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11 April 2010

What’s the witness of your “domestic” life?

I’ve been dipping again into the Anabaptist record. A piece by Alan Kreider took me particularly hard. He wrote, “The church has nothing to offer to the world other than what it has learned to live in its own ‘domestic’ life.”

It isn’t information; it isn’t principles; it isn’t laws and regulations that’s going to make a difference, but how we live our lives before and with others. And this how we live is largely a product of our reflexes, Alan Kreider goes on to say.

Our reflexes, like our values and deep convictions, are shaped by the people with whom we share at the deepest level and with whom we have the deepest ties.

Who shapes you? Who trains your reflexes? Your church? Your family and friends? Or commercials on TV, films, soaps? If it is your church, does your church shape you to demonstrate— in your individual reflexes as in your common life— the teachings and way of Jesus to the world?

According to a note at the end of the article, Alan Kreider is director of the Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture at Regent’s Park College, Oxford. The whole article, “Is a Peace Church Possible?: The Church’s ‘Domestic’ Life,” is on the Anabaptist Network here.

Posted 11 April 2010 † Jack § Commentary § Decision making § Individuals and Community ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:
08 April 2010

Five rules to reinvent Best Practices from Nick Milton

Wednesday Nick Milton in his blog listed these five “rules.” They made a lot of sense to me and so I am reprinting them:

There is a lot of pushback in the KM world about the term “best practice”. In the discussion groups, we hear people saying “we don’t believe in best practice”. Respected KM gurus say that “best practice harms effectiveness”. David Snowden, in his complexity model, believes that best practice will apply only to simple repeatable non-complex problems.

Certainly I have seen the concept of best practice used negatively and destructively in organisations. I have seen people defend outmoded and inefficient ways of working by saying “we are following best practice”. However I feel that as a concept, best practice can still be very useful, with the following caveats

1. Best is temporary. There may be a current “best way” to do something, but like “world champion” or “world record”, it’s not going to stay the best for long.

2. Best is therefore a starting point. We are always looking to improve on best, but without knowing the temporary best, we don’t know what we have to beat. Like a world record, best is there to be beaten - its a minimum accepted threshold.

3. Best is contextual. There may be no universal “best way” to do something. The best way to deal with emergency decompression of a Jumbo Jet may not be the best way to deal with emergency decompression of a Harrier jump jet. However within that context, there is still a “best”.

4. In a new context, you cannot blindly apply “best” from another context. However you can learn from other “bests” - no context is ever totally alien, and there may be approaches and

5. Best practice does not have to be written down. It can live there in the community cloud of tacit knowledge. Usain Bolts “best way to run a sprint” is probably not even conscious - its in his muscle memory. However if it can be written down - in a wiki, or a document, or a manual - so much the better, so long as it is immediately updated every time its superseded and improved. The risk with documenting a best practice, is that it goes out of date, and there is no point in documenting without allowing for continual update. The risk with not documenting a best practice, is that people can’t find it, can’t refer to it, and so make up their own practice which is frequently far from best. The answer is to record and continually update, eg through a wiki, or through a constantly reviewed and updated reference (for example, army doctrine)

If you apply these 5 caveats, then there is little or no risk from the concept of best practice, and instead it can be part of the engine that drives continual improvement.

After all, the concept of best practice is simply the following thought process

“Here’s a problem. Has anyone seen anything like this before? What’s the best way they’ve found to deal with things like this? How can I build on/improve on that to tackle my problem? Hmm - that worked, I’d better let others know what I did”

Posted 08 April 2010 † Jack § Management ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,
26 March 2010

A novel nonviolent approach to disrupting protesters is not without risks

My friend, Boley, called me yesterday amid the teevee pictures and news reports of the haranguing, protesting of Democrats, some of which were threatening and vandalistic. I hadn’t heard from him in a while, but he didn’t spend time at bringing us up to date. He called, he said, for leads to left-leaning reform groups. He had a service to offer and thought I might help him.

I told him I hadn’t really kept up with that sort of thing for a long while. Before I could tell him what I was keeping up with, he cut me off. He had this idea for marketing a band of mercenaries that he would form to disrupt protest rallies and hurriedly told me of his plan. He wanted to strike— so to speak— while the need was hot. Same old Boley. This is what he said.

“Remember being lured to movies by previews and critics only to find out they were lousy and we wasted our money? I got tired of this and wanted to send a message. To theaters and the whole movie biz. One that would be heard, though.

