Get the carrots off the table!

When we're faced with the challenge of getting others to do the work, take the necessary initiative and/or produce the desired results, we can approach this with an open or closed mind. In either case, the outcome depends on the others' motivation. They may be self-motivated or "in need of some motivation". The work may be "no-brainer" or calling for lots of resourcefulness, problem solving and responsiveness to situational variations. As Dan Pink shows us in Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us - the situation may be safe for using extrinsic rewards or fraught with peril.

If we are in danger, our minds will be closed by default. We may be in danger of failing to get the others to do the work. We may be apprehensive about trouble coming from higher ups, clientele or team members who are relying on us to get this done. We may be in danger of the others only making a show of trying to do the work, coming up with excuses or getting distracted by other responsibilities. We may also face dangers of doing more harm than good, creating a worse problem and trashing future cooperation by bungling our use of rewards.

If our minds are closed, we will delude ourselves into thinking it's wise to put carrots on the table. We will set goals and reward the others if they meet the imposed targets on time and under budget. We may create a contest where the best completions win a prize while the others lose out on getting rewarded. We may established a metric to monitor progress and outcomes objectively so the others can compete and beat out their rivals. We might even give everyone a reward if they complete the sequence, but give bigger rewards for the bigger results.

Everyone of these schemes offers extrinsic motivation contingent on performance. These rewards implicitly enforce compliance, control contributions and restrict variations in conduct. They put people "on a short leash" and "pull their chain". Their potential self motivation gets overridden by chasing after the carrots on the table. The lose track of their intrinsic purpose, satisfactions and abilities to grow from the experience. They feel like "slaves to the machine" doing "no brainer work" even if the work is really complex and challenging.

When our minds are open, we get those insidious carrots off the table immediately. We eliminate the potential harm induced by contingent rewards. We make sure everyone has enough resources to run with the ball and solve the problems they encounter. We verify that everyone is getting equal opportunities and fair treatment. We realize their intrinsic motivations will thrive when each is given discretion over what they do, how they do it with whom, when they do it and why they are getting the work done. We assume people have the drive to get things done better than before so long as we stop sabotaging their intrinsic motivation.

Addicted to extrinsic rewards

I'm currently reading and enjoying Dan Pink's latest book: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. Light bulbs have been going off in my head as he reveals empirically verified patterns of human motivation. I've known myself to be intrinsically motivated as far back as elementary school. But I've not felt I really understood those who go after the highest grades, who rack up the most points on the scoreboard or who compete with colleagues for the biggest paycheck. They appear to make the reward an end in itself, rather than incidental to the deeper pleasures of the process, journey and self-realizations. This book tells us that those who devote themselves consistently to contingent, extrinsic rewards are addicted to them. They lack intrinsic motivation due to the insidious effects of extrinsic rewards on one's sense of self determination and autonomy.

All this correlates with what I've been exploring recently about closed minds. An open mind explores the potential significance, value and personal responsibility in a task where it realizes some self motivation to get it done. A closed mind exploits the potential conquest, advantage and power to control others in a task. The closed mind then depends on the reward to make the task worthwhile and it eventually loses motivation once the thrill is gone. The people I get along with easily are all self motivated and appreciative of their own intrinsic rewards. Those people I know who have become addicted to extrinsic rewards show all these telltale signs of trashing their intrinsic motivation and open minds:

• Keeping their eyes on the prize and love for the scoreboard while losing sight of the purpose, significance and value of the pursuit.
• Seeming disoriented and desperate when encountering someone with autonomy from approval-seeking, self-respecting healthy boundaries and robust intrinsic motivations
• Framing every situation to their personal advantage with lenses of superior/inferior, advantaged/disadvantaged, winners/losers, or in control/out of control
• Stockpiling materialistic evidence of their extrinsic worth to compensate for feeling inadequate, empty, insatiable and desperate
• Acting driven to control others, tell them how to live and blame them for any sources of embarrassment, bad publicity or censure
• Expressing their devotion to private wealth with no concept of commonwealth, common good and common interests with those "lowly common folk"
• Experiencing defeat, loss and victimization when forced to pay taxes or their fair share in collective efforts

To consider these behavior patterns as symptoms of an addiction has been eye-opening for me. Conduct like this may reveal insatiable appetites, poor judgment, desperate pursuits and denial of the pattern itself. They suggest a haunting empty feeling that no extrinsic rewards or pleasures can really fill. They also predict the addicts' urges to manipulate other's suspicions with deceits, false pretenses and inflated promises. They are trapped in a perpetual cycle of "people pleasing" that fails to diminish the barrage of disrespect, defiance and self contempt. Their recovery calls for opening their minds to their own intrinsic motivations.

More than open minded

When we get entangled with closed minded people, we lose sight of what all is possible for us to experience with others. We get captivated with a bunch of predictable problems that come with the territory of pervasive closed mindedness. We're likely to be on the receiving end of a boatload of disrespect because closed minded individuals cannot respect themselves or others. Likewise, we're not going to be trusted by those who cannot trust themselves or others. We will be showing up in their play space, looking like a thing to be toyed with, manipulated, controlled or kicked around. We're apt to get deceived by their coverups and attempts to avoid scrutiny. Finally, we will look like a loss, unfair expense or other kind of burden in their selfish world where everyone can only look out for themselves. All this adds up to one big nightmare which obscures all that is possible for us to experience with others.

When problems like these seem inevitable, so are their complete opposites. We'd be wise when entangled to flip out into what we can alternatively experience with others who are also "more than open minded". Here's how I imagine that possibility unfolding:

We're basking in mutual respect as each one of us respects ourselves deeply and treats others to that same respect. Likewise, we trust ourselves to deliver on our promises, find solutions to problems and value others in ways that put us on very solid ground. We find we have the basis to trust others embodying a trust of themselves and stand our ground when that trust gets violated.

We're enjoying receiving the attentions of open minds that approach us with curiosity. We see that we are showing up to others as possibilities to explore, mysteries to delve into and stories to follow along. Likewise, we are wondering about the significance of encounters, fascinated by the nuances in what's occurring and thrilled by the common ground that's emerging among us.

We eager to reveal our unresolved issues and complex decisions still in progress. We seek input into our lingering questions in need of reformulation and disturbing observations that could benefit from other viewpoints. We encounter the same transparency and happily recognize ways to lend a hand, offer support and share experiences with others. We find we are "talking with" instead of "talking at" and learning as much by giving as by receiving insights.

We're immersed in intrinsic rewards, motivations and significance. We run deep when asked "why we're here?", "what we're up to?" or "how we're experiencing this occasion?". We're noticing how these unfolding incidents seem perfectly timed, revelatory or responsive to previous requests. We're enchanted by encountering the same richness and depth in the others. We're finding there is so much to explore beyond "who said what to whom" when these realms of subtle meaning enter into the conversation.

When we're entangled in none of the above, we can't even imagine such possibilities. We can detail others about the particular adversities delivered by other closed minds, but not consider how good it can get when interacting with others who are more than open minded. It takes calling a time out to get into the imaginative space of possibilities like I've envisioned here.

Killing the viral launch

This morning I was asked what I had learned from my reading of Viral Loop: from Facebook to Twitter, how today’ smartest businesses grow themselves by Adam L Penenberg. My first takeaway was how much work is involved in launching any new online venture that scales exponentially. The challenges posed to the IT crew are staggering. Projects that build infrastructure for three years prior to launch (like ning) are designed to scale far better than those that cobble some servers together at first and cope with scaling after it occurs. This posed a stark contrast in my mind between formal systems on dedicated platforms with user login protocols and informal systems that require no login and are free to be distributed over any and all social networking platforms.

