Scit Necessitas » book review

“The Sense of an Ending”, Julian Barnes: Memory, Memento Mori

drillvoice — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 00:18:33 +0000

Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending is a powerful and touching read. The book so honestly and elegantly elucidates the nature of memory and nostalgia that reading it, even at the tender age of 21, was a harrowing experience. In essence, The Sense of an Ending is an exploration of memory: how it is formed, how it shapes us, and how it betrays us.

The Sense of an Ending is written from the perspective of Tony Webster as he reflects on a relationships that shaped his life. The narrative – at least in Part One – is written as a recollection. But not a factual recollection. Tony concedes that Part One is made up of his imperfect, shabby memories which, even as he writes, he realises are inaccurate. He describes them as

a few incidents that have grown into anecdotes, to some approximate memories which time has deformed into certainty. If I can’t be sure of the actual events any more, I can at least be true to the impression those facts left. That’s the best I can manage.

And so the narrative voice brings us face-to-face with the shoddy reality of one’s own memory, prompting me at least to consider my experiences of having my own memories proven wrong.

For example, I’ve recently had the pleasant experience of hanging out more with a former flame of mine. Ex-girlfriend would perhaps be too strong, but it would be in the right ballpark. (As it happens, Part Two of The Sense of an Ending is about Tony’s hanging out with his former flame…but I digress). Recently she and I reminisced about our break-up. We had in common many memories: on Adelaide Uni’s Barr Smith Lawns, mid-afternoon, a summer day, sitting down against the short wall. But we differed on some major details. As I recalled it, we had broken up because I was too committed to climate activism. As she recalled it, a friend of hers had misled her into thinking that I’d been screwing her around. Also, she pointed out, we were on different sexual planes.

Barr Smith Lawns – where many a love was born, and many a love perished.

This was a revelation for me! Not only was my memory wrong, but I had systematically embedded the fallacious memory each time I consciously recalled the event and told a different person. So what I was remembering wasn’t actually the event but my reconstruction of it. Over time my memory of the break-up itself had faded, but I could remember my memory of the memory…and that became my past.

Similarly, The Sense of an Ending is Tony’s recount of his young romance with one Veronica, yet it is embellished by his contemporary revelations regarding the flaws in this memory. In the course of the novel he recounts a particular anodyne letter he wrote her, but then later comes to realise that the letter was in fact cruel and vexatious, “My younger self had come back to shock my older self with what that self had been, or was, or was sometimes capable of being.” His memory had acted to preserve his sense of decency and hide from his present self the petty actions of his past.

Episodes like these gradually undermine Tony’s confidence in his own recall, and he soon speaks more guardedly with an awareness of the tricks his memory might play: “In my mind,” he recalls, “this was the beginning of the end of our relationship. Or have I just remembered it this way to make it seem so, and to apportion blame?” (emphasis added). With this, Barnes’ seems to be challenging us to consider the self-serving nature of our own memories, to reflect upon how we might have sanitised our own pasts in an effort to make our present more bearable.
Key experiences in my past are remembered as a handful of moments, which I remember as tableaux: two sleeping bags like spokes in a wheel holding young people whispering into the night; a dinner of organic pizza after months apart; a broken-hearted friend crying beside me on a public stool. Like an amateur art restorationist I track down these memories and touch them up, adding daubs of emotion where time has faded them. And, over time, inevitably, they become shadows, copies of copies, the grandchildren of the original memory itself. Inevitably something is lost in this process. Cue Barnes:

…our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but – mainly – to ourselves.

The Sense of an Ending reminds us of the uncertainty of memory and cautions us against drinking too pensively nostalgia’s nepenthe. Julian Barnes’ has achieved something remarkable with this text, creating a work that is honest in its inaccuracy, that is genuine in its falsehood. As I try to resource my identity by making a quarry of my past, I’m wary now, thanks to The Sense of an Ending, of the folly of memory.

Related posts:

Book Review of The Great Gatsby
On Love and Loss

“Language Intelligence”, Joe Romm: Rhetoric

drillvoice — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 09:44:56 +0000

Language Intelligence is the latest book by climate blogger Joe Romm. It is a guide to rhetoric, “the art of persuasion through the systematic use of the figures of speech.” To be more precise, it is a powerfully written and invaluable guide to rhetoric. Whether you cross swords on Q&A with Nick Minchin, speak to groups of school students, or write emails for mass consumption, this book can make you better at it. Hell – you should even read it if you are serious about winning games of Risk.

Romm’s blog, Climate Progress, was a haunt of mine in my early days of climate campaigning. His writing had an analytical zest that appealed to the mind of a soon-to-be Engineering student. He also, as has become more apparent, has a deep understanding of how to write and communicate effectively, which has informed and enhanced his own blogging. This particular book, Language Intelligence, I saw in my Facebook newsfeed (I’m a fan of Climate Progress’ Facebook page). I know Romm’s work and bought myself a copy without hesitating.

The first step to good oratory: facial hair.

Romm has written Language Intelligence so that people can communicate better. He is clearly frustrated with the terrible persuasive efforts of many, particularly climate scientists, Barack Obama, and progressives. This book is his gift to modern communicators, collating the knowledge of past centuries so that we can be more effective. This knowledge that he gathers underpins sensational works such as the King James Bible and those of Shakespeare, and an understanding of it (subconscious or otherwise) can even be seen in the work of modern day mass communicators such as Lady Gaga and Bob Dylan.