“Now, I thought how our military industrial complex developed the smart bomb and the drones. You know me, I am not the violent type and avoid confrontations. But targeted, intelligent explosions are different. I wondered what I could do to have an impact like that. Remember our math class? Whenever Miss Snyder returned our tests, she had ‘em on her desk, and we had to walk up to the front of the room to get them as she called out our names.”

“Yes,” I tried to say. And she had them stacked by our scores. If she called your name early, you got a good score and would walk back leisurely to our desk looking it over with a smile or while nodding sagely. If your name wasn’t called ’til the stack got shorter, then your grade wasn’t too good and you hurried back to your desk. But Boley didn’t let me insert this into the conversation.

Boley went on. “I sat at the back and had to walk pass those boys who had spent the lunch hour wolfing down salami, pickles, horseradish, and God knows what other concoctions and must have washed it all down with tonics of some ancient Middle Eastern origin. And by this time of day, their bodily processes had worked to soak up as much nutrients as possible and what was left over was expelled as gas, and usually as I passed by their desks. Man, I dreaded having to pick up my tests in that class.

“Anyway… Smart bombs, I thought, why not fart bombs. I tried it immediately. I loaded myself up with a round of cheese puffs and pork rinds followed by a big bowl of Mexican refried beans from the greasiest of greasy restaurants I knew of. And topped it off with a large cup of hot, black coffee. I thought that would be enough to produce odoriferous results.

“I jogged to the movie house to better have a potent mix. One of those comedies with a star from Friends was playing. The previews had been funny, but I was suspicious. You know sometimes the previews contain all the funny bits and the movie itself is a big boor. A “stinker,” got it? I hesitated at the ticket booth, though; suppose the movie was good. What then? I was all primed to go off. So I turned around and started home.

“As luck would have it, on my way home I passed a church group picketing one of those “adult” newsstand and paraphernalia stores. I thought to myself, here’s a chance to demonstrate the fart bomb effectiveness and begin a business with clients who wanted to clean up lewdness and moral corruption.

“So I went through the picket line and entered the store and none too soon. I was ripe and began emitting rather pungent steams of gas as soon as I began to browse the rack of dee vee dees. I was effective immediately as my fellow customers began edging away from my presence. I was strategically herding them to the front exit when a clerk, holding a handkerchief to his face, asked me to leave and leave immediately. I had been found out. Not only did the scent give me away, but there was noise. How apt, I thought, is the onomatopoeia of the word, flatulence.

“The clerk was rather large and had tattoos. He could have been a biker. He escorted me out through the parting of the rest of the store’s customers. But I didn’t have time to get the hero’s welcome I deserved from the picketers. I had to find a restroom quickly as the concoction I had eaten was making an urgent request to exit my system.

“Now here’s the genius of my plan. You know that creativity comes about when one needs to overcome adversities and set-backs. Well, here’s my inspiration. The next day I had to go to a skin allergist. Apparently something I had eaten had caused a rash to break out over a good two-thirds of my body. Instead of being another set-back, it caused me to discover a better way and not like one of those suicide bombers.

“While I was waiting in the doctor’s office, I thumbed through the magazines there. I discovered that there could be thousands of people affected with body chemistries producing malodors because there are whole segments of the pharmaceutical industry, medical research, and treatment specialists dedicated to combating malodorous substances such as those that are sulfonyl alkanoic.

“So here’s my plan. I’ll organize these people with chronic sweat, foot, oral malodors. While they are awaiting treatments I can book them to combat street protesters. They just have to mingle with the crowd and soon enough the crowd will disperse. Think about it, these rabble wouldn’t be able to stand the smell of exactly what they are expressing when they surround others and name-call, slur, hurl racial epitaphs, threaten.

“I am calling my service the odoriferous mercenaries. I wonder if they qualify as handicapped. I may get an additional tax break for hiring them. I’m going to check that out now. Thanks.”

And Boley hung up, before I could respond. I wanted to say that service could work both ways. Who’s to say that it couldn’t be used by the other side? What would happen if those mercenaries got loose in Congress or in our state legislature? I’ll have to wait until next time to find out more from him.

