionally uncomfortable about Jackson's faith in God and his willingness to converse with God at all times. All negative reviews felt crushed by the pace and the length of the film. Maybe if they were to read the Odyssey and Moby Dick today, would they would make the same type of criticisms? I suspect that they would find the books long-winded, slow, with too many subplots. Many would find the scene where Ishmael and the Harpooner share a bed at the beginning of the book homo-erotic. They would miss the meaning completely as they did with this film.

I fear that we, as moderns, have been cut off from the epic by the pace and the superficiality of modern life. It is hard for us to go beneath the surface any more.

Maybe the DVD and a bottle of wine can help to expand the frame. I sat enthralled and mostly in tears throughout the 3 hours plus of this film. Central to my emotion, was the interplay between choice and destiny.

At the heart of the film is the clash of two civilizations. We witness, with Jackson's death at the end of the film, the first step of the death of an heroic world where character is central. Where relationships are intense between people and where God, Place and Family are worth dying for. The South relies on imagination, flexibility and skill but is overwhelmed by a machine world where economic power is central. Where human relationships are replaced by machine parts

The first part of the film shows the issue of choice and duty. Lee cannot take up the leadership of the Union Army as he owes his greater allegiance to his "country" Virginia. I fear that many modern reviewers simply miss this point. They cannot know the role that Lee, Jackson and other southern leaders have previously played in the Army of the union in Mexico. Nor do they know of their time at the Point. Many of these men were as brothers. Armistead and Hancock are best friends. Pete Longstreet was the best man at Grant's wedding!. Lee had been a central figure in Mexico and had the enduring trust of Winfield Scott. The men who lead both sides had joined the Army of the United State and gave their oath at a time when oaths meant something. But for the Southerners, they answered a higher calling, their "country".

We who are so mobile today, Americans move on average every 5 years, have no experience anymore of what it might be like to be part of a stable society. We know little of the power of place.

The film offers a number of these choices to us at its outset. A son rejects his father's appeal to move back to the North with him. Jackson's first father in law leaves the south to wipe the dirt from his feet on crossing the Potomac. These are powerful and poignant choices. We watch Jim Lewis, a slave, sign up to serve his country too as Jackson's cook. This is no fabrication of the director. Lewis walked behind Jackson's coffin alone holding Jackson's horse at his funeral. In an epic, there is no simple relationship. The film shows the paradox of the burden of slavery in the context of the relationships. Masters and slaves were also people who shared a place and had feelings toward each other. Jim prays to be free but is also a native Virginian and is the friend and confidant of Jackson.

We witness Chamberlain in a painful confrontation with his wife. He leaves her like a Greek warrior for Troy. She can hardly bear to see him go. What wife could? We see in Chamberlain's going to war with his brother Tom another aspect of the particular acting for the general in epic.

This was the time when units of the army, especially in the south, were formed regionally. 6,000 men served in the Stonewall Brigade, all from the Shenandoah Valley. All were brothers and sons, cousins and Uncles, friends and neighbours. Can we come close to imagining what this was like in our anonymous age? So Tom and his brother, whom he constantly fails to call Colonel, are the mythic brothers for all the brothers. Only 200 of the 6,0000 who served in the Brigade survived the war. The region lost all its men. Since then the US Army deliberately does not have locals serve in the same unit.

In true epic, a single person embodies the larger theme. So Jackson embodies the South. He is a two-sided man. Much of the film explores his tenderness and also his fierceness.

A reviewer pours scorn on the scenes in the film where Jackson develops an intense relationship with a 6 year old girl. Maybe he, the reviewer, needed more context. Jackson had been orphaned at 7. His greatest fear was the loss of loved ones. The girl's greatest fear was that her Daddy would not come home. There is a remarkable Christmas scene, where Jackson asks her what she wants and she tells him that she wants her Daddy to come home. He embraces her and says "All the daddies will come home" - Of course Jackson means that they will all come home to God. Everyone that Jackson had loved has died. His parents, his first wife and his first child. What he fears the most is that his current wife will also die with their child. When this little girl dies of scarlet fever, he breaks down and weeps in front of his staff. One asks how can he weep for this girl when he has not wept for any of his men and even for his friends. Dr McGuire answers that he is weeping now for them all.

We also see his fierce side. He advocates taking no prisoners. He, like Grant, knows that war is not a game. That it should only be pursued with great force so that it can end as soon as possible. Jackson is a man whose life is an adventure. His enduring faith in God enable him to accept his destiny. He fears not his own death knowing that it is inevitable. So he is quite fearless and hence inspiring in battle. This sense of destiny and the immanence of God pervades the film and offers us all a other way of being in the world.

