Pure Schmaltz

Let’s say you have a government that doesn’t serve your personal agenda. You have a grievance. You’d like to make some changes to better serve your interests. What do you do?

One popular local strategy undermines. Rather than helping officials leverage their power to serve your interests or taking their power for yourself, this approach diffuses their power by defaming it. No need to painstakingly work through issues or risk personal injury.

This scenario is a seductive alternative for anyone feeling disenfranchised. But it requires some skill, lest the slinger end up with more mud on themselves than on their target. 

First, create yourself a “special interest group.” 

Next, claim to speak for the community.  Name it something like “Citizens for Good Grievances.” (Stay anonymous! Termites work invisibly!)  

Next, assume the worst. Firmly believe their perspective isn’t just different, but evil. 

Then, start peppering them with double binds. If you simply ask answerable questions, you’ll make no headway at all. The questions must elicit guilty responses. Not “How do you care for your dog,” but “When will you stop beating your dog?” See the difference?

If they respond that they’re not beating their dog, it’s evidence of a deeper denial than even you could have imagined (or so your next letter to the editor will say.) If they respond that they’ve already stopped, they indict themselves for having beaten. If they do not respond, their silence will become your gold! However they respond, they’re guilty as you’ve charged! 

You’re best advised to keep them focused on fixing the past. Lawsuits can help here. No one can actually fix the past, but keeping government focused upon fixing the past helps demonstrate their incompetence and prevents you from having to propose anything.

Keep your distance as you sling. Do not get to know those people as fellow humans, for this will surely undermine your efforts. Remember, you can sling forever if you insist that their opinions are evil, not just different.

Properly done, you’ll create a pit where government cannot make a move without clogging its cleats with your anonymous mud. You might not get what you want, but you’ll disable their ability to do anything. Decent payback for such a small investment.

The result won’t be good government, but great grievances.

Is this good enough for us?

"We like to think that people improve their judgment by putting their minds together, and sometimes they do. The studio audience at “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” usually votes for the right answer. But suppose, instead of the audience members voting silently in unison, they voted out loud one after another. And suppose the first person gets it wrong.

"If the second person isn’t sure of the answer, he’s liable to go along with the first person’s guess. By then, even if the third person suspects another answer is right, she’s more liable to go along just because she assumes the first two together know more than she does. Thus begins an “informational cascade” as one person after another assumes that the rest can’t all be wrong.

"Because of this effect, groups are surprisingly prone to reach mistaken conclusions even when most of the people started out knowing better, according to the economists Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer and Ivo Welch. If, say, 60 percent of a group’s members have been given information pointing them to the right answer (while the rest have information pointing to the wrong answer), there is still about a one-in-three chance that the group will cascade to a mistaken consensus."

So says the New York Times!

I continually see informational cascades at work. Heck, I even start some of them.

I read a headline, presume the story behind it, and repeat what I presumed as if it related to the headline. I see someone behaving in some way that would mean something very specific if I were behaving in that way. (God and the person I see only know what their behavior really means!) I don't check in with them before concluding exactly what their behavior actually means, then pass my clever conclusion on just as if it were fact.

Fact is, I don't very often check my facts. I live on a diet of impressions, projections, and unsupportable conclusions. You probably do, too. My prejudices probably influence more of my conclusions than provable fact ever will --- or even could.

Ever had a piece you've written "fact checked?" It can be a disconcerting experience, as someone armed with encyclopedia and a LEXUS/NEXUS account tries to verify the truth of what you've written. In practice, the quality of the story seems more important than the absolute facts behind any story. Who could (or should) ever let the truth stand in the way of telling a compelling story?

To learn that scientists no less than any of the rest of us fall prey to informational cascades shouldn't surprise me. I spent about ten good, middle adult years, eating stuff that was supposed to lower my cholesterol but didn't.

We live, and apparently thrive on speculation. Always have. Always, I speculate, will. But then what do I really know? Our time here is little different than our ancestors' time here. Different speculations, but speculations none-the-less. We are confident that we know a lot, much of which isn't actually so.

Pass it on!

Let's say you want someone to change. What should you NOT do? Here are some ideas.