Posted 26 March 2010 † Jack § Boley § Commentary ‡ Comments (0) °
24 March 2010

Reminding us of the Beatitudes— Sojourner’s verse, voice & prayer for Wednesday, 24 Mar 2010

Verse
Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.
- Philippians 2:4-5

Voice of the day
Even when they call us mad, when they call us subversives and communists and all the epithets they put on us, we know we only preach the subversive witness of the Beatitudes, which have turned everything upside down.
- Archbishop Oscar Romero, an advocate for the poor and marginalized, was assassinated thirty years ago today while giving Mass in El Salvador.

Prayer of the day
God of reconciliation, we pray for people around the world who face conflict and violence on a daily basis. In the midst of instability, insecurity, and the perpetual risk of injury and death, we ask that you would strengthen them. Bring peace to their regions and bring reconciliation between enemies. With you all things are possible, and in this truth we hope for shalom. Let it be, Lord.

Sojourner’s web presence here. You know they’ve been around since the “Jesus Movement” of the 60s?

Posted 24 March 2010 † Jack § politics with low case "p" ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,
19 March 2010

Isn’t there a saying about eyes bigger than your stomach?

That’s what happen to us this afternoon. Went to Cokesbury for a couple more copies of Greg Ogden’s books (Transforming discipleship and Discipleship essentials: A guide to rebuilding your life in Christ) and walked out with an armful of missional church and more disciple-making books, plus two Walter Wangerin books— his latest, Letters from the land of cancer and an earlier one that Markey hadn’t read, Ragman and other cries of faith.

We came out with Making disciples one conversation at a time by D. Michael Henderson, The forgotten ways handbook, A practical guide for developing missional churches by Alan Hirsch with Darryn Altclass, The apostolic congregation, Church growth reconceived for a new generation and The Celtic way of evangelism, How Christianity can reach the west… again, both by George G. Hunter III, and— to let you know we got beyond the “H” authors— a revised and updated Conspiracy of kindness, A unique approach to sharing the love of Jesus by Steve Sjogren, a guy we knew “way back when” in the days of the Vineyard Movement organizing east of the Mississippi.

And speaking of movements, know that added to this mix is Steve Addison’s Movements that changed the world, the book that kick started my current passion.

Posted 19 March 2010 † Jack § Books § Missions ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,
17 March 2010

The social cement that once were radio shows & comic strips

Markey and I picked up our grandson at the airport recently. He’s a freshman at Belmont U and had returned to his high school in Mt Lebanon, PA for a weekend Sadie Hawkins Day dance. (Seems at bit late. Isn’t Sadie Hawkins Day in the fall? November something? I’ll have to Google and find out. Anyway…) We asked if he knew about Sadie Hawkins Day and how it originated. Nope. Hadn’t heard of Li’l Abner or Daisy Mae, Al Capp and the other inhabitants of Dogpatch.

Remember the Shmoo? A white bowling pin-shaped creature that laid eggs and milk and tasted like chicken, ham, steak depending on how it was cooked. It became part of our conversations and we would spot and use Shmoo metaphors in commenting on everyday life. Oh, and there was Joe Bfstplk. You know that guy that always traveled under a storm cloud.

Walt Kelly’s Pogo was another source of conversations and updates for us in the “old days.” The strip was an ongoing social and political commentary and funny and creative, all at the same time.

Our grandson, Phil, and his buddy, Ian, previously had spent a week or so watching past seasons of Lost to get ready for the first show in this, its last, season. So they became familiar with the goings and comings of the various characters in the show and the conundrums they and the plot posed. Maybe the show and other teevee programs, like Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, have taken the place of newspaper comic strips and radio comedy shows like Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, and radio commentators like Gabriel Heatter, H. V. Kaltenborn, Ed Murrow, Lowell Thomas, Bill Stern as a social cement that, in a way, ties us together.

Posted 17 March 2010 † Jack § Reminiscence ‡ Comments (0) °
17 March 2010

Here’s a prayer attributed to St Patrick

Whether it is an actual rendering of one of his prayers, it captures what I know about him and his story. Also, reading this out loud regularly is a good way to start the day.

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through the belief in the threeness,
Through the confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.

I arise today
Through the strength of Christ’s birth with his baptism,
Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,
Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,
Through the strength of his descent for the Judgment Day.

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.

I arise today
Through God’s strength to pilot me:
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s way to lie before me,
God’s shield to protect me,
God’s host to save me
From snares of demons,
From temptations of vices,
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone and in multitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and those evils,
Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul.