My bigger takeaway dealt with four ways to kill a viral launch before it begins to takeoff. Each of these are approaches that closed minds would formulate confidently:

• Develop a delivery system for a product/service mix designed for end users. The interaction is completely over when the customers make use of it. There's nothing to share with others or invite others to join. Consuming products and services is the main activity.
• Keep the development process opaque to the public. Conduct design sessions, in house dialogues and internal debates in private. Avoid any process transparency that could inadvertently develop trust in the offering, identification with the team members or faith in their noble intentions. Keep people from talking about the evolving story in the quixotic product development process or the struggles in getting to launch.
• Offer complete answers, solutions and systems to the unreliable public. Leave nothing to chance, misinterpretation or tampering. Forestall any conversations that might question the value, interpret the offer creatively, challenge the propaganda insightfully or explore other innovative uses.
• Overcharge for the offering -- using the freebie as mere bait, deception and temptation. Eliminate any continual free use by forcing everyone to pay after an initial trial period. Preclude any large following where a small percentage value the premium version and subsequently pay for all the others.

To think this way, all we have do is close our minds. The details will take care of themselves. There no need to consider how to be controlling, how to dehumanize others or how to send the wrong message to eager early adopters. Keeping focused on the launch of the perfect product after a long production effort will do everything required to kill the viral launch.

How do minds open?

Every kind of perceived danger can close our minds without consciously thinking about it. We make up our minds in a hurry to dismiss, disregard and disrespect those who appear dangerous. Our minds close as a safety precaution in order to be ready for fast "fight or flight" reactions. Times of danger are no time for exploring possibilities, reflecting of different meanings or delving deeper into the alarming situation to come up with a different diagnose.

This raises the question "how do minds open?". It can be argued that we live in constant danger where there is never a good time to open our minds. That may be true in abuse relationships, war zones and processes of elimination. But there are many occasions where it appears safe and seems wise to open our minds for the time being. We typically open our minds whenever:

• it seems like someone has "got our back" and is looking out for our interests as if we're on common ground
• it's evident that some gets our point of view, sees things through our eyes and shares some of our interpretations
• it feels like someone is saying "peek a boo I see you" to us by accurately reading our intentions, frustrations and connections
• it's a relief that someone has "de-escalated the adversarial tensions" by acknowledging conflicting interests, concerns and considerations
• it's apparent that someone is reaching out to better understand us, explore more of where we're coming from and what we have in mind
• it's heartwarming that someone is approaching us with respect, fascination and compassion
• it's informative that someone understands a beneficial facet about our own conduct and effect on others better than we do ourselves

Each of these experiences suggest it's time to feel safe. We can let our guard down and open our minds. Times have changed for the moment from needing to act defensive, cautious and vigilant. We can let in what's happening as if some good will come of it that we're not controlling or making happen ourselves. We feel like we're getting served well, cared for insightfully and protected from immediate dangers.

Working with or against others

When our minds are closed, we cannot work with others for their good or for the greater good. It makes perfect sense to work against others and for our own interests as if the two are in opposition. Win/win deals appear to be a losing proposition to closed minds that are wary of giving advantages to the known enemy. Working with others seems naive and vulnerable to being exploited before getting a chance to exploit the others.

When our minds are closed, we need to make enemies of others. We cannot live with ourselves or accept every facet of our total being. We are at war with ourselves and eager to stop taking our frustrations out on ourselves. We project our intolerance onto others whom we find unacceptable, at fault or deficient without a doubt. We make them into our scapegoat, "whipping boy" or "messenger that needs to be shot down". We ease our chronic anxiety, stoked by our self contempt, with attacks on others' composure and confidence.

Working with others is different from collusion and conspiracy intended to really work against others. Working with others begins by getting others understood. That new understanding then breeds compassion, empathy and deeper insights into others. We get an inspired sense of how to work with others and what difference to help them make in their lives. We contribute to a strong system that transitions any weakness into a strength, resource, skill set or effective strategy.

Our open minds are really relating to others who feel moved to do the same for us in return. The inter-relation with others becomes a both/and proposition of benefiting from giving and receiving or from understanding others and getting understood by others. We care for ourselves by caring for others. We gain more than we expected by giving up looking after our own interests. Self interest, amidst working with others, becomes a paradox of selfishly being selfless.

Devoted to exploitation and disrespect

Closed minds can exploit other people's goodwill, loyalty or trust without even trying. It's as if closed minds are designed to be abusive and disrespectful. While this may be good for survival in "Law of the Jungle" situations, it's deeply dysfunctional in our complex societies.

From a developmental perspective, closed minds are also very efficient. They are not encumbered by psychological complications like self respect or self confidence. Their self evaluations are extremely simplistic. Their self concepts are unrelated to others or any hidden talents, callings or gifts. All this makes it easy to show others disrespect. A closed mind does not give a second thought to taking advantage of others, exploiting their vulnerabilities or ridiculing their expectations of getting treated with compassion, understanding or caring.

From a managerial perspective, closed minds are easy to recruit and hire. They are haunted by insecurities which compel them to become dependent on employers. They are tormented by anxieties which necessitate clinging to others and seeking their approval. They conceive of themselves as unreliable which predisposes them to admire higher ups in the hierarchy. Closed minds appear very compliant, manageable and conformist. They don't dispute the abuses and disrespect that is occurring.

From a strategic perspective, closed minds regard customers, underlings and contractors as their enemies. They do a disservice to those who buy, deliver or support their goods and services. They cannot protect their supposed allies or look after their interests when situations deteriorate. We're seeing this pattern currently in health care, credit card services, higher ed, and state legislatures. The closed-minded efficient exploitation of situations necessitates lowering value, raising prices, punishing loyalty and dropping those most in need.

There's no solution to this systemic disservice at the level of management styles or corporate strategies. The problem is rooted at the level of vacant self respect. There's no concept in use for how to show respect to others or oneself. There's no ability to question the insanity of abusing, exploiting and debilitating those who should be getting served. There's no hesitation when showing flagrant disrespect to those respect is essential to success. That cognitive functionality only comes to open minds. The solution emerges by opening closed minds with other open minds.

Redefining the apparent problem

When our minds are open, we are free look askance at problems as they appear at face value. We can consider ways to redefine the obvious problem. We can explore the possibility space where a particular problem does not exist at all or vanishes easily. We can wonder why the problem does not solve itself or disappear when another problem gets solved. We can see ways to change the diagnosis that gives us a very different problem to solve.

When our minds are closed, we are compelled to take the obvious problem at face value. Without realizing it, the problem that appears to have gotten out of hand is a reflection of the solution we have in hand. If we're loaded with money, we will see a problem resulting from a lack of financial resources that we can throw money at. If our expertise is abundant, we will see a problem with ineptitude, inexperience and lack of preparation that we can solve with prodigious educational efforts. If we're devoted to being focused, productive and dedicated to abstract commitments, we will see problems with others' attitudes, motivation and lack of responsibility that we can fix with applied penalties, punishments and disciplinary measures.

The solutions we bring to problems perceived by our closed minds usually backfire. They make the original problem worse while spawning several other problems. The solutions in use produce countless side effects and unwanted repercussions. We are, in effect, asking for more trouble when we try to solve problems with our closed minds. We are functioning as part of the problem rather than contributing to the solution. We're indulging in reductionistic fallacies and misdiagnoses. We're failing to consider enough complications and nuances to match the complexity of the actual problem.

