marginally subversive

thoughts to start the week - and my new adventure, NUMERATI

I picked this one up from Ben Parr (benparr.com) in one of his blog entries.  It is a good way to start the week - and personally, a good way to start my new adventure, Numerati, a company I have set up that will help clients make sense of the reams of numbers and data using statistics, analytics, and integrative-thinking techniques.

Weekend Inspirations: Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford University Speech

It's 6years old - but it still never ceases to amaze and inspire me.

Steve Jobs' commencement speech at the Stanford U is something worth listening to.

The transcript is here.

dispassionately passionate

A former boss and I were talking about his requirements for hiring.  One of the things that he said struck me: "I never hire people who are too passionate for their job.  They tend to mix emotions and work - and let emotions overcome them when the work needs to be done."

At first, I disagreed with him.

My reasoning was simple: "We need passionate people who are willing to go beyond the call of duty to deliver - specially in a very competitive world such as the media and ad industry.  We need passionate people who will go the extra mile in order to deliver."

Then I realized - perhaps a little too late - that passion is not what drives one to go beyond the printed roles and responsibilities and job description.  It is the willingness - that desire - to deliver a great job. It is that belief that "nothing unremarkable should leave my desk", balanced carefully with "I am not superwoman/superman" that makes people remarkable.

Whatever is served in front of them, they deliver - to the best of their ability.  They do the work - and they do it well.  And if doing it well requires doing that "extra bit", that "extra mile", that "extra mile", then so be it.

All these are done with the thought at the back of their heads that "I cannot save the world all by myself - because I am only human". 

When the limit is reached - and we all have physical, mental, and psychological limits - it has to be respected.  And accepted.

Dispassionately-passionate is what we are looking for.

***

This post was inspired by Seth Godin, who writes:

Here's the thing: it's never personal. It's never about you. How could it be? That person doesn't truly know you, understand what you want or hear the voices in your head. All they know is themselves.

When someone moves on, when she walks away or even badmouths you or your work, it's not personal about you. It's personal about her. Her agenda, her decisions, her story.

Do your work, the best way you know how. Is there any other option?

 

A profound, three-liner conversation

P1: Why are you so scared of complexity?

P2: Why are you so scared of simplicity?

P3: Why be scared at all?

i am an artist, you are an artist, we are all artists

It's not the medium or the oil or the price or whether it hangs on a wall or you eat it. What matters, what makes it art, is that the person who made it overcame the resistance, ignored the voice of doubt and made something worth making. Something risky. Something human.

Art is not in the eye of the beholder. It's in the soul of the artist.

via sethgodin.typepad.com

someone in your office could very well be an artist.

she may not know how to draw - but she can do magic with spreadsheets and make them easy to use.

he may not be able to carry a tune - but he may be able to deliver presentations that make people listen.

she may be from the finance and accounting department.

he may be working at the reception area.

it doesn't matter.

they are artists.

and perhaps, in all of us - when we do what we do and imbue it with our perspiration (and sometimes, tears) - there resides an artist.

and sometimes, it may not be beholden by others - and others may see it too different, too weird, too... human.

but what they say or do or how they react do not detract to the work we've done.

i am an artist.

you are an artist.

we are all artists.

on detaching one's self from work

 

a friend of mine who works in the finance field - he is one of those who comes up with those complicated equations and stuff so his company can sell them (I think it's called "securitization"?) - kept on telling me that "YOU ARE NOT YOUR JOB! YOU ARE NOT YOUR SALARY! YOU ARE NOT YOUR HOUSE! YOU WILL NOT BE YOUR CAR!" (since I still don't have a car).

apparently, he's learned it the hard way when the market collapsed.  he saw his colleagues lose their sense of self (selves?) as the financial crisis took hold of their industry.

i asked him, "how did you survive?" (with survive being used loosely as he lost his job during that really blackhole of a period).

he answered, "because i am not my job nor my career nor the letters after my last name nor my car".

immediately after he was laid off, he sold off his Peugeot and downgraded to a more manageable car.  he willingly rediscovered the value of public transportation. and eating at really, really cheap places.  he also took the time to stock up on books and read.

i am sure that not all of us can do what he did - specially that "taking-a-break-from-corporate-world".  but there's merit i think in what he constantly said to me: "YOU ARE NOT YOUR JOB, YOU ARE NOT YOUR CAREER."

this blog from HBR.Org could have captured his entire viewpoints.  i really wouldn't know - i have yet to speak with him.  he's currently in some remote island in some archipelago somewhere reading books he's never had the chance to read whilst working.

