let’s stop the war of words

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A November 2019 article in the British Medical Journal showed how difficult it is to change peoples’ minds, especially with regards to vaccinations. Facts don’t change peoples’ minds.

Lesson 2: don’t bring a fact to a narrative fight

Experts and health professionals can arm themselves with white papers, peer reviewed studies, and symposia; but if these are our only weapons, we will only ever get so far. In an era in which experts are increasingly distrusted, the “we know best” mindset is counterproductive.

Those wishing to encourage vaccination need to identify and amplify the stories that emerge from the real lives and lived experiences of people in their communities (to start, they need to listen for them). It is no coincidence that the most effective climate advocacy in the world right now comes from the improvisations and stories of a 16 year old girl rather than the strategic plans of a generations old institution. —BMJ: New Power versus Old

For example, a mandatory education class in Ontario, Canada — complete with videos and health care professionals to advise — has been useless in getting parents to accept vaccinations for their children.

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a global clown show

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In 2007 I was concerned that Facebook was selling personal data. That same year I asked if there could be a public alternative to Facebook. By 2010 I had left the platform.

This year, after our local newspaper closed, I commented that we are now dependent on this global corporation — that uses our data to manipulate us — as our main form of communication. It is as if we live in a company-owned town, and buy all of our goods from the company store, using a party telephone line that the bosses listen in on. This is directly the fault of government, organizational, and community leaders who have either been lazy, ignorant, or perhaps malicious in promoting this control platform to engage others.

I have faulted our common natural stupidity for following along with the costly convenience of using Facebook as the default communications medium. Christopher Wylie, the whistle-blower for the Cambridge Analytica scandal, said that, “The internet is part and parcel of democracy now, whether you like it or not … Do we need rules that we as a society agree on, with independent regulators who are on our side, not on shareholders’ side?”

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the selfish and the selfless

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders.” —George Carlin

The Lesson We Should Have Learned From 2020 — But Haven’t by @umairh

What is the thing the East had that the West didn’t — that made all the difference in fighting Covid, much more so than money and resources and so forth? Sociality. Social cohesion. Social bonds. Trust, relationships, ties. An economist might call that “social capital.” You can use that term if you want — I won’t, because, like I said, this lesson goes so, so deep that I want to take pains to really explain, and you can tell me if I succeed.

What the East was able to do was cooperate as societies to fight Covid. And it turned out that you couldn’t beat Covid without cooperation at the largest scale — the social scale. The scale of a city or town or block just wasn’t enough. And it was because it enjoys significantly higher levels of sociality that the East was able to — as we say in the West — “pull together” and beat off Covid.

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get out of the office

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In one of my first projects as a freelancer 17 years ago, I was brought into an existing client relationship with a hospital network. Our team had been contracted to develop an e-learning program for nursing staff. I was able to negotiate a ‘confirmation of the analysis’, as I had not been involved in the design process. I was given two days to interview staff on various wards. As I was not hospital staff I was accompanied by the senior nurse.

We learned a lot during those visits to the wards, and even had some procedures changed on the spot as the senior nurse became aware of some redundancies. As a result the e-learning program was cancelled and we developed a few performance support tools and some job aids instead. Training was not the solution to this challenge — getting the right information to trained and experienced nurses was.

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trusted spaces

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In my PKM workshops we discuss the differences between communities and networks. This includes the dark sides of communities as well as the constant doubt and outrage on social media. My general advice is to seek diverse perspectives in social networks but to seek more private, trusted communities for deeper conversations and understanding.

I use Twitter to show how to seek new ideas and opinions by selecting who to follow to create human knowledge filters. The list feature on Twitter is useful in following specific topics and fields. Following, or muting, certain hashtags can also refine what you find on Twitter.

The best feature of Twitter is that you do not have to follow people who follow you. The relationship is asymmetric, just like blogging. In addition, you can still set your stream of people you follow to “see latest tweets first” so that the Twitter algorithm does not decide for you. Of course you have to constantly switch to latest tweets, as Twitter prefers to feed its algorithm to you. Twitter is not your friend. You don’t have to be on Twitter, but I still find it a useful platform for teaching about online social networks. There are also, for now, third-party applications for Twitter, like Tweetbot.

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get out to the edges

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In March [making sense of our digital world] I wrote that my own understanding of the COVID-19 disease started with centres of networked expertise — WHO, CDC, Public Health Agency of Canada. By September [connecting knowledge] I wrote that I see information from the WHO and CDC as lagging indicators, and no longer my first stop to find out what is happening now.

I should have known better and gone back to some of my earlier understanding of sensemaking in complexity and chaos. These formal organizations are hierarchical and bureaucratic. They have institutional blinders. According to Mark Federman, “Organizations are made too complicated in response to complexity.” That complication blurs our vision.

To understand our current situation we need to move to the edge or find others who are there already. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote — “I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over; on the edge you find things you can’t see from the center.” On the edges the answers may not be clear, but they are less obscured than in the centre.

People on the edge mostly do not work for the likes of WHO, CDC, or PHAC.

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moscow rules

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“In the past every village had an idiot, and we could all deal with that. Now the internet is allowing idiots to connect and it is normalising idiocy.” —@snowded

“Most victims of suicide are men, Most people in jail are men, Most victims of violent crimes are men, Most victims of murder are men, Most victims of police killings are men; Most shamed for mental health is men.” —@birgitta

“One of the biggest differences I discovered: poor folks in Germany realise they are poor and mostly vote for parties advocating for poverty relief measures. Poor folks in the US see themselves as ‘temporarily not rich’ and vote for policies benefiting mostly the rich.” —@LyssasLounge

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unity, not uniformity

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One hundred years ago, management pioneer Mary Parker Follett wrote that “Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. We attain unity only through variety. Differences must be integrated, not annihilated, not absorbed.” Her words ring true today as we dance between complexity and order. How can we achieve unity through variety and the integration of our differences? We can start by better understanding alignment.

What is workplace alignment? The recently published MirrorMirror white paper states that alignment is “a shared understanding between people” and that alignment leads to engagement, collaboration, and effectiveness.

“Alignment is not people ‘thinking the same thing’, it is compatibility – making room for differences and challenge, new ideas and change.”

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put on your dance shoes

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(Let’s dance) for fear your grace should fall
(Let’s dance) for fear tonight is all
—David Bowie (1983) Let’s Dance

Creative work is a constant dance between complexity and order, or curiosity and resolve, as Jony Ive explained in his acceptance speech as the first recipient of the Stephen Hawking Fellowship in 2018.

“You see, in the mode of being unreasonable and resolute, you have to solve hard problems. But solving those problems requires new ideas. And so, we’re back to needing ideas and back to having to be open and curious. This is not a shift that occurs once or twice in a multi-year project. I find it happens to me once or twice a day and that frequency of shifting between two such different ways of seeing and thinking is fantastically demanding.” —Jony Ive

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permanent value

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written. He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.” —T.S. Eliot

“The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.” —Ernest Hemingway

“To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing.” —Pablo Picasso

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