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What do we learn about occupational identity from Amartya Sen?

Published October 14, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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Sail Boat by Lee Cannon via FlickrPlural identities

I’ve just finished reading Amartya Sen’s Identity and Violence.  He ends:

“As an eleven year-old boy I could not do much more for Kader Mia as he lay bleeding with his head on my lap.  But I imagine another universe, not beyond our reach, in which he and I can jointly affirm our many common identities (even as the warring singularities howl at the gate.”  We have to make sure, above all, that our mind is not halved by a horizon.”  (pp. 185-186)

Identities as a concept in organizational psychology

I picked up Identity and Violence partly because of the author’s fame but also because identities are a hot topic in contemporary organizational psychology.  We encourage people to develop personal identities that are stronger than the identities of the companies with whom they work.  Instead of being a small boat bobbing about on the choppy waters of a stormy ocean, rather be the ocean and let the company bob about on you.

It’s a fine aspiration and possibly the only way to stay sane.  But I wanted to be able to think about this core idea critically and what better way that to pick up a highly readable book by a Nobel prize winner with command of philosophy and world history and an inclusive outlook.

What are the dangers of encouraging strong personal identities?

I think Sen would not regard our exhortations as entirely foolish.  Sen counsels developing our commitment and appreciation of multiple stories and identities as parents, as children, as professionals, as members of churches, as patriots and as members of organizations that cut across international boundaries.  We are all of these at the same time.

“To halve our horizon” by narrowing our world to one identity and then too, to narrow that world to a formulaic lifestyle laid down by others – that’s what he counsels against.  That’s what he believes is used easily to manipulate us into actions we might in other times and other places (my words) find unacceptable.

Thoughtful multiple identities are strong occupational identities?

A strong occupational narrative might narrow our world.  I suspect though, that narrow occupational narratives turn us into the small boat on choppy seas.  When we see ourselves as part of an ocean able to accommodate many small boats of identities, we feel more comfortable.

That’s my humble reading, anyway.

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Thoreau on the interconnectedness and meaning of life

Published October 7, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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Umbrellas in the rain by Ed Yourdon via FlickrHow can severe disappointment provide meaning?

Sometimes when life disappoints us severely, it is hard to imagine what Viktor Frankl means when he says that people who survived the concentration camps expected it all to make sense in the end.

“How?”  we wail.  “How could that ever make sense?”

I suspect what we are crying is that “No, I won’t let it make sense.  Because to make it make sense is to say it is OK and I cannot say it OK that you killed my mother, my father, my brother, my sister, my grandmother, my grandfather, my uncle, my aunt, my cousin.”

Possibly to have faith in the universe feels disloyalty and we prefer lack of faith to lack of loyalty.

Loyalty is a good thing and loyalty should be honored and celebrated.

Life is often unfair

But life does disappoint, in big ways and small.  Often we feel very profoundly that life is unfair.

I am not saying we should do nothing about unfairness.   Not me.

But the writers like Thoreau point us to another way forward.

First, look at the interconnections of the world.  See the whole picture. Loyalty is part of that picture.  Put it in.

Then, decide what you think.

Thoreau’s dilemma of a rain day

This is Thoreau writing about a rainy day at Walden when he elected to be a subsistence farmer so that he would have time to read and write.

His beans are important to him.   He became a farmer to have time, and the weather is throwing out his plans, challenging the very raison d’etre of his project.

He needs his beans too.  Otherwise he will starve.

But nonetheless he brings first the outlook of a contemporary quantum physicist.  Everything is connected. A rainy day may be disruptive; but it is not an insult thrown at us by the universe.

It is a invitation by the universe to bring ourselves into a more connected relationship with everything around us.

Thoreau on a rainy day

Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness.

While enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me.

The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house to-day is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too.

Though it prevents me hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing.

If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the lowlands, it will be good for the grass of the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be good for me.

Sometimes, when I compare myself to other men, it seems as if I were more favoured by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I am conscious of – as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands which my fellows have not, and were especially guided and guarded.  I do not flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me.

(p. 114 of the 1927 edition of Walden)

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Procrastination, Thoreau, and modern psychologists

Published October 6, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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I'm not working by quinn.anya via FlickrFeeble attempts to dispel procrastination

I am tired.  I am procrastinating.  I have  a messy confused project on my desk so I switched on the Conservative party conference under the pretext that Hague makes sense and I should listen to the Prime Minister.  I have no idea who was speaking but that time-filling gambit didn’t last long. British politicians SHOUT.  Anything on my desk seems preferable to the assault on my ears.

