In the final section of his book, Johansson (2006) focuses on realizing creative ideas. Concepts that he covers include persevering in spite of failures, breaking out of one's network, and taking reasonable risks.
As is always my impression when I read this book, I feel like Johansson's goals are questionable. Should a rabbit learn how to swim? To what extent is Johansson's advice just that--encouraging people to live outside of their strengths? At one point, Johansson states:
There is a common notion that Branson’s daring ventures have something to do with who he is as a person. They are part of how he is wired. Taking huge risks is like breathing air for Branson; it’s a behavior that’s possibly in his genes. This notion suggests that there is little we can learn from Branson’s approach to risk taking. All we can do is look at it, shrug our shoulders, and shake our heads at his craziness and then go back to our business. Not so fast (Kindle Locations 2416-2419).
Johansson then goes on to state that by studying such people, we can learn something about taking risk. I don't dispute his underlying point, but I think he is the one moving fast. Why move past this point so summarily? Why not stop and reflect on the extend to which certain creative tendencies are simply a matter of natural strengths? It is not enough to study people who make things look easy. We need to consider more deeply why more people do not (should not?) follow suit. Johansson never really discusses this subject. The above quotation is the closest he gets to such considerations.
However, I really liked a lot of Johansson's ideas. I do think stepping into the intersection includes all of the elements he suggested. He explicitly makes statements that I have found to be true. He states:
If you take a course of action that is widely seen as correct, your reputation barely suffers if you did not make it all the way. If, on the other hand, you proceed in a way that is less understood and fail, it might be tougher to live down because you will be judged harshly. The stigma of failure can be crushing (Kindle Locations 2437-2439).
I feel like I have encountered this phenomenon quite often in my life. It is crushing for me too. In the past, I think I often laid down under others' criticism--surrendered my ground and tried to find a more conventional route. Perhaps I blamed others for being intolerant and myself for not being able to fit in socially. Recently, though, I've been challenged about my behavior, challenged to see it as somewhat cowardly. I think I need to be braver and not blame others for not understanding, but just do what I believe God is asking me to do.
I don't think people should try too hard to be different. It is not God's calling for every person, but if one does have that calling--if, just in the process of being oneself, one ends up at the intersection and everyone is judging you for it, God is calling that person to hold their course. As Johansson notes, great things are often only accomplished by taking risk.
I also liked what Johansson said about risk. He said: [The study] suggests that efforts we take to decrease risks around us, such as making roads safer, amount to little because our behavior becomes riskier to compensate (Kindle Locations 2492-2493).
He proceeds to give several examples, including seat belts and crosswalks. This argument made me smile because I hate the way governments "nanny" people. There are a lot less of these kinds of rules in China. Foreigners are shocked by how messy the traffic is and how there aren't always railings in high places. People do seem to be able to take care of themselves, though. Johansson describes a relationship to deadlines that I found very familiar.
Having more time means taking more time. Having greater experience or better contacts means relying more on them to get things done. It is not that we waste time, money, or contacts, but that we try to do more with the amount that we have. In trying to do more, we slowly begin to increase the risk of failure, until we hit a level we are subconsciously comfortable with (Kindle Locations 2516-2518).
I notice that I do this with my work. Not everyone is wired the same. Some people start working right away, but I always wait until some subconscious switch in my head flips and tells me to kick it into gear. I kind of wish I could start earlier, but maybe that's just the way I am wired--to spend a long time mulling something over before I do anything about it.
Social Justice and Diversity
I think one weakness of Johansson's book is that he does not address this aspect of innovation. A lot of his examples were white men. I don't think this is because white men are inherently more creative than other types of people. There's an aspect of creativity and innovation that owes its fruitfulness to privilege. One has to have resources to be innovative, and some people are able to come by them much more readily than others. I wish Johansson had delved into this question a little deeper. He could have. At least two of his examples were people of color. I wished he had asked them what influence their race had on their ability to be creative. I think they would have had interesting things to say.
Monday, July 3, 2017
Sunday, June 25, 2017
The Medici Effect: Chapter 7-8
In chapter seven, Johansson (2006) states that creative people
are characterized by having a lot of ideas. He really leans on this idea, giving several examples and argues that quantity and quality correlate, so that a person cannot have quality ideas if they do not also have quantity. Good ideas are also unpredictable. People who have them can have them at any time in their life. He also describes how intersections have the potential for exponentially more ideas.
In chapter eight, Johansson describes how to capture this explosion, giving three steps: strike a balance between breadth and depth, actively generate many ideas, and allow time for evaluation. In this chapter, he discusses brainstorming and notes that brainstorming actually works better for individuals than it does for most groups. He also debunks the idea that pressure makes people more creative and describes optimum timing for developing good ideas.
My reaction to Johansson's description of the mass of ideas creative people have was tiredness. I wondered, "Isn't it possible that these people aren't just creative, but brilliant?" Johansson has this way of implying anyone can do it with just three easy steps. My own life experience does not suggest that. Don't get me wrong, I do know what it means to have a lot of ideas, but the productivity of some of the people he mentions is daunting. Most of my ideas flow through my head and into either my journal or into oblivion--and I love to think about things. Not everyone has that kind of energy. On the other side of it, I really struggle to realize many of my ideas, which the examples he describes don't seem to do. I really wish that Johansson would go through and rewrite this book with a strengths perspective.
I do think what he had to say about the number of ideas at intersections was pretty cool. I also think it is true from my own experience. When one's associative barriers are low, ideas are everywhere. In my cohort, people have talked about not being able to find anything to research, and I think, "Are you kidding?" I can think of maybe ten different topics that I could probably spend my life digging into in about a half an hour. In fact, I brought those ten topics with me to our first week of intensives and sat down with Alex and picked the topic I'm working on now. Finding ideas to research is like picking up pebbles off the beach... so many pebbles... so little time. Developing the idea is just so intensely time and energy consuming. That is where the bottleneck is for me.
I have been having this experience lately, reading these books, where I predict something or react a certain way and then find the book echoing my thoughts. That was what happened this time when I started to read about brainstorming. Johansson quoted an author who said, "The average person can think of twice as many ideas when working with a group than when working alone." When I read that, I thought, "Well then I must not be average because that is not where I do my best thinking." And sure enough, it turns out that some scientists tested this statement and found out that no, people actually are more creative when they brainstorm alone--mostly because turn-taking rules in a group stifle people's ideas and then they forget about them. I think in my case, I also just have a very quirky way of thinking about things that some people find a little hard to accept.