-----------

Detach Yourself from Your Work
by Gill Corkindale 

 

1. Be honest about how much time you spend at work and why. Is it really necessary to work long, extra hours to accomplish your tasks and objectives, or are you regularly staying late for other reasons? To impress your boss and your peers, or simply because you are not managing your time well during the day?

2. Manage your energy, not your time. The excellent HBR article on this subject will help you identify how to monitor and use your energy well. Check your energy levels throughout the day and week. Leave work early one evening a week — say Wednesday — so you can maintain momentum. What is your energy right now and how can you maintain and boost it?

3. Identify and banish time-stealers. These can be in the form of demanding people, routine or unnecessary meetings or tasks, or even your own bad habits. Seek out the critical time-stealers, develop a plan to deal with them and consign them to the past. This should help you feel more in charge of your agenda. What are your time-stealers?

4. Find a buddy or mentor at work. Rather than burdening your partner with work-related issues, find a colleague for a regular downloading session. One friend of mine meets a colleague weekly and they are each allowed a half an hour to rant and rave about issues and seek advice. They find this acts as a great pressure valve for them. Who could be your buddy or partner?

5. Treat time outside work as sacrosanct and refresh yourself. Protect your time outside work as much as you can. You need to be able to switch off from work for your own health and sanity and that of your friends and family. Find a way to refresh and replenish yourself after a week's work. What do you do to support yourself each week? The gym, long walks, visits with friends, a favourite art gallery or restaurant? What is your weekly source of replenishment?

6. Remind yourself that you are much more than your job. However much you love your job, it is a mistake to define yourself too closely to your work. Take time to reflect on what you want to achieve in life and think about your definition of personal success. This should help you during those times when work gets difficult and the pressure becomes unbearable. What is your definition of life success?

via blogs.hbr.org

38 ways to win an argument according to Schopenhauer...

I picked this one up from my other blog, which I got from this blog.

Presumably, this is from Schopenhauer, a German Philosopher, who is quite well-known for his clarity of thinking.  Though I never read his works in the university, I have heard of him and his influence on Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and the psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung.

These stratagems to win any argument were lifted from one of his books, The Art of Controversy, which as you will find out is quite controversial indeed.  In this book, he enumerated how one can win any argument.

Well, it doesn't necessarily mean that one ought to follow them - one needs to be aware of them in order to deflect any attempts of others in using them to win an argument.

Will I recommend someone using these?  I am not sure.  Going through the list, I think these do increase the chance of winning an argument - but they do not necessarily facilitate truth nor are they conducive to real, clear communication lines.

I will recommend reading through them in order to know and be aware.

1) Carry your opponent's proposition beyond its natural limits; exaggerate it.
The more general your opponent's statement becomes, the more objections you can find against it. The more restricted and narrow your propositions remain, the easier they are defend.

2) Use different meanings of your opponent's words to refute his or her argument.

3) Ignore your opponent's proposition, which was intended to refer to a particular thing.
Rather, understand it and state it in some quite different sense, and then refute it. Attack something different than that which was asserted.

4) Hide your conclusion from your opponent till the end. Mingle your premises here and there in your talk. Get your opponent to agree to them in no definite order.
By this circuitious route you conceal your game until you have obtained all the admissions that are necessary to reach your goal.

5) Use your opponent's beliefs against him.
If the opponent refuses to accept your premises, use his own premises to your advantage.

6) Another plan is to confuse the issue by changing your opponent's words or what he or she seeks to prove.

7) State your proposition and show the truth of it by asking the opponent many questions.
By asking many wide-reaching questions at once, you may hide what you want to get admitted. Then you quickly propound the argument resulting from the opponent's admissions.

8) Make your opponent angry.
An angry person is less capable of using judegment or perceiving where his or her advantage lies.

9) Use your opponet's answers to your question to reach different or even opposite conclusions.

10) If your opponent answers all your questions negatively and refuses to grant any points, ask him or her to concede the opposite of your premises.
This may confuse the opponent as to which point you actually seek them to concede.

11) If the opponent grants you the truth of some of your premises, refrain from asking him or her to agree to your conclusion.
Later, introduce your conclusion as a settled and admitted fact. Your opponent may come to believe that your conclusion was admitted.