Christ to shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that there may come to me abundance of reward.
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.

A brief bio of Patrick is currently at the ExploreFaith.org site here

Posted 17 March 2010 † Jack § Missions ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:
27 January 2010

Tufte & Miller weigh in on “the magic number 7 +/- 2

Pardon the copying below, but I just had to include this on the blog since I discovered this stuff this morning. After my post yesterday citing Miller, I thought it my duty. Edward Tufte has a long series of post and comments on the mis-reading and mis-use of George Miller’s article. Here are some excerpts from the exchanges. (The complete series is found here.)

The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Not relevant for design

Now and then the narrow bandwidth of lists presented on computer screens and bullet points on PowerPoint slides is said to be a virtue, a claim justified by loose reference to George Miller’s classic 1956 paper “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two.” That essay reviews psychological experiments that discovered people had a hard time remembering more than about 7 unrelated pieces of really dull data all at once. These studies on memorizing nonsense then led some interface designers to conclude that only 7 items belong on a list or a slide, a conclusion which can be sustained only by not reading the paper. In fact Miller’s paper neither states nor implies rules for the amount of information to be shown in a presentation (except possibly for slides that consist of nonsense syllables that the audience must memorize and repeat back to a psychologist). Indeed, the deep point of Miller’s paper is to suggest strategies, such as placing information within a context, that extend the reach of memory beyond tiny clumps of data. George A. Miller, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information,” Psychological Review, 63 (1956), 81-97 here.

At Williams College in September 2000, I saw George Miller give a presentation that used an optimal number of bullet points on an optimal number of slides–zero. Just a nice straightforward talk with a long narrative structure. (George and I were there to pick up honorary degrees during the dedication of a new science building at Williams College. In addition, Donald Knuth’s talk as well as my own deployed no bullet lists.)

– Edward Tufte, April 20, 2003

George Miller on the relevance of +/- seven
Here is a comment by the George Miller on the scope and relevance of his classic essay:
From: George Miller
To: Mark Halpern
Subject: Re: citation for your disclaimer

Many years ago landscape architects used my +/-7 paper as a basis to pass local laws restricting the number of items on a billboard. It was funded by the big motel chains; if you run a mom-and-pop motel you have to put a lot of information on your sign, but if you have a franchise everybody knows you have hot and cold running water, color televisions, free breakfasts, etc. The restriction on billboard content was driving the small motels out of business.

The same argument was used in the Lady Bird Johnson Act to prohibit billboards within X feet of highways, and the billboard industry (a strange group that deserves an essay of its own) was hurting. They hired a man to travel around from town to town trying to refute the claims that more than 7 items of information could cause accidents. The man’s wife did not like her husband being constantly on the road, so she asked him about it. He told her that the root of his trouble was some damn Harvard professor who wrote a paper about 7 bits of information. She, being herself a psychologist, said that she did not think that that was what Professor Miller’s paper said.

Armed with this insight, he looked me up and told me the whole story about my career, unknown to me, in the billboard industry. There was much more to it than I have outlined here, and I was shocked. So shocked that I wrote a long letter thing to set the record straight. The letter was published in the monthly journal of the billboard industry and that was the end of it. Unfortunately, I no longer have a copy of the letter an I don’t recall the name of the journal (this was all back in the early 70s) so I cannot quote to you its contents. But the point was that 7 was a limit for the discrimination of unidimensional stimuli (pitches, loudness, brightness, etc.) and also a limit for immediate recall, neither of which has anything to do with a person’s capacity to comprehend printed text.

If you want to quote the original article, it is on line and you can find a pointer to it at www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~wn. But if that is too time consuming - yes, you are right: nothing in my paper warrants asking Moses to discard any of the ten commandments.

Good luck, g.
(This is posted at http://members.shaw.ca/philip.sharman/myth.html )
– Edward Tufte, April 26, 2003

Halpern’s email leading to Miller’s reply
Dear Mr Tufte,
You have posted a letter from George Miller to me in which he replies to one from me. I think his letter would be better understood if you had printed mine along with it; as it is, you have an answer without the question that prompted it. His reference to Moses, for example, will probably not be understood without a prior reading of my letter to him. Yours, Mark Halpern

From: Mark Halpern Sent: Thursday, July 30, 1998 12:04 PM To: [George Miller, Princeton University] Subject: citation for your disclaimer

Dear Professor Miller,

The director of the technical writing group which I serve as editor has issued an edict that lists and procedures in our printed and screen-displayed documentation should not exceed seven, or maybe nine at the most, items. This is of course a silly rule, whatever its origin, but I think that its source in this case is a fading memory of a third-hand report of a bad reading of your classic 1956 paper.

