Posted by: Mark Gould | 11 November 2009

Getting attention — the comedy approach

One of the joys of Twitter is that people one follows often point to things that one would otherwise have missed. It was by that route that I became aware of the work of Chris Atherton. She is a specialist in visual perception, cognition and presentation skills. I first encountered her work when someone pointed me to her Slideshare presentation, “Visual attention: a psychologist’s perspective”, which provides a high-level overview of the issue of cognitive load in presentations.

Chris’s blog is full of valuable insights, as is her twitterstream. Her recent post on giving presentations is a great example. I especially like the way it starts — she was going to send some thoughts about presentations to a friend, but it got out of hand.

So instead of sending my friend an email, I wrote this blog post. It’s ostensibly about the mistakes students make when they give presentations, but really it’s about how the only rules you need to know about giving a good presentation are the ones about human attention.

It’s a great post, and full of really usable advice. Unlike many pontificators about Powerpoint, Chris shuns all those rules about structure.

Knowing which rules to follow and which to break is mostly a matter of practice and experience — which you may not have. So ignore, or at least treat with extreme suspicion, anything that sounds like a rule. Common rules include:

  • Use X lines of text/bullet-points per slide
  • Plan one slide for every N seconds of your talk
  • The 10/20/30 rule

These all sound perfectly sensible, but the trouble with rules is that people cling to them for reassurance, and what was originally intended as a guideline quickly becomes a noose.

Ultimately, good presenters just need to bear one thing in mind:

Concentrate on the rules of attention. The thing you most want during a presentation is people’s attention, so everything you do and say has to be about capturing that, and then keeping it. The rules of attention are more or less universal, easier to demonstrate empirically than rules about specific slide formats, and can be neatly summarised as follows: people get bored easily.

Chris then elaborates on what some of those rules are. I would summarise them here, but that would deprive you of the experience of reading her post and the excellent comments on it. I just want to single out one of those comments because it threw something into sharp focus for me.

At the end of a substantial comment, Martin Shovel remarked:

A thesis should be expressed in the form of a proposition – i.e. a sentence – the simpler and shorter the better! – that asserts or denies something about the content. ‘My holiday in Italy’ isn’t propositional; whereas ‘holidays in Italy are a nightmare’ is. It’s good to think of your proposition in the following way. Imagine you’re about to give your presentation when the fire-alarm suddenly goes off. Now you find yourself with only 30 seconds in which to sum up the point of your presentation – what you say in those 30 seconds should be your proposition.

Reading this, I was reminded of Robert McKee’s Story, and of the experience of watching a good comedian. In his exposition of good screenwriting McKee is clear that the script needs to hold the audience’s attention (the theme of bonding with the audience runs through the book), and that it often does that by tantalising the audience. Here he is at the very start of the book, for example:

When talented people write badly it’s generally for one of two reasons: Either they’re blinded by an idea they feel compelled to prove or they’re driven by an emotion they must express. When talented people write well, it is generally for this reason: They’re moved by a desire to touch the audience.

[…]

No film can be made to work without an understanding of the reactions and anticipations of the audience. You must shape your story in a way that both expresses your vision and satisfies the audience’s desires. The audience is a force as determining of story as any other element. For without it, the creative act is pointless.

A good stand-up comedian often does a similar thing. For example, here (jump to 3′33″ for the relevant section) is Alun Cochrane sharing his thoughts on trains, peaches and Red Bull (depending on where you work, this may contain language that is NSFW):

The way he builds the scenario layer by layer retains the audience’s attention and even allows him room for digressions. It is a lesson worth learning. Few comedians or screenplays use bullet points to make their point (apart from the rare examples where bullet points are the point). They command attention by tantalising, asking questions without obvious answers, by engaging the audience’s brains.

Getting attention isn’t just a necessity for scriptwriters, comedians or lecturers. I think anyone who has a message to convey, in whatever format, (including driving organisational change) needs to be good at this.

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Posted in Rationality, Science, Stories

Posted by: Mark Gould | 4 November 2009

Transplanting practices between organisations

It is time to revisit the best practices meme again. Over the past few months I have been struck by the way the term is sometimes used in an all-encompassing way, without necessarily clarifying its scope.

Lamb House, Rye

One relatively recent post of this type “Innovation Builds on Best Practice” was written by Tom Young of Knoco, and refers to their intriguing Bird Island exercise. Over the last ten years, Knoco have been running workshops in which the participants build a tower with a given set of materials, then improve their designs following a number of KM interventions. The decade of experience has been documented in a set of ‘best practices’ which are used as part of the exercise. As the exercise progresses, tower heights increase significantly, and the maximum heights have also grown over the ten year period. (There is a longer account of the exercise in the April 2009 issue of Inside Knowledge magazine.)

Tom defines ‘best practice’ by reference to work done with BP:

A recognised way of [raising productivity or quality level across the board] is to identify a good example of how to do it and replicate that in other locations. We used the term ‘good practice’ in the BP Operations Excellence programme. After we had identified several ‘good practices’, we developed from them, the ‘best practice’. It was only after the ‘best practice’ was identified (and agreed by the practitioners) that it was rolled out and all plants encouraged to implement that method. After all if there was an agreed ‘best practice’ to do an activity, why would you not want to use it? Learning was captured on an ongoing basis and the ‘best practice’ updated periodically.

If I understand him correctly, Tom is comparing performance in an activity, process or task in one part of an organisation with the same activity, process or task elsewhere in the same organisation. In this context, I can see that practices may well be comparable and replicable across silos. (Although, to answer his rhetorical question, I can easily envisage situations where the context may well require a ‘best practice’ to be ignored. Offshore oil extraction will be very different in the different climatic conditions of the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea.)

However, greater problems arise in attempts to transfer ‘best practice’ between organisations, or even within organisations where more processes or activities are at stake.

More years ago than it is comfortable to recall, I studied Comparative Law. (I even taught it briefly at a later stage.) One of the key readings was an article by Otto Kahn-Freund, “On Use and Misuse of Comparative Law” (1974) 37 Modern Law Review 1. (The article is not online, but I found a very good summary of its key points, together with a later piece by Gunther Teubner.) Kahn-Freund’s argument is that a law or legal principle cannot be separated from the culture or society that created it, and so even when there is a common objective, transplanting the law from elsewhere will rarely work. There is a useful example in the criminal law. The way in which criminal investigations and prosecutions proceed varies wildly between countries. It would make little sense to take a rule of evidence from the adversarial system used in England and transplant it into the French inquisitorial system. William Twining has elaborated considerably on this argument in an interesting lecture given in 2000 (PDF).