12) If the argument turns upon general ideas with no particular names, you must use language or a metaphor that is favorable in your proposition.

13) To make your opponent accept a proposition, you must give him or her an opposite, counter-proposition as well.
If the contrast is glaring, the opponent will accept your proposition to avoid being paradoxical.

14) Try to bluff your opponent.
If he or she has answered several of your questions without the answers turning out in favor of your conclusion, advance your conclusion triumphantly, even if it does not follow. If your opponent is shyr or stupid,and you yourself possess a great deal of impudence and a good voice, the trick may easily succeed.

15) If you wish to advance a proposition that is difficult to prove, put it aside for the moment. Instead, submit for your opponent's acceptance or rejection some true poposition, as though you wished to draw your proof from it.
Should the opponent reject it because he or she suspects a trick, you can obtain your triumph by showing how absurd the opponent is to reject a true proposition.
Should the opponent accept it, you now have reason on your own for the moment. You can either try to prove your original proposition or maintain that your original proposition is proved by what the opponent accepted. For this, an extreme degree of impudence is required.

16) When your opponent puts forth a proposition, find it inconsistent with his or her other statements, beliefs, actions, or lack of action.

17) If your opponent presses you with a counter proof, you will often be able to save yourself by advancing some subtle distinction.  
Try to find a second meaning or an ambiguous sense for your opponent's idea.

18) If your opponent has taken up a line of argument that will end in your defeat, you must not allow him or her to carry it to its conclusion. Interrupt the dispute, break it off altogether, or lead the opponent to a different subject.

19) Should your opponent expressly challenge you to produce any objection to some definite point in his or her argument, and you have nothing much to say, try to make the argument less specific.

20) If your opponent has admitted to all or most of your premises, do not ask him or her directly to accept your conclusion.
Rather draw the conclusion yourself as if it too had been admitted.

21) When your opponent uses an argument that is superficial and you see its falsehood, you can refute it by setting forth its superficiality.
But it is better to counter with an argument that is just as superficial.
Your concern is victory - NOT truth.

22) If your opponent asks you to admit something from which the point in dispute will immediately follow, you must refuse to do so, declaring that it begs the question.

23) Contradiction and contention irritate a person into exaggerating their statements.
By contradicting your opponent, you may drive him or her into extending the statement beyond its natural limit.
When you then contradict the exaggerated form of it, you look as though you had refuted the orginal statement your opponent tries to extend your own statement further than you intended, redefine your statement's limits.

24) Make a false syllogism.
Your opponent makes a proposition; force from the proposition other propositions that are unintended and are absurd through false inference and distortion.

25) If your opponent is making a generalization, find an instance to the contrary.
Only one valid contradiction is needed to overthrow the oppoent's proposition.

26) A brilliant move is to turn the tables and use your opponent's arguments against him or herself.

27) Should your opponent surprise you be becoming particularly angry at an argument, you must urge it with all the more zeal.
Not only will this make the opponent angry, it may be presumed that you put your finger on the weak side of his or her case, and that the opponent is more open to attack on this point than you expected.

28) You make an invalid objection to your opponent who seems to be defeated in the eyes of the audience.
This strategy is particularly effective if your objection makes the opponent look ridiculous or if the audience laughs.
If the opponent must make a long, complicated explanation to correct you, the audience will not be disposed to listen.

29) If you find that you are being beaten, you can create a diversion -  i.e., you can suddenly begin to talk  of something else, as though it had bearing on the matter.
This may be done without presumption if the diversion has some general bearing on the matter.

30) Make an appeal to authority rather than reason.
If your opponent respects an authority or an expert, quote that authority to further your case. If needed, quote what the authority said in some other sense or circumstance. Authorities that your opponet fails to understand are those which he or she generally admires thae most. You may also, should it be necessary, not only twist your authorities, but actually falsify them, or quote something that you have invented entirely yourself.

31) If you know that you have no reply to an argument that your opponet advances, you may by a fine stroke of irony, declare yourself to be an incompetent judge.

32) A quick way of getting rid of an opponent's assertion, or throwing suspicion on it, is by putting it into some odious, detestable category.

33) Admit your opponent's premises but deny the conclusion.

34) When you state a question or an argument, and your opponent gives you no direct answer, or evades it with a counter question, or tries to change the subject, it is a sure sign you have touched a weak spot, sometimes without you knowing it.
You must, therefore, pursue the point all the more, and not let your opponent evade it, even when you do not know where the weakness that you have hit upon really lies.