The approaches outlined below sometimes work. The trouble is that they work just enough to keep us hooked into believing that they work unconditionally. We might never conclude that when continually repeated, they not only don’t work, but most often intensify the very behaviors and attitudes we are trying to change. The following lists contain most of the comments you’ve heard frustrated parents pass to their unruly children. Maybe you’ve heard yourself say these, too?

These approaches fail because they just do not work long term, regardless of your presentation skills, your unassailable logic, or the purity of your motivation. It seems to be a law of human nature: Humans cannot cooperate in the face of continual Unsolicited Lectures, Taking The Moral Highly Ground, Self Sacrifice/Denial, and expectations that say, “You really ought to want to!”

Unsolicited Lectures

This approach includes anything offered “for your own good!”

* Nagging
* Hints
* Encouragements- “Why don't you just try to...”
* Begging, Pleading, Justifying,
* Appealing to Logic or to Common Sense
* Any written material Strategically Left Around or Read Out Loud
* Any Silent, Long-Suffering, or Angry “Look at How Patiently and Bravely I am Not Saying or Noticing Anything” Approaches, Repeated and/or Escalating Punishments Often Result in More of the Same, or an Escalation of, Problem Behaviors.

Taking The Moral High Ground

Observing from a superior position, especially when using “unassailable” logic, moral outrage, or righteous indignation. Commenting as if the speaker controls the truth about how things “really” are or how they are “supposed” to be. Acting as if one has knowledge, abilities, or a set of morals in which another is clearly deficient.

* “If you were really committed...”
* “Surely you could see that if you...”
* “Why can't anyone realize that...”
* “Anyone with any sense...”
* “After all I've done...”
* “Look how sick I've made myself by worrying about...”
* “I'll help you if you do exactly what I want.”
* “I will continue protecting you for as long as you behave the way I want you to behave.”

Using this technique puts the target into the position of having to question his own judgment. Since he cannot access your judgment, except through you, this leaves him a prisoner to your pseudo-superior judgment. Your judgment cannot replace his.

Self Sacrifice Denial

Any technique that attempts to encourage change in another by denying something for yourself, as if equity means that you have to invest more than anyone else involved in the transaction:

* Keeping the Peace
* Tiptoeing So Others Won’t Be Upset Or Angry
* Putting the Happiness of Others Before Your Own
* Justifying Yourself
* Protecting Others From the Consequences Of Their Own Actions
* Putting Your Own Life on Hold
* Hoping the Other Will Change
* Trying to Please Somebody/Everybody

“You Really Ought To Want To!”

Where a person or a group tries to make another change, demanding that they do it because they want to do it.

* “You ought to want to please me.”
* “All ya gotta do is...”
* “I want you to show the enthusiasm I know you’re hiding inside.”
* “You helped resolve the problem, but I would have
* preferred that you chose to do it willingly.”


Trying to make somebody more responsible, more expressive, more reasonable, more thoughtful, more considerate, more assertive, etc., is an invitation for them to be obedient to your definition of how they should be, regardless of your actual intention. These rarely, if ever, work. They elicit at best obedience. By far the most likely response will be an increasing inability to respond, disobedience, anger, withdrawal, resentment, and failure.

Most people do not like to be obedient.

Toyota and General Motors decided to have a concrete canoe race on the Missouri River . Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.

On the big day, Toyota won by a mile.


GM, very discouraged, decided to investigate the reason for their crushing defeat. A strategic management team, made up of senior management, was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action. They concluded that Toyota had 8 non-union guest workers rowing on a twelve hour shift and 1 person steering, while the GM team had to include 4 pensioners who couldn’t row, 4 union employees who were restrained from rowing for more than four hours without a break (and had to comply with union rules limiting latitude for individual judgment), and 8 people steering: administering health plans, pension benefits, and compliance with union and government mandates, and maintaining narrowly-focused shareholder relationships.

Feeling a deeper study was in order, GM management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion. They questioned the strategy that insisted upon competing with so many people steering and riding on the boat, and not enough people rowing.

Toyota prepared for a second race by conducting a joint rower/steerer retrospective, while GM rearranged deck chairs. GM lost the second race, too.

Destiny is the accumulation of choices interacting with DNA.

