March 2004 Archives

Lisa and I went to see Marina Warner give the first 2004 Douglas Robb lecture tonight. The topic was After The Arabian Nights: Daemons & Alters. After the lecture, I mentioned to Lisa that, for me, in delivering her lecture, Marina had achieved the holy trinity of breadth, depth, and humour. Often a lecture only delivers one or two of these¹, but tonight we got all three in spades. Of course one might expect such a performance from a world class writer and academic, such as Marina , but, in the past, I have sometimes been disappointed.

As we walked onward to the car park, I began to reflect on how difficult it is to comment on what Marina had said. The difficulty comes from her use of words. The problem isn't in her choice of words, or her vocabulary. Nor is it in the she marshals them and organises them. The difficult isn't in what she says or even how she says it. At the heart of this 'problem' is the way in which she uses words that to reveal how she is thinking about her topic.

I don't know where I read it, but I recall that one of the greatest difficulties encountered by academics doing inter-disciplinary work is coming to terms with the way people in their 'non-main' discipline think. The challenge is to understand the world in as others (in the other discipline) do. For example, most of the content of what is taught in MER isn't hard. The hard part is learning how to think like a manager, or an academic, or a strategist, and so on. For those students who are doing a double major, or a minor, or a con-joint degree, they must run into this problem all the time. Knowing what is the easy part, knowing how is difficult because managers do think about the world different from scientists, differently from artists, etc. Stanley Frielick talks about it like this:

Declarative or propositional knowledge is typically the type of knowledge dominant in university curricula?the 'what' of a subject, abstract, conceptual, and concerned with labelling, differentiating and justifying. Functioning knowledge is based on performance of understanding in professional contexts?it involves the application of declarative knowledge in enacting skills and knowing when and why to perform them. Universities may espouse the development of professional functioning knowledge, but in practice the focus is on declarative knowledge which students often perceive as irrelevant and consequently adopt a surface approach [to learning].

The differences between the way in which groups (disciplines, occupations, ?) think is manifest in the way Darl and I identify, hopefully in a light hearted manner, engineers in the class. It isn't what they say, or even their behaviour that reveals them as engineers. It is they way in which they think about things that distinguishes them (of course this isn't an exact 'science' and sometimes we do mis-identify some).

I believe that functioning knowledge is often learnt, alas at university, through a process of osmosis; by seeing how others do it, rather than being proactively taught. In fact social learning, like this, is a crucial part of human development. Last week, Judith McMorland and I ran a sociodrama seminar for post graduate students. Before the it began, we had laid the room out in the 'traditional' psychodrama² manner, and we were sitting talking. To my surprise, I realised that as we were talking we had adopted the 'psychodramatic voice'. The particular rhythm and cadence, together with the vocabulary of that has been evident (to me) in every psychodrama training session I have ever attended. We were being sociodramatists. For the seminar, we were adopt the the ways of thinking and the ways of acting that are dominant in the New Zealand psychodrama community. The tacit, functioning, knowledge was manifesting itself. No one has ever said to me, this is how a sociodramatists talks, or this is how they think, or even, this is how they see and understand the world. It is something that I have been acquiring over time (and I think it is why I struggle so much to make sense of sociodrama).

The way this plays out in class, and in assignments, is in the way students seek evermore concrete definitions of what they are required to know ? the quest of declarative knowledge, where as lecturers are really looking for functioning knowledge. No wonder the two sides sometimes fail to meet.

Earlier, I was talking with my Research Assistant about how, in MGMT 301, some people can identify the gender of applicants on anonymous CVs from the style of the writing. She is strongly of the view that this is a relative straight forward procedure, as the handwriting can show,broadly, how the writer thinks, and given that the genders think differently it isn't a large step to guess the gender. We then discussed an extension of that, whereby it isn't too hard to guess the general grade of an assignment from the nature/pattern/type of references that accompany an assignment. The references reveal, what sometime is called the quality of thinking, but really is a measure of how much the author of the assignment is thinking like an academic, or a manager, etc. i.e their functional thinking. Some of these points are evidenced here and here. This also reminds me of an article I was reading yesterday by Terry Noel in the Journal of Management Education. In his article Lessons from the learning classroom he describes a situation which parallels the problems discussed here. I

Now all of this has a direct and immediate relevance to my PhD study. My topic, in case I haven't mentioned it often enough is Strategising in professional service firms. In particular I'm using the framework/world view of strategy-as-practice to explore strategy making (aka strategising). Part of my problem in that research is how do I come to understand how strategists think about the world? What is their functioning knowledge. Again, the content of what they do, their declarative knowledge, is relatively, straight forward. But, their functioning knowledge is much more difficult to grasp. Simply watching them do their work may not reveal the logic behind it ? this is the challenge faced by ethnographers throughout academe ? and this is the challenge faced by students 'watching' their lecturers.