Social Justice and Diversity
So I don't think these chapters had a lot to say about social justice beyond the fact that most of Johansson's examples are old white guys who are good at technical innovation. I think it would be nice if he expanded his concept a little in those areas. At the end of chapter eight, Johansson suggests that there is more to innovation than having good ideas. He says, "You must make those ideas happen." I'll admit, that is my weak point. I think there were be more to say about social justice in those chapters because they have more to do with our relationship to each other.
Monday, June 19, 2017
The Medici Effect: Chapters 5-6
Well, I was going to read three chapters, but I had so much to say about chapter six that I decided to stop there. In chapter five, Johansson (2006) describes the process of randomly combining concepts, using the example of Richard Garfield, who invented the card game Magic: the Gathering. He notes that combining concepts randomly is the basis of innovation. In chapter six, he outlines three ways to increase this tendency to find useful combinations of concepts. He suggests we diversify occupations, diversify our interactions with people, and look for intersections.
I have a complex and somewhat negative reaction to Johansson's ideas. I think that reaction is already clear in other posts that I've written about this book. It is not that his ideas are bad, uninteresting, or useless. Its more of a feeling of "been there, done that, and it's not as easy as you are suggesting!"
Here's a question. Our program embraces positive psychology and the strengths perspective that Clifton came up with. According to that perspective, Johansson is approaching this idea all wrong. He is writing a how-to book for uncreative people. He is saying, "You are not very creative now, but if you follow these steps, you will improve." If we agree with Clifton, this is the classic example of trying to teach a rabbit how to swim (Clifton & Nelson, 1992). On the other hand, I suppose Johansson's argument is that we need more creative people. So which is it? Are we building towards our strengths or trying to get people to contort into attitudes and concepts that are not natural to them? Or maybe Johansson really hasn't thought that through at all. Maybe he just wrote this book to profit off of people's tendency to admire and strive to be what they are not.
One of the reasons that I have this reaction to the book is that I am actually the native fish (to extend the teaching-the-rabbit-how-to-swim analogy). I don't need Johansson's advice. He is describing my natural tendencies. As a naturally creative person who is constantly trying to expand my horizons and find intersection (if that is what one wants to call them), I have not found the challenge to be actually doing it. I have found the challenge to be other people really understanding themselves or their reaction to my personality and gifts.
Take Johansson's idea about diversifying our interactions with people. He says: Humans have a tendency to stick with people who are like themselves and avoid those who are different. Psychologists have a name for this tendency. They call it the similar-attraction effect. I don't really seem to have this tendency. I love meeting people who are different from myself. I have across-the-room envy. I want to know what those people over there are talking about. The more different they are, the more fascinating I find them. This ends up being a somewhat self-destructive tendency because other people don't share it. They are usually pretty content not to know me, and it can be a little intimidating to try to break those social barriers. One of the lovely things about living overseas is that you mostly meet the people from other cultures who share a similar tendency. They wouldn't hang out with me if they didn't like hanging out with people who are different in general. They self-identify.
My native crowd, the one that I love the best, is the one that includes my Russian friend, my Mexican friend, my Indian friend, my Filipino friend, my Chinese friend, and my Taiwanese-extraction Californian friend. When we get together, we have so much fun and the conversation is so interesting, but it should be noted and even emphasized that none of these friends are typical of their native land. We are all freaks. Why would we be hanging out together in a residence hall for foreigners in China if we weren't? My Russian friend studied in Lithuania and is going to get her Ph.D. in the U.S. She says that her own countrymen tend to see her as a traitor because of her close ties with the west. My Mexican friend spent eight years in the U.S. before deciding to come and live with a bunch of American teachers in China. My Chinese friend chose to hang out with our motley crowd instead of her own people and is now studying for her MBA in California. None of us fit in in our native setting and it is very unlikely that we will ever be completely happy if we try to go back to that place. I am getting a Ph.D. in my native country, and I know I don't fit in at all.
So I already asked this question, but if Johansson cares so much about fostering creativity and innovation, why is he trying to make more creative people? Why isn't he instead writing a book about fostering the ones who already exist? We don't have a good deal generally. We are forced to specialize and there is not a general value for our differentness. Johansson notes:
Most people, for instance, think they are pretty decent at interviewing candidates for jobs. Some people even claim that they can tell as soon as a candidate walks through the door whether the person is suitable. “When you’ve been in the game as long as I have you can spot them straight away,” they say. Such talk flies in the face of hundreds of studies that have been conducted since the beginning of the century. These studies show conclusively that the unstructured interview has virtually no validity as a selection tool. Such an interview does not give us enough information to understand the candidate’s qualifications. There are many reasons for this problem. People tend to search for commonalities in others. Both the person conducting the interview and the interviewee try to find common ground quickly; if they do, they get a good feeling about each other. The result is that people tend to recruit candidates just like themselves. We do this because we are affected by subjective biases, and in particular by the similar-attraction effect. (Kindle Locations 1258-1266).
He says, "Go out and diversify your experiences" and then he says, "People generally only hire people who are like them." Does he notice the barrier there? I have experienced it. When I was young, I just wanted to explore the world. I wanted to be like the author of Dune, Frank Herbert, who went everywhere and did everything, but I wasn't good at breaking down those barriers, and I didn't really know where to start. I was always too different to get hired. That is the book that needs to be written--a book that helps creative people know where to start and how to connect. For me, ultimately, the answer was to sign up for the Peace Corps. They're not that picky and it really is an amazingly broadening experience, but I tried so many other things first, and there were so many doors closed in my face. Alternatively, there should be a book for non-creative people that helps them to recognize that other people have a gift that they don't have and that they should value and help to promote those people in the work they are trying to do--even if it isn't really obvious how it's going to work out. Maybe Johansson begins that conversation, but most of his focus is on reinventing the way people approach life.
For my student success comp, I suggested that the FHSU administration create a first-year seminar that would be team-taught by a Chinese and American faculty member. For me, this team teaching process would create the kind of dynamism that Johansson is talking about. I just get so excited thinking about the revolutions in pedagogy that might come from such partnerships, and I think it would help our program grow and become more competitive also, but it is really hard for me to communicate that vision to others because creativity and the value of diversity is so little understood--despite the generally mouthed allegiance to "diversity." I don't think the administration here would be willing to face the expense and complaints that such a decision would create (there is always resistance to collaborative work--or change for that matter), so there is an opportunity wasted. I really don't know how to change that. I guess I will hold my idea in reserve and wait for that moment when it might be received.
Social Justice and Diversity
Johansson says, "People tend to stick to their own disciplines and domains. They stick to their own ethnicities and cultures....Why are we so hesitant about working in diverse teams? The reason is at least in part a function of human nature. Humans have a tendency to stick with people who are like themselves and avoid those who are different. Psychologists have a name for this tendency. They call it the similar-attraction effect." (Locations 1243-1245).