Toyota chose to populate its plants with cheap, non-union guest workers, GM chose to populate theirs with domestic, union workers. The Japanese government chose to provide universal health care, pension benefits, easy guest-worker immigration, and hefty corporate give-aways (and look-asides). The US Government chose to require corporations to also be in the health care and pension businesses and discourage non-union, guest-worker immigration that even hefty give-aways and look-asides couldn’t counterbalance.

Toyota focused upon economy of resource and quality of rowing while GM included deck chairs to hold quality of life on board.

After losing the second race, GM took a deep, long-range look at their business model and chose to stop racing Toyota in little boats. So, GM expanded their financing business (even helping Toyota finance their canoes), expanded their position in off-shore markets by forging joint manufacturing and marketing agreements (with, among others, Toyota), negotiated with their union to assume partial responsibility for administering their pension system, and (finally) started spending some serious lobbying money to support domestic universal health care and more progressive guest-worker laws. They chose to expand, broaden, and deepen their business. Direct manufacture and sales of automobiles fell as a contribution to gross revenue. Profitability eventually soared.

In business, it’s a good idea to drop out of competitions that don’t serve your purposes and change the game to something that balances the conditions you face and the aspirations you desire. If GM could divorce itself from its DNA, it might successfully compete in concrete canoe racing. Since it’s unlikely to lose its DNA, it’s wise to choose a strategy that holds the promise of delivering the quality of life it aspires to. Even if that doesn’t involve manufacturing as many cars or racing concrete canoes.

In any competition, success depends upon choosing not to compete where you cannot win. You might have to lose a canoe race or two before you figure out where you should be competing.

Moral:
Success almost never comes from collaboratively improving the processes by which you create what you don’t want.

Today's New York Times features a fascinating article, which plays into recent postings about design. The article, entitled Army Enlists Anthropology in War Zones, describes how employing social scientists is increasing effectiveness and reducing violence in Afghanistan. Here's an excerpt:


The anthropology team here also played a major role in what the military called Operation Khyber. That was a 15-day drive late this summer in which 500 Afghan and 500 American soldiers tried to clear an estimated 200 to 250 Taliban insurgents out of much of Paktia Province, secure southeastern Afghanistan’s most important road and halt a string of suicide attacks on American troops and local governors.

In one of the first districts the team entered, Tracy identified an unusually high concentration of widows in one village, Colonel Woods said. Their lack of income created financial pressure on their sons to provide for their families, she determined, a burden that could drive the young men to join well-paid insurgents. Citing Tracy’s advice, American officers developed a job training program for the widows.

In another district, the anthropologist interpreted the beheading of a local tribal elder as more than a random act of intimidation: the Taliban’s goal, she said, was to divide and weaken the Zadran, one of southeastern Afghanistan’s most powerful tribes. If Afghan and American officials could unite the Zadran, she said, the tribe could block the Taliban from operating in the area.

“Call it what you want, it works,” said Colonel Woods, a native of Denbo, Pa. “It works in helping you define the problems, not just the symptoms.”

The program is just in the early stages, and as the article reports, some feel strongly that this is militarizing the social sciences. Those involved claim to be better socalizing the military. Whatever.

This seems analogous to what I've seen when we focus upon how things really are, as we do when designing a project, as a means for better defining how they might be. As long as the target is killing more insurgents, the supply of insurgents seems inexhaustible. Reframe the purpose to undermining the reasons for people to become insurgents, and the whole game changes quite dramatically.

We probably should no more expect a programmer armed with technology, a manager focused upon controlling execution, or a soldier armed with a rifle to delve into these deeper -- or shallower -- social perspectives. But no project was ever mustered to simply deliver requirements. No project was ever managed simply to exert control. And no war was ever fought -- or, more importantly won -- by simply killing the bad guys.

There's an old concept called Context Marker, that Gregory Bateson used to kick around. A context marker is a subtle environmental cue that pretty reliably informs people how to behave in a situation. Context markers mostly influence at a pre-conscious level. Paying attention to and deliberately setting context markers can influence self organization. 

An example: Set up a conference room into rows of chairs with a center aisle. Dim the lights. Place an open book, perhaps a candle, on a small table at the head of the room. Then invite people into that room and watch what they do. Conversation will hush as they enter. Some will fold their hands in front of them. Ask later why people sat where they sat and and you'll learn that quite a few chose a chair positioned where their family sat in church when they were kids. Were they aware that they were doing that? Most weren't until they reflected on it.