The film, like the Iliad, is an intermix of intense human vignettes with grand battle scenes. A reviewer noted that Ron Maxwell should look at Private Ryan for lessons in how to make a battle scene. Really? This is a different time. Here the issue is to show how men summoned the courage to march into a hail of bullets - to stand yards away from your enemy and to return fire and reload when completely exposed. I found the battle scenes enthralling. 7,000 re-enactors who really know what they are doing knock the spots off any CGI effect. Witnessing the Irish Brigade charge up the hill in a foreshadowing of Gettysburg was a great moment of film. The men accelerating through the fire, crouched as they ran as if they were trying to shelter from rain. Men standing shoulder to shoulder 30 yards from the wall and their enemy. What we see is pure courage.

Ironically we then we see Armistead and Pickett, who were to do the same only 4 months later, comment on the bravery and the folly of such an act. We know that Armistead will die on a wall just like this and that Pickett will have his division and his life destroyed on a wall just like this.. The cheer of anguish and salute of the Irish brigade of the CFA at the wall after they had slaughtered their brothers of the Irish Brigade of the Union was a Homeric moment. This cheer too foreshadows another moment in the future. In the years after the war, a great tradition emerged at Gettysburg. At the reunions, long lines of grey-coated old man would walk stiffly up the hill to Cemetery Ridge where at the wall a long line of old men in blue awaited them. When they reached the wall, their union brothers would reach across and pull them over the wall into their embrace.

The flanking attack at the end of the film just before Jackson's shooting, is also a great moment. For me it is the blend of action with thousands of extras and the score. In silence, the men stand still at the edge of the Wilderness. Then they walk and then run still in silence as the score picks up the pace. It is balletic!

The film takes maybe 20 minutes to show us Jacksons' death. Too long? What we witness is the death not only of one man but the death of the South. From this moment it is downhill all the way. In his single death we see the death of all the 600,000 who died who left their wives and children, their fathers and mothers, their brothers and sisters all behind. In his death, we also see the end of any chance that leadership in itself could make the difference. Now it will be only a game of mathematics where the numbers and the economic might of the North will grind the South down.

My advice for Ron Maxwell and Ted Turner? The complaint heard regarding both films was that they were too long. Yet we see 13 hours of Band of Brother as being OK. Maybe HBO is the venue of the Last Full Measure? LFM demands an even grander canvass. I cannot see how a 3 hour film can do justice to the scale of the last year 2 years of the war where the scale expands and the drama deepens so much Maybe these films are in fact too short? The modern audience cannot easily take a 3 hour film in a cinema but can take a 13 hour series at home if well made. HBO have shown that they are the masters of this format.

Ron and Ted - please do not give up. I know that you want to make a difference. Having the 3 films made would be an act of great historic import. The birth story of the US is the Civil War. This is the furnace from which has come our modern age. LFM above all shows how Lincoln and Grant understood this and how our own time was created. We have to see how these titanic forces were mobilized and applied to understand who we are today.

We have to go to the Mississippi. We have to follow Sherman to Atlanta. We have to go into the Wilderness again and we have to end up at the entrenchment, at the first mine and we have to find our way to the small courthouse where we have to witness the meeting of Lee in his best uniform and Grant in his dusty clothes. We have to see that all of Lee's brilliance was of no avail once a new leader emerged that understood what the real job was - to wear Lee's army down to nothing. We have to see how Lee was bled not just of numbers but of talented subordinates and friends. We have to endure all of this with him to see why at the end he can make the choice not to throw away the last remnant of his army. We have to see that he did give indeed the last full measure. We have to see how, in spite of all of what has happened, all the horror and slaughter, that honour still remains. We have to see the supreme moment of coincidence, when Chamberlain leads the guard of Unions troops in salute their defeated brothers as they march off into history.

The retail revolution - eBay

Tue, 15 Jul 2003 21:09:54 GMT

Why Ebay Works.

Meg Whitman:

"We make our money one dollar at a time, literally $1.72 per listing, and a final value fee if the listed item sells."

"our users are on track to trade $21 billion worth of merchandise. "

"what eBay does is create efficient markets where there were quite inefficient markets before. We’re the major player in the two inefficient parts of the overall [product life cycle] bell curve. "

If you want more details and don't my slogging through powerpoint check out the latest corporate presentation.

[Micah's Weblog]

I think that eBay is the best example of the Support Economy yet. Anyone who cannot see the power of creating a trusted place and facilitation as the new way of doing business - look out. Check out the PPT has a gold mine of stuff - Adam Cohen's Book - see link - is great too.

Dogs and Reality

Tue, 15 Jul 2003 09:28:10 GMT

One of my favourite writers is Matthew Fox. One of my favourite books "The Reinvention of work". There is a forward to the book that goes like this:

"To Tristan (July 10, 1975 - June 15, 1992) my companion and co worker for 17 years, who was a grace to all who knew him. Whose work was play and who was always connected to the great work and whose work was finished on June 15, 1992 at 10.30 am - Thank you"

I was mystified - was this a child? But if you look at the picture of Matt on the end page, you will see a little white dog peering around Matt's legs. Later, I met Matt several times and we talked a lot about Tristan. Jay does the same for me. Matt would be pounding away at his keyboard, as I am now, and finally Tristan would get fed up and start messing with the pages on the floor. "Time to stop using your head Matt and use your body!" Jay is asleep on the floor next to me - but in about an hour he will tell me that it is time to get the paper and I will go outside into the world.