I tried to point this phenomenon out in our Social Justice and Diversity class. I tried to make the point that white people are not intrinsically racist in a special way in which no other race is capable (see Coates, 2015, Between the World and Me for an explanation of that concept). I don't really remember what response I got--maybe it was just blank stares.
My point was that white people are like all people in that they trust other white people more than people who are different--because all people are that way--or at least the vast majority. This tendency to trust the in-group creates racism and social injustice. It is the unusual amount of power that white people have as a group that creates the abuses. (Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.) Any race would create the same abuses in the same situation and perhaps even worse ones, depending on how one looks at it. I'm not saying that to minimize or excuse the problem--simply to understand it and put it in perspective. We can't really solve a problem we don't understand.
Unfortunately, from my experience, that doesn't seem to be an idea that social justice advocates want to engage. Maybe they are afraid that it will let the white people off the hook and responsibility for racism will shift and become ambiguous instead of resting so certainly (and comfortably) on white people.
I have a complex and somewhat negative reaction to Johansson's ideas. I think that reaction is already clear in other posts that I've written about this book. It is not that his ideas are bad, uninteresting, or useless. Its more of a feeling of "been there, done that, and it's not as easy as you are suggesting!"
Here's a question. Our program embraces positive psychology and the strengths perspective that Clifton came up with. According to that perspective, Johansson is approaching this idea all wrong. He is writing a how-to book for uncreative people. He is saying, "You are not very creative now, but if you follow these steps, you will improve." If we agree with Clifton, this is the classic example of trying to teach a rabbit how to swim (Clifton & Nelson, 1992). On the other hand, I suppose Johansson's argument is that we need more creative people. So which is it? Are we building towards our strengths or trying to get people to contort into attitudes and concepts that are not natural to them? Or maybe Johansson really hasn't thought that through at all. Maybe he just wrote this book to profit off of people's tendency to admire and strive to be what they are not.
One of the reasons that I have this reaction to the book is that I am actually the native fish (to extend the teaching-the-rabbit-how-to-swim analogy). I don't need Johansson's advice. He is describing my natural tendencies. As a naturally creative person who is constantly trying to expand my horizons and find intersection (if that is what one wants to call them), I have not found the challenge to be actually doing it. I have found the challenge to be other people really understanding themselves or their reaction to my personality and gifts.
Take Johansson's idea about diversifying our interactions with people. He says: Humans have a tendency to stick with people who are like themselves and avoid those who are different. Psychologists have a name for this tendency. They call it the similar-attraction effect. I don't really seem to have this tendency. I love meeting people who are different from myself. I have across-the-room envy. I want to know what those people over there are talking about. The more different they are, the more fascinating I find them. This ends up being a somewhat self-destructive tendency because other people don't share it. They are usually pretty content not to know me, and it can be a little intimidating to try to break those social barriers. One of the lovely things about living overseas is that you mostly meet the people from other cultures who share a similar tendency. They wouldn't hang out with me if they didn't like hanging out with people who are different in general. They self-identify.
My native crowd, the one that I love the best, is the one that includes my Russian friend, my Mexican friend, my Indian friend, my Filipino friend, my Chinese friend, and my Taiwanese-extraction Californian friend. When we get together, we have so much fun and the conversation is so interesting, but it should be noted and even emphasized that none of these friends are typical of their native land. We are all freaks. Why would we be hanging out together in a residence hall for foreigners in China if we weren't? My Russian friend studied in Lithuania and is going to get her Ph.D. in the U.S. She says that her own countrymen tend to see her as a traitor because of her close ties with the west. My Mexican friend spent eight years in the U.S. before deciding to come and live with a bunch of American teachers in China. My Chinese friend chose to hang out with our motley crowd instead of her own people and is now studying for her MBA in California. None of us fit in in our native setting and it is very unlikely that we will ever be completely happy if we try to go back to that place. I am getting a Ph.D. in my native country, and I know I don't fit in at all.
So I already asked this question, but if Johansson cares so much about fostering creativity and innovation, why is he trying to make more creative people? Why isn't he instead writing a book about fostering the ones who already exist? We don't have a good deal generally. We are forced to specialize and there is not a general value for our differentness. Johansson notes:
Most people, for instance, think they are pretty decent at interviewing candidates for jobs. Some people even claim that they can tell as soon as a candidate walks through the door whether the person is suitable. “When you’ve been in the game as long as I have you can spot them straight away,” they say. Such talk flies in the face of hundreds of studies that have been conducted since the beginning of the century. These studies show conclusively that the unstructured interview has virtually no validity as a selection tool. Such an interview does not give us enough information to understand the candidate’s qualifications. There are many reasons for this problem. People tend to search for commonalities in others. Both the person conducting the interview and the interviewee try to find common ground quickly; if they do, they get a good feeling about each other. The result is that people tend to recruit candidates just like themselves. We do this because we are affected by subjective biases, and in particular by the similar-attraction effect. (Kindle Locations 1258-1266).
He says, "Go out and diversify your experiences" and then he says, "People generally only hire people who are like them." Does he notice the barrier there? I have experienced it. When I was young, I just wanted to explore the world. I wanted to be like the author of Dune, Frank Herbert, who went everywhere and did everything, but I wasn't good at breaking down those barriers, and I didn't really know where to start. I was always too different to get hired. That is the book that needs to be written--a book that helps creative people know where to start and how to connect. For me, ultimately, the answer was to sign up for the Peace Corps. They're not that picky and it really is an amazingly broadening experience, but I tried so many other things first, and there were so many doors closed in my face. Alternatively, there should be a book for non-creative people that helps them to recognize that other people have a gift that they don't have and that they should value and help to promote those people in the work they are trying to do--even if it isn't really obvious how it's going to work out. Maybe Johansson begins that conversation, but most of his focus is on reinventing the way people approach life.
For my student success comp, I suggested that the FHSU administration create a first-year seminar that would be team-taught by a Chinese and American faculty member. For me, this team teaching process would create the kind of dynamism that Johansson is talking about. I just get so excited thinking about the revolutions in pedagogy that might come from such partnerships, and I think it would help our program grow and become more competitive also, but it is really hard for me to communicate that vision to others because creativity and the value of diversity is so little understood--despite the generally mouthed allegiance to "diversity." I don't think the administration here would be willing to face the expense and complaints that such a decision would create (there is always resistance to collaborative work--or change for that matter), so there is an opportunity wasted. I really don't know how to change that. I guess I will hold my idea in reserve and wait for that moment when it might be received.
Social Justice and Diversity
Johansson says, "People tend to stick to their own disciplines and domains. They stick to their own ethnicities and cultures....Why are we so hesitant about working in diverse teams? The reason is at least in part a function of human nature. Humans have a tendency to stick with people who are like themselves and avoid those who are different. Psychologists have a name for this tendency. They call it the similar-attraction effect." (Locations 1243-1245).
