Home of the Wanderer

I recently made a note to myself, in the midst of my sociocratic musings, to go re-read Dee Hock’s book, “The Birth of the Chaordic Age.”  When I did (well, okay, I just skimmed it – it’s laid out to make that easy), I came up with this mapping of concepts (all of which might be useful material for picture-forming when putting together a new organization):

Another tip from one of my learning journals: “Want to develop leadership?  Allow initiative, and permit failures, in non-catastrophic areas.  If you want to grow at all, do this.”

Nick Fenger’s comment (and related email) reminded me of the project I started in February: regularly posting an item from my folder on relationships. I’ve allowed it to sit on the back burner since then. Looks like the flame was off, even. Anyway, here’s another note from my learning journals - this time, from the one on Sociocracy.

It’s about workflow analysis. I wrote this a week ago:

The more you can reduce the qualifications required to do parts of your work – by documenting & routinizing it/them – the more of your work you can delegate to less-qualified people (including possible yourself on days when you’re distracted/”off”/burnedout/whatever). Even if you don’t hand the tasks to someone else, performing them yourself will require less of your mental attention. Either way, you are freed up to apply your energy elsewhere: living your life, doing work at a more abstract level, or any other way you choose. This is both personal & professional development, and it makes you deeply valuable to the people and organizations with whom you live & work.

(Note: if you can simplify your work instructions enough, someone can build a machine to do your work & it becomes entirely optional.  When this happens, the person or organization who developed the instructions stands to benefit the most, as these machines - if they do the job well enough - may be in demand in any number of other organizations.)

A few further thoughts on this subject:

According to a lovely animated video adapted from a presentation by Dan Pink, people increase their output on simple mechanistic tasks when offered bigger rewards for better performance.  More complex tasks apparently work in the opposite way - a small reward for performance improves performance a little, but medium rewards do little to further improve performance and large rewards can actually hurt performance.

A detailed workflow analysis has the effect of taking a task that doesn’t respond well to rewards and turning it into one that does.  Interestingly, Sociocratic remuneration systems offer the largest rewards for performance to those who are doing concrete, detailed, and likely repetitive work, and proportionally much smaller rewards – though perhaps a greater number of them – to those who are working at a more abstract level to guide those projects toward success (because they’ve put in so much less time, and because that time was divided among so many more projects).  Apparently, this isn’t just good math, it’s good psychology.

And lastly, a point about automation: I’m not intending to suggest that automation is universally a good idea.  But I do think that repetitive tasks that can be done by machines should be optional for humans - and that we should give credit to the people who invent them.  When I say such inventors stand to benefit the most, I don’t necessarily mean that they should reap a monetary profit (nor do I mean to say now that they shouldn’t) – just that they are uniquely positioned to do so if they make that choice.  I also happen to think they’d do better, in today’s information ecology, to (eventually) release their invention under a creative commons license and sign people up for service contracts (or not), rather than keeping it to themselves forever.  Obligatory Arduino reference.

I have an inch-thick folder of notes about relationships – how to conduct myself in them, how to approach and enter them so that they turn out more fun for all involved, and so on – generated from my own experiences (and often realized through a conversation with a mentor).  I’ve accumulated them for over a decade; though the oldest thing in this folder is from 2005, I’ve got other folders, books, and journals with my notes on the subject from as long ago as 1997.

Anyway, I decided I’d try sharing some of my accumulated notions.  I’d love to hear from others what they think of these, or how they’ve played out in your lives.  I think it’s going to just be a selection of quick summary notes, for now, often as tips, aphorisms, or what-have-you.

This week’s tip: if you ask for what you want, and play as if you can get it, you’re likely to get it if you can.  If you miss either of these, you’re almost guaranteed not to.

I was once in a state of perplexity
at how to resolve life’s complexity.
My stress was relieved
when I let go and breathed,
because I remembered that I don’t need to work it all out myself.

Or:

Life, an exercise:
releasing expectations;
receiving what is.

Again forgot to take pics. But I’m enjoying visiting with friends and listening to speeches.

Hawthorne Boulevard Business Association annual meeting. Yeah, I haven’t posted for a few days. More on that soon. Anyway, lots of folks here, and good food. Forgot to take pics.

Tempeh reubens and blue heron pale ale with Alexis. Yum!

Oatmeal breakfast with Alexis.