Bramley Famli

My coleague Graeme Codrington sent me a mail link via Twitter today that discusses the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition. It’s a nice punchy overview of the 5-steps towards being an expert (starting as a novice) Well worth the read.

By looking at the five levels from a higher altitude, we can distill some common themes that emerge as one progresses from novice to expert:

• Moving away from relying on rules and explicit knowledge to intuition and pattern matching.
• Better filtering, where problems are no longer a big collection of data but a complete and unique whole where some bits are much more relevant than others.
• Moving from being a detached observer of the problem to an involved part of the system itself, accepting responsibility for results, not just for carrying out tasks.

As I read it, it reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, where one of his chapters is dedicated to the concept of putting in 10 000 hours in order to be a world expert at something. It’s not 10 000 hours doing the same thing. I imagine that simply makes you an expert at monotony. It’s 10 000 hours of growth, development, stretch, etc, etc. 10 000 hours roughly translates to 4 hours every day, 5 days per week for 10 years. When you think, expecially, of sports champions, it does give some insight and perspective to the sort of investment they’re put in to get them where they are today.

I managed to get the PodCast of Gladwell being interviewed on 702. Follow this link to listen to the 10 000 hours exert.

I got sent a great link to an article by Malcolm Gladwell (one of my heroes) by my friend Aiden Choles (The Narrative Lab)

It’s definitely worth a read if you have some time.

Go here to read the article.

I’m wading through one of those books that has the possibility of changing your world for ever! It’s called ‘Iron John’ by Robert Bly. Closing in on the end of the book there is a paragraph about fighting within in a relationship that left me wondering how ‘you get that’. It was a description that made fighting sound wonderful and healthy.

A good fight gets things clear and I think women long to fight and be with men who know how to fight well.

When both use their weapons unconsciously or without naming them, both man and woman stumble into the battle, and when it’s over the two interior children can be badly wounded.

The adult warrior inside both men and women, when trained, can receive a blow without sulking or collapsing, knows how to fight for limited goals, keeps the rules of combat in mind, and in general is able to keep the fighting clean and to establish limits.

Indeed, how do you get this?

If you’ve picked up a Financial Times, from time to time, you may have been introduced to Lucy Kellaway. I discovered her while wondering around iTunes looking for interesting PodCasts. And interesting is just one tiny word to describe my journey with Lucy Kellaway.

I know I’m opening myself to plenty by suggesting that she’s my modern equivalent to business that Luther was to the Catholic Church. She’s been a wonderful breath of fresh air, forcing me to be honest about business today. Forcing me to be honest as a consultant working with people who are ‘in there’ each and every day trying their best to make it all work.

Apart from finding the courage to find a way to invite her to South Africa, I’ve also spent a fair amount of energy and headspace wondering plenty about her philosophies around how business works?

My colleague in the UK, Julie, sent me a link to Lucy Kellaway’s book (didn’t know she had one) and somewhere down the page was her stab at how she sees business things.

What exactly are my ‘basic ideas’ on management?

After a bit of thought I have come up with the following observations and generalities. They are, of course, glaringly obvious. But then management ideas are obvious. Any that aren’t obvious tend to be wrong.

Rule 1 Management is one of the most difficult jobs going, and is harder now than ever because the challenges are greater.

Rule 2 Most people are bad at managing, some are very bad. Hardly anyone can do it well.

Rule 3 Good managers need to be both hard and soft, decent and ruthless, good at the big picture and at the small detail.

Rule 4 In view of the above, the market for management consultants, trainers, gurus, business schools and business books is expanding, apparently without limit.

Rule 5 While most of the management help industry is of dubious value, managers do need the experience and advice of wise outsiders. But to follow that advice blindly – as many companies do – is, of course, idiotic.

Rule 6 Any new management technique that comes with a catchphrase is suspect. It almost certainly will not suit the company in question, and even if it does, the management will probably fail to apply it properly.

Rule 7 It is hard to teach a middle-aged dog new tricks. People who are rotten communicators do not become better by virtue of having been on a course, or read a book. Improving and changing is a long, painful slog.

Rule 8 People like security. They like to be told what to do. Empowerment and flat structures are over-rated.

Rule 9 All work is tedious for much of the time. If everyone accepts this, then so much the better.

That is the short answer. The long answer is this book, which is based on five years of writing a management column for the Financial Times.

So question 2 has been answered. Now to solve getting her to SA : )

Having written that quote from John Powell’s Book got me looking a little around the net. I found a list of his books:

Faith Alive Books

as well as a link to a story that’s re-told a few times, apparently originally by John Powell.

One of my favourite authors is John Powell SJ. In his book ‘Why am I afraid to tell you who I am‘ there’s a great paragraph in the opening few pages. I’m always looking for it, and I don’t always have my book with me. So I’m recording it here so I always know where it is.

In our society today, we have placed a great stress on being authentic. We have talked about placing masks over the face of our ‘real’ selves, and playing roles which disguise our true and real selves. The implication is that somewhere, inside of you and inside of me, lurk our real selves. Supposedly, this real self is a static and formed reality. There are moments when this real self of mine shines out of me, and there are moments when I feel compelled to camouflage my real self.

There is perhaps some justification of this manner of speaking, but I think it can be more misleading than helpful. There is no fixed, true and real person inside of you or me, precisely because being a person necessarily implies becoming a person, being in process. If I am anything as a person, it is what I

think
judge
feel value
honour
esteem
love
hate
fear
desire
hope for
believe in
and
am committed to.

