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Utility

This week, I had two of the critical conversations in the kata deployment. These were go and see experiments because my conversations were only elicitations of the impressions of my interlocutors. I wasn’t trying to see what would happen if I introduced a conversation into the process of management. I wasn’t trying to change their minds, but see how the current state of their minds reacted.

I showed the simple block diagram. It looks something like this:

Inputs Process Outputs
Difficult decisions Choose the decisions that will take the longest to answer (leave the easier ones for later).  Improved questions
Ideas of plans Draft a clear attempt at an answer, preferably a diagram with explanatory notes. Answers
Preliminary drawings Distribute it to the team members. Ask them to scrutinize it and ask questions. Plans
Impressions of obstacles Answer all of the questions that you can.  
Impressions of questions

For the questions that you can’t answer clearly, do research, or experiments, and find the answers.

Do coaching cycles on these research cycles.

  
Known hindrances Update the document with those revised answers.  
Known questions

Repeat these steps until the document can bear the scrutiny of a core set of team members. It’s not that everyone has to agree. It’s that the answers to questions must be defensible. The kata coach should be in these conversations, and look for indications that the interlocutors are making arguments and claims outside of their knowledge threshold. She should document these arguments and claims as obstacles and discuss them with the learner after the meeting. 

They should do more experiments (PDCAs) on these arguments and claims.

  
  Don’t even try having difficult technical conversations without a drawing or technical document in front of the members.  

Of course this process isn’t guaranteed to produce consensus, but lack of consensus isn’t what been plaguing us. It’s a maelstrom of vagueness. Of arguing past one another. Of groundhog day debates. Klinkenborg’s diagnosis comes to mind: people want so badly do be done, that they don’t focus properly on doing. They want the decision made. They “don’t want to argue.” They commit to an idea for a day, then the next throw their hands up, claiming indifference. 

I predicted tepid assent; instead, the idea received enthusiastic support. Why? What did I learn?

In a coaching cycle with my boss, he asked me, and we came to a different conclusion together than I had before the cycle. My conclusion had been something like bafflement. Sometimes people are excited by the same ideas that I am, sometimes they aren’t. Who knows why. His impression was clearer and probably more accurate.  

The question I’m trying to answer is not how to apply Lean principles to the work we’re doing (a question that’s interested me for years). The question I’m asking is, how can we overcome the most daunting obstacle before us? Also, at present, the team members’ descriptions of the obstacle are remarkably convergent.

My thinking, and consequently my presentation, emphasized how our problem could be addressed, instead of how my preferred technique could address our problems.

Is this learning, precisely? It seems more like the application of some general principles. Maybe it’s more like practice. I didn’t learn the principle. But maybe I’ve developed some experience in applying it. 

I think what I’m seeing is that  we (meaning, people in general) want to see precisely how a technique can help us solve our most pressing problem, not hear how, in principle, a methodology can justifiably be applied to a family of problems. Because the core team has been experiencing real grief, sitting in the same long meetings, and I have been trying specifically to reducing this suffering, the resulting ideas were more interesting to my teammates. As Rother would say, I’m focusing on the  one obstacle that we need to solve now. Not picking out the problems that I think I know how to solve. 

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Sententiousness

Solomon might have asked himself, <<Am I still here?>> and, being the wisest judge, he would answer. So Solomon lived¹. Wouldn’t he have?

Prophets made predictions, and after they were realized, were called prophets. Is that what happened? Is Chödrön saying, <<If you do this, that will happen?>> Is she proposing a sort of amorphous covenant?

I notice that a Learner has a habit of saying <<I told you so>> to coworkers. This is so interesting. To imagine this motivation for a minute. To see the world as someone who is continuously yearning to prove, not a particular skill, but her foresight in general.  Her message, as I hear it, is, <<Look, I was right, and I will continue to be right, so follow my advice.>>

I don’t know how to discourage her for from continuing down this path, because I can’t say, precisely, where it leads, but it seems misguided to call others’ attention to your predictions instead of your reasons—outcomes instead of means—because then all they have to do is watch you and look for instances of your being wrong? I’m sure I’ve seen at least one marriage that was made up of this: each struggling for decades to prove to the other that they themselves were the more prophetic, that theirs was the truer covenant. Like gambling addicts, they want, finally, to come out on top in the game of predicting the future.