Magic Numbers and Social Organization Is there a science here?

Sun, 13 Jul 2003 17:54:21 GMT

I am reading Simon Singh brilliant book on Maths "Fermat's Enigma". (See link) Fermat's problem is based on the one equation that even the most dunce maths brain such as my own understand - in a right angled triangle, the Square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the square of the two other sides. - Fermat's problem is based on this simple equation. But that is not my point today. My point is that Pythagoras was struck by how the natural world, such as music and so on, was run by a series of numbers. Numbers can be found at the core of most natural phenomena and relationships. Did you know that you can calculate the actual length of a river by multiplying its crow's length, the point to point, by Pi (3.14)? How weird!

My aha for today is that, why should not human relationships be also governed by numbers? If so, we are underplaying the importance of magic numbers. Why are nurses so unhappy? Might it be that they go to work as groups and not as teams governed by the rules of magic numbers? Why is there bullying at school? Might it be that we do not organize them by using magic numbers? Why do many of our social and work organizations need so much bureaucracy? May it be that we do not use Magic Numbers. Why do all armies have the same core organizational structures of 8 - 15 - 35 -150 and 500-600? Might it be that they have found out intuitively that these sets work best under stress. Why are all HG groups functions of 15 and 35.? Why are larger tribal groups not more than 500? Why is 150 such a perfect number for getting complex work done?

I am beginning to feel that much of the inhumanity and stress in our work place is the machine culture that pays no attention to these hard numbers.

Natural Capitalism - Paul Hawken comes to PEI August 13th

Fri, 11 Jul 2003 18:41:00 GMT

"The Laws that we are ignoring determine how life sustains itself. Commerce requires living systems for its welfare -- it is emblematic of the times that this even needs to be said. Because of our industrial prowess, we emphasize what people can do but tend to ignore what nature does. Commercial institutions, proud of their achievements, do not see that healthy living systems -- clean air and water, healthy soil, stable climates -- are integral to a functioning economy. As our living systems deteriorate, traditional forecasting and business economics become the equivalent of house rules on a sinking cruise ship."

Being an Island and being dependent on our natural resources for the 3 pillars of our economy, Agriculture, Tourism and the inshore Fishery, PEI is on the knife edge. Our use of the traditional industrial model has stressed all the connected systems to the limit. How to save ourselves is the question. Debates about the environment are usually futile arguments from one group who says that we cannot change because if we do, we will lose all the jobs and while the other says that we should not have an economy at all and merely save the environment. The result is that we remain stuck.

For many years Paul Hawken has being saying something different. His message is that an economy is essential. The issue as he sees it is not to chose between jobs and the planet but to have both. The work is to design a new type of economy that works according to the laws of nature and physics. Hence the term Natural Capitalism.

Paul is coming to PEI to speak formally to the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy on August the 14th. But he will speak to the public of PEI at UPEI on the evening of August the 13th.

Over the next few weeks I will post as many good articles that I can about what we face here as issues and also what we now know about a new design that may help us. Please help me by adding your comments and by leading me to other good articles.

Blogging or Social Software - an evolutionary step?

Sat, 05 Jul 2003 11:26:11 GMT

The great leap: "60,000 years ago humans were on the brink of extinction. An evolutionary eyeblink later, there are over 6 billion of us. How did we do it?" [Guardian Unlimited > [ t e c h n o c u l t u r e ]] [Universal Rule]

More and more evidence is emerging that something unusual happened with humans about 60,000 years ago. I'm waiting for the movie. [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]

The breakout 60-40,000 bc is the tipping point where man left the world of animals. More and more the thesis behind this shift has been that complex language appeared at this time. A blind alley for research has been the search for a mechanical adjustment in the body - the throat/larynx area. Soft tissue does not last - hence "proof" of language as a product of mechanical adaptation cannot be found.

More progressive researchers think instead about mindset and culture as evidenced in rates of innovation in tools and art which can be observed. There is no doubt that the rate of innovation becomes exponential for homo sapiens at this time. Poor old Neanderthal has almost no innovation. Art appears to explode fully realized at this time "Lascaux"

The theory that appeals to me is that early man could speak even Neanderthal. But early language as with say highly evolved apes and monkeys was not merely vocal but used a wide range of visuals. Alarm calls, food calls, are all part of the language of many primates. This language is by definition trapped in the present. "Hungry" "Back off" "I want you" I'm sad" etc My mother in law still lives in this world of the emotional present. It is a language of self - we see the world only through our eyes and only in the now. There is no future. The driving force is emotion. This mindset does not allow us to imagine a future and hence there can be no speculative innovation. You can only learn by observing the work of another directly. It is very hard to to exchange ideas outside of a tribe. I bet the vocal apparatus evolved in this prolonged era of mother in law world view. So the tools were ready for a different application.

