yes, it’s the system

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Only in the past month have public health authorities in Canada acknowledged that SARS-CoV-2 is primarily spread through the air, after more than a year of prevaricating by ‘Droplet Dogmatics’ in face of the evidence.

“Since March 2020, Ontario [Province of Canada] public health guidelines have stated that droplet precautions are adequate to guard against COVID-19 transmission. According to the province, airborne precautions, such as N95 masks, are needed only by those performing aerosol-generating procedures, such as intubating a patient [in June 2021].” —CBC 2021-06-20

COVID-19 is an airborne disease. Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer only publicly acknowledged airborne transmission this November. But many protocols to control fomite transmission continue, such as plexiglass dividers and surface washing conveyor belts in supermarkets.

In view of overwhelming evidence, our structures — workplaces, schools, eating establishments — still do not change to adapt to the evidence. Peter Drucker is attributed for the saying that ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’. [What Drucker really said was, “Culture—no matter how defined—is singularly persistent.”] Or perhaps Robbie Burns said it best when considering what happens to our ‘best laid schemes’.

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distributed work 2021

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I am quite certain that distributed work is here to stay. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci at the US CDC is surprised at how long this pandemic is lasting. With the highly infectious Omicron variant becoming dominant in many countries, it does not look like it will be over soon. In a few months time, some people will have been working distributively for two years, not at their request, but having found new work norms to get things done. I have spoken to many people who will not go back to a carbon-intensive work commute.

Here is a review of some thoughts on distributed work throughout 2021.

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creativity needs just enough social connections

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During this pandemic and various lockdowns  there have been many discussions about the need for physical contact and how it supports creativity.

The writer and scientist, Isaac Asimov, reflected on — How do people get new ideas? — after a short stint at an MIT spinoff company in 1959. New ideas are not often received well by those in positions or power or influence Asimov noted.

It is only afterward that a new idea seems reasonable. To begin with, it usually seems unreasonable. It seems the height of unreason to suppose the earth was round instead of flat, or that it moved instead of the sun, or that objects required a force to stop them when in motion, instead of a force to keep them moving, and so on.

A person willing to fly in the face of reason, authority, and common sense must be a person of considerable self-assurance. Since he occurs only rarely, he must seem eccentric (in at least that respect) to the rest of us. A person eccentric in one respect is often eccentric in others.

Consequently, the person who is most likely to get new ideas is a person of good background in the field of interest and one who is unconventional in his habits. (To be a crackpot is not, however, enough in itself.)

Once you have the people you want, the next question is: Do you want to bring them together so that they may discuss the problem mutually, or should you inform each of the problem and allow them to work in isolation?

My feeling is that as far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required. The creative person is, in any case, continually working at it. His mind is shuffling his information at all times, even when he is not conscious of it. (The famous example of Kekule working out the structure of benzene in his sleep is well-known.)

The presence of others can only inhibit this process, since creation is embarrassing. For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones, which you naturally do not care to display.

Asimov felt that isolation is required for creativity.

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sensemaking’s secret weapon

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“Communities of practice are groups of people who share a passion for something that they know how to do and who interact regularly to learn how to do it better.” —Etienne Wenger

“Communities of practice emerge in the social space between project teams and knowledge networks.” —Verna Allee

It is not the size of our networks and communities that matters but how we engage people with diverse opinions and experiences. Networks help us see opportunities and new ideas. Communities give us a place to discuss and learn about these. We need to engage in both.

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“data are never neutral”

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On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for.” —@taylorswift13 in Innovation Lessons from Taylor Swift by @skap5

Reg Revans — “Unless your ideas are ridiculed by experts, they are worth nothing.” via @ShaunCoffey

In the Pursuit of Knowledge, There Be Dragons

“Data are never neutral. They are biased. They are rife with uncertainty and limitations and all sorts of other imperfections. But for data to be legitimate in the eyes of non-technical actors, data must be performed as precise and objective and neutral. This creates a conundrum from anyone whose practice relies on communicating data. When high-powered people want to rely on data as truth, they don’t want to be faced with confidence intervals or error bars. They want to be told that the data are reliable, by which they mean accurate, by which they mean a perfect representation of whatever they wanted to measure. Ignorance is bliss. It’s also political.”

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the fifth wave

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One way I keep up with this pandemic is from 13 experts who share their insights on Twitter — my pandemic list. As we enter a fifth wave of the novel coronavirus, let me share some of these insights from the list and elsewhere.

Droplets

“The question of whether SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted by droplets or aerosols has been very controversial. We sought to explain this controversy through a historical analysis of transmission research in other disease … Resistance to the idea of airborne spread of a respiratory infection is not new. In fact, it has occurred repeatedly over much of the last century and greatly hampered understanding of how diseases transmit.”
—Echoes Through Time: The Historical Origins of the Droplet Dogma and its Role in the Misidentification of Airborne Respiratory Infection Transmission in SSRN 2021-09-21

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adapting to the network era

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The TIMN model developed by David Ronfeldt states that people have only organized in three basic forms — Tribes, Institutions, Markets — and that a fourth form appears to be developing in societies — Networks. I have suggested that new forms appear and are adopted when the dominant form of communication changes. Institutions developed with the advent of Writing. Markets grew to dominance with Printing. It looks like digital (electric) communications are pushing us toward Network forms.

I use Marshall McLuhan’s Laws of Media and his tetrad for sensemaking to understand the effects of new communication technologies.

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the house always wins

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Terry Yu discusses the perils of creating online content and distributing it via consumer social media platforms. Here are the highlights of Yu’s Twitter thread discussing survey data from 150 ‘creators’.

  • 90% are burnt out
  • 71% are considering leaving social media
  • 51% say it is taxing to make a living on social media

The main contributor to this pressure is of course — the algorithm. Creating on social media media looks very easy at first but then the pressures of competition and changes to the algorithm ensure that the platform makes the most profit. With consumer social media, the house always wins.

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masterclasses

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Several times over the past few years I have been asked to conduct online masterclasses to help organizations with their internal change initiatives, such as — digital transformation, distributed work, & online community building. These sessions are 1/2 day (±4 hours) and have from 20 to 60 participants. Each one is focused on the needs of the client which we discuss in advance. Here are the various components that we have used.

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active transportation

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This is a presentation I am giving to Sackville Town Council.

Thank you for allowing me to address council this evening. I would like to discuss active transportation in our town. I am not an expert in this field but I have cycled over 125,000 kilometres since moving here in 1998 and much of that distance has been within town limits. I know our roadways — intimately.

Bicycles are not the only form of active transportation. Town council has recently allowed skateboards on our streets. In addition, there has been a significant increase in the use of electric bikes, often by older adults. This trend will likely continue given what we are seeing elsewhere.

As you know, Sackville recently won the ParticipAction active community challenge for New Brunswick. As the town has claimed, Sackville is a different kind of small town. We have a continuing history of unique road users — horses, hay wagons, logging trucks — and we usually use the roads in harmony. Vulnerable road users — walkers, runners, cyclists, skateboarders — are fellow citizens using our public thoroughfares.

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