Rowan's Future of Choice

Knowing how to know

Knowledge is an important component of decision-making. A decision is a commitment to change. The wrong change could have dire consequences. The right change could be wonderful and enriching. The more we know the better, right?

Exactly what is knowledge? According to the classical definition attributed to Plato, "knowledge is what is both true and believed, though not all that is both true and believed counts as knowledge."

This is a simple and familiar way of looking at things; after all, it has been the foundation of our educational system for 200 years. Educated people are those who have 'acquired' knowledge and mastered fundamental truths. We grant educated people diplomas, better-paying jobs, and a higher stature in our society.

Highly educated people store and manage their knowledge--they often have large libraries and write about what they know. They can also be coaxed into dispensing what they know for a price, or for the good of some cause. This is the purpose of study groups, advisory panels, and special assistants: the metered dispensation of acquired knowledge, often in the guise of that even more precious resource, wisdom.

The concept of knowledge as a thing to acquire and possess--as an asset to measure and manage, is obsolete. Truths are transitory; beliefs are subjective. This is becoming more so as we learn more about the physical and spiritual world. For example, Thomas Jefferson never really took literally his words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident." He was establishing the basis of a momentary argument to dissolve the political connection with Great Britain. He knew that after the revolution a torrent of not-so-evident truths would flourish in the new free society.

I believe that the key to better decision making is not about getting more or better knowledge. It is about "knowing how to know." It is about learning how to find and use new truths and different  beliefs, while discarding or re-using others. It is about turning knowledge from a thing into a process.

Knowledge is how we decide to change, and the small steps we take along the way.

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Definition of knowledge from Wiki

Sleep on it

Sleep more, learn more. Researchers are beginning to understand that sleep is not only for rest; while we sleep, different parts of our brain 'talk' to each other about the day, the patterns we saw, the emotions we felt, and lessons we learned.

When you think about it, we awake each day as somewhat different people, especially those of us who get plenty of sleep!

From Harvard's Division of Sleep Medicine, To Understand The Big Picture, Give It Time – And Sleep

Graphic

Keep saying you don't know until you do

"Great decisions begin with really great people and a simple statement: I don't know. The research evidence on that is very clear—that the leaders who ended up setting things in place that produced extraordinary results over time, and a series of great decisions over time, really were very comfortable saying "I don't know" until they knew.

And really, they were just being honest. I mean, which is best? Lying—meaning saying you don't know when you've already made up your mind? Or presuming to know when you don't and therefore lying to yourself? Or speaking the truth? Which is, 'I don't yet know, but I know we have to get it right.'"

Source: Jim Collins, in Fortune magazine, at this link. Pie chart

"Optimism is true moral courage"

Sir Ernest Shackleton is my hero. He reminds me that we have so many reasons for optimism, and so many excuses to forget them.

"Bad leaders have an unhappy, unproductive and disloyal staff, making hard work even harder, limiting chances of success, and making it impossible to achieve beyond expectations. It's better, he reasoned, to lighten your burden and the burdens of others with a positive attitude and helpful gestures. 'Optimism is true moral courage.'"

Stephanie Capparell, writing about, and quoting, explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton

Article; photo

Big Time

I struggle with this every day: being surrounded by a culture of 'tightly wrapped potential.' From the book, The Think Big Manifesto, by Michael Port. Link

From his blog:

"Scary? Why? Because the small thinking powers-that-be do not want us to think big—and they definitely do not want us to act on our big thoughts. They want us to be tame and predictable, hooked up to the IV of television and shopping, living in our comfortable-life comas. Life is so much easier that way. The citizens (that means us) are tame. The corporations and politicians do what they want. The few can control the many. Is that what you want?"

Decisions as life sentences

"On a personal level, it is possible to reinvent oneself and  to  become  a  leader  in  those  areas  of  one’s  life that matter…. [Recall] pivotal moments  in  the  past  when  the  natural  reaction  was “something  is  wrong  here”  or  “something  is  wrong with me.” Decisions are often made in those moments that affect the way that a person behaves in the present and will behave in the future. The decisions that a person makes to deal with what is “wrong” with them form the basis of one’s persona. Zaffron and Logan call these decisions “life sentences” because they limit and narrow how a person occurs to themselves and how life occurs to that person."

Source: Business Book Review, March 22, 2009. Link

Understanding the concept of how the world 'occurs' to us is key to understanding Steve Zaffron & Dave Logan thesis in The Three Laws of Performance: Rewriting the Future of Your Organization and Your Life. The authors' blog link.

Wouldn’t know a good graph from a George Foreman Grill

Stephen Few's Visual Business Intelligence blog is consistently good. He caught this BI company making an awful chart.

Link to post

What to do

Bruce Sterling had some good advice for all of us at WebStock 09:

"I've never seen so much panic around me, but panic is the last thing on my mind. My mood is eager impatience. I want to see our best, most creative, best-intentioned people in world society directly attacking our worst problems. I'm bored with the deceit. I'm tired of obscurantism and cover-ups. I'm disgusted with cynical spin and the culture war for profit. I'm up to here with phony baloney market fundamentalism. I despise a prostituted society where we put a dollar sign in front of our eyes so we could run straight into the ditch.

The cure for panic is action. Coherent action is great; for a scatterbrained web society, that may be a bit much to ask. Well, any action is better than whining. We can do better.

I'm not gonna tell you what to do. I'm an artist, I'm not running for office and I don't want any of your money. Just talk among yourselves. Grow up to the size of your challenges. Bang out some code, build some platforms you don't have to duct-tape any more, make more opportunities than you can grab for your little selves, and let's get after living real lives.

The future is unwritten. Thank you very much."

Link

Decisions are social

If you fall over in the street, do not just yell 'help' -- point at a person and give them specific instructions.

Link to Changing Minds

TED 2009

Watching TED live stream at http://www.ted.com/