When we're effectively redefining the apparent problem with our open minds, the problem looks more like a cyclical process. We see what's changing and what remains the same as things go round again. We consider how obvious problems are really solutions to hidden problems. We recognize hidden agendas and secondary gains attached to maintaining the problem. We realize the problem has taken on a life of its own that defies getting solved by conventional means. However, we will usually discover an apparently "unrelated problem" that we can solve easily. It happens to eliminate the persistent problem by introducing one of those disruptive, game-changer innovations.

Mind of a control freak - redux

The last time I explored the mind of a control freak, I looked through the lens of inner turmoil and problematic self control. That write-up remains one of my most read posts in the past four years here. My current exploration of closed and open minds gives me a more detailed way to take a look at the mind of a control freak. Both the control freak, and anyone getting controlled, are suffering from closing their own minds.

Control freaks cannot make the distinction between those who need control and those who do not. Their minds are closed to the possibility that some of us are capable of effective self control. Control freaks come across as too controlling, in part, because everyone appears to them as in need of more imposed structure, criticism and corrective action. They cannot let go, or "live and let live" because they are faced with others who appear perilously "out of control".

It's human nature to react to getting excessive interference from control freaks by closing our minds irrationally. We resent the imposition, tyranny and misunderstanding of our good intentions, work in progress or ongoing explorations. We act out our frustrations and fail to take the imposition in stride. We inadvertently provide evidence that we are "out of control" that convinces control freaks that they are right about us. We bring no understanding to the situation or the possibility of contributing to the condition. To us, the control freak appears to be wrong, over-bearing and insensitive. Both see the other as "out of control", in need of control and incapable of self control. Everyone has closed their minds to any other possibility.

Whenever someone appears to be out of control, the relationship involves unresolved and hidden control issues. These issues involve who's responsible, who has final say, who can change what's been already decided and who's the best judge of a situation. The resolutions of these issues enable control freaks to back off, trust the ongoing process and rely on others to play their part. But closed minds rule out these viable solutions, inherent common ground or developmental processes. The other people do not appear to be understandable or capable of resolving these issues. Rather they seem like a things that are not changing, defective objects that need to be fixed or machines that need to be turned down, turned off or turned around. There seem to be no issues to resolve, only out-of-control people in need of more imposed control.

When our minds are open, we see all this I've just described. In other words, we see what is happening to everyone and why it does not stop. We sense what issues are in need of resolution. Most importantly, we see the others very differently. With our open minds, we can see situations through their eyes and look at ourselves from their point of view. We can consider possible ways we've contributed to the misunderstandings and appearances of our needing control. We can own the fact that we closed our minds when under siege. We see others continually changing, coming to new realizations and rethinking what is not working as they intended. We may see the control freak going through a passing phase, wrestling with a troubling issue or stressing out about a pending situation. We can come up with ways to lower the shared anxiety level, to ease the mutual tensions and to improve the atmosphere. We can support the control freak becoming more aware of all these complications and interdependencies, as I've just done.

Cognitive mobility

Another way to picture open mindedness occurred to me today. What if our minds experience degrees of freedom, much like the variations in the movement of objects in space? As I reflected on this possibility, I realized how much mental phenomena gets explained by this metaphor. Here's how some of this possibility played out for me:

When our minds have zero degrees of freedom, they seem to be stuck, confined and overly constrained. We think to ourselves "I can't do that", "there's no way that will work" or "it's not within my power to interfere". With no freedom of movement, we feel powerless, helpless and persecuted in the face of any and all adversity. Our time sense looks entirely backward and gives us an experience of living in the past. It's enough to make us depressed, apathetic and self absorbed. Since what already happened to us is of prime importance, we're as stuck in time as the past history that cannot be changed. We live true to legacy practices, archaic traditions and rituals established long ago. Our minds are closed by default from considering possibilities that require a viable future, power to control situations and aggression to combat our persecutors.

When our minds enjoy one degree of freedom, they can make mental progress or regress to prior cognitive conditions. Living appears to occur on a time line with a future to look forward to and arrive at eventually. We think about having goals, making plans and accomplishing tasks. We battle against those who would revert to prior states or insist on living in the past. We feel powerful enough to control situations, take charge of scattered efforts and move things forward when others become aimless. The future gives us something to shoot for, paths to go down and changes to make before too long. Our minds are closed by our determination to remain focused on where we're headed and the tasks at hand.

When our minds experience two degrees of freedom, we're facing a panorama of possibilities. We're choosing which path by considering a variety of complicated options. There is so much to explore and learn, the future becomes a moving target. We're refining our processes, changing our strategies and thinking up new alternatives to consider. The now moment proves to be so rich with fascinating facets that we easily lose track of the passage of time. We become powerful enough to let go of what happened and confident enough to let things work themselves out in time. We become more trusting of what happens as meant to be, showing us something or guiding us in a new direction. Our minds are wide open to what other viewpoints are showing us and what else we can learn right now.

When our minds experience three degrees of freedom, we're free to transcend this plane of mortal existence. We rise above our circumstances, transcend our small mindedness and embrace the totality of any situation. We stand outside vicious cycles where we can transform the patterned reactions by coming from a different place. We see life as game worth playing with new challenges at every level of these added degrees of freedom. Our sense of time is eternal where we are free to time travel forward to bring back the next step in realizing visionary possibilities. Our minds are open to our inner world of inspired guidance, as well as the panoramic possibilities we explored with two degrees of freedom.

Getting understood

One of the many things we can do for others, when our minds are open, is give them experiences of getting really understood by us. It depends, in part, on the way we ask questions, explore their world, listen to their responses and assemble a map of their potentials in our minds. When we're successful, they feel we really listened to them, explored with them and grasped what they've been saying to us. We picture them in ways they picture themselves. However, when our minds are closed, we cannot give others the experience of getting understood. We're preoccupied with jumping to conclusions and hearing what we want to hear as our minds are already made up. We experience anything we did not expect to hear as upsetting, cognitive dissonance.

When we feel understood by someone or a group, there are many ways we benefit from the experience:

1. We get a sense of who can be trusted with revealing information that might be taken wrong by others
2. We get out of vicious cycles of reacting to reactions and begin to understand how and why others react the ways they do
3. We get credit for our contributions and unique value offerings from those who understand us
4. We get involved in reciprocal arrangements and fair exchanges of responsibilities
5. We gain a favorable reputation among those looking to understand how respectable and reliable we are
6. We get get asked to handle situations, conflicts and challenging problems that we're understood to enjoy and approach effectively
7. We get over our need for extra attention, revenge or isolation that persisted when we we're not getting understood
8. We realize incentives and justifications to keep our own minds open and inclined toward understanding others
9. We become more understanding of ourselves, our inner conflicts, our values and gifts under development
10. We become more likely to get understood easily as our expectations get fulfilled routinely

In spite of all these benefits to being understood, getting misunderstood is far more prevalent. This is partly due to the predominance of closed minds. It occurs often when people have been shocked by an experience of getting misunderstood that then occurs repeatedly. Most organizations are designed to misunderstand people and keep them misunderstood in order to control them. The problems resulting from people feeling misunderstood can keep everyone so busy battling the symptoms that no one takes time to revise the underlying cause.

