Harold Jarche

Here’s a comment e-mailed to me by Graham Watt, friend & neighbour, in response to my post – A Greater Need for Trust:

The communication of bias

My argument against the centralizing use of planners for developing creative thought can be placed within the Harold Innis idea of the periphery being the source of ideas which can offer original perspectives. Whether we talk of rebel groups forming in the mountains, religious sects taking over mainstream religious thought or even the fact that Toronto seldom develops its own talent, instead attracting it from the perimeters then blending it into its normality, we can picture original thinking starting to build, moving to the centre becoming a monopoly and finally consuming itself. Innis showed how civilizations moved into being before ideas from the perimeter began competing, overcoming a balance and these ideas then becoming a monopolistic force. We can see this in the sixties in advertising when the Bernbachian approach moved from the outsider Jewish milieu into mainstream New York advertising and dislodged the incumbent Presbyterians, the chosen ones themselves then eventually dislodged by the advertising technocrats and their acolytes, the planners.

Perhaps we can see something of Innis’ later observation on the power of the periphery to generate perspective if we consider the operas of Wolfgang Mozart and his lyricist Da Ponte. Jane Glover, in Mozart’s Women, explains how the extraordinary creative team of Mozart and Da Ponte worked together so productively. Both Mozart and Da Ponte were essentially outsiders, never fully accepted by the establishment; yet their peripatetic lives, together with their current situation on the fringes of society, had furnished them with superb powers to observe, accumulate and interpret the infinite varieties of human behaviour. Each could therefore portray immense subtlety in theatrical characterization, whether for instance in the modes of expression and colloquialism between the different classes or in overt manifestations of real human emotion “what is said is not necessarily being what is felt, which nonetheless is acutely revealed”. How similar this sounds to the feral advertising team; observers distanced from the power structures of their agency milieu but able to observe, being away from the every day systems, but firmly within the environment of their audiences and fully capable of reaching them persuasively.

My argument is that it is the feral, free range thinkers, the creatives, and misfits, perennial dwellers of the perimeters of power, whose talents are lost here. Their move to the centre ultimately deprives them of their power which is the individuality of the perimeter, in terms of creative thought. When the best of these creatives set up their own agencies they prosper for a time but inevitably become so centralized that they themselves are forced to adopt the technological additives which eventually assure their downfall.

Therefore, agencies like Taxi, Grip, Palmer Jarvis DDB and others of great creative force, are in constant danger from their own success, because success attracts big money, and with it comes technology which breeds systems which are enclosures and enclosures breed complacency.

Thanks, Graham.

According to Tom Malone in The Future of Work, there are three basic decision-making structures in society – Independent, Centralized, and Decentralized. From early civilisation we have moved many of our structures from independent to centralized ones. This culminated with the Industrial Age beginning in the 20th century. Independent structures (e.g. small, autonomous companies) have the lowest cost of communications while decentralized structures (e.g. virtual work groups) have the highest cost of communications. Centralized structures are somewhere in between.

Our society is currently dominated by centralized structures in education, health, government and corporations. Our industrialized world needed control systems so we created centralized structure but commmunications were still relatively expensive. Enter the Internet and communication costs start dropping toward zero. Add in the decline of the manufacturing sector and the rise of the creative sector and you can also call this the end of the Industrial Age.

In Small Schools Loosely Joined, I suggested a structure of community-based schools, linked by information technologies to other communities of learners. The basic premise was of local control but global participation, without the layers of the current educational system’s bureaucracy. I took the title from “Small pieces, loosely joined”; Dave Weinberger’s Unified Theory of the Web. As Dave says:

“The Web is a new public space, solving the old contradiction between viewing ourselves as faceless members of a mass and as “face-ful” unique individuals.”

To paraphrase Dave, on the Web we are not Independent (“face-ful” unique individuals) nor Centralized (faceless members of a mass), but rather Decentralized and interconnected citizens. As the Web becomes our main communications environment, so all of our structures will be influenced by this decentralizing effect (as long as the Internet remains neutral, of course). It’s not so much a matter of solving an old contradiction, but rather of transitioning from a society of centralized structures to decentralized ones.

We are seeing experiments in decentralization happening in various sectors of society. Virtual companies with minimal control are on the rise. It’s easy for a team of independents to get together for a specific project and then disperse to create some other group for another project. I am certain that we will see further decentralization experiments in business, education, health and government over the next decade. It’s not that centralized structures are bad; they’re just not necessary any more.

If you are working in one of these centralized structures, consider your time limited. The same if you’re teaching in one. Now is the time to develop models and ways of working in decentralised structures, while you still have a job. Those in the learning professions have the opportunity to be leading the way, because we are in a period of change and many people don’t have the skills to work in a decentralized world. A good place to begin re-learning is with Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind, that suggests this skill-set for our near future:

• Design or creativity [right brain thinking]
• Communicating stories, not arguments [more right brain thinking]
• Working as part of a “symphony”, instead of a single-minded focus [even more right brain thinking]
• Being empathetic, not just logical [need I say it?]
• Being playful in your work [yup, right brain stuff]
• Creating meaning, not just accumulating knowledge [that would be right brain again]

The first step in all of this is beginning to trust again. Trust was easy in independent structures, like the family, but almost negated completely by copious rules & regulations in centralized structures like multi-national corporations. However, you cannot participate in a decentralized world without trust. Rules and laws can do so much, but a culture of trust is necessary. For example, when I work in a decentralized project team amongst equals (about 75% of my work) we almost never sign a contract, a non-disclosure agreement nor a non-compete agreement. All of the work is done on trust.

I would suggest that the next time we perceive a problem in one of our structures, such as kids at school on those pesky Internets, that we first take a look at how we can foster more trust in all directions.

For further reading, Robert Paterson has several articles on the need for Trusted Space, and this need for trust is also part of the rationale behind the concept of the Commons.

Thanks to Anol, I now have a virtual bookshelf, via Shelfari. Earlier this year, I had taken a photograph of one of my bookcases and posted it as, A few good books. Shelfari is much easier to use and share than photos of books, but it’s still in beta so there will be some glitches.

Creating an account was simple, and the search engine found all of my books quickly. This is a fun way for bibliophiles, teachers and learners to share interests and it’s a Web 2.0 application that I’m sure I’ll continue using.