Procrastination doesn’t work

I thought briefly I had found the fail safe solution to procrastination.  Switch on a party political broadcast.

But within moments, my thoughts had drifted to a book in the other room:  Walden, Henry Thoreau’s classic account of his experiment living frugally in the woods while he studied.

Henry Thoreau and Walden

Thoreau was a principled man, it seems.  In the same breath that he talks of  hoeing beans, he talks of sheltering runaway slaves.  He mentions just as dispassionately about being jailed for not paying his taxes because he refused to pay tax to a government that condoned slavery.

Thoreau and procrastination

Thoreau would have thought less of me for doing work that leads to procrastination.  He believes his experiment for living on almost nothing (rather than steeling himself to live on almost nothing) demonstrates:

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws will be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the licence of a higher order of things.

In proportion, as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitde, nor poverty povery, nor weakness weakness.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost: that is where they should be.  Now put foundations under them.”  (p. 280 of the 1927 edition).

Thoreau and self-regulation

I wonder what Thoreau would have thought of modern psychology.  I think he would have despised it.  Yet some of it is helpful.

Peter Gollwitzer’s work on “wish to intent” and “crossing the Rubicon” highlights the phenomenon that Thoreau describes.  When we are “in full flight”, when we are in flow (Cziksentmihalyi), everything suddently becomes very easy.

Roy Baumeister indirectly also confirms Thoreau’s view.  Baumeister shows experimentally that when we have to make a difficult choice, like eating chocolate instead of something less pleasant like radishes, we show less ability to control ourselves on the next task.  This is why, in David Whyte’s words it is important “to leave all other world’s behind us”.  Or the “the antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness”.

When we are tired we need to move toward “the channel in which our life flows”.

A solution to my procrastination

So I am tired.  Allowing myself respite, will help.  Compromising on the quality of that report will not.  Compromise will make me tireder.

Yup, I least I am not fighting distaste.  I have a challenge now; not an annoyance.

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What is the job of management scholars and consultants in the participation economy ushered in by social media?

Published September 27, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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Alaska 2010 by keithusc via FlickrBen Cameron said at TED:

“everyone . .  . resonates to the words of  Adrienne Rich in Dream of  A Common Language wrote: We are out in a country that has no language, no laws.  Whatever we do together is pure intervention.  The maps they gave us is out of date by years.

Ben Cameron is a Canadian Arts Administrator.   At TED, he described the market for the arts in clear concrete detail.  Old markets are in ‘trouble’, or not, depending on how much you welcome the replacement of the  consumption model of business with the participative model ushered in by social media.

The  collaborative economy has arrived

I subscribe to Ben Cameron’s view.  We are long past the point that old models can be made to work in the old order.

Management scholars and practitioners in the participation economy

I am not in the Arts. I am just a management consultant and scholar.  My role on this earth is simply to describe how we organize ourselves in collective ventures and to provide advice.

That means it is my job to tell you that old methods of selection and training, employee contracts and management styles, salaries and promotions can not work, do not work.

The time has come to create new ways to bring people together, meld working teams  and keep ourselves fresh and relevant.

The vision of the participation economy

I endorse Ben Cameron’s view  that our common aim is to develop a “healthy vibrant society, to ameliorate suffering, to promote a more thoughtful substantive empathic society”.

The challenge for work and organizational psychologists in 2010 is to start writing down and sharing

  1. How people come together to discuss business and how their discussions lead to better ideas of what we can and will do together
  2. How our relationships change from wish to intent to habit and how we can promote relationships that promote the success of the enterprises we envisioned when we set off together
  3. How we remain fresh, thinking up news ways to meet challenges and if necessary disbanding to go onto  new ventures, all the better for having worked together.

That is our mission of management scholars and consultants in a

a country that has no language, no laws.  Whatever we do together is pure intervention.  The maps they gave us is out of date by years.

It is time to get started writing down who knows what and making it available for everyone who want to know.

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5 business uses for social media and 3 hacks to get them right

Published September 27, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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IMG_7838 by BekiPe via FlickrFacebook, Twitter, blogs and forums .  .  .

I live in a world when half my acquaintances live and breathe social media and other half  “stay out of that”.

ROI of social media

Three years, London was abuzz with talk of the ROI of social media.  As far as I could tell, this was just backwash from marketing departments who are challenged internally to account for the money they spend.  When other functions see a funnel that goes from 1000 to 100 to 10 to 1 or maybe none, they rightly want an explanation for all the parties and lunches. When the rest of us say we are going to do something, we do it.