The problem that I have with much of the ‘best practice’ discourse is that it often strays into assertions or assumptions that such practices can readily be transplanted. However, like the law, such transplants will often be rejected.

The other aspect of Tom Young’s post that, frankly, confuses me is his treatment of innovation. Here’s an extended quote.

Now I hear some mention the words like ‘innovation’ and ‘creativity’. Perhaps you are thinking that the use of best practice will inhibit innovation and creativity. For me this is where context is vital.

In some situations, you don’t want innovation or creativity, you just want it done in a standard, consistant fashion.

If you are running a chemical plant, you don’t want the operator to innovate. If you are manufacturing microchips, you don’t want the technicians to innovate. If you are launching a new product into a target market, you perhaps don’t want innovation but standardisation. If you are decommissioning a nuclear power plant, perhaps you don’t want innovation during the work phase.

I am comfortable with this so far. Where things are working well, we should carry on. However, there is always room for improvement, even in simple systems.

Innovation should be built on current best practice. One of the key lessons from the Knoco Bird Island exercise is that if you ask people to do something, they will frequently start based on their own experience. When you illustrate the current best practice that has been achieved by several hundred people before them, they are frequently overwhelmed as to how poor they achievement was compared to what has already been established. 

Where appropriate give them the best practice and ask them to innovate from there. For example if by the introduction of AAR’s the time to change filters has been reduced from 240 hours per screen to 75 hours and a best practice created illustrating how this is achieved, innovate from the best practice figure of 75 hours, not the previous figure of 240 hours but only if it is safe to do so. In some instances innovation must be done in test area, ideas thought out, prototypes created and tested before the agreed modification is installed in the main plant.

My problem here is that I don’t think Tom is describing innovation. These are improvements in existing processes, rather than adaptations to new scenarios where adherence to the current way of doing things would be counter-productive. In a comment to Tom’s post, Rex Lee refers to kaizen. This is something that is often associated with Toyota. To be sure, the lean production processes in Toyota’s main, automotive, division are partly responsible for its continuing viability. However, another critical aspect is the way in which the company has diversified into other areas such as prefabricated housing, which it has been building since the mid-1970s. This response to crisis is an innovation, and goes beyond process improvement. Toyota encourages both through its well-documented suggestion system.

Going back to the Bird Island, it is certainly correct that no sensible business would expect people to embark on tasks or activities without guidance as to the ways in which they have successfully been done before. However, if the business needs a different way to achieve the same outcome, or a different outcome altogether, getting better at doing the same thing isn’t going to cut it.

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Posted in Best Practice, Culture, Innovation, Law

Posted by: Mark Gould | 16 October 2009

Thinking like a designer?

Over the last week, I have noticed a flurry of blog posts and articles referring to “design thinking.” This may just be a clustering illusion, though — the idea is not new, nor can I see any particular reason why it would surface now more than before. What I read does puzzle me, though.

San Gimignano

Let’s start with what is meant by design thinking.

Compare and contrast: Design Observer, October 2009: “What is Design Thinking Anyway?” and Design Observer, November 2007: “Design Thinking, Muddled Thinking.”

A quote from the latter first:

When the word “critical” is attached to the word “thinking,” the result, “critical thinking,” is a term that has clear, well defined, and well-understood meaning — certainly in the academic community, if not generally. As a counter example, the same cannot, for instance, be said about the term “art thinking.” This is not a term that can be used in any precise or meaningful way. Why? Because it could mean painting or sculpture; it could mean figurative or abstract; it could mean classical or modern or contemporary. Because it embodies so many contradictory notions, it is imprecise to the point of being meaningless — and therefore, completely understandably, it is not much used, if at all.

“Design thinking” is as problematic a term as “art thinking.” Design thinking could refer to architecture, fashion, graphic design, interior design, or product design; it could mean classical or modern or contemporary. It’s imprecise at best and meaningless at worst. More muddled thinking.

But then the more recent article takes a different view:

One popular definition is that design thinking means thinking as a designer would, which is about as circular as a definition can be. More concretely, Tim Brown of IDEO has written that design thinking is “a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.” [Tim Brown, "Design Thinking" Harvard Business Review, June 2008, p. 86.] A person or organization instilled with that discipline is constantly seeking a fruitful balance between reliability and validity, between art and science, between intuition and analytics, and between exploration and exploitation. The design-thinking organization applies the designer’s most crucial tool to the problems of business. That tool is abductive reasoning.

Then there is this. Having adopted the “design thinking is thinking like a designer” approach, this site (curated by one Nicolae) goes on as follows.

When design is stripped from forming, shaping and styling, there is a process of critical thinking and creative solving at the very core of the profession. By consciously understanding and documenting this process, a new field within the design domain emerges that deals with the creativity DNA of the design mind. When properly understood and harvested, one can transfer the creative DNA from design into virtually any discipline regardless of brain direction. This process has been recognized by thought leaders as an extremely valuable tool for fostering creativity and driving innovation.

However, this is as far as it goes — there is no further analysis of what this “process of critical thinking and creative solving” might be (apart from a meaningless allusion to the left brain-right brain dichotomy, which is a widespread fallacy[1]). So that takes us no further. (I confess that in my original draft, I was much ruder.)

The reference in this week’s Design Observer piece to abductive reasoning takes us a bit further. Here is what wikipedia currently has to say about that, by comparison with better-known forms of reasoning.