I tried to point this phenomenon out in our Social Justice and Diversity class. I tried to make the point that white people are not intrinsically racist in a special way in which no other race is capable (see Coates, 2015, Between the World and Me for an explanation of that concept). I don't really remember what response I got--maybe it was just blank stares.
My point was that white people are like all people in that they trust other white people more than people who are different--because all people are that way--or at least the vast majority. This tendency to trust the in-group creates racism and social injustice. It is the unusual amount of power that white people have as a group that creates the abuses. (Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.) Any race would create the same abuses in the same situation and perhaps even worse ones, depending on how one looks at it. I'm not saying that to minimize or excuse the problem--simply to understand it and put it in perspective. We can't really solve a problem we don't understand.
Unfortunately, from my experience, that doesn't seem to be an idea that social justice advocates want to engage. Maybe they are afraid that it will let the white people off the hook and responsibility for racism will shift and become ambiguous instead of resting so certainly (and comfortably) on white people.
Monday, June 12, 2017
The Medici Effect: chapters 2-4
I have started reading Johansson's (2006) Medici Effect. I read the first chapter some time ago, so I started with chapter 2 and continued on from there. Chapter 2 describes the rise of "intersections" which is a term that Johansson introduces to describe the place where ideas combine to make new ideas, a sort of psychological place of innovation. He argues that because of three forces, increased movement of people, the convergence of science, and increased computational power, intersections between ideas are becoming increasingly common and important. In chapter 3, Johansson introduces the concept of associative barriers and describes how they inhibit innovation. In chapter 4, Johansson gives three ways that associative barriers can be broken down: being exposed to a range of cultures, learning differently, and reversing assumptions.
Johansson's ideas seem very familiar to me. That is, I feel like he is talking about me and my life. I have intensely pursued the cross-cultural perspective that Johansson describes. I have always been driven to learn differently, and I believe assumptions were made to be challenged--somewhat to the chagrin of my family and colleagues.
I always wanted to travel, but I didn't get the opportunity until my mid-twenties. At that point, I joined the Peace Corps. In my application essay, I stated that I needed to get out of American culture, that it was limiting the way I thought and that I felt stifled by it. I don't know how I knew this--only that I was right. Living overseas was a revelation and a catharsis. So many silly, petty, arbitrary rules that I had been acculturated to accept sloughed off me. It was wonderful. I don't think I can ever go back to living in a place that is not intercultural. People's ways of thinking are just too narrow and it is really hard for me to be patient with their perspective. Maybe God will ask me to grow in that area eventually.
In the section about learning differently, Johansson notes that education can inhibit creativity because the more we know about the established way of doing things, the less we tend to question those assumptions or try to find new ways to do things. Since I was a teenager, I have hated this about education. I have always wanted to turn things on their head and find a new way to look at them, but my impulse to do this was ill-defined, and teachers, not recognizing why I would want to do such things, overrode that desire and insisted I stick to the curriculum. To be fair, perhaps if I had been better at articulating what I wanted to do, they would have been more supportive... but when one is a teenager, this kind of clarity is hard to come by.
I wanted to drop out of high school, but persuaded myself to stay in order not to miss the "high school experience." Graduation was a complete letdown, and I spent the summer after I graduated mourning the loss of my senior year. I could have been doing so many other more interesting things besides sitting zombie-like in the classroom. It is one of my enduring regrets. I was less passive about my education in college, but that resulted in me changing my college four times and my major seven times. I finally got my bachelors in communications (almost as non-specialized as one can be), my masters in linguistics, and my Ph.D. in higher education. I have since been toying with the idea of getting a Ph.D. in neuroscience. It is just such an interesting field. It would mean starting all over again, but maybe I could wipe out a lot of the prerequisites with MOOCs... I don't know.
Assumptions were made to be challenged--including Johansson's assumptions. One thing that bothers me about this book is that Johansson makes so many grand statements. I understand it is probably an aspect of his personality. He strikes me as one of those excited idealists, but he sometimes undermines his credibility with me by taking such an uncritical view of the world. Much of what he talks about, I don't know enough about to challenge, but he did make one statement that I know is not true and given my general experience of the world, that statement makes me highly skeptical of some of the other statements that he makes.
He says: In biology virtually every discovery, including the double helix, has reinforced and refined Darwin’s theory of evolution, not questioned it (Locations 440). I am not an expert in biology, but from what I know of science in general, this statement strikes me as ridiculous. How can Johansson treat evolution as a forgone conclusion? I'm willing to acknowledge that it is a very respected theory, but there are scientists whose discoveries in biology have very much not "reinforced or refined Darwin's theory." There have been books written and documentaries made to this fact. Ben Stein created a documentary on a number of scientists who were ostracized from their academic communities for questioning evolutionary theory.
A lot of experts want to pretend these questions don't even exist. They don't have good answers for the questions posed against evolution--they just sneer at anyone who would ask such questions and label them as ignorant or religious. This is a very ironic stance to take in light of the need to "reverse assumptions." Some assumptions are not allowed to be challenged, and Johansson, with his very uncritical approach, demonstrates that he does not follow the tenants that he is extolling. He is locked into his own cultural associative barriers. I suppose we all are, but I would respect what he has to say more if his own barriers were not so easy to see.
Social Justice and Equity
Another aspect of Johansson's approach that I really do not appreciate very much is how he ignores the way social rules and power structures affect innovation. As I noted in my first blog about Johansson's book, he states that innovation is different than creativity in that the general society has to accept and implement a creative idea in order to make it innovative. Perhaps I have just not reached the point in the book where he talks about this, but this social adoption of creative ideas is, from my experience, the single greatest barrier to innovation.
Johansson's examples of innovation include Edison, Da Vinci and Darwin--white males. He admires them for their creativity, but they would never have accomplished what they did without patrons and without the respect that their gender and race gave them. Lots of creative people are marginalized. They don't fit the usual paradigm of more conventional people in the world--people who have the power to sideline them. Prejudice is a rampant and common poison to creativity and innovation, and there is as much or more of that in the world than ever. I hope that later in his book Johansson acknowledges this fact. Innovation does not necessarily have a bright future. With all of the forces that he describes that create more intersections, we could very well have the rise of a totalitarian state instead.
Johansson's ideas seem very familiar to me. That is, I feel like he is talking about me and my life. I have intensely pursued the cross-cultural perspective that Johansson describes. I have always been driven to learn differently, and I believe assumptions were made to be challenged--somewhat to the chagrin of my family and colleagues.
