Lean? I’d rather be Healthy!

I was talking to a friend the other day about Lean and Six Sigma and all that – and I felt I did not know the word “lean” – so I looked it up on synonym.com and this is what I found for the adjective:

Synonyms (Grouped by Similarity of Meaning) of adj lean
4 senses of lean

Sense 1:

thin (vs. fat), lean
anorexic, anorecticbony, cadaverous, emaciated, gaunt, haggard, pinched, skeletal, wasteddeep-eyed, hollow-eyed, sunken-eyedgangling, gangly, lankylank, spindlyrawbonedreedy, reedliketwiggy, twiglikescarecrowishscraggy, boney, scrawny, skinny, underweight, weedyshriveled, shrivelled, shrunken, withered, wizen, wizenedslender, slight, slim, svelteslender-waisted, slim-waisted, wasp-waistedspare, trimspindle-legged, spindle-shankedstringy, wirywisplike, wispy

Also See: ectomorphic; thin

Sense 2:

lean (vs. rich)

Sense 3:

lean, skimpy
insufficient (vs. sufficient), deficient

Sense 4:
lean
unprofitable (vs. profitable)

And this got me thinking….How is it that we ascribe so many negative connotations to a single idea – anorexic, anorecticbony, cadaverous, emaciated, gaunt, haggard, pinched, skeletal, wasteddeep-eyed, hollow-eyed, sunken-eyedgangling, gangly, unprofitable……etc. etc.
Isn’t it time for a new word to describe what is, essentially, keeping an organisation healthy?  All better ideas for words and terms gratefully received!
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Writer’s Block, Blooks and Going with the Flow

We have all had it. That frustrating blankness that hits you when you want to write something. Those who know me, know that I have been trying to write a book on bees since 1986. I am not sure if this is worthy of an entry in the Guinness Book of Records – but this work of art has been a long time in the womb!

Coincidentally today, I had an extraordinarily energetic meeting brainstorming out a new marketing strategy for a company. We really got “in the flow”. At the end of the meeting I had to take 5 minutes out just to re-tune to normality. One of the people at the meeting started talking about left-brained and right-brained thinking – and pointed me to the work and theories of Gabriele Rico.  Gabrielle has written a book that has sold over 500,000 copies called “Writing the Natural Way”.

On investigating the theories, I was struck by how similar they are to many of the methods I use in my work.  I use Spider Diagrams or Mind Maps a lot to brainstorm-out ideas – and then clump or cluster them into patterns or blocks of ideas – before finally looking for a natural sequence or flow that works well for the problem set in question.  I really liked Gabriele’s names for the two sides of the brain – “Sign Mind” and “Design Mind“.  Sign mind (left hemisphere) thinks linearly, parts-specifically, logically, one step at a time, while the Design mind (right hemisphere) thinks in whole patterns, drawing on images, emotional webs, sensory patterns, as in a memory that suddenly flashes into consciousness as a complex whole.  So similar to the attributes missing in the Organisational Caetextia article I wrote with Mark Richards last year.

So it got me thinking – why don’t I actually use this very effective technique to help me write the book?  And it made me realise that my my work and other activities at home are so time-consuming that the real issue wasn’t so much writers block, but time deficiency!  Although I have already created the chapters, the themes, the plot, I just need to sit down and write.  But I am not a natural writer.  I prefer telling stories aloud.  I prefer drawing pictures.  Anything but writing.  Gabrielle’s theory says I should be using my right brain (or Design Mind) first – and then start writing…

Actually, this problem is really why I started to blog.  Because I thought: if I write regularly in small chunks about things that interest me, then I hope to overcome this writer’s block that I have.  I set up another blog – http:/beelore.com – a few years ago.  And it really does seem to work – this blogging thing.  Little and often is better than being blocked and producing nothing at all.

Which means that I don’t currently plan to finish the book – because by the time I have done everything else, I actually don’t want to find the time to write the book.