Rewarding what is excellent in social media

So today, I was delighted to see some awards for social media in the airlines sector.  I want to be clear here.  I am a psychologist and we aren’t the touchy-feely types the public thinks we are. We spend most of time crunching numbers and we know more about metrics and ROI than you might dream even if exists.  Believe me, you don’t want to know how to do the things we know how to do and can prove with numbers.

What matters in ROI

But because we do know a lot about ROI, we also know what matters and what doesn’t.

  • We must specify a decent goal.
  • We musn’t get bogged down on the how.
  • We must
  1. Make sure we have a goal that captures our sense of “why” this work helps us
  2. Find measures that help us see if we are getting closer
  3. And when we are really clever, find measures that help us learn what matters and what doesn’t.

    But first the what and why in one sentence.   Without that, everything else is busy work.

    New awards in social media

    Simpliflying has four awards for social media.

    • Best social media marketing campaign
    • Best use of social media to drive revenue
    • Best use of social media in a crisis situation
    • SimpliFlying Hero of the Year

    I could imagine one more – Best use of social media to develop a community that would sustain a new revenue stream.

    But there you have it.  Four clear uses of social media: let the market know we are here, increase sales, deal with crises (even unexpected ones like Haiti); and simplify.

    Work psychologists using social media to connect up people

    Because I am a psychologist, not a marketer, I more interested in

    • How to bring people together who might find opportunities working together
    • How to create a space where people can develop working relationships that support sustained happy and profitable working relationships
    • How to keep the relationship brimming with ideas including a strong sense that when it is over it is over and we should all move on better for having worked with each other.

    That’s all we have to do to build great communities

    Set the direction and ask people:

    • Are we doing it?
    • What’s next?
    • What have we learned that we didn’t know yesterday?
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    Oh! The roots of postive organizational scholarship in Henry Thoreau and American transcendentalism

    Published September 27, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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    Sept2010 by anjanettew via FlickrWalden Pond .   .   .

    I had to rummage around on Wikipedia to disentangle my memory traces.  Walden Pond is the home of Henry Thoreau, the American poet.   On Golden Pond is a Fonda movie.

    Henry Thoreau .   .  .

    I am sure that all well brought up Americans have read Thoreau in the original. The rest of us come to him by the way of quotations.

    Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows .  .  .

    Henry Thoreau was an “transcendentalist”, which Wikipedia informs me was a New England movement in reaction to the intellectualism of Harvard and the utilitarian church.  To my naïve ears, this sounds like the basic thrust of the French Revolution that rejected the supremacy of priests and their dictates,.  Once we have rejected the priests as the authority in all things, we needed a way to think about secular authority         and social sciences and psychology arose as formalized ways of describing how we each discover our own truth (Remember the Pope anyone?  Not surprisingly, he is not enthused by this venture.)

    Transcendentalism underpins much of contemporary positive organizational scholarship

    This is an important read.  We see here the essence of dominant aspects of American culture and at least part of the foundations of positive psychology.

    Ralph Emerson, I believe, was one of the early proponents.

    “So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes.

    It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, — What is truth?

    And of the affections, — What is good?

    By yielding itself passive to the educated Will. .  .

    Build, therefore, your own world.

    As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions.

    A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.”

    As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions.

    A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.

    We bring about the world by what we attend to and value.  The world blossoms under the attention of what we value and love.  Whatever situation we are in (like it or not), we move in the direction of the questions we ask and so does it.

    This is more appreciative inquiry (Case Western) than positive psychology (Pennsylvania).

    It is the start point and as you read the now not so young Thoreau describing his life at Walden Pond, you hear the same complaints that we have about life today.  You hear the echoes of Joseph Campbell who followed a similar experiment with life. You hear British poet David Whyte who reconciled his life a marine biologist and NGO worker with is poetry.  You hear Gen Y Tim Ferris and The Four Hour Work Week.

    I am enjoying this!

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    Blogging and the Web1.0 world: never the two shall meet

    Published September 27, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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    http://flowingmotion.jojordan.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Workhorse-by-dale.n-via-Flickr.jpg

    Is blogging still relevant?

    A few weeks ago, Darren Tay of Social Media Breakfast in Singapore asked: Are blogs still relevant?

    Like many others, when I am swamped with another project, my blogging suffers.  More than most activities, 90% of success in blogging is showing up.  Indeed, blogging technology rewards showing up.

