Is Critical Reasoning Dead?

May 22, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off 

I’m not surprised that the most inspiring essay I’ve read in years is written by a motorcycle repairman, who also happens to be a great writer and who has a Ph.D. in political philosophy. His essay contrasts the levels of critical reasoning, intuition, judgment, experience and metacognition in both the bike shop and in the think tank. The former wins hands down.

Although I’ve never been a mechanic I did work for a decade in the machine-tool industry, both as corporate controller and entrepreneur/start-up partner. But the industry was in decline so I got an MBA and a year later started my career as a knowledge professional, specifically a Web 1.0 strategy consultant. It didn’t take long for my elation to turn to disillusion.

I remember a conversation I’d had with one of our solution architects, which in Web 1.0 meant he could write a paragraph and include a diagram. I showed him a brochure from my former company that I’d co-founded, highlighting one of our portable, lathe-mounted superfinishing machines that we designed and manufactured. He smirked and remarked “boy, you’ve come a long way”. The web consulting company merged several times and was eventually absorbed by a larger Web 1.0 company which then went away several years later. I think my co-worker ended up in financial services. After a another short interactive strategy consulting position I became self-employed. The machine-tool company I’d co-founded was under-capitalized and it folded. I lost touch with my former partners but occasionally drive through the industrial park where we were once located.

Its been 10 years but reading the essay reminded me exactly how I felt when the people who made concepts disparaged the people who made capital equipment. I’m grateful that I still have the traces of grease and oil in my blood to be able to appreciate one of the writer’s examples of the kinds of crises that industrial workers and mechanical engineers experienced on an daily basis.

I once accidentally dropped a feeler gauge down into the crankcase of a Kawasaki Ninja that was practically brand new, while performing its first scheduled valve adjustment. I escaped a complete tear-down of the motor only through an operation that involved the use of a stethoscope, another pair of trusted hands and the sort of concentration we associate with a bomb squad. When finally I laid my fingers on that feeler gauge, I felt as if I had cheated death. I don’t remember ever feeling so alive as in the hours that followed.

But what I most identified with in this essay, is author’s description of the “feel” of the knowledge work jobs he’d had and how most everything about management and process contradicted anyone’s ability to produce great, creative work in order to churn out banal, yet profit-maximizing, output. Perhaps I’m over-idealizing my former life, but I don’t remember that kind of creativity stultification in my machine-tool days. But I still cringe to remember how as Web 1.0 consolidated, management continually tightened the throttle on critical reasoning and creative ideas that didn’t fit with their formula. They hated it and I couldn’t live without it. So, like the writer, I got out, not by opening a motorcycle repair shop but by starting my own solo professional service firm. I’d had enough of a taste of “process management” as a Web 1.0 knowledge worker to realize that if I wanted to create and produce at and beyond the level of which I knew I was capable, I’d have to do it as an independent.

Yet like him, I can imagine the possibilities of a more entrepreneurial, post-crisis economy and some resurgence of industry, the trades and the artisans. And I have faith that there’s even a chance for new and better knowledge work as hierarchies flatten and social business models and technologies replace conformity, formula, centralization and control with collaboration, networks, sharing, ideas and critical reasoning. He eloquently describes how our quality of life depends on it.

Our peripheral vision is perhaps recovering, allowing us to consider the full range of lives worth choosing. For anyone who feels ill suited by disposition to spend his days sitting in an office, the question of what a good job looks like is now wide open.

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Filed under: Cognition, Creativity, innovation, intuition, multi-dimensional, self-awareness, shift, social networks
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Social Networks: The Pre-requisites

September 18, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment 

Businesses of all sizes and industries, from solo firms to large corporations, are becoming increasingly interested in using social networks, both internally and externally, to build collaborative and conversational communities.

When I talk to owners, managers and executives about their approach and expectations, I often hear answers that combine elements of Web site initiatives and marketing campaigns. But social networks are about sharing and relationship building. A traditional approach will likely fail.

What I usually don’t hear is a deep understanding of why social networks make sense for them and how social networks are related to shifts in control of markets, knowledge, media and technology. Unlike pre-Web 2.0 online marketing, branding, communications and e-commerce, social networks initiatives bear little resemblance to traditional business and marketing models. Although its good to carefully and consciously experiment, a serious social network program requires that deep understanding as well as integrating a clear purpose and message in all content and communications.

I like the holon as a metaphor for an integral social network strategy.