Deduction
allows deriving b as a consequence of a. In other words, deduction is the process of deriving the consequences of what is assumed. Given the truth of the assumptions, a valid deduction guarantees the truth of the conclusion. It is true by definition and is independent of sense experience. For example, if it is true (given) that the sum of the angles is 180° in all triangles, and if a certain triangle has angles of 90° and 30°, then it can be deduced that the third angle is 60°.
Induction
allows inferring a entails b from multiple instantiations of a and b at the same time. Induction is the process of inferring probable antecedents as a result of observing multiple consequents. An inductive statement requires empirical evidence for it to be true. For example, the statement ‘it is snowing outside’ is invalid until one looks or goes outside to see whether it is true or not. Induction requires sense experience.
Abduction
allows inferring a as an explanation of b. Because of this, abduction allows the precondition a to be inferred from the consequence b. Deduction and abduction thus differ in the direction in which a rule like “a entails b” is used for inference. As such abduction is formally equivalent to the logical fallacy affirming the consequent or Post hoc ergo propter hoc, because there are multiple possible explanations for b.

At this stage, then, abduction doesn’t look too promising as a means of solving problems. However, it might be attractive as a tool to suggest solutions which can then be tested separately. This is the way I imagine it being used — as an exploratory technique. This is supported by exploring a reference later in the article to Charles Sanders Peirce. His lecture “The First Rule of Logic” is apposite here. Peirce argued that whatever mode of reasoning is chosen, “inquiry of any type… has the vital power of self-correction and of growth.” Following from this, “it may truly be said that there is but one thing needful for learning the truth, and that is a hearty and active desire to learn what is true.” We then come to the heart of his argument.

Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon the wall of every city of philosophy,

Do not block the way of inquiry.

Although it is better to be methodical in our investigations, and to consider the Economics of Research, yet there is no positive sin against logic in trying any theory which may come into our heads, so long as it is adopted in such a sense as to permit the investigation to go on unimpeded and undiscouraged.

This opens the way to the kind of instinctive, hunch-following process that appears to be presented now as “design thinking.” I am far from sure that such thought processes are unique to designers or, even, more prevalent in that community. Peirce’s suggested open-mindedness in seeking solutions, followed by clear-headed assessment of the merit of those solutions, is a model that many professionals follow, designers or not.

Neil Denny, in a post critiquing some lawyers’ thinking, points to Edward de Bono’s concept of Po. This idea is essentially the same as abduction — thinking of answers that are entirely distinct from the obvious answers in order to reach a new and achievable solutions. As Neil puts it,

Po lifts us out of the normal patterns of thinking. It does not ask “Is this a good idea?” which invites a critical progression of “…And if not, why not.” Instead, po says “Let’s just accept that the following statement, however nonsensical, however illogical is a good idea. Now, what is good about it? What would work or how would it benefit our organisation, or our clients.”

The idea or the suggestion itself is put forward to stimulate the discussion. The idea can be discarded later once it has identified benefits or methodologies.

As Neil indicates, it is the discussion, or the process by which traditional logical tests are applied, where the work really happens. Going back, again, to an old post of mine, James Webb Young’s A Technique for Producing Ideas (chronologically only slightly closer to de Bono than to Peirce) is just another expression of the same basic process.

The process can be distilled into a small set of key points:

  1. Desire to learn, adapt, or create
  2. Always be open to possibilities (however odd they may seem)
  3. Choose potential solutions intuitively and imaginatively
  4. Test the chosen solutions rigorously
  5. Discard failed (and failing) solutions (including the status quo), however attractive they may appear
  6. Learn, adapt or create
  7. Return to the beginning

This is a hard discipline, and it has to be maintained for best results.

Interestingly, if you persist in concentrating on the things you already know and are familiar with, if you avoid opening your eyes to the widest variety of options, you are likely to be persistently unlucky. Richard Wiseman has reached this conclusion after studying luck and luckiness for some years.

[U]nlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and as a result miss other types of jobs. Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for.

My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

Wiseman’s work is extremely interesting, and worth exploring in more detail. (For those in Manchester at the end of the month there is even an opportunity to hear him speak as part of the Manchester Science Festival.)

It is important, however, not to get too carried away with intuition. When dealing with abstract problems, our brains tend to think in a way that can lead inexorably to error. The clustering illusion that I referred to at the beginning, together with a host of other cognitive errors, can be a real problem when assessing probability and statistics, for example, as Ben Goldacre specialises in showing us. If design thinking just means being supremely imaginative and doggedly intuitive, it is not likely to be a formula for success. If however, it is a shorthand for creative thinking coupled with critical assessment against objective standards (whether those are rules of logic or just client imperatives), then it is undeniably good.

But let’s not allow the designers to think it is their unique preserve.

[1] The reasons why this fallacy persists are beyond my scope here. However, the idea of a clear division is a fallacy. Although the mechanism is not fully understood, the brain almost certainly needs to involve both halves to function properly. Take this statement by Jerre Levy, in “Right Brain, Left Brain: Fact and Fiction,” Psychology Today, May 1985, for example:

The two-brain myth was founded on an erroneous premise: that since each hemisphere was specialized, each must function as an independent brain. But in fact, just the opposite is true. To the extent that regions are differentiated in the brain, they must integrate their activities. Indeed, it is precisely that integration that gives rise to behaviour and mental processes greater than and different from each region’s contribution. Thus, since the central premise of the mythmakers is wrong, so are all the inferences derived from it.

The New Scientist has also covered the issue (only available in full to subscribers, although it is possible to find versions of the article around the internet).

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Posted in Creativity, Design, Irrationality, Lawyering

Posted by: Mark Gould | 12 October 2009

Book review: No More Consultants

Sometimes it is too easy to think (and write) of knowledge-related activities in the abstract. I am guilty of this myself, and I have many books which address the topic in that way — even when they provide examples it is difficult to think of them in concrete real-world terms. Geoff Parcell and Chris Collison’s new book, No More Consultants, provides a welcome dose of reality.

Bridge below Haddon Hall

This new book follows their earlier work, Learning to Fly, but has a much narrower focus. As a result, I think it is probably even more useful. The premise of No More Consultants is simple. In part it is provided by the book’s subtitle “we know more than we think,” but that is just the background. What Parcell and Collinson have done in the new book is to provide a workable framework for organisations to ascertain when and why they can rely on the expertise and experience of their own people, rather than calling in consultants. (Consultants can relax — the final chapter explains that better organisational understanding can lead to more fruitful engagements.)