When minds are entirely closed

I suspect that more than half the people on the planet are functioning adequately with entirely closed minds. This condition is so prevalent because there are so many situations that close our minds. We close up to be productive and focused on the task at hand. We also close up to keep from embarrassing ourselves with irrational outbursts. We get provoked to close our minds when we're faced with dangers, threats, enemies, arguments, fights and battles. We're also inclined to close our minds when we get into conflicts with other closed minds even though this typically escalates the conflict.

When our minds are closed, we are not necessary dysfunctional. We can perform reliably in routine jobs and contribute respectably to our families and neighborhoods. We find ourselves to be very compatible with closed systems that merely oscillate between different states without making any real changes. We can do things successfully that merely require determination, focus and consistency.

However, when minds are entirely closed, we cannot figure out why things happen, what makes people tick or what's behind problems that defy well-intended solutions. We don't know what we're missing. We're limping along without all vast benefits of our open-minded resources. We're burdened with the consequences of excluding complicated rationality and complex irrationality.

Here's most of what we're missing when our minds are entirely closed:

On the rational side of open-mindedness -- where situations get complicated by the diversity of people, backgrounds, experiences, interconnections etc.

1. We're not really listening to others, getting where they're coming from or getting a picture of their passions, purposes, outlooks and priorities.
2. We're not talking things out, working out differences, exploring common ground or discovering more ways to value others.
3. We're not combining efforts, collaborating effectively, working with the varied talents available, or interacting to get things done.
4. We're not sharing what we can bring, providing what we do best, contributing in a like manner or responding to the perceived needs of others.
5. We're not making requests of others, expected insightful responses. soliciting contributions, or asking for help.
6. We're not caring for others, sacrificing for the greater good, supporting others' successes, or nurturing developments collaboratively.
7. We're not finding quality connections, getting satisfaction from involvement, or getting impacted in beneficial ways by interrelating.
8. We're not making getting trusted by others, revealing our intentions, disclosing our history or enhancing our process transparency.
9. We're not sharing our power equally, seeing things eye to eye, or leveling our playing field.
10. We're not maintaining fairness, honoring bi-lateral agreements, or reciprocating in kind or keeping things even.
11. We're not validating others, deepening our mutual respect, seeing others in a positive light or bringing out the best in them.
12. We're not practicing inclusiveness, exhibiting tolerance, valuing diversity or integrating significant differences.

On the irrational side of open-mindedness -- where situations become extremely complex due to the paradoxical nature of everything:

1. We're not coming up with innovative alternatives, creating useful combinations or thinking outside the box of legacy solutions
2. We're not benefiting from our higher sense of timing, balance, proportion or right choices.
3. We're not getting solutions to come to mind when we ask, patiently awaiting inspirations or receiving better than we knew to ask for.
4. We're not compelled to act by an emotional future, feeling called to a significant challenge, or guided by sense of destiny.
5. We're not aware of our own special gifts, refining our particular talents or becoming more resourceful in our own unique ways.
6. We're not learning what interests us specially, following our own curiosity, or acting intrinsically motivated to explore new possibilities.
7. We're not moved by the personal significance of what happens, containing objective evidence with our subjective filters or deepening our unique point of view.
8. We're not immersed in flow experiences, moving from one good thing to another, or filled with appreciation for what's happening.
9. We're not empty in a good way, taking advantage of not knowing what to think or thrilled by the mystery we're facing.
10. We're not basking in positive emotions, feeling blessed at the moment, savoring the immediate experience or celebrating life right now.
11. We're not seeing both sides of the same coin, integrating a pair of opposites into a synthesis or realizing a winning combination.
12. We're not formulating comprehensive solutions, serving the full spectrum of variations or enhancing the responsiveness of co-evolving capabilities.

That's a lot to be missing all at once. With more than half the population limping along without these 24 resources, we can safely expect the world to remain in a sorry mess for a long time to come.

Finding overwhelming chaos within

Psychiatric models of our psyche divide our minds into a conscious and unconscious realm. I find these to be unfortunate labels. The "unconscious" is not unconscious. The "conscious" is merely unconscious of it without finding that it is unaware, asleep or clueless. The so-called "unconscious" is extremely aware, insightful and resourceful. The unconscious is actually more conscious than the so-called conscious realm.

I've drawn a line between "rational" and "irrational" sides of our psyches instead. My use of the term "irrational" includes illogical, non-linear, paradoxical, recursive, reciprocal, self referential, systemic, ecological, cyclical, complex, interdependent, indeterminate, entangled, intertwined, holistic, comprehensive and emergent. Our closed-minded rational personas experience the irrational as chaotic. From a logical frame of reference, the irrational is confusing and overwhelming. It does not make sense within a linear model of causal relations.

Our closed-minded rational personas do their particular jobs very well. They are not intended to handle the irrational side of our psyches. They test the waters and choose sides among all the significant others imposing on them. They determine if they can be a "good one" or have to be a "bad one" among these characters they're facing. If being a "good one" seems feasible, closed-minded rationality figures out how to please other people, win their approval, fit into their crowd, avoid their rejection, earn their respect and establish a trusted reputation with them. If becoming a "bad one" appears to be the only option, the personality seeks rejection, distance, differences of opinion, suspicions and ways to deceive, manipulate and contrive situations to it's own favor. As it discovers what works reliably, it adopts success routines. These habitual reactions are tough to break because they are irrational and entangled with other people's personas.

Our closed-minded rational personas carry a full load simply handling other personas. There's no spare attention to cope with the complexity of the irrational side of the psyche. That irrational half becomes a dumping ground for unresolved incidents, issues and decisions. The irrational depths also internalize positive and negative experiences that may occur again. This can result in hidden talents but also produce bad moods, dark thoughts and unwanted emotions. Different models of therapy offer a variety of names for this inner source of torment: toxic introject, super-ego, internalized abuse, a negative father complex, unresolved power issues, a top dog, a gremlin, an inner enemy, or toxic shame. All of it seems unstoppable, invasive, unreasonable and dreadfully persistent. It makes no sense from our rational perspective where we can reliably make ourselves stop, change or fix something that's not working. It simply makes sense to feel overwhelmed by these encounters with chaos found within our own psyches.

Of course there is more to this story. Our closed minded rational personas are not really relating to other people. That accomplishment requires an open mind to really listen and learn about others. It's not until we can really relate to other people that we can relate to our irrational side. We need to expand our range of what we find tolerable, acceptable, valuable and instructive. With our minds opened, we can approach our irrational side with humility, curiosity and receptivity. We become capable of resolving our inventory of incidents, issues and decisions. We find there is help within to clean up our past and become who we're meant to be. We get over what happened to us and move on with new confidence, insights, projects and relationships.

The clash of open and closed minds

There are two facets to being open minded, as this diagram that I've been using lately shows us. One way opens us to other people. The other opens us to our sources of inspiration, intuitions and inner guidance. I started having experiences of being unusually open minded as early as in elementary school. I was without a clue what's was happening or what I could do differently. I was getting into clashes with closed minds because I was open minded. It's only recently that I have been able to see the pattern as clearly as I describe it here.

When we open up our minds to other people, we have a lot to learn. We seek first to understand them, before getting understood by them. We become good listeners and observers of where they are coming from. We learn enough about their viewpoints to seemingly look through their eyes and see their world the way they do. Over time we can speak their minds, see their strengths, gain their trust and respect their values. With this approach to open mindedness, we get known for being empathetic, inclusive, diplomatic and appreciative of diversity.

When we open our minds to our inner world, we put ourselves on the receiving end of a bounty of gifts. We get answers to our questions one way or another. We are given what to say to and do for others. We receive solutions to our problems and sequences to get everything accomplished. We discover how value it is to not know everything, so we remain open to be shown what to comprehend next. We live in the present moment without fear of being abandoned, neglected or abused by our inner world.