So how did we speak in anew way that enabled us to think of a future and to learn indirectly?

Robin Dunbar suggests that complex speech evolved for man from the primate habit of grooming. All Primates groom. The reason is to keep up emotional health in a hierarchy. Grooming enables you to form and sustain your protective political alliances and community within the tribe that keeps you safe from internal aggression. You get the protection of some alphas and you support each other when you have been put upon by a higher person. We do this at the office but today we use words and we call it gossip. Human society like all primate society is highly political and hierarchical. Think of high school! The cool set - cliques etc.

This is Dunbar's aha! As we moved onto the Savannah where we had to hunt in an organized manner - unit size had to grow so that there were at least 8 adult males. This drove a tribal size of about 40 with perhaps 8 adult females and 15 youths and children. As the unit size grew there was a conflict between the grooming time needed to hold the structure together and the time needed for other activities such as hunting and food preparation. You can only groom one person at a time but you can gossip with many - especially is you are a woman and you are sitting by the fire working on skins with the other women while looking out for the kids. So we started to chat! Getting my drift?

Might social software act as a chat/gossip amplifier? Might it be a driver for an extension of mindset and consciousness that gossip drove 60,000 years ago?

The Support Economy - Rob's Views 2

Wed, 25 Jun 2003 10:26:18 GMT

My take away on the Support Economy is that this might be the "Silent Spring" of business books. The book that sheds light on the core issue - the dynamics and nature of the relationship that we have with the customer and hence with the front line. This inevitably forces a shift in our perspective from engineering to environmental management - from farming to gardening.

I have been working on the health aspects of the organization today and all our research tells us that the need for a shift from transaction to the relationship with the individual is literally on the money.

There is an increasing body of research underway that is looking at the direct cost of the transactional modality on the work force. The new data suggests that in a traditional large organization such as a bank, telephone company that the direct costs of illness attributable to the workplace is now about 17% of payroll and growing ( Clarke Brown). 17% of payroll is a very large direct cost. It is of course only the tip of the iceberg. What type of customer relationship is being generated by a workforce that feels this bad?

Many organizations have put in wellness programs and flex programs to deal with this illness and absence issue. But Linda Duxbury's mammoth survey, over 30,000 Canadian civil servants, shows that no one uses these programs unless there is a supportive managerial culture.

The big idea behind this is Zuboff's hypothesis - that the key is organizatinal culture or managerial relationships. Marmot's work in the UK Civil Service (The Whitehall Studies)has informed us for years that the rate of illness ( and death) in work places is 4 times higher at the bottom of the hierarchy than at the top.

The core issue that is emerging is the nature of the relationship between the manager and the "Managed" As organizations, in the Transaction model, centralize more control and cut the costs of delivery at the point of the transaction, they in effect shut down all feelings of participation and control in the front line. The result is an ever more surly and sick customer interface.

So not only is the Ford system driving large and direct costs but is also blocking any feedback that could come back from the front line. Is also blocking the learning of the front line and is making the customer interface a poisonous well.

Marmot does not suggest that the solution is to throw away hierarchy - he is clear that all sentient beings construct hierarchies. He asks us to examine the nature of the relationships inside the hierarchy.

My current best example of a hierarchy that works well would be a a submarine crew. In 1945 after taking losses of 40,000 out of 50,000, the remaining UBoat crews surrendered with their morale and effectiveness still high. How could this be? The right type of hierarchy I think.

In a sub any one person who makes a mistake can sink the boat. While the chain of command is very much adhered to, there is a different conversation and relationship through the ranks. Everyone is seen as an important individual whose opinion is valued. In the US Sub service toady, every new crew member, no matter what rank, is on probation and will be thrown off the boat if the trust issue is not met. All live the same public, cramped and uncomfortable life - there is little difference in the living conditions and no social separation. When things go wrong, they all die. When things go well, they all contribute.

If you think of this, it is a very different culture and set of relationships, to those of say the larger ships on the surface and of course to the traditional large busines or government enterprise. This is what my friends in the US Army call a "collegial culture. The irony is that one of the organizations that has done the most to shift their internal culture has bee the US Army. They may make poor policemen but they have shown us a daring and a level of collaboration that is unparalleled. The After Action Review has been and important tool in unlocking the command and control culture. BP have also used the AAR with the help of Col Ed Guthrie to great effect to enable a culture of male Scots engineers to learn from each other. The folks at Groove are finding that the simple introduction of collaborative software will not work unless there is work done to unfreeze the culture.

In closing I see the Support Economy as showing us that the next level of competition in organization will be cultural.

