I was just browsing through a few stats for this blog. Pretty depressing really.
Take a look at annual viewing numbers.
Nice slow but steady growth in views and visitors, until a cliff.
Admittedly I took a breather and failed to post anything through most of 2016 but numbers were already on the rocks by then.
There is a similar problem with my LinkedIn articles.
Clearly, if you want people to read your ideas you need to do a lot more than write them down.
Any suggestions?
I have made a career out of avoiding the safe options in favour of not knowing where the next contract will come from. On and off for over a decade I have worked for myself.
It means being your own boss and that is supposed to be good. But it also means you are your own marketing director, project manager, sales staff and tea lady.
There are times when so many hats sit real heavy on your head and you sag. It all gets too much.
The thing is the risk is addictive, probably in the same destructive way that gambling can be. So when doubt mushrooms out of the compost the solution is to take on more risk and start another company.
Profit is still the bottom, and only line
You know the old saying ‘if push came to shove’ means when things get nasty and extremis arrives this is what you would do.
Well, where the corporate world is concerned, any shoving results in action to protect profit. There is, of course, pampering to other values, but the law compels directors and trustees to build shareholder value. And this sets in stone a quest for profit.
Sobering.
It was 1979 when the 2-Tone bands appeared on the UK music scene and reinvented skanking; a lost art of bouncing around to ska music looking like a complete dork.
I passed many a happy hour at Madness, The Specials, The Beat and The Selecter gigs catching the energy and sympathising with the anti-racism messages to Rudi.
So no surprise at joy remembered when ‘On my radio’ by the Selecter came up on iTunes radio after 30 odd years.
Blasting the sound in the living room and attempts at basic skanking dance moves ended in a busted Achilles tendon and six months of healing and rehab.
Funny enough it was almost worth it.
Ask anyone about his or her level of driving ability and they will all say it is above average. This is, of course, true. When it comes to driving ability all rules of statistics become lies.
I consider myself above average. In my head, I am better than most. Not the best in the world of course. There are some people out there better than me but I like to think that I’m not the idiot merging without looking.
My problem is that this ‘better than average’ thinking applies across the board. It creates a kind of swagger, a confidence that is a boon in the modern world. Indeed if my predominant mindset was of inferiority I feel I’d be the one getting mugged. This ‘be the best or if not then better’ is so ingrained that I no longer realize what a powerful paradigm it is, until today.
This morning I awoke with exhaustion. Not the tired kind but the emotionally and physically drained feeling that screams stop, you must have a long rest.
A month of hard work, a greater than usual level of uncertainty that plagues all self-employed consultants, and a certain time of life combined in earnest. At least that would be the logical, dare I say above average, explanation. Only yesterday something happened to me.
I went for a job interview.
Yes, it was bizarre. It has been a very long time since I sat on the wrong, below average, side of the table. And I didn’t mind it at all. In fact, I quite like interviews. There is something about the required nimbleness of thought and speech that I find stimulating, enjoyable even. So the process was not a problem at all.
The generic questions were as crazy as you would expect from HR hacks with no idea of what the job entails, but the interview panel members had expert knowledge and duly nodded at my answers and laughed at my quips. Most importantly they seemed to know what they were doing.
All went well and I proceeded to a task. Apparently, a lifetime of science writing was not enough evidence of my skillset and I had to complete an on the clock summary of a 15 page brochure in words suitable for a web page in 30 minutes. Just follow the process I said to myself as I read the task description.
“Who is the web page for?” I asked without thinking, as nothing in the description hinted at the target audience.
“What message do you need to get across?” I said again without thinking even though that was not in the task description either.
I was, of course, responding to a below average set of instructions. Not particularly significant until I tell you that much of the interview I’d just completed involved several questions, answers and head nodding about the importance of getting the question right. No amount of information gathering and communication of evidence makes any sense unless you know who and what it is all for, I had said. Naturally, it is essential to iterate the Q&A to hone in on the critical needs. The panel seemed to enthusiastically agree.
In my above average head, all I was doing right now was the process I had described to unanimous agreement a few minutes before.
The chair of the interview panel stood next to me staring at the task description. He was the boss but he had no answers to my questions.
If he had said, “Just complete the task please” I would have shrugged and got on with it. After all, I was just processing out loud.
Instead, he visibly cowered, mumbled something about not knowing what was needed, and shuffled away.
“Good example of the iteration process,” I said firmly, harking back to my answer in the interview.
It was stupid I know.