When it seems like everyone else is closed minded, we become too open minded to compensate for their extreme stance. We cannot become less open-minded because it appears they are not open minded at all. We become extremely open minded in ways that oppose closed mindedness and give open mindedness a bad name to the crowd with closed minds. We feel we have to make up for what's missing in the others. We believe we're right and they need to change their minds. We don't see a way to open their closed minds. We cannot believe we are being too open minded or there could ever be too much of a good thing like that.

When we become too open minded, we daydream and fantasize to excess. We've left the quadrant of being open to other people and become exclusively open to our inner world. We become extremely imaginative without grounding our "what-if" possibilities with "what-is" constraints. We become so unrealistic that we are no longer innovative or poised to be helpful to others. Our open-mindedness has become self indulgent, obsessive and out of touch with our circumstances. We've gone off into la-la land with no tether back to home base.

We become too open minded when others are being too closed minded. Both sides have become mutually exclusive and devoted to tormenting their nemesis. The differences between open and closed minds seem irreconcilable -- just like any deadlock, stalemate or standoff in negotiations. Our common ground gets held under suspicion, our common interests get disputed and the conciliatory tactics get discredited as conniving deceits. The dynamics are a closed system often labeled a vicious cycle or set up for single loop learning. There is no escaping linguistic prisons, no awareness of the interrelated complexity and no responsibility taken for the others' condition as a mirror reflection.

A reconciliation and transformation becomes possible when we realize what's missing in our own excessively open-minded approach. We need to become more closed-minded. We are missing the value of constraints, realism, practicalities and obstacles. We need the reasons why not, why we can't and why it won't work. We lack encounters with resistance to change, obstacles to progress and blocking characters to frustrate our easy access to possibilities. Our resolve becomes refined, our sales pitch become more alluring and our value proposition becomes more useful to others.

When we create our opposition as valuable, essential and welcomed, we change our minds, our perceptions and our world. We realize the best of both alternatives: open minds and closed minds are good together. We see how they are two sides of one coin, not extremely polarized positions. We learn the lesson being taught by the exclusively closed minded individuals to combine imagination with realism and possibilities with practicalities. We then hear the others like good listeners do. We return to the quadrant of opening our minds to other people. We relate to the others by understanding where they are coming from as tied into our extreme. We see ourselves through their eyes as previously rejecting their values, priorities and strengths. We can change all that and watch the others change their tune about us, with us and for us.

Contagious without direct contact

The two ideas from Connected that I've seen get the biggest buzz are not the two I mentioned yesterday as my biggest takeaways. One is how many facets of life can be contagious. The other is how we can catch them indirectly, from weak ties like a friend of a friend of a friend.

We are acculturated to accept the concept of "catching other people's germs via direct exposure". We assume there has to be a pathogen involved to come down with another person's sickness. We're aware of maladies that are not contagious like broken bones, acne and diarrhea. We're also apprehensive about getting contaminated when someone is highly contagious, as when they are sneezing and coughing. When there's a pandemonium like the fear of anthrax shortly after the 9/11 attacks or the H1N1 influenza strain last fall, we're doing more to wash our hands or mask our noses and mouthes. This is our paradigm of contagion by direct contact in operation.

Our familiar paradigm cannot explain how we could catch someone else's happiness, bad moods, obesity, or promiscuity. We assume those are conditions like broken bones, acne and diarrhea. We can know about it, hear about others with it and even see it for ourselves, all without coming down with it. We presume we are not as connected as we really are.

Nicholas A. Christakis's book confirmed a long-held intuition of mine: that competencies and incompetence are usually contagious. We catch on to someone who seems capable of producing results with effective methods. We easily imitate someone we admire. Likewise, we can become as awkward, ineffectual or scatterbrained as someone in that condition. We can become like our enemies, pets, or other obsessions without even trying.

What's new for me from Connected is how we can catch on to competence indirectly, from weak ties like a friend of a friend of a friend. That explains how pervasive we find mismanagement, poor teaching and failures of regulatory agencies. That also amy give us hope that large segments of the population can catch on to effective ways to enhance others' lives, communities and opportunities for their contributions.

Connected to free riders, punishers and loners

It's been a week since I finished reading Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. With the added perspective that has come since, I see Nicholas A. Christakis's book offering two big takeaway ideas. The first is the need for diversity amidst cooperation. When everyone is on the same page, a pattern of failure emerges. The agreement becomes excessive. Compatibility becomes too important. Consensus becomes collusion which then silences dissent. This reminds me of similar patterns with groupthink among top executives and governmental cabinet ministers. It also ties into a pattern I previously explored here of unavoidably bad decisions.

The bigger takeaway from this book gives us a pattern that's new to me. When one of more of us have adopted a cooperative role, there is a predictable pattern of other roles that emerge. Not everyone follows the examples of the cooperators. Acts of cooperation, sacrificing for the greater good and supporting others' successes attract role conflicts with free riders, punishers and loners.

1. Free riders: It's inevitable that some will feel compelled to take advantage of the generosity as free riders who fail to do their share, take some responsibility or get some of their own needs met independently.
2. Punishers: The combination of cooperators and free riders infuriates another portion of a tribe, gathering, team or community. These punishers feel compelled to attack, discredit and exclude the free riders. They react to signs of dependency with counter-dependent tactics, hostile-vindictive behaviors and
3. Loners: It eruption of dramatic conflicts, hysterical reactions and irreconcilable differences produces a cadre of loners. These individuals are better suited to survive on their own than by being brought down by the entangled role conflicts. The constraint environment produced by their isolation induces more personal resourcefulness, problem solving and freedom from excessive obligations.

As I tied this pattern to the model for open/closed rational/irrational minds, heres the ways they've combined thus far:

1. Cooperators are OPEN MINDED and RATIONAL. They are effectively listening to others, learning from differences and finding ways to serve others interests. Their situations are COMPLICATED by their awareness of so many varied points of view, agendas, common interests and opportunities for collaboration.
2. Free riders are CLOSED MINDED and IRRATIONAL. They are incapable of functioning in less dependent and exploitative ways because their state of mind is CHAOTIC. They are haunted by past memories, chronic anxiety and apprehensions about reoccurrence of misfortune. They cannot structure their own activities, discipline their urges or focus their efforts for extended periods of time.
3. Punishers are CLOSED MINDED and RATIONAL. They get easily provoked to attack free riders because they cannot relate, empathize or feel for the others. Their mindset is linear, reductionistic and logical. They rely on SIMPLE methods, diagnoses and solutions as if the situations they face are actually SIMPLE. They assume their literal reading of evidence is realistic and underlying dynamics, complexity, inter-relatedness and evolving processes can be appropriately dismissed.
4. Loners are OPEN MINDED and IRRATIONAL. Their minds embrace paradoxes which causes them to stand out from the crowd and handle greater COMPLEXITY. They are open to inner guidance which gives them ways to function very effectively on their own. Their non-reactive, non-judgmental and non-dual awareness feels emotionally detached from the other roles while feeling deeply satisfying, significant and purposeful. (I speak from personal experience here).

Thus it seems to me that these roles are like the four seasons of every year or the four sides to any square. It takes all kinds to make the whole arrangement.