So Solomon would conjure himself into existence³. How? 

Solomon gave into idolatry, and Rabbi Akiva Tatz explains why prophets no longer exist. It is as a result of the Sanhedrin having excised that which leads to idolatry from the human soul. Why did they do it? Because the impulse toward idolatry “so tormented and stressed” even the most pious, that the Sanhedrin “decided to do something active about it.” Tatz says that, “It was, in fact, the most powerful temptation that there was.” People were losing their struggle against it. They couldn’t stop themselves from bowing down to idols. Why? Tatz says that it was their desire to connect with the transcendent, the divine, and I’m sure he’s right. But what else? And why that? Was it only the search for meaning? Is the mundane so meaningless? Well, we know, from the direct and clear account from Epicurus and others, that it wasn’t when it was moderately pleasurable. Epicurus was after Malachi (the last prophet), but was he living in such a different reality? When one had enough food and drink and friendship, when one had a bit of safety and a bit of beauty, couldn’t they enjoy life? So was the impulse to connect with the divine purely spiritual, or was it also practical? Or in other words, was the impulse as overwhelming when one wasn’t in the sort turmoil that was brought on by more mundane causes? Wasn’t this connection with god thought to be the independent variable, the imagined lever of control over nature and the outcomes of battles? Wasn’t a lot of it rain dances?

Maybe, but not all of it. Why? Because of foresight. In any torrent, one can imagine a drought, and their immortal soul. The impulse to petition a god wasn’t purely practical, because we didn’t evolve to perceive the actual valence of phenomena in relation to the fate of our genes. We don’t, most of us, obsessively seek the optimal caloric intake; we seek tasty food. We don’t want more than anything to have as many kids as possible, and then grandkids. And, we do least of all when we have the Epicurean fruits around us. We evolved by the correlation of impulses to survival and reproduction. This is Darwin’s often confused fitness. And the fittest, in the long run, are the most adaptable, the most versatile. (The core principles of Lean, have the effect of exposing to the operators and engineers the fitness of the operation, of exposing the independent variables.)

“The book raises questions, ” says Roth, “and you answer it. Sentence by sentence, really. Phrase by phrase. Then chapter by chapter, etc. Then draft by draft. And when you’ve answered all the questions, the book is done.” 

The Sanhedrin performed an excision on the source of the impulse to bow down before idols, removing it from the human soul, but along with the temptation went the insatiable desire to connect with god, and with that went the talent of prophecy. 

Tatz: “What is the drive to idolatry? Isn’t it to go beyond the self and to worship that which is beyond? The faculty that wants to do that is the same faculty that worships Hashem.  Only it’s misdirected. But it’s the same organ…. There is a desire to transcend and melt into that which is greater…. As soon as they killed the drive to idolatry, do you know what died with it? Prophecy. What is prophecy? The ability to communicate directly with the transcendent reality². And if you take the organ out of the mind that does that, you lose the drive to idolatry, but you lose prophecy, too.”

Later he says, when describing a subsequent excision, this time on the drive to immoral sensuality, “…again, if you’re thinking, you should ask me a question.”

⊕

¹This is a very different maneuver from Descartes’s, by the way. And for a very entertaining history of the interactions of Hobbes and Descartes, read George Hakari’s Soul Machine.

²His voice enters into song at this point in his lecture, and at others. 

³For a beautiful example of a character writing herself into existence, read Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel Lavinia.

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Physical cues

We know that physical cues facilitate habit formation. We know that postures can be a physical cue. In my recent post Rules, I describe hand positions I was experimenting with to remind myself to think about standards and run experiments. In the same post I talk about a turn from using PDCA terminology to use the terminology of experimentation. A question for a few months had a minor fruition for me driving from Tulsa to OKC yesterday. The two sets of finger motions (fourth to first, first to fourth) are unnecessary. What is necessary is that we reflect on what standards may apply, given our objective, and experimentation. Experimentation, fundamentally, has three phases: before, during, and after. 