The basic tool that Parcell and Collison introduce, explain, and show in use is what they call the ‘River Diagram’. This is a way of visualising the levels of performance in an organisation with regard to defined competences. A large gap between the level competence in different parts of the organisation provides opportunities for knowledge sharing.

template

In order to get to the river diagram, the organisation needs to identify an area for change and define detailed levels of performance. The next stage is for different parts of the organisation to assess their own level of performance. The sum of all this work is expressed in the river diagram, and each organisational unit can then decide where to focus their efforts to change by calling on the experience of other parts of the organisation (or even externally).

Within this basic framework, Parcell and Collison are able to spend some time fleshing out a number of key techniques, including facilitation, envisioning future developments, and peer assists. They provide a range of examples of the tools and techniques in use, ranging from development of HIV/AIDS programmes in Africa and India to knowledge sharing between Great Ormond St children’s hospital and the Ferrari F1 team. Along the way, they are also able to provide insights into ways of dealing with a number of recurring challenges to change, such as the ‘not invented here’ syndrome.

Despite the fact that the book is an invaluable guide to practical knowledge sharing, it is carefully not positioned as such. Because of this, it is more likely to find a receptive audience beyond the normal KM community. This attractiveness is enhanced by the clarity and concreteness with which its central ideas are expressed.

Finally, this book does not just exist between two hard covers. Just as they did with Learning to Fly, Parcell and Collison have created an online presence for the book. Whereas Learning to Fly was complemented by a mailing list, No More Consultants is supported by a more nuanced Ning community. This allows resources related to the book to be shared and discussed, and makes it possible for people using the book to share their experiences in one place. It will be interesting to watch how people use the space to develop the book beyond Parcell and Collison’s core text.

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Posted in Book Review, Expertise, KM

Posted by: Mark Gould | 23 September 2009

Learning from failure or success

In a round up following KM Australia, back in August, Shawn Callahan has challenged the notion that we learn best from failure. I think he has a point — the important thing is learning, not failure.

Harris Hawk missing the quarry

Here’s Shawn’s critique.

During the conference I heard a some speakers recount the meme, “we learn best from failure.” I’m not sure this is entirely true. Anecdotally I remember distantly when I read about the Ritz Carlton approach to conveying values using stories and I’m now delivering a similar approach to a client on the topic of innovation. Here I’ve learned from a good practice. As Bob Dickman once told me, “you remember what you feel.” I can imagine memory being a key first step to learning. And some research shows it’s more complex than just learning from failure. Take this example. The researchers take two groups who have never done ten pin bowling and get them bowling for a couple of hours. Then one group is taken aside and coached on what they were doing wrong and how they could improve. The other group merely watches an edited video of what they were doing right. The second group did better than the first. However there was no difference with experienced groups.

I wish I could access the linked study — Shawn’s summary and the abstract sound very interesting. Here’s the abstract.

On the basis of laboratory research on self-regulation, it was hypothesized that positive self-monitoring, more than negative self-monitoring or comparison and control procedures, would improve the bowling averages of unskilled league bowlers (N =60). Conversely, negative self-monitoring was expected to produce the best outcome for relatively skillful league bowlers (N =67). In partial support of these hypotheses, positive self-monitors significantly improved their bowling averages from the 90-game baseline to the 9- to 15-game postintervention assessment (X improvement = 11 pins) more than all other groups of low-skilled bowlers; higher skilled bowlers’ groups did not change differentially. In conjunction with other findings in cognitive behavior therapy and sports psychology, the implications of these results for delineating the circumstances under which positive self-monitoring facilitates self-regulation are discussed.

Based on these summaries, I would draw a slightly different conclusion from Shawn’s. I think there is a difference between learning as a novice and learning when experienced. Similarly, the things that we learn range from the simple to the complex. (Has anyone applied the Cynefin framework to learning processes? My instinct suggests that learning must run out when we get to the chaotic or disordered domains. I think we can only learn when there is a possibility of repeatability, which is clearly the case in the simple and complicated domains, and may be a factor in moving situations from the complex to one of the other domains.)

The example Dave Snowden gives of learning from failure is actually a distinction between learning from being told and learning by experience.

Tolerated failure imprints learning better than success. When my young son burnt his finger on a match he learnt more about the dangers of fire than any amount of parental instruction cold provide. All human cultures have developed forms that allow stories of failure to spread without attribution of blame. Avoidance of failure has greater evolutionary advantage than imitation of success. It follows that attempting to impose best practice systems is flying in the face of over a hundred thousand years of evolution that says it is a bad thing.

In the burned finder scenario, success (not touching a burning match) is equivalent to lack of experience. Clearly learning from a lack of experience will be less effective than learning from (even a painful) experience. By contrast, the bowling example provides people with a new experience (bowling) and then gives them an opportunity to contemplate their performance (which was almost certainly poor). However, whatever the state of their performance, it is clear what the object of the activity is and therefore ‘success’ can be easily defined — ensure that this heavy ball leaves your hand in such a way that it knocks down as many pins as possible by the time it reaches the far end of the lane. As the natural tendency of learners at early stages in the learning process is to concentrate on the negative aspects of their performance (I can’t throw the ball hard enough to get to the end of the lane, or it keeps going in the gutter), it is understandable that a learning strategy which focuses on success could have better results than one that merely explains why the bad things happen.

In the bowling experiment, no difference was found between the negative and positive approaches when experienced bowlers were studied. All this suggests to me is that we need more work in this area, especially considering learning in the complicated or complex domains. Even for experienced bowlers, the set of variables that affect the passage of a bowling ball from one end of the lane to the other is a predictable one. There is not just one cause and effect, but the laws of physics dictate that the relationships between all the causes should have predictable outcomes. By contrast, much of what interests us with regard to knowledge and learning in organisational environments does not depend on simple causal relationships.

In those complicated or complex organisational situations, I think we can learn more from our own failures than other people’s successes (which I think is the point that Dave Snowden is making). I think Shawn is also right to suggest that we can learn from our own successes too. However, that can only be the case if we take the time to analyse exactly what was the cause of the success. So we need a commitment to learning (which brings us back to deliberate practice, amongst other things) and we need the insight into our actions and activities that allows us to analyse them effectively. I think the will to learn is often present, but insight is often missing when we consider successful initiatives, possibly because the greater distance between cause and effect means that we cannot be confident that success is a product of any given cause. On the other hand, it is usually easier to identify causes of failure, and the process of failure also provides an incentive to work out what went wrong.