Open minded irrationality and Cynefin

This morning I've been pondering how to overlay the Cynefin model with my new model of open and closed minds. It only took a slight rearrangement to access the explanatory power of the combined models. Here's some of what the mash-up revealed to me:

When our minds are closed, we can handle SIMPLE tasks and situations. We're amenable to procedures, job aids and policy compliance formulas. Our left brains are functioning optimally for taking action. We become proponents of formal learning because our rationality dictates the use of linear models and logical sequences. We cannot handle self directed, improvisational or informal learning which are all far from SIMPLE. We make a thing of learning rather than an ongoing process. We relate to others in "I - it" dehumanizing terms, not with "I - thou" empathy.

When our minds are closed, our emotions, urges and passions become CHAOTIC. We cannot handle them rationally other than by repressing and denying them. Our inability to integrate them results in a "worst of both" solution. We experience outbursts of stifled emotions, pent up frustrations and simmering resentments. We rationally think these embarrassments give us "all the more reason" to keep a SIMPLE lid on all that seething CHAOS.

When our minds are open, we can handle COMPLICATED tasks and situations. We're amenable to working with others in collaborative enterprises. We're open to the complicated dynamics of social learning that Harold Jarche recently explored. We consider learning to involve ongoing processes that are full of surprises and satisfying discoveries instead of boring deliveries.

When our minds are open, our passions become positive, constructive and inspired. We're in tune with inner guidance that gives us a great sense of timing, a source of creativity and a freedom from anxieties. We experience our inner world as very COMPLEX and fascinating. We realize the "best of both" open minded quadrants. We get inspirations for what to say to others, do for others and seek from working with others. We learn to not oversimplify or repress our irrational side. We learn to value outlets for self expression as that integrates our passions with our productive purposes and projects.These rewarding experiences give us all the more reason to maintain COMPLICATED collaborations by serving them with our COMPLEX irrational sources of inspiration.

Have a COMPLICATED day!

Predictably whiney incumbents

When phonograph records were invented, symphony orchestras thought the sound was so bad that it posed no threat to their ticket sales and concert attendance. "Who'd want one of those pieces of junk", said the concert master as he tuned his violin with panache. When AM radio came along, the tonal range was so pitiful that it appeared as no competition to everything with better sound quality. When portable transistor radios made it possible to walk around with tinny sound coming through an earphone, it too was presumed to be too bad to be worth anything to the mass market. No one expected the very bad invention to evolve into an industry standard by getting better and better.

My model for giving college dropouts a second chance is going to look bad at first also. In my Executive Summary, I predicted seven different objections that incumbents will raise against my approach. Since the submittal deadline, I've thought of a few more. The chorus of dissidents I'm expecting include the dropouts parents, college advisors, student services counselors, faculty, and college administrators. They're all convinced that preparation for effective roles in the next economy requires a college degree, content delivered by authoritative faculty members, textbooks published for use in college courses and frequent tests administered by watchdogs to catch the cheaters.

Here's some of the whining I expect to hear once this value proposition becomes available:

• This cannot be worth the time it takes to complete the process since it offers no diploma or transcript of grades.
• Students won't walk away with any useful knowledge or skills since there are no faculty to instruct them correctly.
• Enrollees won't have a clue how well they're doing since there are no tests to study for or texts to memorize.
• This won't prepare anyone for employment in corporations that reward compliance with authority figures and policies.

All they're really saying is that they are right about how things have always been done around here. They're like the mystified citizen seeing his/her first automobile and figuring it won't get down the road since there's no horse hitched up to it. When a disruptive innovation moves the goal posts, the new play action makes no sense to the referees, scorekeepers, fans, coaches or players of the tried and true ways to win. Game changers are not incremental improvements or respectful of legacy practices. They make do without the essentials of the previous paradigm to make a bigger and better difference in the long run. In the beginning, they only have to be good enough for those non-consumers who are put at a disadvantage by the incumbent product/service mix. My model for giving college dropouts a second chance will do just that.

Precluding motivation problems

Over the weekend, I attended a dessert party hosted by my sister and brother-in-law. I spent most of the evening talking with a fascinating, high school science teacher from a nearby charter school. That conversation got me immersed in the world of motivation and behavior problems that persist in spite of efforts to engage the students, make the material interesting and mentor individuals starved for attention. I mentioned that I view motivation problems as a symptom of content delivery systems, not as an isolated or personality problem. I realized my own model for giving college dropouts a second chance did not address this issue adequately. The next day I came up with a framework to ensure enough robustness and complexity to preclude motivation problems. Here's a look at the model that can apply to every system for serving learners.

Sometimes we're open minded and sometimes we're closed minded. This can be a good thing. Likewise, we alternate between being rational and irrational which can offer us tremendous benefits also. However, when we fail to cover all four ways of functioning, we make problems for ourselves that appear to have no solution or any permanent fix. Weak systems inherently favor the two closed-minded alternatives. The teachers will exalt rationality while the students compensate for that extreme by favoring irrationality. The closed-minded condition of all participants perpetuates the conflicts ad infinitum.

1. Closed minded irrationality is the realm of emotional baggage, addictions and humans behaving badly. It's negative experiences that happened to us and where we went with them after we internalized them in limiting ways. It's a world of living in the past with the same old history repeating itself. It's as if what can happen gets constrained by what already happened that cannot be changed. Those convictions are very emotional and run very deep. There are nothing like more superficial intellectual beliefs and rational convictions.
2. Open minded irrationality defies logical reasoning just like its closed minded twin. This is the space where all is possible that we can imagine. It's explored with a sense of wonder and the use of what-if questions. We uncover unforeseen avenues to explore by delving into different scenarios. We play out our future here and find what we'd love to do and how rewarding it could feel. We live in our chosen future instead of our dreaded past. This realm is equally emotional and deep, but in contrast to closed minded irrationality, it's brimming with positive feelings about ourselves, activities and others we can help out.
3. Closed minded rationality is where we go to get things done. This is the realm of being productive, task focused and reliable. We do things in a logical order for rational reasons. We justify our methods and measure our results. This is the world where we can look good, impress others and win their approval.
4. Open minded rationality is how it's possible to relate to others and collaborate with them. We listen enough to gain a sense of where they are coming from. We connect with their intentions to respond in ways they will find helpful, supportive or valuable. We see what they need and ways we can assist them getting those needs met. We grow to value their diverse interests, different outlooks and distinct priorities.

When all four quadrants get called upon in an educational experience, it's no longer possible to have lingering motivation problems. If one arises, it's merely an exploration of closed minded irrationality that can get responded to or counterbalanced by any of the other three realms. A motivation problem can be a sign of no future to look forward to emotionally at the moment. It may be an indication of relationships or collaborations that fell apart or deteriorated into abuse. It may reveal an opportunity to launch a new project, complete something that's already started or upgrade the rationale for something that needs to get done. When it's said "motivation problems are thing of the past", participants in these experiences will get the pun.

Eliminating the weak

Any large public university implements shared governance practices through the use of over 400 standing committees. In his recent book: Saving Alma Mater: a rescue plan for America’s Public Universities ,the former President of Miami University, James C. Garland, has recognized several patterns in this widespread practice:

1. Those faculty members recognized as exceptional researchers and/or teachers rarely serve on any these 400+ committees
2. Those faculty who want to appear cooperative are eager to sit on those committees indefinitely in order to compensate, in part, for their lack of research and/or teaching talent
3. Effective committees thrive on participants who prepare extensively for each meeting and take their membership responsibilities seriously (much like the approaches taken by exceptional researchers and teachers to all their work)
4. Most committee members do a disservice to the committees they sit on, but furiously object to more effective governance models as violation of their right to participate in administrative decision making
5. Universities find they can add more committees but not eliminate more than few, resulting in a growing number of committees that mostly do a disservice at great expense
6. Decisions to eliminate weak performing departments, degree programs, faculty members or standing committees cannot be made by committees populated with those who would be eliminated.