I always wanted to travel, but I didn't get the opportunity until my mid-twenties. At that point, I joined the Peace Corps. In my application essay, I stated that I needed to get out of American culture, that it was limiting the way I thought and that I felt stifled by it. I don't know how I knew this--only that I was right. Living overseas was a revelation and a catharsis. So many silly, petty, arbitrary rules that I had been acculturated to accept sloughed off me. It was wonderful. I don't think I can ever go back to living in a place that is not intercultural. People's ways of thinking are just too narrow and it is really hard for me to be patient with their perspective. Maybe God will ask me to grow in that area eventually.
In the section about learning differently, Johansson notes that education can inhibit creativity because the more we know about the established way of doing things, the less we tend to question those assumptions or try to find new ways to do things. Since I was a teenager, I have hated this about education. I have always wanted to turn things on their head and find a new way to look at them, but my impulse to do this was ill-defined, and teachers, not recognizing why I would want to do such things, overrode that desire and insisted I stick to the curriculum. To be fair, perhaps if I had been better at articulating what I wanted to do, they would have been more supportive... but when one is a teenager, this kind of clarity is hard to come by.
I wanted to drop out of high school, but persuaded myself to stay in order not to miss the "high school experience." Graduation was a complete letdown, and I spent the summer after I graduated mourning the loss of my senior year. I could have been doing so many other more interesting things besides sitting zombie-like in the classroom. It is one of my enduring regrets. I was less passive about my education in college, but that resulted in me changing my college four times and my major seven times. I finally got my bachelors in communications (almost as non-specialized as one can be), my masters in linguistics, and my Ph.D. in higher education. I have since been toying with the idea of getting a Ph.D. in neuroscience. It is just such an interesting field. It would mean starting all over again, but maybe I could wipe out a lot of the prerequisites with MOOCs... I don't know.
Assumptions were made to be challenged--including Johansson's assumptions. One thing that bothers me about this book is that Johansson makes so many grand statements. I understand it is probably an aspect of his personality. He strikes me as one of those excited idealists, but he sometimes undermines his credibility with me by taking such an uncritical view of the world. Much of what he talks about, I don't know enough about to challenge, but he did make one statement that I know is not true and given my general experience of the world, that statement makes me highly skeptical of some of the other statements that he makes.
He says: In biology virtually every discovery, including the double helix, has reinforced and refined Darwin’s theory of evolution, not questioned it (Locations 440). I am not an expert in biology, but from what I know of science in general, this statement strikes me as ridiculous. How can Johansson treat evolution as a forgone conclusion? I'm willing to acknowledge that it is a very respected theory, but there are scientists whose discoveries in biology have very much not "reinforced or refined Darwin's theory." There have been books written and documentaries made to this fact. Ben Stein created a documentary on a number of scientists who were ostracized from their academic communities for questioning evolutionary theory.
A lot of experts want to pretend these questions don't even exist. They don't have good answers for the questions posed against evolution--they just sneer at anyone who would ask such questions and label them as ignorant or religious. This is a very ironic stance to take in light of the need to "reverse assumptions." Some assumptions are not allowed to be challenged, and Johansson, with his very uncritical approach, demonstrates that he does not follow the tenants that he is extolling. He is locked into his own cultural associative barriers. I suppose we all are, but I would respect what he has to say more if his own barriers were not so easy to see.
Social Justice and Equity
Another aspect of Johansson's approach that I really do not appreciate very much is how he ignores the way social rules and power structures affect innovation. As I noted in my first blog about Johansson's book, he states that innovation is different than creativity in that the general society has to accept and implement a creative idea in order to make it innovative. Perhaps I have just not reached the point in the book where he talks about this, but this social adoption of creative ideas is, from my experience, the single greatest barrier to innovation.
Johansson's examples of innovation include Edison, Da Vinci and Darwin--white males. He admires them for their creativity, but they would never have accomplished what they did without patrons and without the respect that their gender and race gave them. Lots of creative people are marginalized. They don't fit the usual paradigm of more conventional people in the world--people who have the power to sideline them. Prejudice is a rampant and common poison to creativity and innovation, and there is as much or more of that in the world than ever. I hope that later in his book Johansson acknowledges this fact. Innovation does not necessarily have a bright future. With all of the forces that he describes that create more intersections, we could very well have the rise of a totalitarian state instead.
Monday, June 5, 2017
Deep Change: Chapter 21-23
The last three chapters of Quinn's (2008) book on deep change address how the inner life of an individual affects a community. In chapter 21, Quinn talks about developing a vision, and most notably, uses Ghandi's approach to developing a vision as a ideal example. Ghandi traveled throughout India talking to people and finally developed a vision that everyone found compelling, addressing people's desire for "bread and salt." Quinn states that a leader must find the "inner voice" of the organization and speak from that knowledge.
In the notes at the end of the chapter, Quinn gives the statement that one CEO developed for his organization. In those notes was this statement:
We tell them that they should be empowered. Occasionally, they make the mistake of taking us seriously and act on their own. For a moment, they become responsible adults. Their act of independence makes us uncomfortable, and we let them know how we really feel. They respond in amazement, "Oh, that is what you meant by empowerment. Now I understand. You don't need to worry anymore" (Kindle Locations 1758-1761).
This statement really resonated with me because I have experienced this event in so many situations. I'm the type to say what I mean and take other people at their word. I have recently been told that this is a very impractical thing to do, that "normal" people don't say what they mean. I really rebel against that kind of pragmatism, though, because to me, the idea that we accept that this is inevitably the system means that we have accepted this "slow death" that Quinn talks about. I hate that idea. I think I would rather be kicked out of a program for speaking out than accept that idea. I suppose that is the crux of Quinn's vision of deep change. Sometimes the system accepts one's honesty and sometimes it ejects the person. Sometimes, I suppose, it does both. It is hard to love an organization enough to accept that final outcome.
In chapter 22, Quinn gives the example of a Quaker, named John Woolman, who used his disruptive--but not confrontational--vision to convince other Quakers to give up slavery. Finally, in the last chapter, Quinn addressed the idea of empowerment, pointing out that people generally have different ideas of what empowerment means. Even as he was describing the two competing visions, I was speculating about my own view. I thought that the two views should be combined, and sure enough, that was Quinn's idea also.
He makes the statement, right at the end of the book, that leaders can create environments where empowerment is possible, but people need to empower themselves. That struck me as quite apropos. I try to structure my own class so that initiative is rewarded. However, there is only so much I can do to create space for students to strike out. If I make things too unstructured, the students are completely lost, not least because their Chinese classes tend to be so structured and we don't share common cultural assumptions about what a classroom experience is supposed to be. The disappointing part is that so few students try to stand up or really challenge the system that I have set in place. I wish they would, but mostly they just do the things that I make them do with as little thought as possible... *sigh* I am rather pragmatic as a teacher, because I spent so much time as a student. I have often behaved the same way.