As for the quality of the lessons learned from failure or success, I am doubtful that any firm conclusion could be drawn that as a general rule we learn better from failure or from success. However, as we become more experienced and when we deal with fewer simple situations, we will inevitably learn more from failure than success — we will have more experience of failure than success, and other people’s successes are of limited or no value. So, although we can learn from our successes, my guess is that more of our learning flows from failure.

It feels like there is more research to do into these questions.

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Posted in Failure, Knowledge, Learning, Science, Success

Posted by: Mark Gould | 15 September 2009

Speaking of social software and KM

Last week, Headshift hosted an “insight event” to showcase the report on social software for law firms written by Penny Edwards and Lee Bryant. I was honoured to be asked to present, along with Sam Dimond of Clifford Chance and Steve Perry of Freshfields.

Nick Holmes wrote a great summary of the event on his blog, Binary Law, and I intended to post the notes for my session here, but Penny has now done a really impressive job of transcribing our three presentations, together with Lee’s opening remarks. I am particularly impressed because she was listening into the event from Amsterdam, and I gather the sound quality was not particularly good.

Penny’s four posts on the Headshift blog are as follows:

As well as the presentations, we had some great questions from the audience and an opportunity for offline social networking. I only wish we could have had longer to discuss all the issues that people raised. Many thanks to Penny for putting the event together, and to Lars Plougmann for hosting it. (By the way, I think the term “insight event” is a really good one.)

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Posted in Collaboration, KM, Lawyering, Web2.0

Posted by: Mark Gould | 7 September 2009

Book review: Story: Substance, structure, style, and the principles of screenwriting

I read Robert McKee’s book, Story: Substance, structure, style, and the principles of screenwriting during my holiday last month. It is a fascinating insight into a crucial part of the film-making process, and has helped me understand movie storytelling much better. If that was all it did, I would recommend it wholeheartedly — by shedding light on the mystery of film, it actually enhances one’s enjoyment of the medium, rather than degrading it. If you are at all interested in film, read it — you won’t regret it.

Bee at work

However, McKee’s book raised two distinct issues for me. One is internal to the book and concerns the way in which we do work. The second is an external one — what makes an expert?

Towards the end of the book, having worked through the elements that make up a satisfying story, McKee turns to the actual mechanics of screenwriting. It’s not as simple as starting at the beginning and working your way to the end. This model is described by McKee as writing from the outside in.

The struggling writer tends to have a way of working that goes something like this: He dreams up an idea, noodles on it for a while, then rushes to the keyboard…

He imagines and writes, writes and dreams until he reaches page 120 and stops…

So the struggling writer gathers friends’ reactions and his own thoughts to start the second draft with this strategy: “How can I keep the six scenes that I love and that everyone else loves and somehow pretzel this film through them in a way that’ll work?” With a little thought he’s back at the keyboard…

He imagines and writes, writes and dreams, but all the while he clings like a drowning man to his favorite scenes until a rewrite comes out the other end. …

The writer then does a third draft and a fourth and a fifth but the process is always the same: He clings to his favorite scenes, twisting a new way of telling them in hopes of finding a story that works. Finally … back come reader reports: “Very nicely written, good crisp actable dialogue, vivid scene description, fine attention to detail, the story sucks. PASS ON IT.”

By contrast, writing from the inside out is a much more structured process in which the story stays at the heart.

If, hypothetically and hopefully, a screenplay can be written from first idea to last draft in six months, [successful] writers typically spend the first four of those six months writing on stacks of three-by-five cards: a stack for each act — three, four, perhaps more. On these stacks they create the story’s step-outline.

Essentially, the step-outline is used by the writer to describe a single scene on each card. These cards come and go — a scene may be written and rewritten a dozen times on a dozen different cards. The relationship between the cards — which are key scenes and which promote sub-plots, for example — may change over this time. Finally, when the writer is satisfied that the whole things hangs together properly. At this point, the story can be pitched to someone else.

The writer never shows his step-outline to people because it’s a tool, too cryptic for anyone but the writer to follow. Instead, at this critical stage, he wants to pitch or tell his story so he can see it unfold in time, watch it play on the thoughts and feelings of another human being.

Once the story is seen to work, it is time for the treatment: each scene is expanded into a readable description. That process allows the story to be honed further until it is ready to be turned into a screenplay — dialogue, directions and all.

The wise writer puts off the writing of dialogue for as long as possible because the premature writing of dialogue chokes creativity.

Writing from the outside in — writing dialogue in search of scenes, writing scenes in search of story — is the least creative method.

The description of this process is fascinating. I think there are elements that can be drawn out for wider use in the work that we do. Rather than draft agreements which are then batted back and forth between parties (in much the same way as the screenplay in the “outside in” example), could we envisage the legal documentation of a transaction from the inside out? Perhaps the following key points might be useful.

  1. Why is this deal being done? (In McKee’s screenwriting terms, this might be the “Inciting Incident”)
  2. What are the major points of agreement (and disagreement) between the parties? (Tension between protagonist and antagonist; character and characterisation)
  3. What other issues are at play? Are there any external pressures — time, regulators, etc?
  4. Can the deal (and the answers to the preceding questions) be summarised easily? (The pitch)
  5. Does everyone agree with the pitch? (Develop into a treatment)
  6. Once the treatment is agreed, the documentation (formal contractual provisions) should easily flow from the treatment.

To be honest, I have no idea whether this would work. However, I have seen enough frustration borne of endless argument over the minutiae of legal drafting to be interested in seeing if an alternative would be any better at conveying the commercial meaning of a transaction into legally enforceable wording. Just as dialogue restricts creativity, so does legal drafting. Once a clause is set in Word and becomes the subject of argument, it is difficult for lawyer and client alike to think creatively about alternative ways of achieving the same object, or even whether that object is actually a desired one — consistent with the ’story’ of the commercial transaction that is being documented.