Earlier in this insightful book, Garland notes how legislative attempts to curtail cost increases or to improve access of higher ed backfire. The "one size fits all" approach does more harm than good to those in need of the intervention. Costs go up for them and their access declines. To solve this problem, he recommends the introduction of market mechanisms, competitive dynamics and responsiveness to small niches of customers. This will eliminate the weak components without waiting for committees to make those decisions. It will become obvious what the marketplace dictates to cut back on or to eliminate entirely. The market will then be a final arbitrer in what can be financially viable, self sustaining and most valuable for the public getting served.

As I see the complex system of higher ed perpetuating itself, I predict that "eliminating the weak" will backfire like those well-intentioned legislative maneuvers. The real problem here involves the nature of the pervasive weakness, where the weakness comes from and how much of the system is actually weak. Higher ed is not strong enough in the right way to utilize the marketplace to eliminate weak performing departments, degree programs, faculty members or standing committees. Higher ed can only be eliminated altogether if "eliminating the weak" gets adopted, like those committee members deciding to eliminate their own jobs.

The best of strong systems are resilient and sustainable. They benefit from the paradox of being "strong in a weak way" where weakness is a kind of strength. Weak strength makes for flexibility, spontaneity and serendipity. Strong strength makes for reliability, consistency and determination. In combination, the two kinds of strength yield a robust breed of responsiveness to changing environments, also known as "buffering the core technology with a requisite variety of response capabilities".

These strong systems do not have committees, assigned jobs or administrative departments. They discover an erratic and unpredictable supply of tasks, problems and issues to address. The people adopt roles in the moment and then change roles often. They think of themselves as avatars of their own invention rather than identifying with a rigid reputation or personnel file of qualifications. They are individually responsive to situations which makes for system-wide responsiveness. They quickly remediate breakdowns in cooperation resulting from free riders, threatened turfs or battles between constituencies. There are developmental pathways and support systems for any weakness to become a strength of both kinds. There's lots more to get done besides the daily routines in order to keep the overall system resilient, responsive and resourceful.

Within this frame of reference, most institutions of higher ed comprise a pervasively weak system. The pathological dynamism breeds the obvious weakness in departments, degree programs, faculty members and standing committees. It's structured to have the problems it endures with finances, internal conflicts, cultural stagnation, costly participation in governance and the rest. When it attacks weakness within its ranks, it is misdiagnosing the symptom of its own pervasive weakness. It's trusting it's "weak way of seeing" that is guaranteed to find weakness and remain blind to strong, sustainable and resilient responses.

Funeral for higher ed

Yesterday, the students at CU Boulder held a mock funeral as if all of higher ed is dying. They constructed a coffin and many protest signs with ingenious commentary like "higher ed is too young to die". They will take their demonstration to the state legislature in Denver later this week in hopes of turning the tide against the students who are drowning in soaring cost increases.

Over the past week, I've been reading the best book ever by a college President: Saving Alma Mater: a rescue plan for America’s Public Universities by James C. Garland. I gained a lot of new insights into the reasons that legislative funding is declining, costs are soaring and innovations are getting shot down. Garland agrees with my own writing about the business model in higher ed being broken. Yet he understands why it cannot be fixed better than I have. In the book he proposes the elimination of state subsidies, the distribution of state funding as scholarships to students and the introduction of competitive pressures into the decisions of public colleges.

I especially enjoyed Garland's understanding of faculty committee incompetence, inevitable conflicts with administrations and the impossibility of any college President fulfilling all of the position's responsibilities. He opened my eyes to the huge cost and predictable avoidance of tough decisions that are endemic to participatory decision making. All these details speak to problems with academic bureaucracies, administrative hierarchies and subsidized enterprises.

James Garland is optimistic that a change to a competitive business model could revise decision making, priorities and spending within a public university. He sees private universities as far better managed and worth emulating. He anticipates the end of state subsidies will force the faculty to agree to cutting weak departments, degree programs and faculty members. He hopes the empowerment of students to "vote with their wallets" will improve the quality of teaching, relevance of course requirements and utility of capital expenditures.

I am more convinced, however, by his thorough explanations for the declines in the present situation. It seems more likely that stagnation, stubbornness and self pity will predominate the varied reactions among faculty and administration as they face their deteriorating situations. See students marching with a coffin on their shoulders on the local TV new last night seemed like a perfect picture of the prognosis for higher ed in the coming decade.

Buffering the core technology

I've been working on the internal processes for the business model that gives college dropouts a second chance. As I've explored different ways to conceptualize those processes, I've come back to a favorite model of mine from the field of "sociotechnical systems". The model is comprised of a core technology that gets buffered by a requisite variety response capabilities to deal with environmental turbulence. Lets unpack that one piece at a time.

A core technology is something we want to keep doing regardless of changing circumstances. Our body functions are a core technology. We want to keep breathing, circulating blood cells, replacing dead cells, eating, etc. regardless of how crazy things get around us.

Environmental turbulence is the craziness unlike "business as usual" that can disrupt a core technology. Our body functions experience getting suffocated or stabbed with a knife as turbulence which jeopardizes our core technology of bodily functions.

Response capabilities deal with the environmental turbulence so the craziness does not disrupt the core technology. Our abilities to fight off attackers and evade confrontations are response capabilities that keep us from passing out or bleeding out.

Buffering the core technology occurs when we have enough different response capabilities (requisite variety) to deal with the full range of assaults we may encounter.

We each have many different core technologies in use personally. Production systems contain numerous core technologies also. When we're caring for others, there are core technologies between us that make it possible to have positive effects on others and ourselves. As I will explore in some of my future posts here, each of these core technologies can be buffered by response capabilities to avoid disruption by environmental turbulence.

Proponents of formal learning

Anytime I ponder the value of informal learning like I did on Saturday, professional training departments appear to be in big trouble. When I explored the possibility of collaborative training departments last month, I'm under the same impression. As I read Learning in 3D, the authors shared this view of training departments in big trouble. They see training departments excluding themselves from the space of generative learning, teachable moments and self exploration.

I've taught Employee Training & Development many times at the undergraduate level. I noticed the students who enrolled in those classes were unlike those in my classes on leadership, entrepreneurial creativity or managerial effectiveness. I've also consulted the training departments in large organizations that we're plagued with a lack of skill transfer from their "indoctrination programs". The employees of those training departments exhibited similar characteristics to the college students learning to conduct TNA's, work with SME's and design instruction according to the ADDIE protocol.

With these experiences in mind, I've developed a theory about the differences in mindsets, personalities and emotional baggage between those who favor formal vs. informal learning. Both "types" are creating experiences of being right, making the other type wrong, and justifying their experiences in ways that avoid cognitive dissonance. Here's a brief outline of the theory I'm developing:

People with lots of experiences with learning being difficult for themselves inadvertently make learning difficult for others. Formal instruction fits their world view nicely. Those who find learning comes easily to them naturally expect learning to be easy for others also. They favor informal modes of learning.

