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Tag: social constructionism

Does Google make us stupid?

Published July 17, 2010 by Jo Jordan

Escher's Relativity in Lego by Andrew Simpsom from idigit_teddy via FlickrDoes the internet change our brain structure?

Nicholas Carr thinks so.  I must confess that I haven’t read his book.  I should but I imagine MRI scans could give us a definitive answeer.

I know a lot of people, such as appear on BBC Radio 4 would agree.

While we wait for hard neurophysiological evidence, I’ll suggest that this perception is an illusion.

  • Reading on the web is different.  Those who are very good at working with paper have had to go back to noobe status.  I can’t text (fast) either.  I type fast but I can’t text.  Learning anything takes time and of course, we protest when we have to go down a snake back to Go..  But the fact is our discomfort.  Our discomfort is not evidence that our brain will get scribbled.
  • I have become more impatient with long dense text.  Is that evidence that the internet shortens our attention span?  To this I answer, so?  Why should I wade through some wordy gobbley-gook.  Why not deliver the information more efficiently?  And for the information of those who have learned to wade through verbiage – this is not normal behavior!  We know attention wanders after 10 to 15 minutes.  We know managers have an average task time of 10 minutes.  (I didn’t say it ~ this is a classical result from Mintzberg). Doctors in Britain get 10 minutes from calling your name to returning you to reception.   If we realistically want to communicate with busy people we need to show them what they need in a flash.  Get over it!  We have the tools to communicate better.  Let’s try them.

The internet gives us better manners (well sometimes)

I am writing this post though to quite deliberately link to Dan Erwin who makes an important point.  The internet helps us understand that truth is not certain.

You have your opinion and I have mine.  Not because we cannot communicate but because see the world from slightly different places.  When we take both views into account, we have a fuller picture.

Gen Y have learned to look at a more complete picture through using the internet.  As a result, they should be better leaders and managers and doctors and artists.

Actually, not all of them learn that many views matter.  Some seem to think that if there are many views, any view is truth.

That’s not the case.  Every view is part of the truth.  Every view is valid but only part of the story.

In social science, we call this social constructionism.  In social activism, we call this diversity.  In appreciative inquiry, or positive organizational scholarship, we look for multiple voices and see what picture we make when we listen to all the voices.

I like the way Dan Erwin makes the point and I wrote a whole post so that I don’t lose the link!

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The greatest leaders spark curiosity about the system

Published December 5, 2009 by Jo Jordan

Our goal had gone walkabout

On my travels, I found myself teaching systems thinking in a university which broke a large course into 25 student groups. A few people determined the curriculum and an army of people taught students who wrote a common examination.

I was shocked by the examination papers. Students rambled on tossing in whatever thoughts came to mind.

We sensibly had an interim examiners meeting and I voiced my concerns. Well, it seems that I was the one to have misunderstood the curriculum.  The curriculum designers were trying to convey the idea that there are many perspectives on any issue. They didn’t see a common goal or direction as an essential part of any system.

I am cursed with an “open mind” so I hastened to the internet to double-check and the idea has hung around my mind ever since as unfinished business does.

3 misunderstandings about system goals

I’m afraid that systems do have common goals. That is entirely the point. But it seems that this is a point that is often misunderstood.

Some people think the system’s goal is their goal

No! There are still multiple perspectives. We can add the system as a virtual person and ask what is the system’s goal! We have the boss’ goal, we have the system, goal and we have each of our goals.

Some people think there is no common goal

It is true that the organization does not have a goal. An organization cannot think! When we say that the organization’s goal is X, we must ask who says that?

But we not only want to understand the multiplicity of goals but we also want to understand how the many goals come together and how the system goal morphs in response. We cannot ignore the system goal ~ or we do as a sailor might ignore the weather ~ at our peril.

Some people think goals are constant

They are ~ for a second. Goals morph as situations change. When we ignore the dynamic quality of goals, then we get mission creep. Conditions change and if we don’t stop to think about what we want, what we all want, we find ourselves doing too much of one thing and too little of another. A mess in other words. Goals are infinitely variable.

Articulating the morphing of goals in any group is what makes a leader

A leader understand the multiplicity of goals in a community and sees how are contradictions and conflicts, agreements and alliances come together to make us what we are – how the whole comes from the parts and affects them in turn.

A leader is a person who is able to articulate this dynamic mix so that we feel supported by the whole and essential to its well being. This is a tough call when a group is determined to quarrel or terrified by its destiny. The hall mark of a leader is that he or she looks for the common ground where we all belong and keeps looking.

Facilitating the agreement is the hallmark of the greatest leaders

Helping us find that common ground is the hallmark of the greatest leaders. We often doff our caps to leaders who were in the right place at the right time. They represent what is the best about ourselves and we throw them into the limelight to remind us of who we are and where we are going. In time, we choose a new leader because our direction has changed and we need new icon on our bows.

We remember these leaders because these were times that we felt great. The greatest leaders, though, help us identify the right questions. They know how to “bound” the group. They know how to focus our attention on the question that we must answer if we are to find the way forward and the place where we feel great.

That’s why it seems as if great leaders set goals. They set a boundary which focuses our attention on question-asking.

It is not the goal that is important, but our compulsion to find out how we should reach the goal.

Colin Powell once said “Leadership is about ‘Follow Me!. Even if it is only out of curiosity.”

Leadership is the art of engaging the imagination in the search for collective answers.

The system is important. With good leadership, we accept the system as a virtual person ~ a popular virtual person who we all want to look after and please.

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Is the essence of a happy life a point-of-view?

Published August 2, 2008 by Jo Jordan

I read a great post this morning suggesting the Clay Shirky has it wrong.  We don’t really have a cognitive surplus, or we cannot make use of the cognitive surplus, because people prefer desultory entertainment to purposive action.

Positivism vs constructivism

The author writes in a scholarly genre: dealing with facts and evidence in a positivist way.  I almost responded likewise.

What if the author, Steve, looked at the world through other eyes?

What if the mytho-poetic tradition, a la Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey, are correct and we like to hear a narrative?

  • Does that explain why we prefer to watch stories about someone?  Rather than a read explanations of some thing?

What if we like to write stories in a narrative (even though it was beaten out of us at college)?

  • Would we feel more cheerful, me and Steve included, if we were allowed to tell stories about
    • action,
    • purpose,
    • calling,
    • doubt,
    • triumph?
    • All the human attributes banned from psychological reports?

Positive psychology and the narrative

Positive organizational scholarship, for example appreciative inquiry, are quite clear that a positive approach includes social constructionism – in other words, our voice and the voice of others.  The positive principle is expressed not only as something positive and not negative, but as something purposeful, compelling, engaging, enduring, exciting, soothing, validating.

Positive psychologists (as opposed to positive scholars) tend to retreat back to questionnaires to measure their strengths and virtues.  Just as happiness strictly refers to a life well-lived (not a mood, person or moment in time), I suspect someone better read than I can explain why a strength or virtue belongs in a narrative, probably as a ‘calling.’

In short, the Hero’s Journey, or narrative structure is still to be adopted by positive psychologists with vigor.

The essence of positive psychology is a point-of-view

Would I be going too far on this Saturday morning to suggest that the essence of a positive approach is a point-of-view?  We all want to hear who does what, and why.  What was their deep moral case for spending time the way we do.

And is it so wrong to relax by following the moral case of others?

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