The other issue that McKee’s work (his book and the seminars that he runs) raises relates to expertise. McKee is an adept critic and analyst of screenwriting, but he is not a great screenwriter himself. His record at the Internet Movie Database indicates that he has written a couple of TV movies and some TV series episodes. Some of the comments on his work suggest that this apparent lack of success undermines his authority on screenwriting. Others use the traditionally snarky riposte “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” Both of these reactions miss, I think, the fact that McKee never says “copy me.” Instead, he brings a thorough reading of a range of good and poor films. (In fact, one could be concerned by the fact that he relies excessively on Chinatown for examples, were it not for the impressive list of films referenced in less detail but obviously equally well understood.) Out of that reading, he extracts incredible insight, which should be regarded more highly, not less, for the simplicity with which it is distilled into a set of clearly understood principles.

That, I think is part of the essence of expertise — insight translated into clarity, so that one’s audience can hope to achieve the same insight. That is the opposite of the traditional obfuscation which many experts (many in the field of law, I am sorry to say) typically indulge in.

Another aspect of expertise, which needs to be harnessed in the service of insight and clarity, is passion or enthusiasm for the subject. That passion is clearly evident in McKee’s book. He wants to eradicate poor storytelling in the movies by making the basic element — the screenplay — better. According to the Wikipedia article on him, McKee’s insights are not all especially original. I do not think this necessarily matters — his passion brings them to life more vividly than their originators were able to.

There is clearly more to expertise than just insight and passion, but McKee’s work shows how those elements in combination with even a limited body of material can generate real value.

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Posted in Book Review, Expertise, Lawyering, Stories

Posted by: Mark Gould | 4 September 2009

Storing our future knowledge?

Over the summer, I read a couple of blog posts about knowledge storage that I marked to come back and comment on. Separately, Mary Abraham and Greg Lambert have suggested a fairly traditional approach to selection of key knowledge for storage and later access.

Dover Castle

First, Greg issued a clarion call for selectivity in information storage:

Knowledge Management should not be based on a “cast a wide net” approach to the information that flows in and out of our firms. In fact, most information should be ephemeral in nature; addressing only the specific need of the moment and not be thought of as a permanent addition to the knowledge of the firm. When we try to capture everything, we end up capturing nothing. In the end we end up losing the important pieces of knowledge because they are buried in a mountain of useless data filed under the topic of “CYA”.

I had to Google “CYA”. And thereby hangs a lesson. How can we know when we make a decision about recording the present for posterity that the things we choose will be (a) comprehensible to those who come after us and (b) meet their as yet unknowable needs?

For centuries, the study of history relied on official records and was therefore a story of kings and queens, emperors and presidents, politicians and popes. The things that were left behind — castles, cathedrals, palaces and monuments as well as documents — actually provided us with only slender insight into the real lives of the majority of people who lived at any given point in time. Only when archaeologists and social historians started to untangle more trivial artefacts like potsherds, clay pipes, bone pits and everyday documents like manorial rolls, diaries, or graffiti were we given a more rounded picture of the world of our predecessors. At the time, those things were ephemeral — not created for posterity. The lesson we always forget to learn is that we don’t get to write our history — the future does.

Because Google has access to a vast mass of ephemera, I was able to learn what “CYA” means. In Greg’s context, it is the stuff we think we might need to keep to protect ourselves — it is an information security blanket.

Mary Abraham picked up the thread by addressing the Google question:

Folks who drink the super search kool-aid will say that the cost of saving and searching data is becoming increasingly trivial, so why spend any time at all trying to weed the collection?  Rather, save it all and then try Filtering on the Way Out.  On the other hand, look at the search engine so many of us envy — Google.  It indexes and searches enormous amounts of data, but even Google doesn’t try to do it all.  Google doesn’t tackle the Deep Web.

So why are we trying to do it all?

That’s a good question, and one that Greg challenged as well. I want to come to that, but first the Deep Web issue needs to be dealt with.

As I understand it, the problem for Google is that many useful web resources are stored in ways that exclude it — in databases, behind paywalls, or by using robots.txt files. That may be a problem on the public web, but it shouldn’t be in the enterprise context. By definition, an properly set up enterprise search engine is able to get access to anything that the user can see. If there is material in a subscription service like Westlaw or Lexis Nexis, then searches can be federated so that the result set includes links into those services as well as a firm’s own know-how. Alternatively, a firm or search provider can make special arrangements to index content through a paywall. There simply should not be a Deep Web problem in the enterprise context.

But what of the main issue — by storing too much, we lose our ability to find what is important? I think Greg and Mary are right to challenge the “store everything” model. There is much that is truly ephemeral — the e-mail that simply says “Thanks” or the doodles from that boring meeting. The problem with those, though is not that keep them, but that we created them in the first place. If the meeting was that boring, should the doodler not have gone and done something else instead? Isn’t there a better way of showing appreciation than sending an e-mail (especially if it was a reply-to-all)? I think that is the bit that is broken. Some other things are ephemeral even though they do need to be captured formally. Once an expenses claim has been paid, and the taxman is satisfied, there is little need to keep the claim forms available for searching. (Although there may be other reasons why they should not be discarded completely.)

However, I am still concerned that we cannot know what will be useful in the future, or why it might have a use. At the heart of an organisation like a law firm there are two strands of information/knowledge. The first is a body of technical material. Some of this is universally available (even if not comprehensible) — statutes, cases, codes, textbooks, journal articles: documents created externally that we all have to understand. Some is specific to the firm — standard documents, briefing notes, drafting guides: our internal know-how. I think this is the material that Greg and Mary are concerned with. And they are right that we should be critical about the potential immensity of these resources. Does that new journal article say anything new? Is that textbook worth the space that it takes on our shelves? Is our know-how really unique to us, or is it just a reflection of market practice? These are all crucial questions. However, almost by definition, as soon as we fix this material in some form it is of mainly historical interest — it is dying information. The older it gets, the less value it will have for our practice and our clients.

The other strand is intangible, amorphous, constantly shifting. It is the living knowledge embodied in our people, their relationships with each other and our clients, and their reactions to formal information. That changing body is not just responsible for the knowledge of the firm, but its direction and focus. At any time, it is the people and their connections that actually define the firm and its strategic preoccupations. In particular, what our clients want will drive our future knowledge needs. If we can predict what our future clients commercial concerns and drivers will be, then we can confidently know what we should store, and what to discard. I don’t think I can do that. As a result, we need to retain access to more than might seem useful today.

