Month: April 2020

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Well, That’s Didn’t Work Out

I attempted to take some time away from my laptop for two days.
I failed in that attempt.

Yesterday I had a call, which I want to shout about but can’t for commercially and personally sensitive reasons.
I’d forgotten about it as it was a half hour in an otherwise clear schedule.
Then I had a catch-up call with a client, only to discover that an email they’d sent a week before hadn’t arrived.
Cue a frantic afternoon pulling together the necessary documents, which I delivered this morning.
Then I had to help out a good friend, related to the thing I can’t talk about but want to.
We had that call this morning.

Now I’m finessing the work that was sprung on me yesterday before hopping on another client call at 5pm.

So, mostly laptop time.
No reading done at all.
My eyes have been tired and itchy as I’ve not been sleeping well the past few nights.
Maybe the past few weeks.

But it got me thinking about productivity.
What is it?
How is it defined?
I mean, it’s not being ‘busy’ because I can be busy not doing anything.
(There are times I’m acing that kind of productivity I could be in line for a gold medal.)
Is it related to action?
Output?
Its effect on others?
Forward motion on a project, or a retracing of steps if we’ve learned something new?

I know it’s not sitting in Zoom meetings (mostly) because I’ve been in loads of those and felt more weary than every before but not feeling like I’ve ‘achieved’ anything.

Google (yeah, lazy, I know) says it’s ‘producing or able to produce large amounts of goods, crops, or other commodities’ and a productive day is ‘not about getting a lot done; it is about the getting the important stuff done i.e. the stuff which really matters to you.’
Yet a productive person is someone who ‘gets much done’.

If I’m sat thinking about a problem and possible solutions, am I productive?
Is that too philosophical..?
Actually, don’t answer that.

I’ve learned in my systems thinking study that language is important, as it represents your worldview and what you think it is often doesn’t always equate to what someone else holds up as a definition.

I’m still nowhere nearer an answer than I was.
And I’m still nowhere closer to getting on with my reading.
I do know that every LinkedIn guru thinks we’re not being as productive as we could be, although they’re surely measuring that in amount of guff spouted on LinkedIn about being productive.

How do you measure your productivity?

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April Playlist

I did one last month.
A playlist of the songs I liked during March 2020.

I thought I’d stick at adding 20 songs to each playlist.
It seemed like a good number of songs, coming in around 75 minutes of music, or thereabouts.
Of course, I generally like more than 20, so I simply add the first twenty starting at the most recent.
Maybe I’ll do a big playlist of the songs that missed the cut at some point.
Maybe I won’t.
Fickle old me.

Anyhow, I’m going to try and take a couple of days away from my laptop to get some reading done for my MSc, so I’ve pulled April’s playlist together a couple of days early.

Note to readers: It only represents the songs I listen to on Spotify, although if I’m listening somewhere else I tend to add tunes I enjoy if they are available.
Which isn’t always the case.
Anyway, it’s a snapshot, that’s all.
Enough of this DJ waffle.
Let’s crack on with the music.
Enjoy.

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Tweeting Again

So, I reopened my Twitter account.
I’d stopped tweeting almost a year ago to the day, because it wasn’t a space in which I found clarity or happiness.
This time I’m doing things differently.

I’m ignoring it most of the time, dipping in every other day at best.
I’ve not rushed to follow the same people I was before.
That’s mostly because they work in advertising and I have no desire to hear about that.
However, I have those people in a list and I do look at that when I log on.
I’m not downloading the app.
Ever.

I’ve also noticed that I’m giving even less of a shit for LinkedIn.
Which is good, as it’s the same four messages regurgitated by almost everyone.
Instead, I stick to my systems group when I do view it.
That is more in tune with what’s in my head and what needs to be in my head.

Anyway, I’m occasionally Tweeting again.
You can follow me if you want.
At some point I’ll probably get around to following back.
Unless you Tweet about advertising, in which case you’ll be placed on a list.