These are the things that define my person, and they are constantly in process, in the process of change. Unless my mind and heart are hopelessly barricaded, all these things that define me as a person are forever changing.

My person in not a little hard core inside of me, a little fully-formed statue that is real and authentic, permanent and fixed; person rather implies a dynamic process. In other words, if you knew me yesterday, please do not think that it is the same person that you are meeting today.

I have experienced more of life, I have encountered new depths in those I love, I have suffered and prayed and I am different.

Please dont give me a ‘batting average’, fixed and irrevocable, because I am ‘in there’ constantly, taking my swings at the opportunities of daily leaving. Approach me, then, with a sense of wonder, study my face and hands and voice for the signs of change; for it is certain thatI have changed. But even if you recognise this, I may be somewhat afraid to tell you who I am.

I don’t know if you ever finish a book and feel like something different has happened? Something different to how you feel after finishing other books? Today I finished “The life and times of the Thunderbolt Kid” by Bill Bryson. I felt something different. It’s difficult to explain what, but I felt it at a deeper level than usual. Felt it in a different place and felt a different kind of thing. And while I can’t really pin-point where or what, I do know it felt good. I finished, put the book down, and just sat, stared, tried to think, feel, ….. and when nothing really special happened, I just got up and moved onto the next thing.

It’s a clever book, and being my first Bryson book, I assume it’s clever in the way that he’s known and talked about to be clever. It’s about him growing up in the 1950′s. But it’s really about America, Des Moines, to be specific in the 1950′s. And while I’m not American in any way, shape or form, I knew enough to appreciate and connect with much of what he reflected on.

It’s also about the changes that happened in America and the world toward the end of the 1950′s and the beginning of the 1960′s.

If I had to sum the book up, it would be in a sentence Bryson ‘pens’ on page 267 of the copy I was reading. Toward the end of the book. It was a sentence that grabbed hold of me and I haven’t been able to shake it off. It possibly, probably in fact, says more about me than about the book and what Bryson was trying to say. But perhaps not? Perhaps I’m right on the button?

“We were entering a world where things were done because they offered a better return, not a better world.”

Definitely worth a read : )

I’m currently reading a book by Richard Dawkins (not to be confused with Stephen Hawking). Dawkins is well known for his book “The Selfish Gene”. Moving on… the book is called “The God Delusion“. I’m posting to the blog because I’m not sure who’ll have a conversation with me around this read? You may understand why I suggest that, when in his preface Dawkins states his goal in witting the book as:

“If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down. What presumptuous optimism! Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument, their resistance built up over years of childhood indoctrination using methods that took centuries to mature (whether by evolution or design). Among the more effective immunological devices is a dire warning to avoid even opening a book like this, which is surely a work of Satan. But I believe there are plenty of open-minded people out there: people whose childhood indoctrination was not too insidious, of for other reasons didn’t ‘take’, or whose native intelligence is strong enough to overcome it. Such free spirits should need only a little encouragement to break free of the vice of religion altogether. At very least, I hope that nobody who reads this book will be able to say, ‘I didn’t know I could’.”

It feels like it might be a very thought provoking read for me. I’m not even sure how I feel about reading it. But that’s not a good enough reason to read or not read it. I remember Os Guinness, in his book ‘Fit Bodies, Fat Minds‘ speaking of modern believers who had lost sight of their journey for the truth. They’d stopped short in pursuing only Jesus (in this case he was witting to Christians). As Guinness went on, he felt that in not searching for the truth we run the risk of only discovering someone else’s version.

So this then becomes my journey for me of my journey with Dawkins through his book.

• Richard Dawkins Foundation
• Richard Dawkins on Wikipedia

Just before going on leave I picked up a couple of books to read while I was away. I’ve never read a ‘Noam Chomsky‘ (apparently he’s one of those must read human beings before you die) and found this one, “Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World“. I chose it because it’s written in conversation style (interview by David Barsamian) around issues pertaining to the US imperial ambitions for the rest of us.

“I think not only the region (Middle East) but the world in general correctly perceives the U.S. invasion as a test case, an effort to establish a new norm for the use of military force.”

It felt like it could be an easy ‘slide’ into Noam, and it was. What surprised me was that it didn’t turn out to be a monster, thud-factor, academic read that I was going to have to work hard at getting my mind around. It turned out to be a straight forward, in your face, heck of an interesting read. He, in fact, spoke regularly of academics and I enjoyed his abuse of them and their role in making things more complicated than they should be.

If you’re looking for an easy to read overview of Noam Chomsky’s view of the world post-911, and haven’t read anything of his before, then I’d recommend this as a good starting place.

His book left me with a few paradoxical thoughts. One being that on one hand the voice of the average person has never counted for more and has the ability to change things; sharply contrasted with the idea that there are powerful people and governments out there, and that if they can take out an entire country, they don’t even work up a sweat when contemplating me.

“The new doctrine was not one of pre-emptive war, which arguably falls within some stretched interpretation of the UN Charter, but rather doctrine that doesn’t begin to have any grounds in international law, namely, preventative war. That is, the United States will rule the world by force, and if there is any challenge to its domination-whether it is perceived in the distance, invented, imagined, or whatever-then the United States will have the right to destroy that challenge before it becomes a threat. That’s preventative war, not pre-emptive war.”