Why is rhetoric even important? Because people are irrational and because people are lazy. Persuasion isn’t about convincing an audience with a rational, fact-based argument. On the contrary, decision-making is an irrational, largely subconscious process, and rhetoricians recognise this and modify their persuasive efforts accordingly. Facts don’t persuade people, people persuade people, and rhetorically effective people persuade people best of all.

The fact that people are lazy makes it especially important to have an ability to express ideas pithily and stickily, to capture complex ideas in a few verbal brush strokes, like the minimalist Japanese painting that depicts a whole landscape. According to Language Intelligence, “Newspaper readers read 56 percent of the headlines, but only 13 percent of the stories are at least half-read”. Rhetorical skill enables you to craft an interesting and informative ‘headline’ (or subject line!) in a minimum of words, adapting to the fleeting attention span of the audience. Further, an understanding of rhetoric provides inoculation against the efforts of our would-be seducers, who will use their own rhetorical wiles to win us over. In short, rhetoric makes you better at both conveying your ideas and understanding others’ efforts at persuasion.

Romm covers a range of figures of speech and rhetorical devices. The two I’m most inclined to discuss are repetition and metaphor.

Good rhetoric uses repetition to make ideas memorable and believable

“The AYCC is Australia’s largest youth-run organisation.” I trot out this phrase on the phone, in conversations, in workshops. So do other AYCC members. We’re trained to. Things got a bit awkward, however, when one AYCC member was in a tute group with a member of Oaktree (another Australian youth NGO) who claimed the same honour for their organisation! Discussing this afterwards, I noted that it’s not truth as such that matters in this case. As long as we stick to our guns and keep repeating this message, it’s going to be accepted as truth.

Repetition makes ideas memorable and believable. There are a number of things going on here, various cognitive biases that make repetition rhetorically effective. They all come back to the same thing: repetition makes ideas memorable and believable. Romm refers to studies finding that “repeated exposure to a statement increases its acceptance as true”, basically giving empirical weight to the statement that a lie told often enough becomes the truth.

In high school we learnt that effective writing is varied, that we shouldn’t reuse adjectives or turns of phrase. When it comes to rhetoric, the reverse is true. Speaking or writing persuasively requires us to hammer ideas home. And you can’t put a nail in with a single hammer strike. “Simply repeating the same thing over and over again is the top strategy of every master persuader.” Repetition makes ideas memorable and believable.

Good rhetoric uses metaphors to make it easier to understand and remember ideas

Metaphor is crucial to persuasive communication because metaphor makes ideas more enduring. It’s also critical to facilitate understanding. It’s a linguistic and neural reality that humans make sense of abstractions – time, love, speech – with reference to more literal phenomena: “virtually all of our abstract conceptualization and reasoning is structured by metaphor.” So, to put it metaphorically, if you don’t use this device, you are a turkey.

The turkey is widely known to eschew the use of metaphor.

Writing previously, I’ve pointed out that “metaphor enables you to explain something unfamiliar by comparison to the familiar.” Romm is more precise: “a good metaphor implies intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.” Words are not containers, yet we can put things in them. Ideas are not pictures, but we can see them. Superiority is not elevation, yet we can rise to the top. This understanding of metaphor is in many ways more nuanced and more intricate than what is used in high school poetry. Metaphor is fundamental to and implicit in all communication, not just the poetic. It’s precisely the ubiquity of metaphor that compels an effective rhetorician to understand and practise it.

This is somewhat counter-intuitive. You might think that getting at an idea obliquely is rhetorically ineffective, that the best way to convey ideas is to make them as plain and literal as possible. You might think that – but you would be completely wrong. In fact, research indicates that “metaphors are easier to understand than literal statements with the same meaning.” They “make it easier to understand and remember prose”. This is for various reasons. Metaphors require more mental effort for their meaning to be understood, and this act of decoding enhances not only memory, but also the attitude towards the idea. The more a listener is involved in making sense of a message, the more the message “sticks”. Because metaphors unite disparate concepts they are also lodged in more places in the brain, strengthening retention. Finally, visual metaphors are effective for persuading visual thinkers, who are prevalent in our society. Painting pictures with words, using visual metaphors, helps to persuade people who think in images.

Language Intelligence can help you communicate better

Romm’s a climate blogger and he isn’t writing Language Intelligence just for shits and gigs (an abbreviation of “giggles”, not “gigs” as in “speaking gigs”). He gives specific examples of how various individuals or groups consistently fail to use rhetoric effectively. Scientists, for example, tend to be highly literal and shy away from repetition. Obama, for example, lacks an extended metaphor for his presidency. Progressives, bless their infuriating commitment to failed methods, often rely on facts to persuade.

Romm is writing this book because climate activists are being beaten by a rhetorically superior opponent. And let me say, Language Intelligence is long overdue. Too frequently climate campaigners commit the most basic offenses against effective rhetoric, whether repeating their opponents’ language, expressing their ideas in the negative (“carbon pricing won’t hurt households”), or speaking literally.

The good news is that most of us are so crap that it would be very easy for us to get significantly better. Romm’s book is the first rung on the ladder and, should you let it be, the second, third, fourth. His book makes the case for pursuing better communication, and outlines how it can be achieved. Language Intelligence is a worthwhile read for anybody. For climate campaigners, and particularly those working in communications, it is invaluable.

Chris Rose’s “How to Win Campaigns”: Motivational Values

drillvoice — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 10:24:54 +0000

Chris Rose’s How to Win Campaigns is an asset for campaigners, particularly its chapter on Motivational Values. The chapter explains how society is composed of three distinct values-based groupings of citizens, and how messages and actions can be tailored to fit the values of each group. I explore motivational values and their implications below.

