Folks, I am having surgery this Wednesday and have no idea how log I will be away. Might not miss a beat, might be out for awhile. If I am going to be gone for a while, I will let you know why...

This written misery will continue for four more such serious entries, then it will get interesting.

Second, this stock knowledge that gives a sense of reality is taken for granted. We essentially never reflect on it, but use its assumed existence to guide all of our behavior. As you will see, you take for granted so many aspects of your life that you don’t even realize what you don’t even realize. Today I am writing in my living room in a comfortable chair with a laptop on my lap. Let me list some of the dozens of thing I take for granted in the format: fact/assumption. My daughter’s dog is snuggled between me and the arm of the chair. Why do we have dogs as pets that are completely spoiled and pampered? The room is cool. Why do I have an air conditioner on instead of windows open and a fan? There is my son’s music stand he uses for his saxophone. Why do we think that music is supposed to be composed of eight notes to a type of measure rather than any other number—with corresponding assumptions about the sound of music produced? There is a hibiscus plant in a vase. Why not a food plant? I am sitting in a house that has my name on the mortgage. Why a house that is owned partially by a social agreement and what is ownership anyway?

One implication for leaders and strategic planners is that strategic planning isn’t strategic because we take strategic issues for granted. We enter a room with all sorts of assumptions that we never even identify, and we take them for granted during the entire “planning” (read: continuing the past) process. What this phenomenological insight suggests is that the first steps in planning facilitation are to expose all assumptions. Do not kid yourself—this is a very difficult task. There will be essentially no person with an interest in upsetting the status quo, and any who would lead the charge to undertake radical change would probably be viewed as an arsonist or an anarchist. Never-the-less, to be true to phenomenology, one would have to dig enough to expose the stock knowledge that is taken for granted. Keep in mind that if your organization does this and the competition does not, you will have an unparalleled opportunity to eclipse all competitors.

Taking the wrong things for granted can paralyze a firm. I had a long-term planning client, who for 17 years opportunistically chased any and every product development that would make some money. After our first strategic planning session together, the firm began to focus, doubling its sales in three years in an industry that was contracting. The firm continues to thrive, because, put simply, senior leaders did not accept what everyone else in the industry took to be gospel. Namely, rather than remaining a replacement supplier of burner parts to the coal fired electrical generation industry, they focused on being the provider of low nitrous oxide systems to help utilities meet Congressionally mandated low NOx targets. This simple change of stock knowledge made all the difference.

Serious Intro to Phenomenology

This entry continues the explanation of the core model and all its constituent parts. Just to remind you, this is heavy going, especially when you read the next three and the last four together...

Phenomenology is “a generic term to include all the positions that stress the primacy of consciousness and subjective meaning in the interpretation of social action.”[1] First, a person’s reality is their stock knowledge. (Stock knowledge is amalgamation of the rules, processes, conceptions, and information that makes up the known world of the social actor.) Everything you “know” about the world is your stock knowledge: cooking, marriage, child rearing, organizing, social conventions, language, leading, scientific method, et cetera. Some is more sacrosanct than others: physics vs. cooking recipes. We tinker with the laws of physics at our peril; we tinker with our recipes at our whim.

This implies that we can “attack” the stock knowledge that people have about their world (or our own, of course). For example, consider a manufacturing organization that has for more than one hundred years made industrial heaters. Many of the men and women on the shop floor are third generation family members who have worked for this company. They all have a life world whose stock knowledge at hand is based upon what their parents and even grand parents have told them, what the union tells them, and what they observe. Not to be simplistic nor insulting, but to simplify this discussion for economy of exposition, consider that these factory workers view the tons of steel on the floor all around them, which we call work in process (WIP), as job security. It took weeks to stamp, press, weld, bend, cut, punch, and drill all that steel, and it will takes weeks more to finish all that is in process. A shop floor employee might say “they can’t fire me for weeks until I clean up this big pile of steel.” But WIP could be seen to be job insecurity. Imagine a parallel company who does not share the stock knowledge at hand of our hypothetical company. This alternative company views any WIP as bad and wasteful. That means that this alternative company has at most one piece of steel at each work station, not tons of it. What, we ask rhetorically, is the inventory carrying cost of hundreds of tons of steel—in perpetuity?! The alternative company immediately has a cost advantage. Also, consider a quality problem. In our company, we now have to rework many thousands of pieces, at great expense. The alternative company need only modify that which is in their system currently. This difference in perception between the two companies gives the essence of lean manufacturing. The lean (alternative) factory has higher quality, at lower cost, with much better response times. Accordingly, our company does not have job security in its work in process in this type of a competitive arena, but rather job insecurity. Our firm will simply not be able to compete in the long term.