A more empathic person would have recognized the body language as an expression of awkwardness, dare I say a slight inadequacy, and smiled warmly. They would have ceased questioning and simply got on with it.
Some might even have suspected a ruse and not been had by the psychoanalyst’s tricks. The task was of course designed to see how much candidates are prepared to suck up.
I did not suck anything. In one short sentence, I called it out. The walk did not match the talk and I said so — fearless and in this context reckless.
Needless to say, I did not get the job but I did learn a great deal.
I learned to never give up my better than average expectation. It can be a nuisance and at times a liability but keeping to the highest possible standards is a good thing. Trying and expecting above average is noble.
I learned that, ruse or not, you need to give people clear and precise instructions whatever the task.
I learned that you should expect that everyone who is your work superior be good at their job even though there is a chance of them being below average at it.
And I learned that in the world where statistical rules do apply, each and every day I will meet people better than average and below average at what they do. It is a fact.
So if I keep expecting the best, at least half the time I will not be disappointed.
As you know Alloporus has been down for a few months, mentally and electronically. Now, suitably rested, ‘ideas for healthy thinking’ is back.
I’m not sure what will come up in this reboot because during the break some competition for the ideas bandwidth has emerged.
Over at afterbefore we have an updated site that includes a new blog with thoughts on the future of agriculture. Feel free to add comments on our 10 big things we need for global food security.
Alloporus environmental is also getting a new site that will feature posts on natural resources and evidence. More on that one soon
Explanations of how to use evidence have continued on LinkedIn with a series of posts for the professional audience.
I’m guessing that this blog will become more commentary than content and maybe a little clogged with cross-postings.
If you get bored, there is always the archive or a binge watch on Netflix.
May the thoughts be with you
M
Are you ever amazed at human ingenuity? I have been staggered by it lately.
Thanks to my time of life, or some internal dormant desire, I have been spending far too much time watching Youtube videos. Given the endless topics that people are prepared to make videos about you could spend many a lifetime on this medium watching Russians do crazy things, animals being cute and a two year old dropping the f-bomb in the ice bucket challenge.
There are also a multitude of channels by random dudes [and the occasional chick] displaying the intricacies of dovetail joints, router tables and fast drying shellac.
Yes, it’s time to build your own wood shop. A place where a middle-aged man can retire to make things that nobody wants and often look crap but satisfies a curious urge to create.
Thanks to the interweb you don’t have to buy magazines or books to figure out how to cut a cove with a table saw. You can watch Matthias Wendel do it. He’ll even figure out and show you what you have to do to the saw blade to make the cut cleaner.
Even though the hours of instructional videos just the prelude to making a bedside table — as with most things action can be avoided if you see there is someone else already doing it — the instruction is not what has captivated me. It’s the problem solving skills.
Anyone who has worked at all with wood, or house renovations for that matter, knows there is a wrong way to do something and several right ways. It is possible to cut a board straight with a table saw, a circular saw, a compound mitre saw or any number of hand saws. Each will do the job given a level of skill.
These woodworking gurus are all about finding the next best way. They revel in the problem solving and in the engineering that takes. Why cut a tenon with a saw when you can do it with a panto-router, or much better, a home made panto-router?
So this is what they do. They find new ways of doing things.
They even admit when the new way has flaws and then post another video showing how they fixed them. It is actually refreshing and uplifting to watch.
It also explains how we came to be so successful a species. We really know how to fix things. In fact we can find 10 different fixes for any given challenge even of there is already one that works perfectly well.
We really did take tool use to the next level. It truly is amazing what you can do with a router.
There is a very funny scene in an episode of the Big Bang Theory where Penny asks Sheldon and Leonard trivia questions about famous American rock bands. Needless to say they are clueless. Not even Sheldon’s eidetic memory could rescue him. Penny’s infamous smirk was never funnier.
So now, do you know what this is?
Don’t worry. A thousand people chosen at random from the population probably wouldn’t know either.
Most folk would be able to tell you that it was ‘some science shit’ and a few of them might know it was an equation for something.
Just one or two would recognise the mathematical notation for the third law of thermodynamics that states all processes cease as temperature approaches absolute zero.
But if more than two out of 1,000 people knew this you would suspect that the sampling was far from random. Perhaps it took place in the coffee break of a theoretical physics congress attended by Dr Coopers.
Now, of course, if you did sample 1,000 delegates from said congress, not all of them would recognise the equation. But I digress from my main point, which is this…
Each of us can only know a tiny fraction of what is known.