Patrick Lambe catches this tension neatly in his post “The War Between Awareness and Memory.” I looked at that in my last post (five weeks ago — August really isn’t conducive to blogging). As I was writing this one, I recalled words I last read thirty years ago. This is how John Dos Passos caught the same mood in the closing words of the eponymous prose poem that opens the single volume edition of his great novel U.S.A.

It was not in the long walks through jostling crowds at night that he was less alone, or in the training camp at Allentown, …

but in his mother’s words telling about longago, in his father’s telling about when I was a boy, in the kidding stories of uncles, …

it was in the speech that clung to the ears, the link that tingled in the blood; U.S.A.

U.S.A. is the slice of a continent. U.S.A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving picture theatres, a column of stock quotations rubbed out and written in by a Western Union boy on a blackboard, a publiclibrary full of old newspapers and dogeared historybooks with protests scrawled on the margins in pencil. U.S.A. is the world’s greatest rivervalley finged with mountains and hills. U.S.A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bankaccounts. U.S.A. is a lot of men buried in their uniforms at Arlington Cemetery. U.S.A. is the letters at the end of an address when you are away from home.But mostly U.S.A. is the speech of the people.

Sometimes questions about the “laws bound in calf” or “dogeared historybooks” are less important, maybe even a distraction. The real life and future knowledge of the firm is the speech of the people. That cannot be reconstructed. We need to be aware of all the ways in which we can preserve and retain access to it, for use when a client comes up with a new conundrum for us to help them resolve.

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Posted in History, Knowledge, Lawyering, Stories

Posted by: Mark Gould | 30 July 2009

Now and then

A couple of days ago, Patrick Lambe posted a really thoughtful piece considering the implications of heightened awareness from the new generation of social software tools as opposed to the traditional virtues of long-term information storage and access. If you haven’t read it, do so now. (Come back when you have finished.)

Laid down

The essence of Patrick’s piece is that when we focus our attention on the here and now (through Twitter or enterprise micro-blogging, for example), we forget to pay attention to the historically valuable information that has been archived away. This is not a problem with technology. He points to interesting research on academics’ use of electronic resources and their citation patterns.

How would online access influence knowledge discovery and use? One of his hypotheses was that “online provision increases the distinct number of articles cited and decreases the citation concentration for recent articles, but hastens convergence to canonical classics in the more distant past.”

In fact, the opposite effect was observed.

As deeper backfiles became available, more recent articles were referenced; as more articles became available, fewer were cited and citations became more concentrated within fewer articles. These changes likely mean that the shift from browsing in print to searching online facilitates avoidance of older and less relevant literature. Moreover, hyperlinking through an online archive puts experts in touch with consensus about what is the most important prior work—what work is broadly discussed and referenced. … If online researchers can more easily find prevailing opinion, they are more likely to follow it, leading to more citations referencing fewer articles. … By enabling scientists to quickly reach and converge with prevailing opinion, electronic journals hasten scientific consensus. But haste may cost more than the subscription to an online archive: Findings and ideas that do not become consensus quickly will be forgotten quickly.

Now this thinning out of long term memory (and the side effect of instant forgettability for recent work that does not attract fast consensus) is observed here in the relatively slow moving field of scholarly research. But I think there’s already evidence (and Scoble seems to sense this) that exactly the same effects occur when people and organisations in general get too-fast and too-easy access to other people’s views and ideas. It’s a psychosocial thing. We can see this in the fascination with ecologies of attention, from Tom Davenport to Chris Ward to Seth Godin. We can also see it in the poverty of attention that enterprise 2.0 pundits give to long term organisational memory and recordkeeping, in the longer term memory lapses in organisations that I have blogged about here in the past few weeks…

Jack Vinson adds another perspective on this behaviour in a post responding to Patrick’s.

I see another distinction here.  The “newer” technologies are generally about user-engagement and creation, whereas the “slower” methods are more focused on control and management activities much more so than the creation.  Seen in this light, these technologies and processes spring from the situation where writing things down was a time-consuming process.  You wanted to have it right, if you went to that much effort.  Unfortunately, the phrase “Document management is where knowledge goes to die” springs to mind.

In knowledge management, we are trying to combine the interesting knowledge that flows between people in natural conversation as well as the “hard knowledge” of documented and proven ideas and concepts.  KM has shown that technology just can’t do everything (yet?) that humans can do.  As Patrick says, technology has been a huge distraction to knowledge management.

I think Jack’s last comment is essential. What we do is a balance between the current flow and the frozen past. What I find fascinating is that until now we have had few tools to help  us with the flow, whereas the databases, archives, taxonomies and repositories of traditional KM and information management have dominated the field. I think Patrick sounds an important warning bell. We should not ignore it. But our reaction shouldn’t be to reverse away from the interesting opportunities that new technologies offer.

It’s a question (yet again) of focus. Patrick opens his post with a complaint of Robert Scoble’s.

On April 19th, 2009 I asked about Mountain Bikes once on Twitter. Hundreds of people answered on both Twitter and FriendFeed. On Twitter? Try to bundle up all the answers and post them here in my comments. You can’t. They are effectively gone forever. All that knowledge is inaccessible. Yes, the FriendFeed thread remains, but it only contains answers that were done on FriendFeed and in that thread. There were others, but those other answers are now gone and can’t be found.

Yes, Twitter’s policy of deleting old tweets is poor, but even if they archived everything the value of that archive would be minimal. Much of what I see on Twitter is related to the here and now. It is the ideal place to ask the question, “I’m looking at buying a mountain bike. For $1,000 to $1,500 what would you recommend?” That was Scoble’s question, and it is time-bound. Cycle manufacturers change their offering on a seasonal and annual basis. The cost of those cycles also changes regularly. The answer to that question would be different in six months time. Why worry about storing that in an archive?

Knowledge in law firms is a curious blend of the old and the new. Sometimes the law that we deal with dates back hundreds of years. It is often essential to know how a concept has been developed over an extended period by the courts. The answer to the question “what is the current position on limitations of liability in long-term IT contracts?” is a combination of historic research going back to cases from previous centuries and up to the minute insight from last week’s negotiations on a major outsourcing project for a client. It is a real combination of archived information and current knowledge. We have databases and law books to help us with the archived information. What we have been lacking up until recently is an effective way of making sure that everyone has access to the current thinking. As firms become bigger and more scattered (across the globe, in some cases) making people aware of what is happening across the firm has become increasingly difficult.