Social Justice and Equity
John Woolman's one-man fight against slavery is a good challenge that we can take on social injustice even as one person and make a difference if we really hold to our vision strongly and understand the people we are trying to persuade. I think Quinn would agree that part of Woolman's success was that he was a Quaker himself. Sometimes we think it is enough to have the high moral ground, but being able to understand others' values and speak to those values in our efforts to confront social injustice is really important.
I mentioned that idea to one of the teachers in our program last intensive--that a lot of the reason that Trump won the election was that many social justice advocates had stopped listening to the people they were trying to persuade. We cannot force people to accept change--without a costly civil war, anyway--and even then it is not really successful, as Quinn notes. If we want the change to really come from the heart we have to deeply understand and appeal humbly to the people we are trying to change by asking real questions. Social justice advocacy is floundering in the United States for this reason: nobody is really listening anymore. There is a lot of, "Please tell us what you think... so we can point out how wrong you are."
In the notes at the end of the chapter, Quinn gives the statement that one CEO developed for his organization. In those notes was this statement:
We tell them that they should be empowered. Occasionally, they make the mistake of taking us seriously and act on their own. For a moment, they become responsible adults. Their act of independence makes us uncomfortable, and we let them know how we really feel. They respond in amazement, "Oh, that is what you meant by empowerment. Now I understand. You don't need to worry anymore" (Kindle Locations 1758-1761).
This statement really resonated with me because I have experienced this event in so many situations. I'm the type to say what I mean and take other people at their word. I have recently been told that this is a very impractical thing to do, that "normal" people don't say what they mean. I really rebel against that kind of pragmatism, though, because to me, the idea that we accept that this is inevitably the system means that we have accepted this "slow death" that Quinn talks about. I hate that idea. I think I would rather be kicked out of a program for speaking out than accept that idea. I suppose that is the crux of Quinn's vision of deep change. Sometimes the system accepts one's honesty and sometimes it ejects the person. Sometimes, I suppose, it does both. It is hard to love an organization enough to accept that final outcome.
In chapter 22, Quinn gives the example of a Quaker, named John Woolman, who used his disruptive--but not confrontational--vision to convince other Quakers to give up slavery. Finally, in the last chapter, Quinn addressed the idea of empowerment, pointing out that people generally have different ideas of what empowerment means. Even as he was describing the two competing visions, I was speculating about my own view. I thought that the two views should be combined, and sure enough, that was Quinn's idea also.
He makes the statement, right at the end of the book, that leaders can create environments where empowerment is possible, but people need to empower themselves. That struck me as quite apropos. I try to structure my own class so that initiative is rewarded. However, there is only so much I can do to create space for students to strike out. If I make things too unstructured, the students are completely lost, not least because their Chinese classes tend to be so structured and we don't share common cultural assumptions about what a classroom experience is supposed to be. The disappointing part is that so few students try to stand up or really challenge the system that I have set in place. I wish they would, but mostly they just do the things that I make them do with as little thought as possible... *sigh* I am rather pragmatic as a teacher, because I spent so much time as a student. I have often behaved the same way.
Social Justice and Equity
John Woolman's one-man fight against slavery is a good challenge that we can take on social injustice even as one person and make a difference if we really hold to our vision strongly and understand the people we are trying to persuade. I think Quinn would agree that part of Woolman's success was that he was a Quaker himself. Sometimes we think it is enough to have the high moral ground, but being able to understand others' values and speak to those values in our efforts to confront social injustice is really important.
I mentioned that idea to one of the teachers in our program last intensive--that a lot of the reason that Trump won the election was that many social justice advocates had stopped listening to the people they were trying to persuade. We cannot force people to accept change--without a costly civil war, anyway--and even then it is not really successful, as Quinn notes. If we want the change to really come from the heart we have to deeply understand and appeal humbly to the people we are trying to change by asking real questions. Social justice advocacy is floundering in the United States for this reason: nobody is really listening anymore. There is a lot of, "Please tell us what you think... so we can point out how wrong you are."
Monday, May 29, 2017
Deep Change: Chapter 11-20
I read several chapters of Quinn's (2008) book on deep change. Most of those chapters focused on aspects of corporate change. I was especially interested in Quinn's description of the technical, transactional, and transformational paradigms. Quinn notes that many people gain individual technical skills that initially help them to succeed, but ultimately, as they are promoted to leadership positions, they learn to operate by a transactional paradigm. In contrast to the technical paradigm, the transactional paradigm has little to do with technical skill or expertise and more with how well that person is able to work with others and find solutions that everyone can accept. Quinn calls these "political" skills. The third type of paradigm is the transformational paradigm. This sort of person is internally motivated and willing to sacrifice themselves in order to enact their vision.
Quinn introduces the first two paradigms without suggesting that there is a third, but somehow I knew there would be a third. In my own life experience, I have not fit well into any of these paradigms. Initially, I did not have either the technical or transactional skills, but at heart I operated according to a transformational paradigm. Quinn doesn't really address this phenomenon. I wonder what he would have to say about it. From my own experience, I would say it's not really very useful and that these paradigms must build on each other (and Quinn does say that they build on each other rather than being interchangeable). I always struggled with having a vision for the world that I was incapable of achieving. I think that living out of this place for a long time undermined my self-confidence and optimism. It is now somewhat difficult for me to believe that I can make a positive change, even through self-sacrifice.
Eventually, I gained some measure of technical skill. I earned my bachelor's degree and started teaching English, a language that I know both as a native speaker and as a linguist. My struggle with my idealistic approach, however, created a strong disinclination to engage in a transactional paradigm or attempt to manage others. I have been, for many years, very happy to stick to teaching my class and let others do the managing. Then recently I was challenged to see this passivity as selfish and I started to engage, cautiously, in the managing/transactional paradigm (I joined committees and helped with negotiations). It turns out that I am fairly good at it as long as none of my principals are on the line.
The transformational paradigm still fills me with qualms, though. Those years of wanting so badly to change things and not being able to because I lacked the technical and transactional capital still haunt me. I want to stay in my shell. I want to just teach my class. I want to conduct research and write about it, somewhere further off stage. I don't know if that desire will ever change.
Quinn spends so much time talking about change for its own sake. He talks about how organizations must have change or they will die. He doesn't really give much direction on what kind of changes are necessary beyond saying something like, "Look into your heart. Face the truth and live with integrity." I wonder how much we can really fix the system as it exists, though. Maybe it needs to be taken down entirely, and we need to start over from scratch. After all, education is a servant to the status quo. Is it somewhat heretical to suggest that possibility of higher education in the United States? I think that might be an "undiscussable" topic in our program. I have to admit, I've run up against three or four of them since I came to Azusa.