I would rather work, play and blog; and go with the flow.  For the moment – anyway.  Than write a massive book.  On bees.  That probably few will read.  And certainly not over 500,000!  The rough numbers that read Gabriele’s book!

In fact I called beelore a “blook” – sort of cross of a book and a blog.  So maybe I havn’t got writer’s block…..I have simply replaced it with a new age, Web 2.0 writer’s blook!

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Escaping Flatland Thinking

I came across this short excerpt from the great film “What the Bleep Do We Know?” – in which Dr Quantum visits Flatland.  Makes you think!

And if you enjoyed that, you might enjoy this – which will begin to stretch your brain quite a bit:

And if you are still with me, come with me to the tenth dimension!

And if you are still with it, then you must be thinking: “Aren’t there really 11 dimensions?” – well here we are for a final brain stretcher:

And if you have gotten this far, I’ll next meet you in anti-time with Rob Bryanton!

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Hereafter and History Homework

Last night I went to see the Clint Eastwood directed movie – Hereafter.  I thoroughly enjoyed it as I had a near-death experience in the 1980s – and it sang true to many of the things that happened to me at the time – but which I have not really been able to articulate since.

The ironic thing was that I had attended a parents evening the night before and found that my son was struggling with his History and English essay writing. I took my son out to dinner before the film and explained to him that when I sit down to write something of any length, I always do it back-to-front. “Begin with the end in mind”. That sort of thing. I also use this very powerful tool in the work that I do. Some call it envisioning. I call it “Back-to-Front” Thinking. I then thread the important threads through the storyline to create drama, interest and tensions that get resolved at the end (which I have already written). I am no great writer – but I find this technique is so powerful, it has allowed me to express my ideas much better than any technique I was taught at school. I suppose in tech-speak it is like reverse engineering….but on original work and not copied from someone else.

Now when we got out of the film, the two pieces fitted so neatly together! The writer of the Hereafter movie, Peter Morgan, must have written the script back-to-front. How else could he have done it?

Like reading a good book, the film has three threads – a man with psychic powers, a woman writer-journalist who lives a near-death experience and a young boy who….well I don’t want to give too much away! The three threads dance through the film until they resolve each other’s tensions and stories at the end. What good movie or book doesn’t?

So back to Homework. I wondered why I was never taught this technique at school? I think of all the painful experiences where I had to sit down and write – without being told how it important it is to design before doing? I wonder why we don’t talk about the “how” of the structure to produce fine art – and make it much easier for young folk to succeed in what is really quite a simple technique.

Thinking of the UK government and the UK economy, I wonder if it is time for a bit of back-to-front thinking there too?

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Why do some organisations drive us totally bonkers?

Most of us can relate to examples of when customer service organisations have driven us completely bonkers: being passed off to another department that does not answer your call and drops you into a black hole; getting through to an Indian call centre that has not a clue how to address your problem; orders placed and fulfilled incorrectly……the list is endless.

With the so-called customer relationship being such a fundamental component to the success of any business, why do companies behave in such a maddening way? The answer may well lie in some interesting new research from psychology. It describes a model that helps to diagnose the roots of certain common mental health problems but can also be extended to help us understand some of the more general dysfunctions that we see within organisations.

The New Psychology of Caetextia (or Context Blindness)

Recent psychological research in the UK has come up with a new model for us to understand better what is going on with people suffering from a range of mental health conditions such as Asbergers’ syndrome, Autism and schizophrenia. In summary, these symptoms are best expressed by the inability of people to switch easily between several foci of attention – and to track them against the history and context that relates to them. This new line of research has been called ‘caetextia’ by the researchers: coming from the two Latin words caecus, (meaning ‘blind’) and contextus, (meaning ‘context’). Further details can be found at www.caetextia.com.

It would appear that organisations can also demonstrate the symptoms of caetextia (or context-blindness). Organisational Caetextia (or OC as we will call it from now on) can help us understand why some organisations exhibit a sort of madness when dealing with their customers and employees – yet give us a clue as to why they remain blind to the significant consequences of acting in such a crazy way.