I’ve recently finished Chris Rose’s How to Win Campaigns. Dan Lewis-Toakley, whose gravity-defying hair characterised many a Live Below the Line video, recommended it to me. The cat, Chris Rose, also ran a campaigning masterclass in Melbourne. I thought I had better go prepared.

The book is…well, it’s not a book. It’s a compendium. It’s vast. It’s detailed. It has many diagrams. I suspect it will thwart my attempts to pithily summarise it. In this situation I do what any sane-thinking person would: reflect on discrete components. In this case, the chapter on motivational values.

How To Win Campaigns on Motivational Values

I hope it is gradually becoming accepted knowledge that people are basically batshit irrational when it comes to decision-making. Most of our decision-making is subconscious and influenced by a variety of factors completely independent of self-interest or reason. Various different models and concepts exist to help one understand this, and I’m certainly a fan of what Lakoff has had to say (start here, then go here. Then here if you’re serious.). I think the model in How to Win Campaigns adds a great deal.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. In the application that Rose describes, the information is shown not as a hierarchy but in a circle.

It corresponds to Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The thesis is that any population contains people in any one of three states, differentiated by what their dominant need is from the Hierarchy. People begin in “sustenance-driven” (SD) mode, in which the dominant need is for safety (security, stability also feature). This group is known as settlers. Once these needs are “fully met”, an individual may move to the “outer-directed” (OD) mode, in which their dominant need is success (the esteem of others, external recognition). We call these people prospectors. Finally, once esteem needs are met, people move into the “inner-directed” (ID) phase. Here the dominant need is ethics (self-actualisation, an ethical identity). ID people are known as pioneers. (Chris Rose suggests you do a short questionnaire here and determine your own type.)

A few notes:

New behaviours start with pioneers, then may be emulated by prospectors, and only then (once normalised) adopted settlers. Pioneers are looking for new and different experiences and are more willing to risk the social consequences of being different. Once a behaviour is adopted amongst pioneers, “Now People” (one of four sub-groups within the ‘prospector’ grouping) may adopt it. This is a significant process of normalising a previously odd behaviour, making it possible for mainstream settlers to adopt it.
It’s much easier to change behaviours than values. Behaviours start with pioneers, move to prospectors, and only then are taken up by settlers. Over a much longer time frame, social change means that settlers tend to meet their dominant need and shift into the prospector phase. Because the behaviour change happens much more rapidly, it is a much more effective means of effecting social change. Effective campaigns meet people where they are at, they speak to people in their own values language, and can motivate their action using their own values.
Pioneers are natural recruits to campaigns. They are the most open to new things and to change, and less likely to fear a loss of respect or defiance of authority. This is also a challenge to campaigners: how do we design campaigns that prospectors or settlers are motivated to join? What must be different in our messages or our actions?
Prospectors are motivated by what is fashionable or fun. Prospectors won’t join a cause because it’s worthy. Their dominant need is for external validation, not to be ethically fulfilled! If campaigners want to reach prospectors – a crucial step towards influencing society’s behaviour – they must be able to speak to these needs.
Settlers stay in their comfort zone. They are influenced by authority. This means that campaigns targeting settlers must play to this inherent conservatism.

Motivational Values and Campaigns

How might this model be applied? My thoughts turn to the Repower Port Augusta campaign. This is a remarkable campaign, partly because it can so effectively appeal to settlers, prospectors, and pioneers. This is achieved by the variety of both messages and tactics.

I recently took part in the Walk for Solar, a 328km, 14-day walk from Port Augusta to Adelaide. This walk drew pioneers from the core of the AYCC, individuals driven by a need for self-actualisation who saw the walk as a chance to act on an issue important to them. It also promised “Now People” (from the prospector group) the possibility of new experiences and adventure. Pioneers are also motivated by a message about building Australia’s first baseload solar thermal plant and doing something about climate change.

AYCC’s ‘Walk For Solar’: pioneering.

What does Repower Port Augusta offer settlers? The campaign talks often about the employment benefits for Port Augusta, the security that baseload solar thermal offers, reliable electricity and clean energy jobs. Port Augusta faces an uncertain future: its two coal stations are on their way out. Many locals are thus likely to be concerned with issues of security and stability, and the prospect of baseload solar thermal offers that. That’s how settlers are reached in terms of message; the concept also applies to tactics. A community vote held in Port Augusta fielded over 4,000 votes, an incredible turnout in a town of around 15,000. In comparison, a rally in Port Augusta to mark the beginning of the Walk for Solar had a poor turn out. This could be because a rally is an extra-parliamentary tactic that doesn’t fit with the identity of settlers. The community vote, on the other hand, while also extra-parliamentary, mimics a process fundamental to our democracy, one which most of us have practised and are familiar with. The community vote is thus a tactic that resonates with settlers and allows them to participate.

There’s a lot in Chris Rose’s How to Win Campaigns; this is just the tip of the iceberg. The chapter on motivational values was fascinating and useful. Understanding the different needs of different value-groups and how this influences their behaviour and decision-making allows campaigners to deliberately tailor messages and tactics to better fit the range of values and motivations present in society.

There’s a lot on motivational values that didn’t make it into this post – please comment if you have anything to add or ask.

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“Long Walk to Freedom” by Nelson Mandela: Leadership, Apartheid, and Climate Activism

drillvoice — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 03:51:25 +0000

Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom is a stirring book. Autobiography already has something rich and intimate about it; in Long Walk to Freedom that is combined with the nobility and inspiration of a successful struggle against injustice. In reading it, I reflected upon a few things: leadership, apartheid, and climate activism.