    A blog is less an act of writing and more a particular web format that allows easy updating.  More than that, Google ranks new material more highly than old and helps us find an audience, provided we show up.

    Why sometimes I stop blogging

    Nonetheless, sometimes I don’t show up.

    At first I thought I had no time.  But when you are used to blogging, it takes little time.

    Then I thought that other projects that require writing compete for the same psychological energy.

    Hmm, I wonder about that too.  Writing for a blog is more carefree and energizing than most writing.  Well, possibly that is the reason. Much professional writing sucks the life and soul out of you (and your readers).

    Another possibility is that there are whole swathes of the UK who only know vaguely what a blog is. They certainly don’t understand the technical point that a blog is just easy to update.

    They don’t use RSS feeds and they don’t know what a feed reader is.

    Broadband is wasted on the rich

    Those who are uneducated about the internet are not the indigent or poor either.  People who don’t understand blogging have broadband. They just don’t use it.   We might argue that the government has wasted a lot of money giving broadband to people who are never likely ever to use it.

    These are people who live in institutions.  They get up and tread the same path every day.  They talk to the same people.   And they watch the same TV programmes.   They are paid a lot of money to ignore the rest of the world.

    They do bump into the real world sometimes.  They experience serendipity occasionally but so infrequently they actually remember!  Despite being moneyed members of the chattering classes, they have never heard of TED.

    Blogging and institutionalized life: never the twain shall meet

    I think that’s why I stop blogging.  I get sucked into that world.

    I’ve always known that I have a poor kinesthetic memory.  When I step off a plane in Instanbul, or Nairobi or Singapore, I always blink and exclaim “It’s light!”.  I can remember that I will be surprised, but living in UK, I forget what it feels like to be in bright sunlight.

    When I am fumbling my way through old institutions and groping around their murkier unswept cobwebby corners, I remember there are blogs.   But the feeling of blogging recedes.

    Maybe that’s why we stop blogging. We’ve gone through Platform Nine and Three Quarters and we are in Muggles world.

    Well, I’ve come back the other way.  Let’s see how long I can stay.

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    A working culture where people find flow frequently?

    Published August 27, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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    Reflecting on swans by pmarkham via FlickrWhen your eyes light up

    Have you any idea what you look like when you are in flow?  I guess not, because almost a definition of flow is that you are not looking in the mirror .  You are so absorbed in what you are doing that time and the world stands still.

    But I know what you look like.  And so does everyone else.  We can’t miss the glow in your eyes.

    Flow is the core of an an organizational psychologist’s business

    People often ask what an work and organizational does.  They are puzzled   Do we lay people down on a couch and mutter ‘there, there’.  Do we explore your sexual fantasies about .  .  . I’ll let you fill in the gap.

    Our business is flow.  What is flow?  What conditions of work are conducive to flow?  How can we organize so that more people experience flow more of the time?

    Embedded in the last question is a sub-speciality of organizational psychology.  A special topic within organizational psychologists is understanding the web of connections that go on behind the scenes so that in work situation after work situation people are able to pursue goals and find the exhilaration of flow.

    Is it possible to support a working culture where people find flow frequently?  And if so, what are these institutions and what do they look like?

    Unseen jobs in sky rise buildings

    It is an interesting question because the people who think about these institutions are in what I call the hidden jobs.  We see people at the checkout counter. We see the doctor.  We see the lawyer.  But there is a whole world of people in sky rise buildings that we never see at work.  And even if we did, we would see little of what they do.  Their desk, their paper, their computers look like any other. They are just like any other.  It’s just what they think about is different.

    That’s what is different.  Some of us think about whether it’s possible to support a working culture where people find flow frequently.  And if it is possible, what are these institutions and what do they look like?

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    How I installed Java on Windows XP . . . eventually

    Published August 17, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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    Do you still dream by Zenera via FlickrHow to install Java on Windows XP

    Normally, when we want to install Java, we google Java, go to their website and press download.  Hey, presto.  Sun pick the right for our machine and a window opens.  It takes a few minutes but everything happens without us doing much more than accept the licence and press Finish.  Or, something equally thoughtless on our part.   And so the day this doesn’t work, we are confused and mildly panicky.

    I couldn’t download Java 6 Update 21 onto my XP this weekend and it took me about 3 days working very hard to sort it all out.  As always with computing problems, when you find the person who knows, it’s easy.  Sadly, the person who knows is not on Sun forums or on Microsoft help pages.