Social Justice and Equity
During our orientation for this program, one of our instructors got up and presented the topic, "What is the purpose of higher education?" She had us listen to a short talk by an expert who said that higher education was in crisis in the Unites States and would be completely changed in twenty years. Then she passed around a handout of statements of purpose from maybe ten different presidents of higher education institutions in America.
As she talked, I skimmed through the various statements, and the feeling began to grow in me that these were not the people best qualified to answer this question. They represented the very establishment that was under attack and were therefore too invested to have honest answers. I flipped the handout over and wrote on the back, "Higher education exists to reinforce the established elite and to acculturate new members into that elite." After our discussion, I approached this teacher and showed her my written statement. I think I expected some kind of engagement, but that teacher glanced at what I had written and said, "Very nice," and turned away.
I have to admit, that was a very disappointing introduction to this program. I have since encountered other "undiscussible" topics, but this one troubles me the most. How can educators who say they are committed to equality and social justice ignore the intrinsic gate-keeping purpose of their own profession? If they don't believe their profession has that purpose, why don't they have a better answer for those who think it does? There seems to be so much effort to make higher education more accessible, but the more accessible we make it, the more education people will have to get in order to achieve the purpose of higher education: to join an elite who are distinguished as experts from the general hoi polloi. In this sense, pursuing equity and social justice in higher education ends up being a matter of chasing our own tail.
This is an undiscussible topic that under girds much of what we do in our program, and I know that I, for one, would very much benefit from an open discussion on it.
Quinn introduces the first two paradigms without suggesting that there is a third, but somehow I knew there would be a third. In my own life experience, I have not fit well into any of these paradigms. Initially, I did not have either the technical or transactional skills, but at heart I operated according to a transformational paradigm. Quinn doesn't really address this phenomenon. I wonder what he would have to say about it. From my own experience, I would say it's not really very useful and that these paradigms must build on each other (and Quinn does say that they build on each other rather than being interchangeable). I always struggled with having a vision for the world that I was incapable of achieving. I think that living out of this place for a long time undermined my self-confidence and optimism. It is now somewhat difficult for me to believe that I can make a positive change, even through self-sacrifice.
Eventually, I gained some measure of technical skill. I earned my bachelor's degree and started teaching English, a language that I know both as a native speaker and as a linguist. My struggle with my idealistic approach, however, created a strong disinclination to engage in a transactional paradigm or attempt to manage others. I have been, for many years, very happy to stick to teaching my class and let others do the managing. Then recently I was challenged to see this passivity as selfish and I started to engage, cautiously, in the managing/transactional paradigm (I joined committees and helped with negotiations). It turns out that I am fairly good at it as long as none of my principals are on the line.
The transformational paradigm still fills me with qualms, though. Those years of wanting so badly to change things and not being able to because I lacked the technical and transactional capital still haunt me. I want to stay in my shell. I want to just teach my class. I want to conduct research and write about it, somewhere further off stage. I don't know if that desire will ever change.
Quinn spends so much time talking about change for its own sake. He talks about how organizations must have change or they will die. He doesn't really give much direction on what kind of changes are necessary beyond saying something like, "Look into your heart. Face the truth and live with integrity." I wonder how much we can really fix the system as it exists, though. Maybe it needs to be taken down entirely, and we need to start over from scratch. After all, education is a servant to the status quo. Is it somewhat heretical to suggest that possibility of higher education in the United States? I think that might be an "undiscussable" topic in our program. I have to admit, I've run up against three or four of them since I came to Azusa.
Social Justice and Equity
During our orientation for this program, one of our instructors got up and presented the topic, "What is the purpose of higher education?" She had us listen to a short talk by an expert who said that higher education was in crisis in the Unites States and would be completely changed in twenty years. Then she passed around a handout of statements of purpose from maybe ten different presidents of higher education institutions in America.
As she talked, I skimmed through the various statements, and the feeling began to grow in me that these were not the people best qualified to answer this question. They represented the very establishment that was under attack and were therefore too invested to have honest answers. I flipped the handout over and wrote on the back, "Higher education exists to reinforce the established elite and to acculturate new members into that elite." After our discussion, I approached this teacher and showed her my written statement. I think I expected some kind of engagement, but that teacher glanced at what I had written and said, "Very nice," and turned away.
I have to admit, that was a very disappointing introduction to this program. I have since encountered other "undiscussible" topics, but this one troubles me the most. How can educators who say they are committed to equality and social justice ignore the intrinsic gate-keeping purpose of their own profession? If they don't believe their profession has that purpose, why don't they have a better answer for those who think it does? There seems to be so much effort to make higher education more accessible, but the more accessible we make it, the more education people will have to get in order to achieve the purpose of higher education: to join an elite who are distinguished as experts from the general hoi polloi. In this sense, pursuing equity and social justice in higher education ends up being a matter of chasing our own tail.
This is an undiscussible topic that under girds much of what we do in our program, and I know that I, for one, would very much benefit from an open discussion on it.
Thursday, May 25, 2017
Deep Change: Chapters 9 and 10
It's been a while since I've written in here because my life has been kind of crazy. I had to submit my comprehensive exams and grade my students' rough drafts, which is the most demanding grading project of my semester. However, I have handed all of those back and this is a holiday weekend, so I have time to catch up on my blog.
I read Quinn's (2008) Deep Change book, chapters nine and ten. Chapter nine is the final chapter on personal change, and chapter ten is the first chapter on corporate change.
In chapter nine, Quinn states that we need to "build the bridge as [we] walk on it." He states that we often don't know where we will go, but we need to believe that we are sufficient to get ourselves there. He says, "When we pursue our vision, we must believe that we have enough courage and confidence in ourselves to reach our goal." This statement is troubling to me because it seems to imply that we are our own measure of what we can do, and I don't think that measure is very reliable.
I attend a church service that is designed as an outreach to students. In a recent lesson, we were asked to reflect on the quality of truth. My student friend suggested that truth was whatever we agreed that it was. I noted that by his definition, any community could establish truth and as long as everyone agreed that it was truth, it was true. I pointed out that many wars start this way--when two large communities with different truth claims encounter each other. Terrorism is only the most recent focus of that kind of conflict. By his definition, the truth claim of a fundamentalist Muslim terrorist, that the death of the innocent is justified in order to protect and promote Islam, is legitimate because it is agreed upon by his community.
He then stated that truth was something we had to establish for ourselves. I asked him, "If I claimed as my truth that I no longer have to eat, does that make it true?" Answer was "no." I asked, "What would happen to me if I lived by this truth?" All of the students admitted that it would not be good for me... that I would eventually die. I observed that truth is not establish on a personal level but as a law in the world. One law that is generally recognized is "You must eat to live." Another one is that "if you drop your phone, it will likely break." This last law is called the law of gravity. The world does not really conform to suit us. We have to know its laws.