Patrick’s conclusion is characteristically well expressed.

So while at the level of technology adoption and use, there is evidence that a rush toward the fast and easy end of the spectrum places heavy stresses on collective memory and reflection, at the same time, interstitial knowledge can also maintain and connect the knowledge that makes up memory. Bipolarity simply doesn’t work. We have to figure out how to see and manage our tools and our activities to satisfy a balance of knowledge needs across the entire spectrum, and take a debate about technology and turn it into a dialogue about practices. We need to return balance to the force.

That balance must be at the heart of all that we do. And the point of balance will depend very much on the demands of our businesses as well as our interest in shiny new toys. Patrick is right to draw our attention to the risks attendant on current awareness, but memory isn’t necessarily all it is cracked up to be. We should apply the same critical eye to everything that comes before us — how does this information (or class of information) help me with the problems that I need to solve? The answer will depend heavily on your organisational needs.

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Posted in Best Practice, KM, Knowledge, Lawyering, Technology

Posted by: Mark Gould | 29 July 2009

Book review: Made to Stick

This has been a Summer of story for me. Back in June, I attended a workshop run by Shawn Callahan on “Storytelling for Business Leaders”. I was vaguely aware (from reading Shawn’s blog if nothing else) of the power of narrative, but he drew out the key elements really well. Now I realise that a lot of what I thought were stories were in fact limp examples. Even a good example can have some persuasive power, but a story with the right elements is by its nature indisputable.

Do not sit -- Haddon Hall

Towards the end of the workshop, Shawn referred positively to Made to Stick, which prompted me to move it from my wishlist and actually buy it. Written by two brothers, Chip Heath and Dan Heath, it draws out six characteristics of ideas that stick in people’s minds. (The archetype for sticky ideas is provided by a wealth of urban legends, which prove staggeringly resistant to rebuttal.) Pleasingly, the Heaths have made sure the initial letters of these characteristics form a neat mnemonic SUCCESs.

  • S: Simple
  • U: Unexpected
  • C: Concrete
  • C: Credible
  • E: Emotional
  • S: Stories

There is a bit of circularity here: the Heaths advocate the story form both as a container for the other characteristics and as a characteristic in itself.

The book is an easy read, because it is well constructed (naturally, it is suffused with stories and examples) not because it is simplistic. The authors make sure that we understand that there is some real analysis underpinning this work. In some respects, therefore, this can be read as a companion, practical, volume to Predictably Irrational. There is a close relationship between our human respect for stories and the behavioural economics of Dan Ariely. (And Ariely himself uses a lot of story-based examples.)

For me, the key message of the book (and of Shawn’s workshop) is that you can’t argue against a story — that is someone’s experience, not a carefully constructed debating point. That’s why we can’t make horses drink — all we have available to us is blunt persuasion — if we could tell them stories, we could engage more usefully with them.

Recently Mary Abraham highlighted a real issue we often face in convincing people that something is good for them in her post “The Four Chickens Problem.” She likens the problems we have persuading people of the merits of Enterprise 2.0 (although any “jam tomorrow” solution is likely to raise similar issues) to the challenges faced by organisations trying to eradicate malaria.

The most effective way to prevent death by malaria is by using long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets. Yet organizations that distribute these nets have discovered that the folks who receive the nets sometimes choose to trade them for four chickens rather than use the nets.

Why do they want chickens rather than nets? Because the immediate concrete need for food is more obvious than the future abstract goal of eliminating disease. Mary’s solution to similar problems in the business context centres on persuasion.

In order to achieve changed behavior (or adoption of a new tool) we must:

  • Educate people as to the actual cause of the problem.
  • Educate people as to the theoretical benefits of the proposed solution.
  • Prove the solution in such an obvious way so that you make the theoretical real.
  • Include monitoring and evaluation to keep proving your case as you implement the solution in their community.

Don’t just throw your nets (or E2.0 solution) at the nearest group of people. You can’t solve problems they don’t realize exist.

In a comment on Mary’s post, Jack Vinson proposes another approach, using a coaching model:

Even better than educating people is to lead them through a discussion of the core problems and mechanisms for their solution. It is so much more effective to have them come up with the solution, even if it is the same one you would have presented 30 minutes ago. Then you have a much better chance of challenging the solution and presenting its benefits / drawbacks, as you will have their general agreement that it is the right thing to do.

These answers are fine, but they depend on ensuring that the message you are selling actually resonates with the audience. If there is a powerful story to tell, the education piece will follow.

You may have noticed that I have been including images in my posts recently. In part this is just to please myself — apart from one (attributed) example, they are all pictures that I have taken. Largely, however, it is a distraction from my usually wordy posts. Selecting the image can be a bit of a challenge — I like to see a link between the image and the text.  This one was easy.

Earlier this month, we took advantage of the sun to visit a bit of local history, Haddon Hall (famous for being the backdrop to a number of period dramas). Like many such places, they need persuade visitors to be careful with the historic furnishings. The normal approach to this problem is to rope things off or to put notices on chairs telling people not to sit on them. Instead, what they have done at Haddon Hall is simply to place a dried teasel on the chairs and benches. Nobody would sit on a teasel, would they? Without an unsightly rope or notice, they have communicated an important message to visitors. A message made to stick.

So, if you have ideas you need to communicate, Made to Stick will help immensely — it is certainly a worthwhile purchase for people in a range of roles. For those interested in storytelling as a leadership tool, Shawn is running a webinar “Three Questions We Usually Get from Leaders About Storytelling: Reflections, Discussion & Tools” with Terrence Gargiulo next month. (The webinar is running twice, to make the most of timezones.)

Are your leaders great storytellers? And, why should you care anyway?

With over forty years of combined experience, two of the world’s leading narrative consultants divulge some of what they have learned. Join Shawn Callahan of Anecdote and Terrence Gargiulo of MAKINGSTORIES.net for a 45-minute rousing interactive discussion rich with examples and practical tools.

I will be attending the webinar to continue my Summer of story; I’m looking forward to it.

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Posted in Book Review, Stories

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