¹ I expect I am as guilty of doing this as anyone. But then again, taking in everything from such a lecture is hard work.

² Psychodrama - sociodrama. I wouldn't worry to much about the difference here.

We've started the first of the summits. In these, the various functional specialists get together, hopefully, to share knowledge about their roles (rather than to share competitive information). I suspect, well know, that I didn't explain the point of them well today. But nevertheless, there is a strange paradox that occurs when we hold summits. It takes a while before people begin to appreciate the usefulness of the summits; but it is necessary to do the CEOs and CFOs first¹. Consequently, some of the benefits of the summit are lost.

It's probably worth me commenting of the efficacy of the summits. Firstly, I don't believe that these sessions disadvantage any team. i.e. If they were going to win, they will win. What they do is to build capacity in all of the companies. e.g. Last semester only a few teams were insolvent at the end of the simulation, whereas, without the summits, as many as one third of the teams may become insolvent.

¹ I'll leave it to the reader to decide why this is the case.

I found today's class very revealing. I was a little surprised to find out how difficult students are finding it to select a particular topic for their upcoming assignment this week. I spent some time after the formal part of the class, going around the four or five teams that stayed in the class room, talking about the assignment. There seems to be a lot of concern about choosing the right topic and about find theory to go with it. Some students are also daunted by the length of the assignment (2,500 words).

So here are my "consolidated" comments from those discussions today. My standard disclaimer at this point is that I hope this isn't used a formula for writing the assignment ? it is really only to some approaches; I recall one stage I student, having been told by the tutor that the short (1000 word) assignment needed about five paragraphs, getting very upset because she could only work out what four of the paragraphs were about. Anyway, thinking about the length of the assignment ? 2,500 words may seem like a lot of words, and it may be tempting to try and address several issues rather than just one (as a way to 'pad' the assignment). But my recommendation is that one issue is all that is needed.
Allowing one or two pages for a rich description of the situation (500 words), and some reflection on it (500 words) that is 1,000 words. We're half way there. Bring some theory to bear on the situation ? we'll that has to be 250 ? 500 words to show you know what you're talking about that all totals 1,250 ? 1,500 words. Now, the introduction is likely to be a page long (250 words), and the conclusion is probably going to be two pages (500 words). That's another 750 words. Giving a grand total of 2,000 ? 2,250 words. This is close enough, especially when the reference list is added in. Of course, I'm not sure I would structure it exactly that way, we all have our own style; I'd probably interleave the theory and the reflection ? but I would probably write them separately first.

The next issue is references. Again, I reluctant to give a specific number, but 12 isn't unreasonable at stage III, but it is possible to do an excellent job with a third of that number. (It's also possible to do a bad job with 12.) Think about why you are using references ? what is the point? They aren't there to please the reader. I've more to say about the references, and theory, later.

Choosing the topic doesn't have to be hard. I think one of the easiest ways is to look back at your journals and see what seems important to you. I'll use one of Amit's journals as an example. In that entry he mentions the issue of power¹. It would be fairly straight forward, I imagine, for Amit to write a longer more reflective description around that. Using his Organisation Behaviour textbook, he could readily identify two or three key authors (if he doesn't remember them from OB), and their main works. He could read those, and immediately have refreshed his existing knowledge about power. Add in a couple of other things that impact on power (maybe leadership ? again taken from OB), and he is done. The trick, if there is one, is to build on what you know rather than learning something completely new² (unless, of course you are really interested in the specific issue).

Alternative, Amit could look at the issue of incrementalist approaches to strategy in his group. Drawing on the readings he is doing in another class, most of his theoretical background is complete ? it's just a matter of making sense of his experiences, thus far, in those terms. i.e. Why does he value one over the other.

Of course, if something of particular interest to you, say mental maps, then do that. Both readings are good starting points and other can be found; I was pleased to hear two students talking about this, and one guided the other to a specific book that introduces the the topic.

¹ As I write this, I'm wondering how many essays on power we might now get.