Nelson Mandela is an amazing leader

What most caught my attention was Mandela’s leadership. The story demonstrates how he makes hard decisions, acts as a force for unity, and drives unrelentingly at what is right. Mandela is a moral authority, a role model for those of us who aspire to lead lives of greatness.

But this goes further again. Mandel’s writing itself is further evidence of his leadership. He is humble to a fault, emphasising the contribution of other figures, glossing over his public speeches to crowds of tens of thousands. So much so that the book leaves you wondering at times – why is this guy such a big deal again? To be frank, I was surprised when he got sentenced to life imprisonment, as the way the book is written it isn’t obvious that he had done much to warrant such a sentence! This humility of Mandela’s is pretty cool.

Further, I suspect autobiography is a genre that tempts the author towards putting their own spin on things. Yet, while Mandela presumably does so, the book feels deliberately even and fair. Even writing retrospectively, Mandela is kind to his opponents, owning his opinions and ensuring opponents’ critiques are conveyed. The writing is so honest, so neutral, it feels as much like a history as like a memoir.

And of course, it is: Long Walk to Freedom is a history of apartheid in South Africa and the resistance against it. Sad to say, apartheid is a crime against humanity the depravity of which I hadn’t grasped prior to reading this work. It’s just totally fucking horrid. Not only that, it is despicable that the international community took so long to smack it down, that atrocities like the Sharpeville massacre could happen and be known and that nothing was done. Now, I’m not a huge fan of interventions and there are lots of good reasons why I don’t make foreign policy, but it seems pretty shameful that Mandela might have to go and talk Prime Minister Thatcher out of cutting sanctions. Holy heck.

Casualties of the Sharpeville Massacre.

That’s another good thing that came out of this reading though: I’m a little less ignorant of what apartheid was like, what it felt like to live under it, what it meant to resist it. I’m a little more aware of what it means to truly be oppressed…and to truly sacrifice for a cause.

From a Long Walk to Freedom to a Race Against Time

As a climate campaigner I’m particularly interested in Mandela’s story. I think apartheid is in a league of its own, but the experience of building and being part of a movement is more broadly applicable. It’s thus illuminating for me to reflect on Mandela’s sacrifice and on how he views the part he played.

Mandela commits his life to the movement. He literally gives up decades of his life in accepting his imprisonment. He separates from his first, then his second wife. He risks persecution, destitution, even murder. His fate is interwoven with that of the ANC, he speaks of being bound “heart and soul.” He describes politics as his “lifework”: “an essential and fundamental part of my being.” Woah.

Not too long ago, I spoke with Kumi Naidoo, head of Greenpeace International, at an AYCC Training Camp. Kumi had been in South Africa campaigning against apartheid. His own brother was murdered by the Nationalist Government. And Kumi’s advice to us youth in the climate movement was to take a chill pill: to study, party, meet friends, have sex, basically to enjoy ourselves. “The cause doesn’t need you to give your lives”, he said, “but the rest of your lives.”

Kumi Naidoo pictured with AYCC crew, Canberra, mid-2011.

They were memorable words but I didn’t strongly agree at the time. Apartheid was a visceral reality far more direct than today’s climate disasters, yet the prospect of tipping points and runaway climate change make the threat of climate catastrophie far more terrifying. Is it much use if I campaign on climate change in fifteen years’ time? If scientists know what they’re on about the most important campaigning I do on climate change may be what I get done before I grow out of my twenties. Is there time to lay about? Change takes time, but this may be time we don’t have, and I don’t know the answer. But I’m glad for how Long Walk to Freedom developed my thinking around activism.

Nelson Mandela’s life story is enriching and moving. Mandela is an icon, a moral authority, a proven leader whose struggle against the evil of apartheid has lessons for us all. Truly we are blessed, those of us in democracies, for even though the crisis is urgent, and the stakes sky high, we at least not denied our humanity.

In Long Walk to Freedom we have an example of a movement that achieved great things. But the walk is not yet over. Mandela, the ANC, South Africans – they stood up to a great injustice and won. We must let their example inspire us to do the same.

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Just Between You And Me, this Book on Relationships isn’t Very Good

drillvoice — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 21:13:11 +0000

I found Just Between You and Me while browsing a bookstore, something I rarely do. This is perhaps unusual for somebody who reads alot, but I find browsing a fruitless exercise. I’d much rather base my reading decisions on friends’ recommendations or, ideally, recommendations implicit in other texts, such as when one book refers to another. (It is in this happy way that I came across Anna Karenina in The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Man Who Was Thursday in Deus Ex. OK, Deus Ex is actually a video game, but I’d still call it a ‘text’.)

I mention this because I got Just Between You and Me: The Art of Ethical Relationships (JBYAM) while browsing a bookstore. I was soon to move house and was depositing some surplus tomes at the local second-hand bookstore. As what I have learnt is standard practice, they didn’t give me any money but offered me store credit. The store had a copy of Put Me Back on My Bike, a cycling book which is alluded to in Ianto Ware’s brilliant zine, 21 Nights in July. As per the previous paragraph, this was a strong temptation. However, it was too expensive, and JBYAM looked good. Dedicated as I am to the art of ethical relationships, I thought that this book would be an invaluable addition to my small library.

I was wrong. Not terribly so – I’d call it a not-worthless addition. That said, I’d happily sell it on ebay for even a mere $3.