So, as a leader in this case, your job would be to acquire the “appropriate” stock knowledge at hand, and convince the organizational members of the importance of this alternative world view—for everyone’s best interest. Again, not to be accused of being simplistic, because I do know better, but this little scenario describes many an industry: autos, steel, assembly, shoes, et cetera.

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[1] Natonson, Maurice, “Philosophy and Social Science,” in Literature, Philosophy and Social Science (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1968), p. 157.

Type Eight Phenomenology

This is going to be the shortest entre yet. After this one I introduce the six attributes that will make up the model that drives my book. BTW, my new working subtitle is: The Story of Reality. I got the idea from Malcolm Gladwell's "The Story of Success."

The un-cited authors of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy identify seven types of phenomenology; of which three of them are useful for creating an eighth type of phenomenology or amalgam. Existential phenomenology examines the concrete experiences of human existence. Hermeneutical phenomenology looks at how we engage the world by using interpretive structures. “Realistic phenomenology studies the structure of consciousness and intentionality, assuming it occurs in a real world that is largely external to consciousness and not somehow brought into being by consciousness” (SEP, p. 8; italic added). What I am proposing to you, which I have found useful, is a combination of these three—concrete, engagement, of the world that is external to our consciousness. This particular combination, while not suggesting that the others are not worthy of intellectual pursuit, provides a useful tool for dissecting our world and changing it.

Concrete engagement of the external world is an apt descriptor of most leaders’ actions. If the media and marketing people want a label, call it Type-Eight Phenomenology… I call it practical sociology that can change the world.

I am back!!!

Friends: so much has happened in the last few months that I hardly feel like I am the same person that wrote the last blog. A few dear readers have been prodding me to get back to this blog and you owe them for my return. My book is nearly done (90%?). What I am going to do in the next few months is post more and more from the chapters that are ready for the publisher, starting with the next 7 blog entries that describe my model of phenomenology. These entries will be the most intellectually demanding of them all, so please hang in there.

Fundamentally, phenomenology is the study of consciousness from the first-person perspective. In particular, sociologists seek to discover patterns that they call structures of consciousness. The first person point of view is significant because sociologists only consider conscious experience of phenomena.

While this book is not written for phenomenological sociologists, I feel obligated to be as intellectually honest to them as possible, commensurate with not making this work impenetrable to the lay reader. I doubt that I will satisfy my sociological friends, but the lay reader is more important to me here because they can benefit greatly from this work interpreted in a usable fashion.

Having said that I want to be brutally clear with the reader. Although this is the most intellectually demanding chapter of this book, I promise that if you work through it, you will discover a tool of gargantuan usefulness and commensurate power, presented for you in a simple and usable format consistent with maintaining a modicum of intellectual honesty.

The following quote gives a sound description of phenomenology as sociologists think about it, but when characterized this way, phenomenology is not very accessible and hence not too useful to laypeople, especially leaders.

“The basic intentional structure of consciousness, we find in reflection or analysis, involves further forms of experience. Thus, phenomenology develops a complex account of temporal awareness (within the stream of consciousness), spatial awareness (notably in perception), attention (distinguishing focal and marginal or “horizontal” awareness), awareness of one’s own experience (self-consciousness, in one sense), self-awareness (awareness-of-oneself), the self in different roles (as thinking, acting, etc.), embodied action (including kinesthetic awareness of one’s movement), purpose or intention in action (more or less explicit), awareness of other persons (in empathy, intersubjectivity, collectivity), linguistic activity (involving meaning, communication, understanding others), social interaction (including collective action), and everyday activity in our surrounding life-world (in a particular culture)” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, entry on phenomenology, page 2 (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/).

