Interesting As It Is

Beautiful Questions...

The poet E.E. Cummings once wrote "Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question." Given the hardened and cynical political discourse that is playing out in our local and national politics, it seems to me that our imaginations would be better served by turning our focus from answers, to questions.  All of us know, at some level, that the name calling political hallabaloo isn't going to take us anywhere productive, unless you're a political candidate. Oh, sure, if you have an issue that you are passionate about, like health care, the war on terror, or some other political hot potat, you want some damn answers.

But it seems we're losing patience and are now caught up in a title wave of answers, many of them seemingly detached from any useful or inspiring question.

If our country is to turn itself around, to get out from under the sagging weight of debt, doubt, and doom, we'll need to reconsider problem solving by proxy, and re-frame our debate from one of claiming the best answers, to creating the better question. The quality of our questions, whether part of a political discourse or in our businesses and corporate life, will determine the quality of our answers.

Perhaps we should spend more time crafting beautiful questions, and less time looking for simple answers.

Useless ideas...

There are just too many things to do in life than to spend countless time diddling with ideas.  Oh...don't get me wrong, ideas are needed to shape our future, but as the tasteless old slogan goes "ideas are like assholes..every person has one."  Are ideas that important?

Of course they are, but we've placed too much emphasis on the cultivation of ideas, and have developed a cultural idea fetish.  It's the spun gold of business, the cornerstone of innovation, and the content of countless books and articles.  Companies spend millions to protect "cutting edge" ideas, and intellectual property attorneys collect millions to oblige. Entrepreneurs look for the "next big idea" and philosophers and politicians make pronouncements about and "idea, whose time has come". 

But there is something vastly more important than a few good ideas. Action. If a notion isn't put into action, developed, thought through, built and used, it exists as little more than a distraction, and sometimes a costly one at that. Those of us who posses a strong creative impulse have to spend less time shaking the crystal ball in hopes of finding a new idea, and more time following a plan of action. What are we going to do with our ideas is more important than having brilliance.

Ideas are all too often useless coinage that tumble about the mind. Consistent, step by step action, actions that results in creation are what makes a better world, or at the very least, makes us a better living.

The imagination is a big talker, it has big plans for you, but takes up a lot of mind space, most of if useless clutter. Take control and practice action, measure your own outcomes and tune your action performance. It's what actually will make a difference.

1) Keep a journal. Keep a list of your ideas in a single place, but don't clutter up the pages of your journal with a million ideas...remember, nearly all of them are useless, don't become a hostage.

2.) Keep a journal.  Track the individual steps you need to take to birth an idea and bring it into reality. Record what you're learning, what your insights are, and what you need to do next. (I use Toodledo, and find it really supports that flow)

3.) Give up visualizing the end goal. Visualize the steps, and what you need to do today, and tomorrow.

4.) Use goals sparingly. Having goals is fine, but they're like ideas, and too often we become seduced into thinking that having goals is what makes success. No. Action is what leads to success. Fewer goals, more action.

Open source living. I was reflecting on the idea of living in an innovative and open sourced way. I know that we can get a lot of that from electronic communications, but what would it look like if we opened our problems for others to help us resolve, or find innovative new ways to approach our issues. Living open sourced may already be happening, but maybe not intentionally enough.

Here's a problem I'm having. I've posted a listing for a Datsun 280Z on Craigslist. It should list for $4500+. It's in prime shape, hasn't been driven much in the past 10 years. It's listed for $3800...no interest yet. Is there a better way to sell a car?

Okay, it might look like I'm trying to pimp my readers to help sell a car, but surely someone out there solved this problem, and discovered a different way of doing it. Open source the problems, we are stronger together.

Less Fun. More Freedom.

I've made a good living talking and writing on the premise that great places of work are defined, in party, by how much fun everyone is having there.  The Fish! Philosophy, which I spent a 8 years touting and building, has "Play" as one of the necessary components of workplace mojo. I still believe this is partially true, and statistics quants provide some backup numbers to support the notion, that if we're having fun in our jobs, than it's a good place to work.  But there is a darker side to the whole "Play All Day" concept, and it seems lost in the din of happy happy joy joy, especially nowadays. 

I was reading a quote from Jody Urquhart, one of the many preachers of jack-you-up (motivational speakers), that love to cheerlead for balloon animal attitudes at work. She proclaims there are only three ways to motivate people to work harder, faster and smarter. You threaten them, pay them more, or make the workplace more fun. Obviously, only the third one gains much motivational mileage (at least with leadership) after all, who would argue against whistling while you work?

All this talk about having fun in our jobs, combined with the amount of time and money companies have spent selling that message to its workforce, one would think we would have more workplaces with people engaged and having fun. But it's a mixed record, at best. Gallup produced a famous benchmark study, the Q12,  where they measured employee engagement and found that 28% of employees are engaged and happy at work, 54% are not engaged, meaning they'll do the job but don't expect anything extra, and a stunning 17% of respondents not only are not engaged, but they actively spread toxicity. That means that 71% of all workers are, in one way or another, not engaged and, I'll assume, not really having much fun. I would guess, based on anecdotal evidence I've collected, that those numbers are even worse today. It's not encouraging

Which brings me back to preacher Urquhart's statement that making the workplace fun is the only way to motivate people to do more, better, faster, smarter work. The entire premise is flawed, because no one person, or committee, or boss can make the workplace fun. The word "make" itself suggests a tactical control paradigm that corrodes individual choice, and provides one reason why people don't feel work is a safe, or that it is place to not only play, but to be free. Having some sense of personal freedom may be at the core of every, single story about workplace engagement, and it's not easy to achieve such freedom in any workplace, even ones we deem enlightened. 

Organizations are complex social systems, with both obvious and subtle social influences. We can't simply turn up the play-o-meter and have people chicken dancing next to the desk, and call that a better work environment. What freedom must mean, is that everyone has a real choice to decline participation in group think play play fun fun.  If you don't want to come out and play...hey, that's cool!  

We need a fundamental shift in our thinking that starts long before we become part of the workforce. We need to reshape our educational system, examine our social communities in youth, and build new models based not on training people to work in factories, or in cubes, but to encourage new, radical thinking. We can turn out entrepreneurs and deviants, fringe thinkers, tinkers, and curiosity freaks, develop tough people that resist compliance mentalities, and are comfortable with ambiguity. This kind of workplace requires less control, less top down command and demand, and more tolerance for the exchange of ideas that don't always mesh with our own popular opinion.

Our workplaces are disengaged, not just because people aren't having enough fun, but because we have not cultivated a culture that encourages that right kind of free(er) thinking, a culture that makes the messy imagination and mixed up creative expression as important to the workplace, as an expensive academic education, and where freedom of all kinds, can rein supreme. 

Now...go out and play...NOW!