In JBYAM, author Christina Colegate expounds various philosophies applying to relationships. She gives herself a broad mandate, beginning with relationship with self, rippling outwards through anticipable terrain regarding friendships and romance, and reaching the far shore when she begins examining the abstract relations between complete strangers in separate nations. Each chapter addresses one such concept, using the staid approach of undergraduate philosophy: write about what other philosophers have said, critique it, chuck in your thoughts. For me, this prosaic and predictable style did no favours. The book seesaws between being a simple reference text on relationship-related philosophy and being an original contribution from Colegate herself. This is not effective.

But, to take the seesaw metaphor and expand it to an entire playground, there is pocket money to be found amongst the barkchips. I did find cause to put my trusty blue and orange highlighters to use, finding many an interesting turn of phrase or quotation that spoke to me. Almost exclusively these quotations were from people other than Colegate. Sometimes she came up with nice turns of phrase, although they often achieved little more than being a memorably elegant paraphrasing. I’m trying to be fair to the author: there were gems in the rough. But to be fair to you, I wouldn’t call them diamonds.

Who is this book right for? I don’t know. Those more in to philosophy than I would, I suspect, scorn it. Perhaps the uninitiated may find it and experience the wonder of first encountering philosophy, a wonder that Alain de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy offered me. In all though, there are better introductions to philosophy out there, and there are better and more detailed introductions to how to relate ethically.

Management & Organisations: “Maverick” by Ricardo Semler

drillvoice — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 07:11:06 +0000

I read Ricardo Semler’s Maverick because at some point in my life I became a management nerd. I still am. Organisation management, people, processes: they fascinate me. In a cultural context in which work is boring and meetings are a waste of time, I am charged by the challenge of figuring out how we can make better organisations. How do we make it easier for people to do their jobs well?

Currently I’m making great bounds in exploring this interest. I’m studying an Advanced Diploma of Management with the Groupwork Institute of Australia (GIA). This course looks deeply at collaborative management and better practices for getting along at work. Underlying this, it builds the actual emotional intelligence required to be an effective manager.[1] In addition, I’m working part-time with the AYCC. The AYCC is just getting on six years old, so doesn’t have entrenched traditions or structures in the way of older monoliths. It’s a fertile environment for experimentation and change. Finally, I’ve been reading some great books related to management. One such book is Ricardo Semler’s Maverick.

Maverick is not required reading for the Management Diploma, but it comes very highly recommended. Fellow students of mine had read it and raved about it before I picked it up, and I’d also heard gushing words from the course facilitator and founder of the GIA, Glen Ochre. It wasn’t available an eBook, so I tracked down a copy, ordered it from the US, and waited patiently.

The good, and perhaps surprising news, is that Maverick is very easy to read. Despite functioning as a guide or instruction manual of sorts, it is written as a biography, and a terse, content-rich one at that. Biography? I use the word with only some hesitation. Maverick is best understood as the history of how Ricardo Semler, the author, transformed Semco, his father’s and then his company, from a middling and traditional company to a highly-successful pioneer in collaborative organisation. But “history” is too dry, too impersonal. Semler writes lovingly and passionately, injecting into the novel stories of himself and of others. “Biography” it is.

The book details Ricardo’s starting at Semco and his initial failures at improving the way the company worked. Then, bit by bit, it all starts happening. The chapters unfold chronologically, with each one relating a specific challenge and a specific way the company responded. In this way the key ideas or revelations are communicated, presumably in the same order in which they were implemented at Semco itself.

What Semler has to say on Organisation Management

As the reader, you are flooded with great ideas, learning about revolution after revolution. First Semco sets up worker committees to allow workers to speak collectively and take greater control over their workplace. As time passes they abolish company rules and policies, arguing for common sense as a substitute. Semco soon up-ends the power relationship between managers and subordinates with a system in which job applicants are interviewed by future subordinates and managers are evaluated twice yearly by those who work under them.

By the end, Semco is the big rock candy mountain of workplaces. They no longer employ people in menial roles, with even senior staff doing their own photocopying and filing. The workforce is broken up in to small units, avoiding the impersonal nature of large corporations and allowing employees to form close connections and be in touch with what is going on in their environment. Colleagues decide together when to start work, and can even set their own salaries. Company profits are shared with employees. Most excitingly, bureaucracy has been eliminated by a radical yet simple structure:
“Counsellors” are a team of about six people who are the equivalent of Vice Presidents or higher. They coordinate policy and strategy. “Partners” are the “seven to ten leaders of Semco’s business units.” Every other employee is in the outermost circle and is known as an “associate”. “Coordinators”, shown in the triangles, are those in “basic leadership” roles. They “guide” teams of five to twenty associates.

This structure is beautifully elegant. I’m constantly wondering what the ideal structure is for the AYCC and, more broadly, what principles should govern organisational structures. What is the sensible model?

This one really appeals to me. I like the lack of pyramids, which imply not only hierarchy but superiority. I like the flexibility in the outermost circle, the ease with which associates and coordinators can relate and transmute. I like the lack of layers, which implies both a welcome sparsity of redundant managers and a workforce that is displaying more autonomy, judgement, and accountability.

And that’s about it for writing about the actual contents of the book. Interested? You could start by checking out this brief summary. Really though, just get and read the damn book. Maybe you’re not interested in this like I am. But I’m pretty confident that at some point you’re going to have a job in a workplace. Then you’ll see.

Maverick turns the story of an organisational transformation in to a gripping read that proffers a vision of how work could be more fulfilling. The essence of Semler’s thesis is that “our advances in technology have far outstripped our advances in mentality.” These days we have the means to have radically different workplaces and workstyles, yet factories and companies are still run like textile businesses from 1633. Too much of what happens in the workplace happens due only to the oppressive weight of the past. Too few are ready to revolutionise, to question these conventions, and to take the uncomfortable steps towards a workplace that works better. Semler’s Maverick is a story of instruction, explaining specific initiatives that helped Semco to prosper through lean economic years.