Whew! Now you have a sense of the elaborate array of considerations that are commonly undertaken in the name of phenomenology, but that are as dense and obtuse as to be un-useful. I will characterize this important theory to make it accessible, simple, and interesting to our lives.

The Paradox of the Applicability of the Social Sciences to Business

I will be travelling for the next three weeks and may not have access to the internet all the time. Thus I hope you enjoy this commentary on the state of disconnect:

There is a paradox in the popular leadership, management, and business literatures, of which I am a perfect example. The paradox is the lack of sophistication or even use of the social science literatures created by leaders that were created by academics, yet the expectation that our “self-help” leadership books are more than just a personal exegesis. Consider my personal example.

When I was a graduate student at Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Business, I was required to read the entire literatures in the social sciences of psychology, social psychology, and the sociology of organizations, plus basic sociology for background, given my interest in organizational behavior. I was given the extraordinary advantage of four years of funded graduate training. I was told, essentially, to learn and learn how to create knowledge. This I assiduously did. Since the University required a blend of practical and theoretical training (my “applied” area was defense policy and the transfer of arms to other countries) I studied organizational behavior and the classics of sociology as they applied to organizations.

At that time I was just a curious graduate student who absorbed everything I read critically but with an orientation of acceptance. I had very little work experience other than clinical chemistry. Accordingly, I was unable to imagine how the various theories I was absorbing related to the needs of business, government, non-profits, and the military. I had essentially no grounding by which to evaluate, appreciate, or use these abstract theories. At the time I had essentially no business experience—I was just a bright, dumb graduate student learning from books. I had no idea the applicability of what I was reading.

Conversely, the very business people who had the knowledge to apply the things I was reading would NEVER read this stuff. It was far too academic and inaccessible. I doubt any practitioner in any sector of the world’s economy would spend the time, go out of their way, or immerse themselves adequately to understand these academic frameworks, theories, and models. Academics seldom have work experience appropriate to understanding the applicability of these theories and practitioners seldom have the academic knowledge of the social sciences to that would inform them about their organization’s needs, limitation, and opportunities. Consequently, there has been an almost total disconnect between valuable sociological and psychological theories and their implications for modern enterprises.

Thus the paradox. There is a set of literatures out there (see Appendix One) that can inform our business, non-profit, governmental, and military leaders, but that literature does not penetrate (very deep if at all) the leadership literature. Authors are essentially uninformed about the very rich social science heritage available to society. This book is an attempt to remedy this lack of interpenetrability of practice and social science knowledge.

How NOT to launch a Blog

Just after initiating this blog I went in for a non-elective surgery for my right (dominant) shoulder and have not been able to use my right hand for weeks. I
Hope my absence has not bored you like my forced ennui…

Here are the opening paragraphs of my next book. I will follow with why, how, and what.

Your world is not what it seems. Not at all.
You have been so programmed to see things as you believe them to be that you can not—you are unable to—see alternative realities that are immediately in front of you. It is as though you live in the world described by the movie The Matrix, but there is no “matrix” other than that which we impose upon ourselves. This is no exaggeration. Humans have created (slight variations of) a social world all over the globe, and we collectively accept various social contrivances as the way things are, or are supposed to be. But they are not and do not have to be that way.
I write this without irony, condescension, hubris, or glee. We are all blind. So blind, we think blindness is normal.
Let me take a simple example that everyone can relate to: home. “Home” is a social construct. It is an agreement among people who share their world together. For some, it may imply a dwelling, for others a state of mind. Even if we agree on dwelling, for some this could be a ger that is moved periodically or even constantly (Mongols of the 11th-12th centuries); for others a family structure that is owned by generations of members. Who is included in the home is as variable as human societies are plentiful: individual, spouse, children up to a certain age, children forever, male children forever, female children and their ultimate spouse and children forever, one to four generations, strangers with similar beliefs, strangers who pay for short term lodging—the list goes on and on. The purpose of the home is equally expansive: sleep, eat, cook, love, storage, mercantile establishment, work place, home office, brewery, garden, stable, refuge, et cetera. Just because you see home the way you do has absolutely no bearing on others who see it completely differently in one or several aspects. Each construct is a social agreement that members share. That makes it real for that social group. You live in many such social groups and take completely for granted you version of “reality” regarding any of your social agreements. They are invisible to you and as such are intransient. By learning to see them, you can learn to change them.

