1.) Every so often I’ll check in with an update on the blogging process. This is an update. It’s presented in the popular list format. Take your time with the list, and please enjoy every item individually. Try to chew each list item at least 50 times to ensure healthy digestion. Remember to breathe.

2.) Many people find obvious facts to be tedious. They deem the unexceptional to be just that, and not worth further comment. Then of course there are marketing people, some of whom I’m proud to be associated, and they occasionally justify their existence by constantly promoting every mundane detail.

3.) My blog is one year old. Yes. Time is a fleeting companion. Yes, I’m aware that you’ve been around. Congratulations to you too.

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This image was buried in a link in the previous post.

Thanks to Patrick Marasso for encouraging us to appreciate poignant eBay moments.

[tags]chaos, Patrick Marasso, eBay[/tags]

In 1920 Hermann Hesse published a collection of essays titled Blick ins Chaos (Glimpse of Chaos). I’ve been studying The Idiot recently, and below are few excerpts from Hesse’s essay on that work.

For those of you who are new to the Plan Resonate blog, this post is part of an ongoing series that looks at chaos from a management perspective.

Here’s Hesse (PDF):

“The “idiot,” I have said, is at times close to that boundary line where every idea and its opposite are recognized as true. That is, he has an intuition that no idea, no law, no character or order exists that is true and right except as seen from one pole – and for every pole there is an opposite pole. Settling upon a pole, adopting a position from which the world is viewed and arranged, this is the first principle of every order, every culture, every society and morality. Whoever feels, if only for an instant, that spirit and nature, good and evil are interchangeable is the most dangerous enemy of all forms of order. For that is where the opposite order is, and there chaos begins.”

“A way of thought that leads back to the unconscious, to chaos, destroys all forms of human organization. In conversation someone says to the “idiot” that he only speaks the truth, nothing more, and that this is deplorable. So it is. Everything is true, “Yes” can be said to anything. To bring order into the world, to attain goals, to make possible law, society, organization, culture, morality, “No” must be added to the “Yes,” the world must be separated into opposites, into good and evil. However arbitrary the first establishment of each “No,” each prohibition, may be, it becomes sacrosanct the instant it becomes law, produces results, becomes the foundation for a point of view and system of order.”

Hesse does not advocate chaos. His conceptualization polarizes chaos and organization to the extent that chaos is unlawful, immoral, and deplorable. This is one view, and it appears to draw heavily from the Laotse quote I presented earlier.

Absolute aversion to “classic” chaos doesn’t seem like a healthy management strategy. Management after all is a human endeavor. Work demands that we become comfortable with a certain amount of chaos while still holding our goals for higher states of organization. Sitting with the chaos is necessary. And then to really understand it we’d need a clearer description of what the U.S. business class refers to as chaos.

Ed. note: this small piece of research continues and it tends to get increasingly philosophical as it goes.

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Here’s a funny lesson in effective communication (from Ming the Mechanic).

Yesterday I was hanging out in Mt. Diablo with some friends. I started speaking frat and someone called me on it. “You should be a management consultant” they said.

And I was totally like fuck yeah dude.

Ming’s post challenged my standards: I like “proper” spelling and I tend to subconsciously discriminate against misspelled words. It’s something to be more aware of.

We don’t need one set of rules for communicating in english. It’s clear that we don’t even need one set of proper spellings. Sure it can be useful to share specific connotations, but it’s not as though society wants for more opportunities to communicate. Culturally specific rules are not and should not be considered universal. This has particular importance in the case of business english.

[tags]Ming the Mechanic, cultural rules, business english[/tags]

It’s been a successful year for Plan Resonate and I’ve recently expanded the studio. I’m looking for people who are interested in occasionally sharing some of the newly available space here at 26th & Alabama in San Francisco.

A few months ago I was involved in an effort to organize a collaborative physical workspace in San Francisco. That effort became The Hat Factory. You can learn about them at their site and at the Coworking Wiki.

I’d like to do something that is similar to the Hat Factory and different. My space isn’t cafe like, it’s home like. The new office space is a former bedroom. This post includes pics of the entrance to the new office, and the office space, and a guest workspace in my downstairs studio. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to Rebecca Blood for posting about the Visual Meaning project from Cornell. Here’s a link to Rebecca’s introduction to the project. Here’s a link to the project. And below are links to a couple of diagrams that I’m fond of.

My current favorite from the project:

http://martha.mannlib.cornell.edu/charts/?p=65

The power of the image is that it appears to be drawn with crayon. When I’m looking at it I can’t help but imagine the scholar working late in the evening, sitting at the kitchen table with a child, sharing crayons and ideas about life and biology. Funny how crayons can humanize science.

The question from Cornell was to identify a memorable diagram. The first that came to my mind was from Koshi. Koshi publishes a lot of his images at the Songbird blog:

http://www.songbirdnest.com/node/498

It’s a typical Wired type of diagram, and on it’s own it might not be that special; yet in the context of Koshi’s many other illustrations at the Songbird blog, it’s an impressive shift in style. His images are consciously cool, and super 2.0, mostly way too cute for my taste, and I still like them. Plus those guys are my neighbors and I hear great things about their software. Check out their webcast, it’s great, and it makes me want to start subscribing to MP3 blogs.

[tags]visualizing information, Cornell, songbird[/tags]

Here’s a historic reference to chaos that I enjoyed:

“Therefore:

After Tao is lost, then (arises the doctrine of) humanity.

After humanity is lost, then (arises the doctrine of) justice.

After justice is lost, then (arises the doctrine of) li.

Now li is the thinning out of loyalty and honesty of heart.

And the beginning of chaos.”

Taken from “The Wisdom of Laotse”, Chapter 38, Degeneration (I’m citing the Modern Library 1948 version edited by Lin Yutang.)

Consider that these ideas have been influencing human thought for over 25 centuries. I think that qualifies them as relevant.

How they become relevant to your management strategy is a different conversation…
[tags]chaos, Laotse[/tags]

Earlier this year I was interested our perception of chaos in the market.

Tom Peters published “Thriving on Chaos” in 1987. The “Handbook for Management Revolution” offers a lot of advice on how hyperactive managers can effectively foster a workplace culture of urgency and impatience.

Peters’ book was an 11 month NY Times bestseller and is described by some as being his best. It’s a powerful piece of work.

It’s amazing the way he transformed the value and connotations of the idea of “chaos”. My used paperback copy is marked “Property of Idyllwild Presbyterian Community Church Women 1991″. I’m not joking. Peters metaphorically and literally made chaos an attractive concept for even the most mundane among us. It was a beautiful strategy.

Here’s a money line from the preface:

“Most fundamentally, the times demand that flexibility and love of change replace our longstanding penchant for mass production and mass markets, based as it is upon a relatively predictable environment now vanished.”

Revolution was in the air sisters and brothers. Not the type of chaotic revolution that results in uncomfortable changes to our lifestyles, but chaos and revolution nonetheless. The MC5 would not approve. Rural California secularist church womens’ groups, on the other hand, were no doubt profoundly impacted.

If 1987 was a chaotic marketplace, what do we call this condition 20 years later? I used to like the word chaos, now it seems completely insufficient. Any suggestions? Any other words we haven’t already co-opted from radical groups to describe the new era of management strategy?
[tags]chaos, revolution, Tom Peters, 1987[/tags]