  1. Plan an experiment (think about the future)
  2. Run the experiment (think about the present, or the immediate future, the very next instant, which for our purposes is defined as the present)
  3. Reflect on the results (think about the past, and the artifacts it created, including data we collected during the experiment)

Additional phases break those three out: phases of preparation before the experiment, phases during experimentation, aspects of experimentation (including the test itself, and collecting data during the test), and all of the ways we can analyze and evaluate data after the test, propose adjustments, propose new standards based on the results, and so on.

So that leaves us with

  1. Thumb to index finger: think about standards
  2. Thumb to second finger: think about the future
  3. Thumb to third finger: think about the present
  4. Thumb to the fourth finger: think about the past.

Near the end of this lecture, Rabbi Michael Skobac talks about the use of posture in spiritual practice. “Nothing can’t be raised up into a meaningful spiritual experience.”

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Airport Chapel

In his introduction to his own translation of Meditations, Gregory Hays observes about philosophy in the time of Marcus Aurelius,

Ancient philosophy certainly had its academic side. Athens and other large cities had publicly financed chairs of philosophy, and professional philosophers taught, argued, and wrote, as they do today. But philosophy also had a more practical dimension. It was not merely a subject to write or argue about, but one that was expected to provide a ‘design for living’—a set of rules to live one’s life by. This was a need not met by ancient religion, which privileged ritual over doctrine and provided little in the way of moral and ethical guidelines. Nor did anyone expect it to. That was what philosophy was for.

Is this true? Did the myths that Edith Hamilton describes in Mythology do so little to inform the daily habits of individuals? It does seem as if individuals had less say in how they spent their time. Maybe there was less need for instruction?

I’ve always wondered whether its monotheism was the innovation that made Judaism so fertile in the West. In light of Hays’s observation, was Judaism’s unique trick to intertwine the myths and rituals of religion with a set of detailed instructions, and a clever set of reasons to follow them? 

I was away from work for two weeks. One week of kata training, and one with the family. I had four objectives:

x Spend a lot of time with my mom.
x See my friend Val twice.
x See my grandfather twice.
x Do rituals every morning and evening.

It’s the last one I’m interested in here. I kept it easily enough in the hotel, and while staying with my mom. Meditate for ten minutes, read some Epictetus, do The Founder, write a few sentences. Before going to bed, review any notes I had written on scraps of paper and put in my pockets, and picture getting up  the next morning.

Driving to the Philadelphia airport was tricky. Sudden and heavy snow. Flights delayed. I got out of Philly a few hours late, not in time to make the connecting flight in St. Louis to Tulsa. But there was a flight the next morning at 06:55. The flight landed in St. Louis around 11:00, so I wasn’t going to leave the terminal and go to a hotel. 

I wandered around the terminal. Sat on a rocking chair, listened to the warning that the moving walkway was coming to an end.  Read part of a New Yorker article about Jim Simons and texted Brit to tell her that there was an article about Estonia. Read an article on my phone about how to sleep in an airport terminal, and one about Mehran Karimi Nasseri, the “Iranian refugee who lived in the departure lounge of Terminal One in Charles de Gaulle Airport from 26 August 1988 until July 2006….”

When I got up the next morning, I wondered what I should do. I thought of my rituals, and it seemed that I wouldn’t do that. But then I recalled that, wandering around the night before, I had passed an airport chapel. Of course I hesitated. Then I thought about Epictetus. Was he wrong? Should we maintain only a casual attitude toward our rituals? Are consistent, deliberately chosen habits conducive to mental health? Is BJ Fogg‘s research on Tiny Habits wrong? Do we not abandon ourselves, and make the world seem a little less reliable, each time we fail to follow through on our own intentions?

I didn’t know how to perform my rituals in the airport chapel, so I asked myself how I should walk there. I figured that out. Then I figured out how to open the door, etc. 