Phenomenology of Time

Friends:

I have started a blog based on my next book, which is VERY close to being ready for the publisher—like maybe 60 days!

Rather than starting chronologically with chapter one, I decided to start with something that should grab just about anyone. This will eventually be from chapter ten on space and time.

My book uses phenomenology to help leaders make radical changes. (Phenomenology is a sociological theory that takes the first person account of our life world.) There are many issues, but this entre to this blog is about the Phenomenology of Time. The issue is how an organization and its leaders see the objectives and outcome (and their measures) depending upon their time perspective.

Imagine that you are an atom of cadmium. Let us consider your life. You were born in a star. Several billion years ago a star burned all of the hydrogen up and became a supernova. In the cataclysm of that implosion, thirteen billion molecules of cadmium were created. They streamed out and away from that dying star. Drifting in interstellar space for 350 million years, you randomly are swept up by other pieces of interstellar dust and over the next 40 millions years travel in the companionship of many other “heavy” atoms like carbon, silicon, et cetera. You happen to be the only cadmium atom in the bock of dust. After travelling for another many million years, you happen (the statistical improbability is almost uncalculatable) to get caught in the gravitational pull of a future planet that we call earth. You fall into a primordial ocean and sink to the bottom. Over the course of a billion more years, you are covered deeper and deeper by the decaying bodies and exoskeletons of various microscopic creatures. Eventually, after another 500 million years, the plate tectonics of the locale where you landed changes and the sea bottom begins to be pushed more toward the surface. Within a brief span of 75 million years you come to be up folded into a mountain range. Over the next 100 million years you reach the surface of the “rock” that you are now embedded in because of the interminable and tenacious effects of weathering. Now your time scale changes a bit. A tree root grows to within a few micrometers of you and you are swept up by the isotonic pressure of the viscous differential between the “living” tissue of the root and the “solid chemical soup” outside the root. As you transition into the root, you are drawn up into the fluid of the tree and over the course of the next decade are moved from place to place, quite randomly. Eventually you become part of the seed of the tree, and in the year of that seed’s creation, you fall to the ground and are picked up by a squirrel. Transported ten feet in a matter of minutes you are buried for later consumption. Early next spring, before the seed can germinate, the hungry squirrel retrieves you and eats the seed. Ground up with all the other molecules that you have been living with these last several months, you pass into the intestines of the squirrel and are absorbed by osmosis in the squirrel’s small intestine. You become now part of a bone of that squirrel, where you remain for three years. When the squirrel dies and decays, you return to the chemical soup on the forest floor through the action of bacteria that repeatedly consume you and upon their death eventually you are snatched up by a fungus—being incorporated into the fruiting body of that mushroom. You are again a part of a living creature. A human happens upon that mushroom, collects it, and later eats it. You are “digested” again and this time becomes stuck in a cell whose primary function is to hold fatty molecules. You stay put for several years, but one day a neutrino hits a cell in the human that you are hanging out in and that cell mutates. It becomes what we call cancerous. The body attempts to repair the cell and in a process not well understood by that human’s species, a cellular body retrieves you from where you have been slumbering these last few years and you become the most critical element in the repair process, eventually greatly extending the lifespan of your human host. In another billion years of bouncing around in living and non living entities, the star around which the earth orbits becomes a supernova and evaporates earth and you become again part of the interstellar dust, now with no one to tell your story.

The relevant life cycle ranges from stellar ages measured in billions of years; interstellar ages measured in hundreds of millions of years to billions; geological time measured in tens of millions to hundreds of millions; living creatures measured in hundreds of years (trees) to decades (humans) to years (squirrels and cells) to seasons (an acorn) to hours (fungal fruiting body) to minutes (processes in a cell). In this life scale we see that our accepted time scale is but a blink. Yet our whole lives are lived out in that blink, each moment etched in a time scale unimaginable by the cadmium molecule.

Now the purpose of this thought experiment is just to get you to see that yet again, the very nature of our existence is colored or determined by perspectives that we take for granted and that we assume all others share. You can change the world with a different perspective.