• People who lose focus, curiosity and motivation to learn often expect others to suffer the same impairments. They will commiserate with their misfortune by avoiding any depth to exploration, personal reflection or collaborative interpretation. Those who experience themselves being naturally determined, inquisitive and inspired will set up others to delve deeply into alternative theories, viewpoints and models for framing the superficial level of data.
• People who have trouble shopping for things they need, finding what they want or discovering better ways to search will spoon feed others every morsel of information. Those who succeed at finding what they're looking for set up others to go on adventures to discover for themselves also.
• People who have written things that got ignored or received bad grades for -- expect information provided in archives, wiki and libraries to get ignored. They favor required reading, handouts and slide presentations to make sure the content does not get ignored. Those who have received lots of attention and recognition for what they have written expect that to continue. They are eager to generate digital archives of searchable tagged content that others may find useful at a later time using their own keyword searches.

All this suggests that we cannot talk others into "informal learning" or expect them to change their approach to learning. They have been convinced that formal learning is necessary by their persuasive prior experiences. They live in worlds which manufacture further evidence of their being unquestionably right. When they get assaulted by advice to switch to informal learning, they simply experience more difficulty learning that, a recurring loss of motivation, a repeated failure to find what they're looking for and further evidence of their viewpoint getting ignored. In others, they are seeing "all the more reason" to stick with formal learning.

Evaluating ourselves informally

Informal learning makes it nearly impossible to give fair grades to process or outcomes, to score accurately or to objectively compare informal learners. When we adopt informal learning as I explored in Learning to formalize informal learning, we will also need to adopt informal evaluation schema.

When we're playing games, we naturally keep score "in our heads". We know how we're doing as we're immersed in activities. We may even have some ideas of how we could do even better. Anytime there is an outcome from our efforts, we're learning from that feedback. We can see whether we made the difference we intended with our effort. We may even be able to assess whether we should next try harder at the same approach or wise up and try a different strategy.

When we're interacting with others, we can continually observe how we're doing. It's apparent by observing the others in our interchanges. We can get a sense of how we are meeting expectations, getting along, contributing effectively and doing our fair share. The readouts to watch are in people's eyes, body language, tone of voice and subtext of what they say to us.

When we're getting something done on our own, we can usually assess our effort from the effects we're having. We can discern whether we are making a problem worse, doing harm to the materials, or taking a long way to get a simple task completed. Likewise we can become impressed with how much we've accomplished, how we went about it, and the quality of the final result.

In each of these cases, we rely on our informal evaluation schema. We have already internalized criteria to rate ourselves and resolve in our own minds "how we're doing?". These standards give us many other open questions to continually consider. They focus our attention on performance indicators. We're looking for feedback that answers the questions raised by the criteria we have in mind.

When we get practiced, experienced and confident in our own informal evaluation schema, another benefit gets realized. We can take other's evaluation of us with a grain of salt. We can differ from their assessment with our self evaluation. We can prefer the criteria we apply to our efforts and outcomes over their way of scoring us. We can see how their way of evaluating us has a autobiographical dimension to it, saying more about them than us. We can be wonderfully selective about which feedback we accept and how we let it get to us. As with informal learning, there are these many benefits to informal evaluation.

Learning to formalize informal learning

When we don't already know how to formalize informal learning, there's a lot to learn. We can welcome the challenge if the process of learning is informal enough to engage us. We can dread learning how to formalize informal learning if the process is too formal.

Whenever we're formalizing informal learning, it's a formal requirement that we welcome useful mistakes. Without productive errors, we won't know how we can get our understanding or practice wrong. We may assume incorrectly that there can never be too much of a good thing or we may fall short of enough effort to succeed. When making mistakes like these help to develop our competencies, we can take our setbacks in stride. When we have learned from our mistakes, we feel like we've really taught ourselves what we know. What we learned then appears to be something that can be learned, but not taught to us, because we have to learn it for ourselves. Our own mistakes became our teachers instead of relying formal instruction, requirements, testing or practice drills. The formal requirement to encourage useful mistakes invites us to engage in a bounty of informal learning.

When you're learning to formalize informal learning, you haven't really begun until you find out for yourself that you have over formalized the learning, formalized formal learning instead or relied too much on informal learning emerging on its own.

Whenever we're formalizing informal learning, it's also a formal requirement that scatter what needs to be learned amidst many different places, people or contexts. Without going on a search for new ideas, skills and strategies, we won't enjoy a sense of adventure. We may rely excessively on authorities to give us the answers and then act helpless when we're expected to act on our own. When we discover what we need to know by looking for it on our own, we end up with more curiosity than before. We then entertain more questions, open ourselves to more possibilities and explore more avenues that intrigue us. Our own inquiries become our teachers instead of formal presentations that involve no discoveries at all. The formal requirement to scatter what needs to be learned results in lots of informal explorations and satisfying realizations.

When you're learning to formalize informal learning, don't take it from this write up. Look for people who are doing it successfully, how they differ from those who are not and what facets of their situations facilitate their sense to formalize informal learning effectively.

Formalizing informal learning also requires us to walk learners through scenarios up to the point where they have unlearned their misconceptions. Without providing assistance to expose false premises, to reveal partial understandings and to challenge half truths, we may go off on misguided adventures. We may start out overconfidently, get shot down and then lose our confidence in a hurry. When we've been guided to through the of labyrinth of misunderstandings, we become well oriented to take it from there. We can proceed with a sense of the pitfalls to watch for, the tempting conclusions to avoid and the misleading signs to read with suspicion. We remain confident as we journey forward into unknown territory. We achieve early successes that become good habits with continued advances.

When you're learning to formalize informal learning, you may assume nothing can go wrong until you fall for any these pitfalls and get quickly discouraged:

• Providing bad examples of conduct, speech or thought processes (hypocrites, incompetents, egomaniacs, etc) for learners to emulate and imitate
• Leaving the learners with too many choices which undermines their abilities to make up their minds and to choose wisely
• Giving the learners too much to figure out on their own rather than an open framework to fill in creatively
• Bombarding the learners too much content in hopes it will be stimulating, rather than killing their appetite for further self exploration

Knowing to beware of these pitfalls, an adventure lies before you. How can you formalize informal learning in ways that produce the results you want with the people you're serving? How can they pick up the ball and run with it informally after the formal handoff from you? How can you set them up to find out for themselves what needs to be realized by them, not told to them?

As you may have already been realizing as you read this, formal learning poses the opposite requirements from those of formalized informal learning:

• Instead of encouraging useful mistakes, formal learning penalizes mistakes. Formal learning presumes that mistakes are made from a lack of paying attention, insufficient studying, or poor academic skills. There's nothing useful about mistakes in developing comprehension and competencies. Mistakes are only useful to identify who deserves bad grades, remedial assignments and identification as a deficient learner.
• Instead of scattering what needs to be learned, formal learning delivers required content in centralized locations like classrooms and books. Formal learning opposes adventurous exploration as opportunities to lose focus, get distracted and become unproductive. Time spent looking for answers is viewed by advocates of formal learning as time taken away from covering as much material as possible in the given time.
• Instead of assisting students in unlearning their misconceptions, formal learning assumes errors will get obliterated by providing more content. Unlearning could only cause learners to understand less, become more easily confused and appear poorly informed. Expertise is comprised of knowing more than others so they can be properly informed, corrected and advanced through the requirements.

I've been thinking since I wrote everything above earlier today, that there is a fourth requirement when we're formalizing informal learning. It's been called "giving an incomplete", "giving an open specification for what is expected but not how to achieve it" or providing the framework for the learners to in-fill in their own ways". You can take it from there and figure out this one on your own. That way I'll be giving you an example of fulfilling this requirement and setting up your own informal learning. By the way, that may be yet another formal requirement: providing an example worth imitating........