Organizations that can unlock their culture to be genuinely participative will overwhelm their traditional competition. They will make the transition from a metaphor based on a machine which demands conformity and the constant application of outside resources to a natural system based on the principles of true growth.

What do I mean by true growth? Think of your child or a tomato. If we as parents or gardeners, provide the right early environment, the child and the tomato will do all the rest. It is set to grow. New research on the development of children by Doug Wilms at UNB, now tells us that it is not socio economic issues that drive vulnerability in children, failure to learn and to behave, but the family culture. The worst parental approach is Authoritarian - this shuts kids down. Such is the culture of the business transactional model. The second worst is the Permissive - this is added to the government model which is the most toxic of all. In government there is a maximum control on process and the least control on behaviour. The optimal culture is described as Authoritative. Where there are rules but they are made increasingly as a result of participation from all members of the family.

As with parents and children, so with business and government

The Support Economy - A great review

Tue, 24 Jun 2003 15:09:39 GMT

I think that the Support Econmy will become the Silent Spring of our time - a book that changes how we see the world. I will do my best to find as many good reviews as posssible - here is the first.

Harry Potter - The Connection to the Book the Support Econmy

Tue, 24 Jun 2003 14:53:31 GMT

First Impression. "If you try too hard to improve your failure rate, you become afraid of your inbox."

-Nigel Newton, chief executive and chairman of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

[Fast Company]

The book "The Support Economy" by Shoshana Zuboff makes the case that in the real new economy, the value will be in the relationship not in the transaction. To understand what this means in practice have a look at this article describing how the publisher of Harry Potter pulls this off.

Harry Potter - A thoughtful review

Tue, 24 Jun 2003 14:46:07 GMT

Harry Potter, teen rebel. No, Hogwarts isn't a hotbed of drugs, smoking and sex (at least not yet). But J.K. Rowling's rich and huge new installment unmistakably brings our bespectacled hero into adolescence. [Salon.com]

For the price of looking at one ad - a really solid review.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - A quick Review from PEI

Mon, 23 Jun 2003 11:02:58 GMT

This was the scene at the Bookmark in Charlottetown on the stroke of midnight as we were thronging to buy our copies of the new Harry Potter Book. What an event!

I finished the book last night (Sunday). Rowling has pulled it off and has turned in another page turner. I can hardly imagine the pressure that she must be under to keep up the standard. Only two books to go. Like much of what is popular today, the book dwells mainly on the split between the corporate and the magic world. The Matrix and Lord of the Rings also speak to the inhuman aspect of the corporate/bureaucratic world and our longing for freedom. In this book, the split is deepened beyond merely the Muggles and the Wizards to include the invasion of Hogwarts by the Bureaucrats from the Ministry of Magic. Rowling uses Dickensian names just to ensure we don't miss the point. The ever so political and self-inflated Minister is called Fudge and his bureaucratic and poisonous Heydrich is called Umbridge. The conflict is between those who know what is really happening - Harry and Dumbledore - and those that will pay any price to keep the uncomfortable truth from emerging - the Ministry and the bureaucratic world.. The real evil, Voldemort, lurks in the shadows for most of the book. There is a Munich feeling about the appeasement group who feel that identifying the threat is worse than the threat itself.

As I read my words it sounds boring - I assure you that it is not. The conflict between being human and being a robot is central to our time and Rowling exposes our Matrix with extreme vividness. This, like the Matrix, is a very revolutionary work and will set up millions of children to "see" the true face of the evil that exists in our world - the mind that cares only about the institution versus the people. The action races along and the tension is built cleverly throughout the 766 pages. Knowing that one main character dies provides a poignancy as we interact with the characters. The characters also build. Harry is becoming a Neo like reluctant hero who like Frodo is becoming aware of his true burden and how it separates him from all others. The lines between good and bad blur further. Is Snape all that bad? Was Harry's father all that good? Why is Dumbledore so un-supportive of Harry?

Sex is entering the story as is the mystery of girls for boys - especially sensitive boys like Harry. Rowling has a real touch here and I suspect that the later books will build on Harry's growing sexual as well as emotional maturation. Anger is a major element of Harry's life now. Understanding it and controlling it again portends to be a development feature.

Rowling works on many levels. On the surface, the book is an adventure story like the Odyssey or the Matrix. You can read it just for that and have a great time. Below the explicit adventure is a drama - a drama of our time about the struggle to regain our humanity in a machine world where magic has been all but extinguished. Where Muggles can't see the wizards all around them and where the Wizards' own bureaucracy is working to extinguish magic. Below this, as in the Lord of th Rings and in the Matrix. is an epic. The epic is the development of an innocent into a true hero - reluctant, modest, confused who has no idea of the greatness of his real powers. Who finds out who he is by the process of ordeal. Who in the end, while supported by a fellowship, is alone and now understands his destiny is to stand alone and to confront our greatest threat - the loss of our humanity.