Social Media Integral Strategy

Social Media Integral Strategy

A holon (Greek: holos, “whole”) is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part. The word was coined by Arthur Koestler in his book The Ghost in the Machine (1967, p. 48). Wikipedia

Whatever the planning process, a visual will ensure that strategy and execution is anchored to the underlying understanding and purpose. Simple questions should be asked at the outset and periodically, for example:

  • Is this good for me?
  • ….for us?
  • ….for the community?
  • ….for a greater good?

Once the purpose is clear, a road-map for short-term experiential learning, and long-term actionable metrics can be developed to direct your social networks to go the right way.

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Filed under: Creativity, Generations, alignment, differentiation, integral, intention, metaphor, multi-dimensional, shift, social capital, social networks, strategy
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Use visuals to simplify and clarify.

August 26, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment 

RedShift: Natural influence expansion in the connected world

RedShift: Natural influence expansion in the connected world

Most of the popular small business advice is tailored to product companies. That’s because service firms are always more challenging to define and differentiate without creating complexity which then leads to confusion. And that confusion will increase as new small and solo professional service firms are founded by generalists, multiple careerists and encore careerists.

The nimble solo psf’s are uniquely able to create services for evolving markets that emerge from disruption, convergence and shifting demographics. Their challenge is to simply and effectively communicate who they are, where they’re going and how they help their clients.

If I can’t easily explain my content, I step back, formulate a question that I think needs to be answered and then convey that answer in some visual format. I give my right brain the right of way so to speak. I know its a highly effective method for gaining “creative clarity” and I use it extensively and successfully in client work.

Here’s a recent example of mine. To improve my ability to more clearly communicate RedShfit’s benefits to my clients and community, the question I asked myself is: How do RedShift programs create natural influence and why is that good?

By creating the graphic, I let my right brain (mostly) give me the answer.

You don’t need high-end graphics skills to do this; a whiteboard sketch is great. I used CmapTools for the natural influence concept map.

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Filed under: Creativity, Natural influence, alignment, convergence, differentiation, direction, disruption, encore career, generalist, global microbrand, going solo, intention, multi-dimensional, simplicity, slash career, social capital, social media, solo psf
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Multi-dimensional

July 1, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment 

One of my challenges as a professional services practitioner is developing unique and rigorous personal, professional and organizational growth and improvement models and communicating those simply, creatively and effectively. I’m always encouraged when clients use similar terminology.

That happened recently when one expressed the desire to be more multi-dimensional with respect to blending various careers, talents, skills and abilities as an independent business, thinking about slash-career in a new way.

I personally got enthused about the term multi-dimensional in the early nineties reading Peter Drucker’s predictions that future organizations must succeed on all 3 dimensions - economic, social and human - rather than succeed on just one.

Recently, I was reading Florence Scovel Shin, a spiritual and metaphysical writer and practitioner in the 1920’s. She writes of the importance of the fourth dimension, a term she used to describe intuition.

In the past 10 years, astounding gains in cosmological knowledge is increasingly supported the theory that the known universe itself is multi-dimensional, in other words, one of infinite parallel universes all part a grand multiverse.

Now that I’m coming across the phrase “multi-dimensional” in many contexts in addition to those I’ve mentioned, I’m wondering if our traditional linear models are no longer sufficient to describe states of change at this stage of our individual and collective evolution.

dimension_blog.png

But since we’re limited by our physiology to experience a multi-dimensional existence, how does understanding the multi-dimensional improve our lives if we’re not physicists or scientists?

I think in some respects its better to not know but rather to sense that there’s infinitely more to our reality than what we see and directly experience in our linear timeline and with our existing perceptual abilities. If we can be still enough to sense what we can’t directly experience, and make that stillness and sensing a practice, we can learn to be in touch, or to make friends with, the multi-dimensional. Heightening this sense enhances life experience at every level - from practical personal, professional and organizational problem solving and decision making to truly transformational shifts in consciousness when the things we want begin to spontaneously and naturally feel like probabilities rather than possibilities.

Try replacing “anything is possible” with “everything is probable” and you’re likely to feel energized and naturally influential. If you fully believe the second statement, and refuse to believe anything less, you’re being the fulfillment you desire, rather than having to do something to get it. This might feel like going against the wave (and airwaves full) of artificial influence and resultant reactivity that presently dominates our one world. But often the right direction is to go the other way.

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Filed under: In Transition, career, going solo, multi-dimensional
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An O/S For Change

February 9, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off 

Getting clients to write, or in some other way ground, objectify and embody their change experience is like pulling teeth. We’re in the habit of thinking mostly about what we don’t want, and then talking about how we’re justified in having these negative beliefs, thus further locking them in.

