A while back, I asked (and sought to answer) the question, “Can you know something if you didn’t learn it?” The question I was pondering today is, “Can you know something, and apply that knowledge, without understanding it?”
The short answer, I believe, is yes. Need to give some more thought to the long answer.
I started and saved a draft of a post titled “In defense of meetings” back in summer of 2013. Just a title, no content, not even any notes. I have no idea what I had in mind to write. My guess is that it was something to counter the assertion that “meetings are toxic” put forth in the book Rework back in 2010.
That assertion, of course, resonates with anyone who has ever had to endure a meeting culture in their work. Meetings for the sake of meetings. Meetings to plan the next meeting. Meetings to talk about what was discussed in the most recent meetings. How are you supposed to get any work done with all these meetings?
More recently I’ve put to paper (well, screen) some thoughts on Meetings in the age of working out loud, in which I too bemoan the time spent in meetings when we have all these great collaboration tools we can use to keep everyone “in the loop.” And there is no lack of others who express a similar sentiment, for example Email is A Problem, But Meetings Are the Collaboration Issue. « Simon Terry.
More recently still I’ve been involved in conversations with other members of Agitare about meeting design, looking not at the day-to-day (sometimes hour-to-hour) meetings that plague organizations but rather at the possibilities and potential of well designed meetings beyond the “everyone get together in the same room (physical or virtual) and we’ll go around the room so everyone can say what they want to say” meeting that is so typical in most work places. (Wow, that was a long sentence.)
As part of these conversations I let them know about the great work in this area my friends at Filament are doing here in St. Louis.
WE DESIGN, FACILITATE & HOST AMAZING IN-PERSON AND VIRTUAL MEETINGS THAT HELP SMART PEOPLE THINK TOGETHER BETTER.
Filament
I in turn have discovered some great resources about meeting design, most notably the book Meeting Design by Kevin R. Hoffman. In an excerpt from chapter two posted on A List Apart, Hoffman focuses on the one design constraint all meetings share: the ability of the participants to remember the discussion. From the excerpt:
The brain shapes everything believed to be true about the world. On the one hand, it is a powerful computer that can be trained to memorize thousands of numbers in random sequences.1 But brains are also easily deceived, swayed by illusions and pre-existing biases. Those things show up in meetings as your instincts. Instincts vary greatly based on differences in the amount and type of previous experience. The paradox of ability and deceive-ability creates a weird mix of unpredictable behavior in meetings. It’s no wonder that they feel awkward.
Meeting Design by Kevin R. Hoffman
I’m looking forward to digging into this deeper.
The default marketing strategy for this category of tool is to emphasize efficiency….
The marketing from efficiency argument is simple to articulate and deeply rooted in an industrial mindset. Tools are good if they make workers more efficient; Frederick Taylor opined on the size and shape of shovels to improve the efficiency of strong-backed men moving stuff from pile A to box B. Knowledge workers aren’t shoveling coal. None of us work in typing pools.
These tools and their effective (not efficient) use are better understood from the perspective of augmentation laid out by Doug Engelbart. Saving keystrokes isn’t the point; redistributing cognitive load is.
Jim McGee – Knowledge Work Effectiveness not Efficiency
Jack Vinson has had several posts of late on the evils of multi-tasking and the unfortunate (yet seemingly unavoidable) and relentless march toward more and more multi-tasking. This comes from management styles, focus on action, and indeed the technologies we use.
Jack’s post today started me on a blog journey that resulted in several other worthwhile posts on the topic.
Chris Spagnuolo has an interesting article on multitasking, The Myth of Managed Multi-tasking:
Lifehacker: Multitasking: Stephen Covey on Balancing Work and Life
To a chronic multitasker, everything is a task. Soon, the things in life that are really important to them are in the same list as everything else, and the only tasks that get done are the ones that have become urgent, but often aren’t very important.
Steven Covey: How to strike a work and life balance [Stephen R. Covey]
Autonomy – Mastery – Purpose
Aimed at adults who have already heard the starting gun, these are three things that Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers) and Dan Pink (Drive) have written about in terms of meaningful work and a meaningful life. These are also incredibly important parts of growing up.
As infants and toddlers, the focus for kids is to learn, to master things like walking, language, and play. There is not a whole lot of autonomy, nor is there any long term purpose.
As kids grow through adolescence they start to accept, and demand, more and more autonomy. If they are lucky enough to discover a passion that demands all of their attention – sports, academics, music, writing – they will seek out mastery. Some will begin to see their purpose in life, and begin to move in that direction.
As teenagers and young adults our kids become completely autonomous – within bounds, of course – and are free to pursue their purpose and continued journey toward mastery.
As I hinted at last time, though, parents – especially parents of autistic kids – sometimes have a tendency to focus too much on the “mastery” part and defer, sometimes indefinitely, the “autonomy” and “purpose” parts. For parents, it is all too easy – and tempting – to try to control, to MANAGE, our kids’ lives through each of these various stages. To decide what our kids should be interested in, what their purpose is. To make decisions for them, and not allow them the autonomy they crave. (“He’s only 10 years old, he can’t make a decision like that for himself.”)
Much more difficult – and, in my opinion, ultimately more rewarding – is for parents to be a LEADER for their kids. To observe and discover what our kids strengths are, what they are interested in, and encourage mastery in that. Even if it something we don’t understand or that we would never do. To accept the purpose they discover for their life, and encourage them to live that purpose even if it seems “stupid” to us.
To always challenge our kids to reach just a little too far instead of always pulling them back from the edge.
I’ve been following Luis Suarez’ (@elsua) thoughts on a world without e-mail for quite a while now. His arguments have always made sense, and yet I’ve always had this nagging feeling of, “Yeah, but….”
Last week I had a chance to view/listen to a recent presentation Luis gave about making the jump from e-mail to social media tools, along with the mind map – no PowerPoint, either! – that goes with it, appropriately subtitled E-mail is where knowledge goes to die. I think I finally understand.
After listening to the presentation, and talking with some co-workers and others about it, one of the most common comments I heard was, “That sounds great, but it looks so hard. Why would I want to do make my life and my work harder?”
It was then that I realized that when most people who are tied to e-mail hear this argument about social media vs. e-mail, they apparently think that moving their work is supposed to make doing their job easier. But that’s not what it’s about at all.
Using social media isn’t about easy, it’s about better. More effective, more productive, less wasteful; however you define “better”.
In e-mail, there is no learning, no opportunity to learn. In fact, e-mail practically screams “non-learning environment”. Despite what it is you are actually trying to accomplish in your work, you spend a good amount of time trying to stay out of “mail jail”. When someone new joins your team or your project, they will never catch up. How can they, when all the knowledge has died in e-mail archives that are “somewhere else”.
With social media, nearly every transaction is a learning opportunity. Sure you’ll spend as much time sorting through all your social media contacts and messages as you do processing e-mail. But with social media, you are forced to make sense of the information, all the while creating and sharing new knowledge about whatever it is you are working on.
Of course, if you don’t care about learning, about improving, about becoming more effective, then sticking with e-mail is fine.
Music. Movies. Higher education. What do these three things have in common?
A solid entrenchment in the ‘good old days’ and an incredible unwillingness to engage the present, much less the future, of their industries.
At least that’s the impression I have a little more than halfway through Anya Kamenetz’s latest book, “DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education”.
Kind of like the story of librarians told in “This book is overdue”, where there are many dedicated individuals who see the possibilities but who must first overcome the ‘institution’.
A lot to think about.
no straight lines 