I find it ironic that many of the so called religious right claim that Harry Potter is a dangerous book because it brings us back the world of magic, nature and evil. How they fear our true humanity! It is now clear to me that Harry embodies what we know of the life of Jesus. A reluctant hero who likely thought of himself as only a carpenter but who was called to a mission. Who was confused for a long time in the desert. Whose ministry was aimed at exposing the inhumanity of the establishment. Who understood what this attack on the establishment meant. Who provoked them beyond their limit and in the certain knowledge of what this would mean.

Is not this true heroism? To take on your own society and expose its institutions for the self serving, faceless prisons that they tend to become?

Great artists communicate great ideas so simply that we take on the revolutionary idea without even knowing that a Trojan Horse has entered the walls of our mindset. Rowling is such an artist. The Wachowski brothers are as well. They use the mechanism of adventure to warn us of our peril. They use their ability to be popular to plant a virus of "seeing" the world as it is in our children. In so doing they prepare our society for change.

Good things in poor places

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 23:52:39 GMT

Wireless cottage industries: "phone ladies" of Bangladesh. A new service expansion by GrameenPhone, Bangladesh's leading cellphone company, is sparking the creation of new family businesses in the impoverished country -- where there are only about three land lines for every 1,000 people.

Under a special low-priced package, it has been offering phones to village women, now popularly known as phone ladies, and changing lifestyles into the bargain. The phones are registered only in the name of women but they are also operated by their husbands and sons and shared out in the village at a few taka per call. With just one phone, the service has now become a family business in many villages, with monthly earnings averaging $170, a lot of money in poverty-ridden Bangladesh which has an annual per capita income of $368.
"This has improved our living standards and made us feel proud in every sense," said operator Masuda Begum. The phone ladies also enjoyed a bigger say in family decisions, including marriage of children, Masuda said. Many have renovated their homes with their new income and in villages with electricity they have bought color televisions and refrigerators. Some are even sending their children to the cities for school where they also have access to qualified doctors.

Link to Reuters story, Discuss (Thanks, Hal) [Boing Boing Blog]

Grameen Bank is the leading Microcredit organization in the world. Microcredit is based on the idea of Social Capital which many of us have been talking about in the context of blogging. Our traditional credit system is based on the individual - alone. Social credit ie extended to a group. The loss rate is miniscule. My link is to a review of a book called Give us Credit. Worth a read. While Micro-credit was developed for the third world I bet that as VC for small business in the west it could be great.

Technology or Culture?

Wed, 18 Jun 2003 10:23:36 GMT

TECHNOLOGY AND ORGANIZATIONAL UNIFICATION: This blog is really transformational for me. Just when I think I have heard all perspectives, I'm awakened to new viewpoints. Case in point... I was with a very respectable customer today. It was clear that these folks get the value of human interaction given the market they are in (PURE knowledge creation and subsequent value generation), but architecture somehow gets in the way.

Halfway through our discussion, a very bright fellow in the crowd offers that "decentralized software disrupts the value that we, as a corporation, bring to the table. These highly valued employees will just leave us, as teams, if we allow edge-based agility. We give them POWER." Sigh... Shrug... Fascinating...

As we slog through the adoption of emergent technologies, it is clear to me that technology isn't the issue. In fact, it is a complete NON-ISSUE. I'm reminded by my anthropology buddies that technology is a mere tool. Until the tribe adapts it's social viewpoint (read: culture, values, memes, networks), technology is nothing but an enabler versus a real change agent.

[Michael Helfrich's Radio Weblog]

Michael is spot on. If you want to see how powerful his insight is there is a gem of a book called "The Dynamics of military revolution" edited by Knox and Murray. They look at many epoch changing technical innovations in the military such as the introduction of longbows, muskets, rifles etc and show that it takes about a generation, or a bad war, to make the social adjustment. IE consider the rifle. At the beginning of the civil war, tactics demanded that men line up facing each other and pour it on. By the end of the war, everyone who could get into trench did so. BUT the Europeans missed the whole point and spent much of the first 6 months on WWI charging into machine gun and rifle fire. In WWII, the French and the Brits had in total more tanks than the Germans but they deployed them as infantry support weapons. The german, by losing the last war, had created an entirely new method - Blitzkrieg. The key is to make the cultural shift and then the doctrine shift. You deploy the new in a new way. if you deploy the new in the old way - 'we keep all the knowldge inside', you fail.

A Comprehensive Social Theory Reading List

Thu, 12 Jun 2003 10:06:53 GMT

Via Dave Pollard and sourced by Elizabeth Lawley

The Support Economy - Capturing the Value in the relationship and not merely the transaction

Thu, 05 Jun 2003 02:14:11 GMT

Relationships - Where we capture our value

Traditionally we capture value in the transaction. A car salesman works in an environment where he gets no credit for me buying six cars from him over time – but that is my potential. The car salesman gets no credit for all the service work that I could send him – but that is what happens with a good relationship. The car salesman gets no credit for the referrals I give to my friends who buy the same car – but this is what happens. So the cars salesman can easily screw me and lose all of this value. This is the main business model of our time. It misses the point that the right type of relationship can drive much more value than a single transaction. In eBay or Amazon the core is the right type of relationship. In Amazon, the customers run the sales side of the store by being the review committee. In eBay the customers run every aspect of the store and have tightly knit communities of say stamp collectors, sports car enthusiasts or golfers.