Semler’s Maverick is a story of entertainment, with twists, highs, and lows, as plentiful as in the trashiest Dan Brown thrillers. And Semler’s Maverick is a story of hope. You’re not alone. It doesn’t have to be this way. There are better options. And if Semler can do it, you can too.

[1] Article in Harvard Business Review on emotional intelligence

“The Great Gatsby”, F. Scott Fitzgerald

drillvoice — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 11:29:18 +0000

Ah, yes, The Great Gatsby.

This book highlights yet another of the pitfalls of being a precocious child: I first read it when I lacked the worldliness to truly appreciate it. I’m fairly confident that bits of it appealed to me, but it was nothing like this time. Nothing at all.

The book’s story is almost archetypal in its familiarity: boy meets girl, falls in love, they don’t get together, he spends the rest of his life trying to change that. What makes Gatsby so striking, so poignant, so noteworthy, is probably not the story itself, so much as the prose, the nostalgic melancholy, and the insights in to American society. Note, however, that I’m not going to comment on that latter point, as I would go round in circles and get lost. So let us look forward to the two other things.

A friend of mine told me that he stopped reading The Great Gatsby without finishing it. I find this astonishing, not because the plot is gripping (it’s pretty good), but because the writing is beautiful. Reading it is almost blissful. Fitzgerald uses language so vividly, so uniquely, that it is common experience while reading to encounter a completely unprecedented metaphor or turn of phrase that, nonetheless, is so apt as to seem perfectly familiar. Only a literary genius could describe:

an apartment as “one slice in a long white cake of apartment-houses”
a disjointed conversation as “the broken fragments of the last five minutes at the table”
party chit-chat as “the echolalia of the garden”
the scenery at a party with “fresh faces drifted here and there like rosé petals blown by the sad horns around the floor.”
lingering regret as being “like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.” or,
the late afternoon sky as being “like the blue honey of the Mediterranean”.

Writing that is this good literally takes my breath away. I’m reminded of trying to draw an apple for high school art homework, and my sister said not to draw an apple, but to draw the apple. The idea is not to pull images or schema from memory, but to portray originally. In the same vein, Fitzgerald’s writing doesn’t draw upon the literary equivalent of stock images. It is wholly original. The events are rendered in enchanting, impressive prose, that makes the very act of reading one of sheer delight.

There is also a quite intellectually-stimulating question, implicit in the text, regarding the past, how it affects us, and how we ought to let it affect us. This comes through Gatsby’s (the character’s, not the abbreviated book title’s) nostalgic melancholy.

What I mean by “nostalgic melancholy” is a pensive wishing for how things were. It’s a sort of melancholy, a loneliness, an emptiness, that is backward-looking, that wishes things had been different.

You see, Gatsby, when a penniless soldier, fell in love with the affluent Daisy. She reciprocated his love. Before they quite settled matters he was sent overseas by the army and she, in his absence, married the bland and boring Tom Buchanan. Now returned, and rich, Gatsby has established himself as the host of rather extravagant parties, all in the hope of giving Daisy and himself a chance to meet and rekindle their love. You see, the poor guy never really got over her.

Eventually Daisy and Gatsby do meet: Gatsby engineers this through their mutual friend Nick, the story’s narrator. Their love is reborn. As Nick observes (and Fitzgerald beautifully writes), “Her throat, full of aching, grieving beauty, told only of her unexpected joy.” But so much is different. She’s married, five years have past, he is different, she is different. Love alone, it seems, is not enough.

Fitzgerald has created an awesome situation here. Daisy and Gatsby, former lovers, are re-united. It would be so possible, so predictable, for them to get back together. But it doesn’t happen so easily. Daisy has her life, has a certain inertia therein, and can’t simply leave that for love. Each of us grows and changes and in the process learns from the past. To an extent, this process involves leaving the past behind, moving on, moving forward. And Daisy has moved on.

Gatsby really struggles with this. He isn’t content to be happy with the past. He insists that the present take on the same rosy hue as what has been, apparently blind to the impossibility of such. Thus, he wants to erase both the five years of separation that Daisy and he endured and the fact of Daisy’s loving Tom. Gatsby denies this latter fact, which is too much for Daisy:

“Oh, you want too much….I love you now – isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past.” She began to sob helplessly. “I did love him once – but I loved you too.”

However, Gatsby is not to be put off. The narrator has already discerned of Gatsby that “He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something.” Gatsby later asserts, “incredulously”, in response to Nick’s statement that one can’t repeat the past: “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!”

We thus witness juxtaposed understandings of the significance of the past in relation to the present. Gatsby feels that the present should serve the past and, in fact, the future. He doesn’t care for Daisy’s current stability and security – he wants to create a shared, joyous future, founded on a shared, joyous past. Present be damned. Daisy, on the other hand, certainly loved Gatsby, and loves him now. But for her the hold of the present is stronger. She loves her husband, is happy with the status quo, and isn’t about to shake things up in an effort to recreate what has been. Wow.

Let’s leave it basically there. The book is brilliant. The writing is brilliant and the novel gets at the heart of a question that many of us have faced: can what has been be again?

Allow me to end this appraisal by quoting from the short novel’s ending lines, a conclusion that reveals both the startling magnificence of Fitzgerald’s writing and his thematic treatment of the past:

“[Gatsby] did not know that [his dream] was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, strech out our arms farther….And one fine morning -

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

“Tess of the D’Urbevilles”, Thomas Hardy: Yeah Nah

drillvoice — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 02:40:41 +0000

I don’t think I’m up to the task of saying much about Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbevilles. It confounded me.