Quinn is suggesting that there is a law that says, whatever you set out to do, you will be able to do it--as long as you think you can. I don't really think that is true. The problem with truth is that if you get it wrong, you'll die. If I decide I don't have to eat, when I actually do, I will die. If I decide that I can jump off a five story building because the law of gravity doesn't apply to me, I will also likely die. Getting it right is important... but there is something to what Quinn says. I actually only think it makes sense within a Christian paradigm.
Quinn tells the story of Ghandi, saying that Ghandi wasn't surprised when resources started to show up because the thing he was trying to do was "right." This story reminded me of a well-known character in my own faith tradition. George Mueller was a English orphanage director who decided to take God at His word when He promised to provide. For years he ran an orphanage without any source of income or fundraising and God did provide. I think that Quinn's idea should be revised to say, "God will build the bridge that we are willing to walk." That undertaking is scary enough. I don't think I would want to try it if I was my own sole resource.
Social Justice and Equity
In chapter 10, Quinn begins to talk about how goals are formed and pursued in organizations. He notes that all organizations are made up of coalitions. The organization might state a public goal, but usually the operative goal of an organization is different. He notes, "The operative goals are usually congruent with the interests of the dominant coalition." As an example, he says that universities say they exist for their students but generally they exist for the interest of their faculty and administration. Recently, I've been helping with reform efforts in my own program, and I know what he says is very true. We spend very little time talking about how to improve things for the students. Most of our focus in on the faculty and their working conditions.
Quinn goes on to describe how this dynamic works in a business school that he worked with. I thought it was interesting that the dominant coalition was not willing to change until they realized that their survival was on the line, and even then, the change that they implemented was a matter of balancing their interests with those of the students. Quinn states:
Organizations are coalitional. The dominant coalition in an organization is seldom interested in making deep change. Hence deep change is often, but not always, driven from the outside. In the future, great business schools will still be built by hiring great researchers, but they are also likely to be expected to meet the needs of other constituencies. This will mean that they will have to meet a wider and often competing set of expectations. Competition and the motivation for survival will remain intense.
I wonder if this is one of those immutable laws, like gravity. Is it possible for a dominant coalition to put the interests of a coalition with less power before their own? Or is it always a matter of balancing interests? Social justice advocates often try to make dominant coalitions change without considering this instinct for self-preservation. In fact, such self-preservation is despised. Are advocates such as this breaking themselves against a natural law? How can outside forces be used to create this impetus for change? Or are those forces already in play?
I read Quinn's (2008) Deep Change book, chapters nine and ten. Chapter nine is the final chapter on personal change, and chapter ten is the first chapter on corporate change.
In chapter nine, Quinn states that we need to "build the bridge as [we] walk on it." He states that we often don't know where we will go, but we need to believe that we are sufficient to get ourselves there. He says, "When we pursue our vision, we must believe that we have enough courage and confidence in ourselves to reach our goal." This statement is troubling to me because it seems to imply that we are our own measure of what we can do, and I don't think that measure is very reliable.
I attend a church service that is designed as an outreach to students. In a recent lesson, we were asked to reflect on the quality of truth. My student friend suggested that truth was whatever we agreed that it was. I noted that by his definition, any community could establish truth and as long as everyone agreed that it was truth, it was true. I pointed out that many wars start this way--when two large communities with different truth claims encounter each other. Terrorism is only the most recent focus of that kind of conflict. By his definition, the truth claim of a fundamentalist Muslim terrorist, that the death of the innocent is justified in order to protect and promote Islam, is legitimate because it is agreed upon by his community.
He then stated that truth was something we had to establish for ourselves. I asked him, "If I claimed as my truth that I no longer have to eat, does that make it true?" Answer was "no." I asked, "What would happen to me if I lived by this truth?" All of the students admitted that it would not be good for me... that I would eventually die. I observed that truth is not establish on a personal level but as a law in the world. One law that is generally recognized is "You must eat to live." Another one is that "if you drop your phone, it will likely break." This last law is called the law of gravity. The world does not really conform to suit us. We have to know its laws.
Quinn is suggesting that there is a law that says, whatever you set out to do, you will be able to do it--as long as you think you can. I don't really think that is true. The problem with truth is that if you get it wrong, you'll die. If I decide I don't have to eat, when I actually do, I will die. If I decide that I can jump off a five story building because the law of gravity doesn't apply to me, I will also likely die. Getting it right is important... but there is something to what Quinn says. I actually only think it makes sense within a Christian paradigm.
Quinn tells the story of Ghandi, saying that Ghandi wasn't surprised when resources started to show up because the thing he was trying to do was "right." This story reminded me of a well-known character in my own faith tradition. George Mueller was a English orphanage director who decided to take God at His word when He promised to provide. For years he ran an orphanage without any source of income or fundraising and God did provide. I think that Quinn's idea should be revised to say, "God will build the bridge that we are willing to walk." That undertaking is scary enough. I don't think I would want to try it if I was my own sole resource.
Social Justice and Equity
In chapter 10, Quinn begins to talk about how goals are formed and pursued in organizations. He notes that all organizations are made up of coalitions. The organization might state a public goal, but usually the operative goal of an organization is different. He notes, "The operative goals are usually congruent with the interests of the dominant coalition." As an example, he says that universities say they exist for their students but generally they exist for the interest of their faculty and administration. Recently, I've been helping with reform efforts in my own program, and I know what he says is very true. We spend very little time talking about how to improve things for the students. Most of our focus in on the faculty and their working conditions.
Quinn goes on to describe how this dynamic works in a business school that he worked with. I thought it was interesting that the dominant coalition was not willing to change until they realized that their survival was on the line, and even then, the change that they implemented was a matter of balancing their interests with those of the students. Quinn states:
Organizations are coalitional. The dominant coalition in an organization is seldom interested in making deep change. Hence deep change is often, but not always, driven from the outside. In the future, great business schools will still be built by hiring great researchers, but they are also likely to be expected to meet the needs of other constituencies. This will mean that they will have to meet a wider and often competing set of expectations. Competition and the motivation for survival will remain intense.
I wonder if this is one of those immutable laws, like gravity. Is it possible for a dominant coalition to put the interests of a coalition with less power before their own? Or is it always a matter of balancing interests? Social justice advocates often try to make dominant coalitions change without considering this instinct for self-preservation. In fact, such self-preservation is despised. Are advocates such as this breaking themselves against a natural law? How can outside forces be used to create this impetus for change? Or are those forces already in play?
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