If you think of this, you will see that such a focus on the transaction as the sole source of value pushes the seller into an adversarial relationship with the customer. Each individual transaction will trend toward maximization. The customer has to get screwed in the end and the relationship will be lost.

Relationship value is not a new-age term. Every small business owner has known all about this. A small shop keeper or business man knows that it is not just the deal today that is important but the stream of deals with this customer. The small owner seeks to maximize the value of the relationship over time. He truly serves the customer and the customer feels this. What the small owner lacks is the price and the variety that a large chain can off. This is why he has been put out of business by the production model.

So our task is to combine the power of the large to offer price and choice with the feel of the small where the customer relationship comes first. If we do this then we will execute our main intent which is to run a big company like a small one.

Why will this appeal to customers today? We know that people today demand a high quality of direct participation and influence both in the workplace and as consumers. They do not want to be treated as a segment in a mass market or as a cog in an industrial process but as individuals whose identity is affected by what they do and with whom. They want real and human relationships and will be attracted to them as employees and as customer.

The support Economy - What is the nature of the new model for capitalism?

Thu, 05 Jun 2003 02:08:18 GMT

Some thoughts this week after finishing the "Support Economy"

Culture – The new method of competition

When Henry Ford introduced mass production at the beginning of the 20^th century, he not only changed how things were made, he changed the culture of the workplace. In this production culture, head office was the organization’s brain and it decided everything. Products were conceived, designed, produced and then marketed and sold. The enterprise pushed out from the centre. This model has taken over all aspects of organized life today. At its heart is a need to control the core process. Everything and everyone had to be “managed”. It was successful during a long period of relative stability.

We are so imbued with this model that we mainly fail to see it for what it is – only a model which has had a life of about 100 years. Today, we have reached the design limits of this model. More efficiency cannot be squeezed out of it and the business, social and technology environments are now changing so fast that such a model cannot react fast enough.

A new model is emerging. It is the reverse of the production model. In this new model, which we can see in the actions of new adopters such as Wal*Mart, Amazon or Dell, the flow is reversed. The customer sets the product agenda. It is the customer who decides what they want and who drives the production process back into, not simply one organization, but into a network of suppliers organized by the host company. The new model works deliberately to eliminate, or significantly reduce, inventory, such as eBay, Dell or Southwest, or to carry inventory in a distributed form in the supporting federated system such as Wal*Mart and its suppliers. With very low or no inventory, they have a compelling cost advantage.

All have remarkably sensitive customer interfaces where, at best, individual customer profiles, preferences and accrued activity and trust are maintained in real time such as by Amazon, eBay and Dell. Or, profiles are held in aggregate, where community profiles are maintained such as at Wal*Mart.

This is not simply a re-engineering of the process but a shift in culture. It involves the giving up of the idea that the market can be controlled by head office. Head office in these organizations does not pretend to be able to predict customer behaviour, instead it works to have the best sensory system possible. It uses this acutely sensitive information system to track trends and to react immediately.

As a result, the customer experience has been transformed from an outward push to an inward acceptance. It is fun to fly Southwest as well as being inexpensive. Amazon provides a community of book reviewers that pulls the customer into the primary sales position in the firm. Wal*Mart greats each customer and so on. The customer gets what they want rather than only what the firm will give them.

In a world where most of have all that we need, in terms of things, this putting the customer into the driver’s seat give them the potential for the experience of control and participation that the old system prohibits.

This is the key to understand the new model. Its value is in the experience of control and participation given to the customer. For the first time, the customer is in control and not the corporation. Once customers have experienced this, they do not go back! Conversely, in the new organization, to give the customer control and participation, head office has had to give the front line control, and participation as well. Once employees have had a taste of this they too do not want to go back.

To pull this off, these organizations have pushed a remarkable amount of decision making power out to the front line. Floor clerks in Wal*Mart can move material around the store and each store has a computer assisted re-order model that enables the store to track orders to the unique preferences of its own community. At Dell you speak to a real person who then tracks your order all the way to set up. At eBay the buyers and sellers deal direct.

If you are a competitor of one of these new model firms and you are still using the old model, you will fail. You cannot deliver the costs and you cannot deliver the customer experience.

So we see the icons of the old model struggling or even moving into bankruptcy. United Airlines, AMR Air Canada; Kmart, Home Depot; and most small booksellers and Indigo and Chapters. eBay is on track to dominate the second hand car market. Dell can take on any competition and is moving into other sectors beyond PC’s.