Someone was aware enough to recognize how that context marker might influence the people encountering it. This is an example of a light touch that works whether or not one is influencing an anarchist or an organization. We can become more aware of the contexts we find ourselves in and more deliberately choose how to respond, but without that awareness, we're pretty much slaves to these influences.

We find a lot of garbled context markers whenever we see an incoherent team at work. A team might, for example, espouse co-equal relationships but their leader "owns" a certain, dominant position at the table. No one consciously decided this "lowerarchy", but no one else would dare sit in that chair! Such groups seem to extend their 'storming' period. Perhaps because they are trying to resolve the pre-conscious incongruities surrounding them. 

I'm always amused when I attend a class or a conference promoted as different and find the same old context markers: Lectern, PowerPoint slides, talking head or dancing bear holding forth in front of a room full of people who cannot see each others' eyes. Notice how the really interesting conversations happen in the hallways and the bar? Context markers.

When context markers are mixed or haphazard, don't be surprised if you find that you need to do a lot of coaching and reminding about principles and protocols. When markers are consistent and deliberate, people seem to just act right.

We are more sensitive to context markers than we are conscious of them. Explaining doesn't influence in the same way. They represent tacit knowledge, stuff anyone raised in a culture just understands. Anyone not raised in that culture might not get it. 

Some mix-ups are unavoidable. Our contexts are remarkably incoherent these days. I'm always confused when I enter a company who claims to have a culture of trust, but also has an armed guard station and a metal detector at the entrance. Or one that claims a flat organization, but the managers have doors and gate-keepers. One of my colleagues, disturbed at the mixed message his office door induced, came in on a Sunday and took that door off its hinges and set it on two saw horses to make a conference table. A perfect metaphor for creating more congruent context markers. 

Self-organization does just happen. Whether self-organization 'just happens' as intended might have more to do with the intention than any anarchist or leader might comfortably acknowledge. In Small Gods, Terry Pratchett introduced priests who had learned that if they prayed fervently (and quickly) for a rock to fall after they'd dropped it over a cliff, the Gods always answered their prayer. I've learned that if I can conjure up a sticky metaphor for what we're up to together and share it, we all seem to line up facing that goal. If I just explain where we're intending to go without attending to the context markers that correspond to people quite naturally going there, I'm herding cats.

Yesterday, I read Seymour Hersh's latest: Shifting Targets The Administration's plan for Iran in the New Yorker. I found myself slipping into a cocoon of dread as I read. The piece examines the Administration's deliberations around how to justify attacking Iran. It tells a story of cynical certainty creating conditions before the fact that will justify the unthinkable after the fact.



Later, I was listening to a book called Dark Star, which tells the story of a Pravda journalist during the run-up to WWII. He, too, was surrounded by cynical certainty seeking to justify unthinkable actions. He lived in dread, too.

This got me thinking about uncertainty and realizing that I usually operate pretty well under conditions of uncertainty. Uncertainty is, after all, the human condition. I start going ginky, though, when a cynical kind of certainty slips into the conversation. Like when I'm certain of what I need to do and uncertain how to justify doing that. Or when I'm certain that something is going to happen and I can't imagine it turning out well. These combinations seem like the perfect breeding grounds for dread.

Dread seems to spring from the certain parts, not the uncertain ones. Cynicism has been defined as wounded optimism. And when my own certainty shifts from optimism to wounded optimism, I slide into dread. Maybe you do, too.

My problem is certainty then, not uncertainty. It won't respond to becoming more certain because the root cause already wallows in certainty. More certainty then just creates more muck to wallow in.

Perhaps, if the difficulty is certainty, the antidote lies in uncertainty. But not the "damn, I'm stuck with not knowing again!!" wounded certainty, but with another kind. An optimistic uncertainty. Since both my certainty and my uncertainty are about the future, they're both just stories, just fiction now. If the present fiction isn't working, a replacement fiction is called for.

I'm learning to appreciate my dread. It's evidence that I'm not yet as productive a writer as I might be. It challenges me to write a better story, one that might satisfy me now, today, rather than leave me huddled and fearful.

If this seems awfully notional to you (like it does to me!), it's only because it is. Our notions (aka our fictional certainties) have powerful influence, and might well be effectively neutralized by simply changing the story.