Even the eidetic can only remember what they have seen or heard. And for those of us who forget all the time, then our fraction can be small indeed.
The curious thing is that rather than get to know a little about a lot, people specialise. Either by choice or just as a default from our experiences we focus. After a while we all know quite a lot about something.
There are people who know more than seems possible about the cutting tolerances of a lathe or the rules that govern a financial balance sheet. There will be someone who can recite by heart the poems of Keats and someone else who can quote the test batting averages of all players in the current Indian cricket squad and then proceed to tell you why many of them should never have been selected.
This accumulation of specific knowledge is very useful. It gives us great depth in technical and practical matters. How else would an accounting firm provide services or repairs be made to a faulty MRI scanner? Not to mention brewing a decent coffee.
We need people who know the details.
What has struck me of late is just how specialised we have become and how little this means we know when presented with material outside our expertise. Just like Sheldon and Leonard, we are easily at a loss.
And yet we also take for grated what we know.
Because I have been in the guts of ecological science in research, teaching and my consulting practice for far too long, I take scientific knowledge for granted. For example, I can easily see the link between grazing management and soil carbon — graze too hard and soil carbon declines — and the net environmental benefits of changes to grazing practices that stop or even reverse that soil carbon decline.
What I can’t do is assume that a specialist in financial assurance will see or believe that such a link exists. She needs evidence. And as the language and logic flow falls outside her expertise she will need some persuading.
This is usually not a problem because ecology and accounting speak happening in the same room is about as rare as a female financial specialist. Except that they are about to collide.
The next decades will require that food production doubles or a lot of people will go hungry. Hungry people are not easily or righty ignored and the only way to feed them will be to invest in more efficient food production, distribution and storage systems.
It will be a time for specialisms to be recognised and respected. Times approach when the lion will lie down with the lamb… and come to some agreement.
This will only happen if expertise and depth of knowledge is respected. If we have to spend all the time convincing each other we actually know stuff then the solution will slip away.
So be grateful that someone among the 1,000 knows the formula for the third law of thermodynamics and don’t dismiss her for being odd.
It will be smarter to listen to she has to say.
The end of your world is nigh.
You are told by God, a noted and reliable source, that in 100 days it all ends for you. Your mortal coil will burn out. You become the rarest of individuals who knows exactly when it will all be over.
What would you do with 100 days if they were all you had left?
Perhaps sell the house and tick off as many bucket list items as you can in the time, spiced up with liberal quantities of gay abandon.
You might reconnect with family and friends splurging out on dinner parties twice a week being sure to get the caterers in.
The grudges and prejudices that have dogged you for decades might be melted away as you spend your last 100 days on a mountaintop sweeping up leaves.
You might choose to ignore God’s 100-day deadline claiming a ruse and believe that you actually had a lot more time.
Clearly there will be as many ways to fill the last 100 days as there are people to fill them.
The most common theme among the disparate choices will be to do more or less the same as you always do. You will text, tweet, post and play Candy Crush. You will watch hours of crime dramas and cooking shows on TV. You will complain and argue, laugh and sing. Because these are the things that you do now when you have an unknown amount of time left. They are warm and familiar things that we all choose to do everyday.
And the thing is that you choose to do them. On the train to work, in the evening after dinner, at the weekends, in the 72 hours of the week you are not sleeping or working.
Yes, you choose to do them.
Think about it.
The CEO of Widgets-R-Us is a progressive kind of fellow. No matter that his after work cross-dressing has become an obsession.
In the daytime he thinks hard about the business of selling widgets and is always looking for ways to make improvements. One day as he sipped orange juice in the front of a morning flight to the capital, an article in a magazine caught his eye. It was on the merits of unexpected pay rises and he read it twice.
Fortified by the prospect of a motivated workforce the CEO called his chairman before the seat belt sign was off and easily persuaded him of the merits of pay rises all around. A few weeks later he proudly announced a board sanctioned raise of 5% for everyone in the company.
Not only that but if the company performance improved more pay rises were to come. He proudly told the now eager employees that this made him feel humble to be able to help everyone out.
Sure enough widgets cascaded off the production lines and on to consumers with unprecedented efficiency. The company became hugely successful kicked along by a newly efficient and pay rise motivated workforce.
In the blink of a corporate eye the base pay of everyone in the company had doubled and the CEO smiled all the way to his favourite car dealer.
And the riddle is?
Alloporus 