In the old model, you could compete by applying a simple concept – more money. By gaining access to more resources, you could use increased scale to push prices and costs down and use your increased hegemony to have power over the consumer. This is why the trend in the old model is for more scale. But now scale will not help United Airlines or Home Depot. The new model demands that you kill off your old culture, the culture that made you successful and which you know so well.

More on Viktor Frankl - A remarkable review on Amazon

Fri, 30 May 2003 23:29:48 GMT

My focus on Viktor Frankl this week is to answer a question for my students. We are talking about the need in organizations to have purpose or a meaning higher than merely making more money for the shareholders. I know of no one who informs me more on purpose than VF. Don't we yearn to be part of something noble? is this not part of the appeal of the Matrix and Lord of the Rings? is not corporate life so dull and misery making.

What if your company made its money by genuinely serving others?

52 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

deneurotization of humanity, May 11, 2001

Reviewer: groovylew from Oxford, UK

Frankl's logotherapy enables people to once again discover the quality of life. Frankl believes that the first two schools of Viennese psychotherapy (Freud and Adler), which he calls the depth psychology, must be complimented the logotherapy - the height psychology.

His therapy explores man's future instead of his past.

Summarizing the Freudian concept as the will to pleasure and the Adlerian concept as the will to power, Frankl points out that man's basic motivation in life is neither pleasure nor power. Each person lives to discover the meaning of life and thereby to fulfill it - the will to meaning. Life is too meaningful for man to comprehend: it is essentially incomprehensible because it lies on a higher realm than that of man's.

During the World War 2, Frankl survived four concentration camps including Auschwitz. In the camps, most of the inmates despaired that if they did not survive the camp, there was no meaning in suffering. Frankl, on the other hand, believed that if there was no meaning in suffering, there was no point in surviving the camp. In other words, the meaning of life was either unconditional regardless of the situation one was facing, or it was none at all.

In the camps, Frankl would console his inmates telling them, "Someone looks down on each of us in difficult hours ?a friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead ?and he would not expect us to disappoint him. He would hope to find us suffering proudly ?not miserably ?knowing how to die.? He would explain to them that it was not them asking the meaning of life. It was life asking them the meaning, and they had to answer to it. What Frankl witnessed in the camps contradicted Freud's theory that if people were left without food for few days, their wants would be reduced to the common desire for food. While some inmates behaved according to their instincts, as Freud predicted, there were also others who lived up to this challenge. Frankl witnessed people who gave away their last piece of bread and others who organized religious activities, which resulted in execution if they were caught.

One of logotherapy's techniques to help people discover values is to have them imagine their lives from their deathbeds and look back on them. During such exercises people often find that their current definition of success differs significantly from that on their deathbeds. They realize that they do not wish they had made more money, had more sex. It is interesting to note that virtually everyone points to relationship as their most cherished value. They wish that they had spent more time with people they care about. Logotherapy bases its therapy on the fact that man is a self-transcendent being. Psychotherapy which views man as a self-contained being is bound to fail.

Frankl's favourite analogy regarding this matter is the eye. The function of the eye is to transcend itself: healthy eye does not see itself. The more it self-transcends, the more it actualizes itself. Only when there is a problem, such as glaucoma, does it notice itself. Man actualizes himself in the same way. Self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendent.

Man is most human when he is occupied with something other than himself - when he is serving others?needs.

The best time to take a picture of man is when he is least conscious of himself. How unnatural the picture looks when he is told to say cheese, to notice himself. Man neither lives by himself nor for himself. Man who views himself as a self-contained being is bound to live in despair. If he were to weigh the suffering and joy in life, he will find that the suffering outweighs by far. Every approach to suicide prevention needs to be grounded on the irreducibility of the unique human phenomenons and the self-transcendent nature of man. Only then can he find the meaning in suffering and thereby meet the challenge.

He then realizes that life expects something from him in every situation. This "mere?realization in itself may even put an end to suicidal thoughts. Painting green the leaves of a dying tree lasts only so long, while watering its roots naturally turns them green. Frankl warns us of the serious consequences of reductionism. And his logotherapy thoroughly de-establishes the reductionism in psychotherapy and re-institutes the human realm in psychotherapy. Logotherapy has a significant contribution to make in our world where more and more people are seeking psychotherapy to address this human realm. Logotherapy, then, is a psychotherapy for the man in the street ?all of us.

Man's Search for Meaning - The essence of Viktor Frankl's message

Fri, 30 May 2003 22:57:23 GMT

Man's Search for Meaning is known for powerful scenes like the parting with Otto and for its insights from camp life. "If only our wives could see us now!'" said the man next to Frankl as they set off on a morning march to the labor site.

And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another upward and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking about his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. . . . A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth-that love is the highest goal to which man can aspire. . . . I understand how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss. . . . In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way-an honorable way-in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to under-stand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in divine contemplation of an infinite glory."