    I’m writing down here what I learned to remind myself when it happens again.  Don’t follow me because I don’t really know.  Maybe do the checks I suggest here to get oriented.  Then head over to the links and follow from there.  Of course, by the time you get this problem, Java might be on a higher version and XP might be very old.  Proceed cautiously and google, google, google.  Someone out there has already solved your problem.

    Evidence Java doesn’t work

    You are looking at a webpage and a graphic refuses to work.  Maybe there is a grey box with a lego-like object in the middle saying download the plugin.  Your Java doesn’t work.

    If you are not sure, at time of writing, the website for Wordle has lots of Java enabled graphics.  Head over there and try.

    Java download doesn’t work

    Most times, when you are told to download a Java plugin, download it.  Be patient, but within five minutes you should be sorted.

    Download is not working.  You are getting crazy messages like Error 1722 saying the installer doesn’t work; try again later. You tried again later and you had no joy.

    Or you are told the program is already there but then the install won’t work because the program is there.

    You suspect Windows Installer is not working

    Go to Microsoft and download Microsoft Installer 4.5.  You will have to restart your  machine.

    (I don’t know if this is necessary.)

    You saw requests for logfiles

    Go to C:My Documents and SettingsAdministratorLocal  SettingsTemp

    You are logged on as Administrator, right?

    If your can’t see Local Settings, go to Tools on the menu bar, Folder Options choose View and make sure Show hidden files and folders has been selected.

    Your logs are called msi…, jusched.txt and java_install.  Follow the genius below and you will not need these.  But just in case.

    You’ve tried everything

    This was my starting point.  I was pretty sure Java wasn’t working but I couldn’t update either.   I have tried downloading from the Sun site.  I tried all their options.  No joy.

    Time for analysis

    OK, it is time to stop expecting everything to work smoothly and to start to think in an orderly way.  Try these tests to get an overview.

    Add/Remove Programs

    Is any Java installed on your computer at all?

    Go to Start/Control Panel/Add-Remove Programs

    Wait for it to ‘populate’ the list.  Under J, is there any Java listed.  There might be lots; there might be nothing.

    Don’t do anything yet. Just jot down what’s there.  Maybe later you will come back and remove it all.

    Does Java work on your machine?

    Go to Start/Run  type cmd<enter>

    Now you are in the command-line, change directory (actually not sure you have to do this) but type

    Cd c:

    Then at c: type

    Jview

    You should see some sort of programmatic response.  If you get nothing or an error, your basic Java program on Windows is not working.

    Note this.  There is a fix but I am not even sure it this is necessary.  But if you think it is, go here for instructions to reload MsJava

    Clear all traces of Java from your machine

    Go to this genius at Whatthetech and read the instructions and the thread.

    Basically, what you are going to do is

    • Go back to Add/Remove Programs and remove all Java.
    • Then you are going to do something we users never do.  Fix your Registry. Don’t do it by hand. It is too dangerous.  Run his program to clear all the old Java references from your Registry.
    • Then you will install Java using the offline option.

    I’ll add one more tip.  When Jave installs, don’t be in a hurry.  If you try to install twice, you will get the Error 1722 again.  I had given up and about an hour later, an install box popped up and the install went seamlessly.

    Test whether Java is working

    Close your browser. Reopen it  and test that you can read Java applets with a site like Wordle.

    Thanks to my unnamed genius I am running smoothly again AND understand what I did.

    P.S. The picture has no relevance to this story.  I need one for the format and this picture came up under Done!  I once used it on a Moo card and it was the most popular card with young male social media specialists. So in honor of competent young geeks who share their knowledge  . . . .

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    Great Leaders, Great speeches: Jimmy Reid

    Published August 16, 2010 by Jo Jordan

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    glasgow university by Gavin Gilmour via FlickrJimmy Reid: Orator and Visionary

    Jimmy Reid will not be known to many people outside the UK.  Nor will he be known to many Gen Yers.   I hard vaguely on the news that he had died but thought little.

    Then on Saturday I stumbled over Jimmy Reid’s 1972 speech to Glasgow University which was reprinted in its entirety by The Independent.  I was so excited.  I thought a new leader had burst into UK politics.

    I was half way through the speech before the penny dropped.  1972 – 4 decades ago and every bit as relevant a maninfesto today.

    As a speech, it may not be quite on the same plain as “I have a dream”.  It doesn’t have the simplicity or the connection to images shared with a huge audience.  It’s too thoughtful.  It might rank up there, though, with Obama’s speech to the Democratic Party in 2004.

    Here is a Wordle of the speech (via ManyEyes.)  I am going to do more work with speech.  I’d love your comments and requests.

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