35) Instead of working on an opponent's intellect, work on his or her motive.
If you succeed in making your opponent's opinion, should it prove true, seem dinstinclty to his or her own interes, the opponenentwill drop it like a hot potato.

36) You may also puzzle and bewilder your opponent by mere pomposity or use of highfalutin words.
If the opponent is weak or does not wish to appear as if he or she has no idea what you are talking about, you can easily impose upon him or her some argument that sounds very deep or learned, or that sounds indisputable.

37) Should your opponent be in the right but with a faulty proof, you can easily refute it and then claim that you have refuted the whole position.
This is the way which bad advocates lose a good case.

38) A last trick is to become personal, insulting and rude as soon as you perceive that your opponent has the upper hand.
In becoming personal you leave the subject altogether, and turn your attack on the person by remarks of an offensive and spiteful character. This is a very popular trick, because everyone is able to carry it into effect.

via experimentalist.posterous.com and http://melsantos.blogspot.com/2005/06/schopenhauers-38-stratagems-or-38-ways.html. For the complete list in German and in English, see http://coolhaus.de/art-of-controversy/

masking ineptitude with arrogance... and smokes and mirrors

I have always been astounded, amazed, surprise, awed (ok... enough...) by how much people would push the envelope to get ahead in the corporate race.

Seth Godin writes about arrogance masking reality in the corporate world.  And I couldn't agree more.  

He writes:

Somewhere along the way, we confused the signals with the work. Now there are people who start with the bad behavior and the affectations, hoping that it will be seen as a sign of insight and talent. And they often get away with it. "Who's that?" we wonder... "I don't know, but they must be good at what they do, because why else would we put up with them?" It's a great plan when it works, but I don't think it's a strategy to be counted on.

Call it confirmation bias.  Or some other form of cognitive bias.  

Or simply attribute it to our humanity that seeks to find the good in people and forgo their shortcomings and ineptitude.

From my vantage point, however, it's all about smokes and mirrors, low signal-to-noise ratios, creation and maintenance of illusory skills and achievements even when faced by threats of being found wanting.

Godin writes further:

The key to getting a reputation for being brilliant is actually being brilliant, not just acting like you are.

If only it were that easy.

Sometimes, the reputation of being brilliant is not enough particularly in a corporate scenario where low signal-to-noise ratios and smokes-and-mirrors are upheld, rather than good, remarkable, and excellent work.

I think in spite of the changes that have occurred or occurring in the corporate world - and the demand for people to be linchpins and to be investors in "emotional work" rather than simply "showing up for time and the attendance sheet", there will always be companies - regardless of how much they extol the virtues of innovation and "challenge the status quo" - that are deeply mired in smokes-and-mirrors.

 

 

fortune favors the bold

a very short reminder that somehow is getting forgotten with all the things that are lingering in the air right now...

 

Marginally Subversive Thought of the Day: Success is the enemy...

Our marginally subversive thought of the day comes from Charles Hampden-Turner and Linda Arc, as quoted by Jamshid Gharajedaghi in the book "Managing Chaos and Complexity":

The most stubborn habits which resist change with the greatest tenacity are those which worked well for a space of time and led to the practitioner being rewarded for those behaviors. If you suddenly tell such persons that their recipe for success is no longer viable, their personal experience belies your diagnosis. The road to convincing them is hard. It us the stuff of classic tragedy.

----------------

That we live in fast-changing times is an open secret. And yet we remain to be stuck with our age-old paradigms and schemas of the world. We invest and we gain - that was what it used to be in finance, in marketing, and in business. It was simple.

But we no longer live in simple times.

We are faced with competitors who are as smart as we are. With suppliers who are as protective of their businesses as we are with ours. With consumers who are armed with information gathered from a vast, constantly growing library called the Social Web. With staff and employees who are fast realizing that life in the Firm is not the only life worth living. With leaders who are far more concerned with their parachutes and exit strategies and with pleasing quarterly-results-focused investors than with long-term brand- and business-building.

And yet our response mechanisms remain to be rooted in the same old assumptions.

It is time for businesses and marketeers to wake up and smell the coffee - perchance its smell will reinvigorate them - and us - to think radically different from how we thought in the past.

Things have changed. Things are changing.

So why aren't we shifting? Why aren't we challenging our old assumptions?

Just because it worked in the past doesn't mean it will work again. And again. And again.

The world has changed.
It's your turn.