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Rules

The Epictetus quote that I have recited the past several mornings is,

“Whatever rules you have adopted, abide by them as laws, and as if you would be impious to transgress them; and do not regard what anyone says of you, for this, after all, is none of your concern.”

What does it mean? First, it implies that you should adopt rules for yourself, and that you should do so very carefully. You wouldn’t pass laws that you didn’t think that you could follow. You wouldn’t enter into a religion the gods of which set impossible standards. So think your rules through.

It implies, also, that you should have a process for adopting rules. Use a process of experimentation on any  rule before adopting it. You should also have a process for eliminating a rule that, because of changing circumstances, is no longer serving its intended purpose. Only remove a rule from your list when you are calm, and not at the precise time that you are supposed to be following it. You never want to set yourself up for failure by having the option of abolishing the rule on the spot.

What does it imply that you should do when you transgress a rule? Should you flagellate yourself, or put yourself behind bars? No, but you should think hard and make serious plans to ensure that you don’t transgress it again. Ask yourself what you should do. Transgression should be a prompt for reflection. What was your intention when you adopted the rule? What outcome does it assist you in achieving or avoiding? Why did you transgress it? What, mentally, was going on at the time? What externally? What, done differently leading up to the event, would have prevented it? What about precisely when it occurred? Were there negative practical repercussions? What did you do about those? What should you have done? 

I use the mental technique of going back and visualizing myself not transgressing the rule. I play the scene leading up to it just as I remember it, but when it comes to the critical moment, I make the right decision. If I transgressed any rules that led to this one, then I correct those in the memory, too.

If there are behaviors that I engaged in that made me more likely to transgress the rule, I run another visualization in which I engage in safer behaviors. 

How do I know when a rule applies? As always, practice. When I lie down at night, and when I hear the alarm in the morning, I perform a simple exercise. I have a rule for going to bed and for getting up, and its primary purpose is to remind me to identify situations in which a standard applies, and to apply it:

  1. I put my thumb to my first finger, and ask questions like: what’s the standard (rule) for this behavior? (Or, when I’m trying to achieve such and result, what’s the process? Or, when such and such occurs, how do I respond? What’s the output standard? Are there input standards?)
  2. thumb to second: do it.
  3. thumb to third: what was the result? Did my performance (process) match the standard? Did my product (output) match the standard? Did the inputs meet their standards? If they didn’t, what did I do about it?
  4. thumb to fourth: do the standards need updated, or are they still correct?

This takes less than 10 seconds. By practicing it before going to bed, and right when I wake up, I ingrain it.

When I’m performing an action for which I can’t think of a standard, but suspect that I should develop one, I perform the hand mnemonic in reverse:

  1. thumb to fourth (finger): what am I trying to achieve? What don’t I understand? What question is most relevant? What experiment can I perform? What is my mental model of this situation? Can I make a prediction based on it? What do I predict will happen if I perform such and such?
  2. thumb to third: do it.
  3. thumb to second: what did I see? What is the data? What did I predict would happen? What actually happened. (Obviously, this is an adaptation of Mike Rother’s language.)
  4. thumb to the first: what can I extrapolate from this? Can I create a standard (a rule) from what I learned? Do I need to do additional experiments? What else do I need to learn? 

These are the SDCA and the PDCA.

As an aside, in his new book Mike Rother observes that PDCA remains jargon, and we’re probably better off using common terms like prediction→ test → data → evaluation. Think about it. Shewhart developed the PDCA as a specific industrial application of the scientific approach. Over the years, we’ve expanded its use to include all kinds of empirical modalities. So why not just go back to the plain language of science and empiricism? 

Also, when I break a rule, my primary technique for addressing it is asking myself questions about the situation. I’m not particularly hard on myself, because I know that if I make the process too unpleasant, I could lapse. Sustainability is the priority. I favor honest assessment over strict adherence. I seem to answer honestly when I ask questions about my adherence to my rules. And assertions are more impactful when they are framed by a question. 42.

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The larger world

1.