Once I finished it, I realised that I had never “got it”. I hoped that someone I knew could explain it to me, could make sense of what happened, could help me to understand. But this didn’t happen.

What is so weird? Well, the protagonist, Tess, suffers and suffers. Nothing really goes right for her, which is awful at first, but then just a bit awkward. You really want the poor girl to score a break.

She doesn’t. Tess is poor, gets raped, miscarries, leaves home, and works as a milkmaid. Things look up when she marries the love of her life, but he leaves her when he learns of the rape. Yeah, it kind of sucks. I don’t want to give more away, suffice to say, things go on sucking. Woe.

However, while I didn’t really get it, I didn’t mind it. Hardy writes some excellent prose, and his verbal landscapes are often a joy to imagine. [quote]the stars, whose cold pulses were beating amid the black hollows above, in serene dissociation from these two wisps of human life.”[/quote][quote]Westward, the wiry boughs of the bare thorn hedge which formed the boundary of the field rose against the pale opalescence of the lower sky. Above, Jupiter hung like a full-blown jonquil, so bright as almost to throw a shade. A few small nondescript stars were appearing elsewhere. In the distance a dog barked, and wheels occasionally rattled along the dry road.[/quote]There is also a great observational wit, applying itself to questions of love, lust, family and feeling. For example, Hardy cannily maps “the debatable land between predilection and love.”

In addition, Tess of the D’Urbevilles is an interesting picture of how life in rural England used to be. Culture, custom, tradition, are all described as part of the world, an unassuming part of everyday life, and for a modern reader the effect is almost comic. Certainly it is notably curious. In my favourite such episode, some milkers resort to song to encourage reticent cows to give forth of their milk – this is apparently common, accepted practice!

So yes, the book is outrageous. The writing is great and it’s a pleasant way of learning about past English society. Perhaps it is better read with a Cicero, someone to help you make sense of it, a sort of anthropomorphised Cliffs Notes, ideally. But, to be honest, there are lots of other excellent books, and maybe you can give this one a pass.

If you don’t want to give it a pass – it’s here on amazon.

“The 4-Hour Workweek”, Timothy Ferriss: Personal Effectiveness

drillvoice — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 11:15:47 +0000

The 4-Hour Workweek is a guide to reducing one’s workload to the point that it can be handled with 4 hours each week, so that the free time (and surplus cash) can be used to live one’s dream lifestyle – learning martial arts, travelling, that sort of thing.

Is it engaging? Yes. Is it plausible? I suppose. Is it advisable? That depends.

If you were serious and you read this book you would:

Find a premium niche product (e.g. yoga guide for rock climbers)
Style yourself as an authority, market the product effectively, and generate significant custom.
Automate the entire business model so that every stage operates independently of you.
For good measure, you have a “virtual assistant” in the Majority world who handles your email etc. They can’t go to the toilet for you but you can get them to do anything a PA would do, as well as other even more inane things.
Let the money come in.
Live the life you want.

That’s about it. I can hear the sceptics gathering out there, but whatevs. The book actually had a lot of interesting and useful ideas that I think are useful even if you discount the central proposition.

For example, Ferriss argues that most employees are paid to spend a lot of time doing wank – trivial work that doesn’t justify the time it takes. This occurs because people need to be seen as doing important and high-brow things and thus waste time in meetings and communication etc. when they could just be getting stuff done:

“People are poor judges of importance and inflate minutiae to fill time and feel important.”

Ferriss advocates using the Pareto Principle to pick the two most valuable things to do, doing those things, and then basically leaving it there. All the other stuff can go to buggery. (Note that the steps above apply to entrepreneurs – if you are an employee, you can still reduce your workload, but you are also required to liberate yourself from the office environment to avoid discovery.)

There are a few other really valuable ideas I feel:

Being a hard nut about meetings. Avoiding all meetings and, if you attend one, insisting it have a clear agenda and last no longer than 30 minutes. Communicate as much as possible in writing and deliberately schedule commitments when the meeting is meant to end to avoid its going overtime.
Never be interrupted. Interruptions destroy effectiveness. If you get interrupted you are unlikely to finish tasks. Thus, let calls go to voicemail and check twice daily. If people approach you pretend to be in a call and get them to give you a 15 second summary and/or email you. If you answer your phone, pretend to be in the middle of something and cut directly to the chase. Says Ferriss, “The cubicle is your temple -don’t permit casual visitors.”
Check email infrequently. Twice a day he reckons.
“Fear disguised as optimism.” Ferriss uses this phrase to pinpoint an unwillingness to act that is based on optimistic denial – not realism. In the context of the book he is talking about people who don’t take the entrepreneurial risks he describes. More broadly, the idea is relevant to many employees – especially managers – who may often put off making uncomfortable decisions due to a misplaced hope that things will sort themselves out.
“Being busy instead of being effective.” Ah such a common phenomenon. I’ve known this beast all too well. In the past I’ve self-importantly crowed about the number of tasks I had listed, or the number I had completed. I took delight in polishing off lots of tasks – even if they weren’t particularly important. The simple truth here is that doing a lot doesn’t mean achieving a lot.
Tasks swell in perceived importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for their completion. Ferriss calls this Parkinson’s Law. I love it. I imagine many of us have experienced it in relation to essay due dates. The application of this idea is to allocate less time for completing tasks and thus do them without any nonsense. It could also include a rigorous commitment to working no more than the defined hours of your job.
Using people as a solution to a poor process multiplies problems. That is, pouring time in to a flawed process does nobody any favours. I experienced this far too much last semester in Engineering when my team would despair at not having enough time to complete deliverables. Rather than aim for good process, the method instead was “let’s all sit in a room for 8 hours and hope something emerges.” These sessions often featured no leadership, no delegation, no purpose, no set of intended outcomes. Oh god. Good process comes first, people!