Of course you are in no way responsible for the misreadings of your paper, and the silly things done in its name, but I hope you can help my organization, at least, climb back out of the pit it has dug for itself, using your paper as its shovel. I have seen somewhere a quotation from you, or a paraphrase of your words, in which you deplore the strange conclusions that some have drawn from your paper, and express your dismay over all the half-baked rules that people have promulgated, citing it as their authority.

In my attempt to get our director to rescind his bad rule, I would like to be able to quote your very words against him; would you tell me where I might find such words? Or, if what you’ve said in the past is not on record, could I induce you to say now that nothing in your paper should be taken as warrant for asking Moses to discard at least one, and preferably three, of the Commandments?

With my thanks, Mark Halpern

– Mark Halpern (email), November 3, 2007

I first was made aware of George Miller’s study in grad school for communications at West Virginia University in the 70s. Mike Burgoon, my professor, had us read it. He had been at Michigan where Miller was a professor.

Posted 27 January 2010 † Jack § Decision making ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,
26 January 2010

Miller’s “the magic number 7 plus or minus 2″ meets chocolate cake and fruit cups

This morning on NPR’s Morning Edition had a feature from Radiolab on decision making and the role played by the “rational” and the “intuitive” systems of the brain/mind.

Using George Miller’s seminal study on the limits of distinct things we can keep “in mind,” Baba Shiv, a professor at Stanford’s business school, had subjects individually given either a two-digit or a seven-digit number. They were asked to go to a room down the hall and repeat the number to the research assistant there. On the way down the hall, though, the subjects were stopped by another assistant and asked if they would like a snack— either a piece of chocolate cake or a cup of fruit.

The students trying to keep the two-digit number in their mind were more likely to choose the fruit. The ones trying to keep the seven-digit number in mind were twice as likely to choose the cake. Shiv reasons that trying to keep the seven-digit number fresh in the mind so preoccupied the rational, logic mental system that the more intuitive— or what what Shiv describes as the emotional— system was unencumbered and led students to choose the cake rather than the more rational and reasonable choice of the fruit— which we all know is “better for you.”

You can listen the the Radiolab story here: 20100126_me_19

Posted 26 January 2010 † Jack § Decision making ‡ Comments (0) °
25 January 2010

Attractors in community healthcare

As you know I’ve been attracted to attractors recently. I’ve found an example of attractors in patterning improvements in community settings. Russell Gonnering has a post over on the Cognitive Edge site on amplifying positive “attractors” to benefit community healthcare. He cites work by Marian Zeitlin and Jerry and Monique Sternin.

A Tufts University nutritionist, Dr. Zeitlin used the term “positive deviant” in the book, “Positive Deviance in Child Nutrition”, authored with Hossein Ghassemi and Mohamed Mansour. While studying malnutrition in Africa, the authors were struck by the fact that some children seemed to be doing quite a bit better than others. These were the “positive deviants”. The adaptive child care and feeding behaviors of these children, as well as the social networks that supported them, were studied. Life in the village was a Complex Adaptive System, and these people had adapted very well. The genius of Zeitlin and the Sternins was to realize that the key was to identify what was going right for those children and amplify it, instead of focusing on what was going wrong with the rest of the community and trying to fix it. In other words, they understood the value of amplifying a positive attractor instead of trying to impose order!!

To quote from the Fast Company article:

“The traditional model for social and organizational change doesn’t work,” says Sternin, 62. “It never has. You can’t bring permanent solutions in from outside.” Maybe the problem is with the whole model for how change can actually happen. Maybe the problem is that you can’t import change from the outside in. Instead, you have to find small, successful but “deviant” practices that are already working in the organization and amplify them. Maybe, just maybe, the answer is already alive in the organization — and change comes when you find it.

I wonder if looking for “positive deviance” to amplify would work for community anti-drug coalitions. Of course you would have to confront the federal and state insistence on “importing change for the outside.”

Posted 25 January 2010 † Jack § Complex adaptive systems § Individuals and Community ‡ Comments (4) ° Tagged: , ,