Don’t take it personally.

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It’s The Little Things

Friends.
Family.
The first notes of your favourite song on the radio, especially in the car.
The warmth of sunshine.
The tickle of grass on your bare feet.
Sand squished between your toes.
Water.
A hug.

Respecting the 2-metre distance rule.

Because it is a rule.
It’s not a guideline, or a if-you-want-to thing.
And it doesn’t invite you to call someone a c*nt if they ask you to respect that difference.
Which is what happened today in a store, to my wife.
When she asked a young man to stay back.
Politely.

He was asked to leave.
Without being able to pay for the things he had wanted to purchase.
And he probably blamed my wife.
Instead of considering how it takes effort from everyone to pull in the same direction.
To follow the rules.

Because it’s the little things.
They make a huge difference.
Not only to how society functions.
But to how people are made to feel.
And how you get made to look like the idiot you are in front of a packed store of people when security ask you to leave without being able to pay for your goods.

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A Question of Ethics

I was on the #Cardstock Zoom call today.
Matt Ballantine mentioned the difficultly in determining ethics within an organisation.
I said I could help.
Because ethics is something that comes up more than once within systems thinking.

The biggest problem with ethics is that people assume you mean morals.
While they share the same house, they are definitely in different rooms.
Morals are personal, whereas ethics are defined by the group.
And therein lies the problem.
It’s a group activity.

Ethics can’t be rushed, either.
They should not be provided as a static way of being.
Instead, ethics should be malleable, almost as if they were a start-up within an organisation.
This allows for new worldviews to be brought to the table for discussion.
We’ve seen how this might play out with the current Covid-19 pandemic and the dilemmas that doctors are finding themselves in with regards to who gets treatment and who doesn’t.
It’s not as cut and dried as it might seem.

Morally, it should be everyone.
Ethically, the choice is not binary.
This is why hospitals have ethics committees, so that one person’s morals don’t override what is best for all parties involved.
It also means difficult decisions need to be made.
But it also means that as new data are made, so that committee can shift their ethical policy.

Heinz von Foerster (1992; Ethics and second-order cybernetics. Cybern Hum Knowing 1:9–19) states that ethics are “desirable and undesirable conditions inherent in any action and in the consequences of the action.”
The conditions of our ethics are not abstract, but are a core part of a form of action. This is clear in the example above about our current medical situation.

So, how do you go about creating ethics?
Discussion.
Reflection.
Knowing, and accepting, each other’s worldviews (which will include morals).
And a big bucket of compromise.

Because ethics are emergent.
They are not static and solid.
Despite what we think.

Those practices that we can agree upon, as a group, are what make up our ethics.
As Ray Ison points out in his excellent book, How to Act (Ison, 2010, pages 108-109), it is the working on the code of ethics (or conduct) that is important, not the code itself.

If that all sounds like it’s obscuring the obvious, it’s not meant to. What it means is: we need to have the difficult conversations in order to determine where we are willing to draw our boundaries.
That’s where the ethics are.

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Homemade SnapChat/Zoom Lenses

It’s low-tech, but it works.
Made with buckets of silliness and a few Artefact Cards.

I would say it’s because of the boredom setting in, but this pic was from week one of my lockdown (which is week two or three for everyone else!)

Ahead of my time.

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Headlines

I do love writing headlines.
I think I delete about 99% of them before I present them to the client.
And it’s rare I actually get to write them these days.
When I was in the agency world, I didn’t really have the time (or quiet space) to really sit down and let the pen flow as much as I’d have liked.
So it’s great when I get the chance to do it now.
Like today.

I am always reminded of advice from Sally Hogshead about writing headlines.
She says to find the one headline you need to write 100.
There’s a famous image of the 800 headlines she wrote for BMW when she needed just eight of them.