Next question: how applicable is this book if you, say, like your work. If you work in the not-for-profit (NFP) sector as I do and are motivated by, say, passion?

The book is still highly applicable. The tools for “elimination”, for reducing frivolous work, are intended to be used to reduce the overall workload. In an NFP context, they could still be used to reduce frivolous work…except the time saved would then be spent on non-frivolous work. There is also the option of following the book’s advice and finding a way to automate income, and then to continue to roll in the NFP sector – but without necessarily requiring a wage.

I don’t know many entrepreneurs but I know many people who are interested in how they can work more effectively. To all you I say – this book is worth reading. You may not quit your job and begin making a living marketing hugely-overpriced items to a niche market, but you could certainly learn how to use your time better.

Buy on Amazon

Book 24: “The Razor’s Edge”, W. Somerset Maugham

drillvoice — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 08:21:02 +0000

Some individuals can make a profound difference in our lives, and The Razor’s Edge is testament to this. The book is auto-biographical and biographical. It is written as a recount of the author’s own experience, but it is about another, Larry Darrell, whose life makes a profound difference to others. (In fact, this book was recommended to me by an individual who made a profound difference in my life. Funny how these things happen.)

The book is lengthy and written in five parts. It follows Larry from his young college days through a journey, both spiritual and literal, culminating with the achievement of a degree of self-actualisation. Maughan’s account of this journey is replete with other fine characters: Elliot Templeton, a wealthy American ex-patriate who enjoys haute culture; and Isabel Bradley, Larry’s ex-spouse, who, like Templeton, lives pretty well.

I enjoyed this book spiritually. It sits in my emotional memory alongside excellent meals with friends – maybe it isn’t hugely insightful, maybe it doesn’t change my life, but it is a time very well-spent. It may not alter my life, but it certainly adds to it.

One such pleasure exists in Maugham’s observations about life. Good writers, I daresay, have a certain sixth sense about the world, about our lives, about our relations. Maugham seems to have this and puts it to good effect, his pearly paragraphs evidencing a piercing understanding of our world. Consider,

In all big cities there are self-contained groups that exist without intercommunication, small worlds within a greater world that lead their lives, their members dependent upon one another for companionship, as though they inhabited islands separated from each other by an unnavigable strait.

While not beautiful per se, this opening paragraph does display Maugham’s ability to step outside a society and reflect upon it.

Or what of,

For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they were born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives’ tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in.

Now, I’ve read a little identity theory, I get what Maugham is saying here. Surely if I hadn’t though, I’d be struck nonetheless by this obvious revelation. Maughan nails it – and my understanding of people deepens. This occurs throughout the text. In all, Maugham’s observational prowess enriches both the novel and the reader.

Before leaving this point altogether I’d like to add that, curiously, the book is excellently paced but suffers from some clichéd prose. Regarding pacing, the story never happens too quickly or too slowly. At times it moves gently, but this never feels slow – it’s more like chewing on well-made rye than swallowing litre after litre of watery soup. Charting an entire lifetime of personal growth with his novel, Maugham has a significant duration to play with, and he shows excellent discretion, neither overburdening nor shortchanging the reader. There is though some underwhelming cliché. I may be wrong – it could be that Maugham was the first to use what has since become a hackneyed phrase. If I’m right though, Maugham has apparently seen fit to include some fairly rudimentary phrasings. Specifics allude me but it’s fairly predictable – clouds being fleecy, mornings being misty, lips being rosy etc. etc. etc.. While this is not by any means iniquitous, it is noticeable in what is otherwise an excellently written book.

Thematically now, this is a great book to read in adolescence, mainly because of the focus on Larry. (Though I’m now 21, I’m aware that ‘adolescent’ comes from the latin word meaning ‘to grow up’. I’m still growing up and I’m still happy to get better at it.) The author first meets Larry when the latter is an insulated and selfsome teen, but, continuing to meet him at subsequent stages of his life, Maugham is able to chart Larry’s own becoming a full person. We see Larry reject his fiancé, abandon employment, look for greater purpose, visit the orient, and return to others whose lives have turned out quite differently to how they expected. Larry’s grappling with existential questions mirrors my adolescent experience and presumably that of others. Larry’s life demands answers, if not to “what is my purpose?” at least to “what do I want to do with my life?”. Larry’s willingness to ask these questions and his bravery in seeking answers is a valuable demonstration of just what can be made of a life.

Finally, and incidentally, I enjoyed reading about high society! I’m not quite about to live as the landed gentry do, but there is an undeniable quality to it. Is it the fine dining? Is it the absurdly contrived social etiquette? Is it the banter? I don’t know, but I am fond of any society of which it can be non-ironically written,

“I’ve always said that eight was the perfect number,” said Elliott, determined to look on the bright side of things. “It’s intimate enough to permit of general conversation and yet large enough to give the impression of a party.”

Of course, I now intend to entertain only in groups of eight.

The Razor’s Edge. Brilliant observations. Compelling narrative. Titillating portrayal of aristocratic life. The only thing this book lacks is insight into bringing down dictators. It’s a good one.

Buy a copy from Amazon