Think of your belief system as your internal operating system that drives your life experience but has never been re-booted or de-bugged. Before you can clean out the bad code and replace it with an updated version, you need to dig into it to understand how it drives, or blocks, your fulfillment. Getting your beliefs down in writing, or in a recording, or in a visual are how you get them out of your head, where they spin and spin but nothing really changes.

thinkingchange.png

If you avoid the step of objectifying your change process, and I’ve seen this so many times with clients, it takes much longer to understand your complex system of beliefs that direct, or counter-direct, your personal, professional and organizational responses to change. When you don’t know what you don’t know, you’ll continue to feel powerless as you’re buffeted by the changes impacting your life, your business and your organization.

hiddenbeliefs.png

One caveat about creatively examining your individual or organizational belief system: don’t make it difficult by trying to make it perfect. If writing about your shift feels hard and stressful, then you can be sure that there’s an unwanted belief blocking your progress.

A lot of new-age and mass-market personal improvement material is unconcerned with doing the work that results in a deep level of self-knowledge. It appeals to the desire for a quick fix for being stuck, or getting the fulfillment that eludes. Its understandable why we’re seduced by simplistic positive thinking and creative visualization self-improvement models. But all too often, they just add more layers of “code” on top of an already buggy personal belief system. Improvements are fleeting, action plans are abandoned, and results are often disappointment and frustration. The reason is that hidden beliefs in what is not wanted continue to drive, even if they are hidden and ignored. Until recognized, examined, accepted and released, they will without fail, block quick fix attempts to get to something better, more meaningful and lasting.

The process is the same for collective beliefs as it is for individuals and its critical to leading and facilitating an organizational culture shift. Organizational cultures are collections of beliefs that largely determine the likelihood of success of any change initiative. To ignore, or not examine cultural beliefs is, like with individuals, a path to failure and frustration.

org_culture.png

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Filed under: Belief, Cognition, Consciousness, career, culture, enterprise initiatives, going solo, multi-dimensional, tribal wisdom
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Niche philosophy and slash career

January 12, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off 

I had lunch with an old friend last week who for decades has been both a successful therapist and abstract painter. He’s one of my few lifelong entrepreneurial friends with “little to none” technical or new media experience or interest, although he does have a web site for each business. In fact, I’ve often joked with my brilliant and talented friend that he’s the only Neo-Luddite I know who always gives me great insight and ideas about building a professional practice; advice that has nothing to do with the Web or technology.

So I was surprised when he told me that he knew he had a problem because in the last month he’s received no new calls from people who found him on the Web. He told me that until recently, he not only has consistently gotten inquiries but has had a number of people travel from the west for his services. When the calls recently stopped, he checked Google for his name and certain keywords, and saw that he did not come up at all until the second page. He previously came up on the top of page one. It was a big “aha” for him. It was a bucket of cold water for me, seeing how ahead of me he was, however unwittingly, in terms of getting business from SEO. More on that in my next post.

Later, my conversation with my friend made me think again about niche marketing principles, generalists and the recent buzz about “slash careers”, which I think is a cool idea, but interpreted so widely that it adds to the confusion about “to niche or not to niche”. But I do feel strongly that the convergences and intersections in our increasingly multi-dimensional lives, are big factors in how we design our service models and how we design and develop our personal/professional brands. Unlike some of the bloggers and authors on the this subject, I don’t think any model is more right, wrong, better or worse than any other. They’re just different, and a good starting point to think about what an integral, unique solo practice looks like.

generalist.pngI see myself as a generalist with a number of programs that share some core elements, for a number of different markets. My work draws upon my personal activities (like rowing, and being around kids as much as possible) but I don’t make money from my outside interests.

slashcareer.pngI see my therapist/artist friend as an example of a true slash career (and potential global microbrand). Both careers are businesses with separate markets. They draw upon and benefit each other, through him.

One of the authors, using herself as an example, describes her slash career as author/journalist/speaker/blogger/columinist. I see that differently from my friend - its words, largely the same topic and for the same large audience. I don’t have a name for it but it looks more like this to me - concentric.

quasislash.png

Other career-coach bloggers, when posting about the dangers of slash careers, lump in, for example, plumber/fisherman. But that feels more like career/hobby. But its a fine line, and like most career advice in the conceptual economy, there’s no one clear-cut answer. So I suggest play with it and bring in the right brain by drawing it. You may be planting the seeds for your global microbrand.

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Filed under: Consciousness, career, differentiation, encore career, generalist, going solo, multi-dimensional, slash career
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