Available from this SlideShare from The School of Visual Communications

Sally has won a large clutch of awards over the years, so she knows her headlines.
Yes, some of those in the above image aren’t great; some might be called stinkers.
That’s the point.
To find the gold you have to sift through a lot of crap.

Today I’ve written just 62 headlines.
I have three selected so far.
I need five.

Just another 438 headlines to write then.

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Compass

When I think about how I work as a strategist, I start with the image a compass.
While I may begin working before this, in terms of reading information and going for a walk, by the time my client gets to hear and see my thoughts it’s the compass that they are interested in.

Why a compass?
From where we are now, and where we think we need to get to, what bearing do I need to take?
It’s what a compass is good for.
Orienting within a given terrain at a specific moment.

The thing about a compass is, whenever you need to make sure you’re still heading on the same bearing – or if you need to divert, or even change direction – you can use to work out how to get somewhere from the point you’re at.
Every time.

Orienting yourself around the challenge is really important. It’s not a step that can be skipped, or guessed at.
And the more I read and write around systems thinking, the deeper I believe this.

For clients, I am the compass.
I am the person who helps them understand where they are and where they want to go.
Together work out the possible routes.

More on that later.

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Where next?

About a year ago, I was in a quandary.
I was stuck.
I was lost.
I wrote the following, but didn’t publish it.
It’s sat in my drafts since.
Today, I decided to finish it.

I don’t watch a lot of television.
However, recently I’ve been drawn to programmes that focus on people wanting to change – what they do, who they date, etc.
It’s surely related to that age-old question people like to ask: if you could do any job, what would you do?
Or if you could live anywhere, where would that be?

Of course, there are a lot of unknowns that, when you scrape beneath the surface, demonstrate that as a question it’s not actually that easy to answer.

And, if you’ve already worked out what it is that you want to do, why would you consider stepping backwards, or changing direction?

The longer I stay working how I want, the distance I put between myself and my old working life.
I often wonder where I’d fit in these days, or what job I could conceivably do.

The question I’ve been posing internally is: what would you hire someone like me to do?

I’ll admit, this was originally because I was considering a move back into the corporate fold, or even a move away from anything I’ve done before – perhaps even to what I began describing as a ‘car park attendant’, by which I mean a job that requires little responsibility.
However, that could be short-sighted.

And short-sighted it was.
One of the best things I’ve ever done is be open to change, to accept that nothing remains the same and to take the opportunities this brings.
I good friend, Benita of Create Radical Love, said to me: when you feel lost it’s when you grow the most.
She is so right.

Shortly after that conversation, I re-evaluated where I was.
And I realised that I wasn’t finding intellectual stimulation in my work, or in my everyday life.
It was an easy decision to take: go study.
That’s how I found myself signed up for an MSc in Systems Thinking in Practice.
It got me far out of the comfort zone I’d nestled myself in.

Because the safe space I’d created for myself was incredibly comfortable.
It felt wrong, though.
I’d allowed my past health issues to hold me back, to define me, to take the wheel and determine my direction.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.

While I can’t change the past, I know I don’t have to accept the future.
I can’t be sure that I actually have any control over what happens, but I know that if I’m not happy I can create the action that shifts that.
It wasn’t my work that was wrong, it was how I approached it that was wrong.
I hadn’t been clear, with myself or anyone who wanted to work with me.

I’m taking steps all the time to change that, to make my point clearer.
It’s paying off.
I know I’m back at square one again.
Yet, the past five years hasn’t been a waste.
I’ve learned a lot.
I’ve got lost and I’ve grown as a person.
I have a better idea of the path I want to take, and while I’m nervous of the mistakes I’ll invariably make, I know that being wrong is the way to be right.
I can’t pretend to have the answers if what I’m helping my clients with is learning how to learn as they themselves learn.

I need to get writing more.
To get the ideas out of my head.
To work out loud and be wrong (and I will be).
To pay more attention to demonstrating my way of thinking.

My next module on my MSc is about strategy and systems.
It’s perfect timing.