In cases of caetextia in individuals, the new research has uncovered two types of context blindness – and OC can also be observed in two distinct types of dysfunctional behaviour. Before we look at these two types, though, it is worth looking in more detail at the part of the brain that allows us to process context.

Parallel Processing in the Human Brain

In order for us to have context, we need to be able to see events from different points of view. Recent research into how the brain works has revealed that all mammals have a part of the brain that can process masses of information at the same time – similar to the new ways that we configure parallel processing in computers. This part of the brain developed millions of years ago to guage the risks associated by processing multiple streams of information and unconsciously comparing them to previous experiences. This is something we take for granted today, but millons of years ago it was the key to any mammal’s survival and conserve energy by not reacting to every stimulus that came along.

The research has concluded that this parallel processing part of the brain can become impaired – and this is particularly prevalent in people who demonstrate symptoms on the autistic spectrum. In such cases the brain cannot do the parallel processing necessary to keep separate streams of attention, switching effortlessly between each of them to assess their relevance to what is actually happening in the here-and-now. This form of parallel processing requires the brain to dissociate: in other words to be able to to review what it knows about something that it has come across before, whilst also paying attention to that something in the present. It is no wonder that such people often suffer from learning difficulties!

Two types of Organisational Caetextia (OC)

The research has also uncovered two types of Caetextia: front-of-brain or straight-line thinking blindness and back-of-brain random association blindness. What is interesting is that these types of caetextia can also be applied to organisations and can help us understand why some organisations are so disconnected.

The first type can be called “Process OC”. This is where an organisation processes work in logical straight lines without taking into account the wider organisational implications of doing so. This type of OC is fixated in the front of the brain. Examples might be a call centre agent who does not know which person or department to hand-off someone to and simply puts them into a telephone black hole. Another example might be an agent who says “I am really sorry that this has happened to you, I will get someone to ring you back” – and they never do.

Organisational Caetextia of the process type tends to happen lower-down organisatons (for instance someone in the back-office saying: “that’s not my job, I only process this type of transaction”. Front line workers will often be encouraged to adopt to this type of thinking with phrases such as “You are not paid to think. Just do what I say”. This dysfunctionality is exacerbated by outsourcing arrangements where the supplier organisation fulfills its minimum service level obligations and is very much driven by the mantra “if it is not in the contract, then I can do it, but it will cost you more”.

The second type “Informational OC” tends to be found higher-up in organisations. This type of OC is based in the back of the brain. The symptoms of this type of organisational madness is driven by managers and “leaders” defining a whole world of information they need to run the business that is of very litle value other than to those managers holding their jobs down or playing the politics of the given day. Often the amount of information needed expands without any understanding on the cost associated with gathering it. The information is then dressed up as targets to “motivate” those lower down the organisation to stretch themselves to meet those targets and get a bonus. Vast parts of the organisation chase numbers that have no bearing on the reality of what is actually happening to customers on a day-to-day basis.

In times of stress, the information will often be used to create random associations between the data sets, coming to rapid conclusions to reinforce otherwise illogical assumptions and then finding it rather difficult to justify their decisions after the event. The whole saga of justifying Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq is a good example of this. Organisations also use such pools of information to get rid of people lower down in the organisation who are not “conforming”… even if the data bears no resemblence to reality and the people are doing valuable work with customers.

Conclusion

Successful organisations use back-brain (information = innovation) with front-brain (process = delivery) in a combination that drives continuous improvement. A well-known example of this is Google who allow each employee to spend 20% of their time on their own projects.

In less successful organisations, these two frameworks of OC might be useful in alerting organisations, managers and employees or service workers to the madness that is around them – and perhaps give them a perspective to stop some of the maddening things they are doing to their customers and suppliers at the moment!

References

More on the basic and ongoing research at Mindfields College (now Human Givens College) at: http://www.caetextia.com

The main ideas in this article were first published with Mark Richards (ex:pw consulting) in an article for the CRM evaluation centre.

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