How did Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters come about? In other words: how could it be possible even? That’s what I wonder, even though these kinds of inquiries are not my habit. This is maybe the only movie that seems too close to be true. He admires the bar for its rectangularity. Other than wandering with OKC with Brit, I’ve never heard someone express such a familiar appreciation for the way a building occupies space. He engages in long-distance swimming. Tim Ferriss observes that over 80% of his high-achieving interviewees engage in some kind of meditative practice daily. 

Less than one minute in, he tells us: “The whole process of making art
is an act of faith, in a way.  This idea that you’re gonna will something
into existence that means something to the larger world.”

David Foster Wallace and Gregory Crewdson were both inspired by
David Lynch’s film Blue Velvet. Wallace called Blue Velvet an epiphanic experience.  In Blue Velvet, Sandy Williams’s room is “Right above [her] father’s office.” In Brief Encounters, Crewdson describes listening, his “ear to the wall.” 

When Jeffrey Beaumont lays out his plan, what kind of friends are he and Sandy? They are sitting at the diner. Is their friendship one of Pleasure?
Utility? Or the Good? Jeffrey makes a somewhat philosophical argument:

There are opportunities in life for gaining knowledge
and experience. Sometimes, it’s necessary to take a risk.

Why isn’t he too scared? Is it courage? Is he a bad person?
No, he’s desperate to understand something.
About the world? 
No, about the world of his childhood. Just like Crewdson.

In 1997, Isabella Rossellini played Pallas Athena in a mini-series aired on NBC, May 18th. Of course Jeffrey is a very straightforward hero. He excavates and slays the beast.

What does one call those colonial houses, with the siding? Two stories, lining the streets of Dover. Back from some family trip, usually to visit family, my family back inside, in the kitchen and elsewhere, I sat in the car and listened to the engine cool, watched the signs of the fall. Pictured my family inside. My mom in the orange  incandescent light. The scene at thirty-one minutes makes my stomach ache.

2.

Edith Hamilton wrote Mythology, explaining that the Greeks put the gods in human form, drew humans in detail for the first time, and called them gods.

3.

Next month, December, I will fly into Logan Airport for business
at Cambridge, then drive down to Delaware, to see my mom and family.  I’ve watched this documentary three times and I am, each time,
astonished. Jeffrey says,

I’m seeing something that was always hidden.

Edith Hamilton calls Ovid out for impiety. He’s too playful. If Lynch is Virgil, is Tarantino Ovid? When Ben sings In Dreams at Pussy Heaven, Lynch is not Ovid, but Homer, singing hymns. It’s not ironic. It’s ceremony, ritual. Ben is donning Hercules’ Nemean lion pelt and playing the role. I asked a friend about her conscience, and she said that it’s a voice created by authority figures throughout her life. How strange. 

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Inquiry, reasoning, and experimentation, each, are exploratory behaviors

What are these days where I can only stomach questions?  In other words, what causes them? I find myself asking these questions in a level pitch, without the elevation that marks inquiry. What effect does that have? Question after question in the melody of an incantation, what am I wandering off towards, what distant terrain?

Inquiry, reasoning, and experimentation—each, are exploratory behaviors.

I was talking with a friend. We were close together, my hand on her waist.  What is that wonderful feeling? How can skin feel that way? I asked her how. She told me, “I dry-brush.”

Alone again, miles away. I imagine some experiment.

Prediction
If I work for one half-hour, this anxiety will wane.

Result
I don’t know, but now it’s mixed with something else. Some grim pride and affinity for the world.

Conclusion
It’s better to work through it?

Yes. Scale of one to five. 
Five being terrified, envisioning myself being stabbed or beaten, lacerated; one being tranquility. 

In the chase over shadowy mountains and wind-swept peaks she delights,

And what was the effect of placing that there? And what was my intention? Why do I have to go through so many iterations? I don’t mind the first question being wrong, but the eleventh is worse. But we learn. We inquire further.

I mean, five. Obviously. If you use that scale.

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Sisyphus

Paul wrote to the Corinthians. Epistolary literature. Are we in Corinth? Camus wrote to us.