² There is some research that shows that learning something completely new for an assignment results in sub-optimal results.

Took a few hours off from writing new application for ethics approval to see Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman in Paycheck. I quite enjoyed it; but it certainly is in the ironing movie genre. Since we had free tickets, I wasn't too disappointed by it.

Lisa thought the plot was weak, and I tend to agree with her. Not only that but the action sequences were 'over-engineered'. I feel that Jonny Woo's style is showing its age.

Interestingly enought though, it did raise a topic I've mentioned here before of structuralism vs. existentialism. Maybe not in those words, and I'm sure a philospher would debate my use of the terms and their applicability to Paycheck. But, it did look at how much we can shape the future, if the future is know to us. For example, supose a firm has detailed information about its sole competitor, what are the outcomes? And if they know that the other knows, what then? I suspect that game theorists would have a ball (and would consider the films 'logic' to be rather weak too).

I haven't seen The butterfly effect yet, but I image that, like Paycheck it cause me wonder about points of leverage and how little needs to change in order to have a large effect. (The old, if a butterfly flaps its wings in a rain forest it can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world, line.)

Last night, Lisa and I went to see Abigail's Party at the Maidment Studio. As the program says:

North London, 1997 - the year of the Queen's Silver Jubilee. The Sex Pistols are gearing up to blow Donna Summer and Jose Feliciano out of the charts forever. The neighbours have been invited around for a few drinks, maybe a bit of dancing, and if you're lucy, light snobbery, relentless bullying and social humiliation.

Yes, it's a get the guest play. I do enjoy those. Perhaps my chums at ATCP will have some thoughts on that.

We really enjoyed the play. It was very well done.

Two of the players stand out for a special mention. Bernadette Brewer played Beverly. She was wonderfully over the top, and her dress was a feat of engineering. Also, Linda Johns was marvellous as Sue, the divorced neighbour. Her timing and demeanour were perfect.

Whilst we were at the theatre, I bumped into Tony. He was in the first cohort of the BBIM at Tamaki. I was surprised that I remembered his name as it has been over four years since I taught him. He must have completed his degree and be in the first graduating year of the BBIM. That is a great achievement. Well done, Tony. I'll be looking forwar to seeing him cross the stage at the graduation ceremony in May.

Anyway, he seems to be working for Tech Site Services , so I guess the IM part of his degree is paying off.

I've spent a happy few hours merging two weblogs together. At first I thought it would be as easy as changing a few SQL tables.

Alas, that is only half the job. There are also the categories that also need to be redone. Not a straight forward job. Perhaps I should have done some research first - but much of the fun is in finding out.

Anyway, it's done now, and everything seems to be working okay. If there are any problems particularly with entries from before 2004, please let me know.

From: dan margan
Sent: Thu 3/25/2004 22:40
To: p.smith@auckland.ac.nz
Subject: MGMT 301 Assignment 1

Hi Peter, I'm just writing to try and clarify a point about the first assignment due next Friday. We have been asked to make academic links between our groups' behaviour and the literature (scholarly, not textbooks). Does this mean all references must come from journals such as the course readings and other related ones and no text book references at all. Also, does scholarly refer to peer reviewed articles only. If you could clarify these for me I would be very thankful.

Thanks heaps.
Dan

From: "Smith, Peter"
To: "dan margan"
Subject: RE: MGMT301 Assignment 1
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 08:51:04 +1200

Hi Dan,

Thanks for you email and your question it contains. I imagine others have the same question.

I don't remember if it was the first lecture, or the second one, but I do recall taking about depth of understanding and the need to read deeply. I'm always nervous of using examples; too often, in the past, I've given an example only to find that 40% of the class take up that issue, regardless of how fitting the example is to their situation.

With that 'disclaimer', let's look at an example:
The explanation of group think in the stage I text book let's one know that the phenomena exists, but doesn't allow you to 'do' much with it - the text book isn't very helpful in a practical sense. The stage II text book (Organisational Behaviour), goes further and describes it better, but it is still somewhat superficial. So if you think your group, for example, is exhibiting 'group think' then perhaps it would be good to read Janis's original work to get the 'full story' (and maybe read a few articles that draw on Janis). Then, having that deeper understanding, you can more effectively explorer the extent to which your team is exhibiting Group Think.

Does that logic make sense?

It takes a judgement call as to what is scholarly - and part of any degree is reaching an understanding as to why something is scholarly. In general, peer reviewed articles are more scholarly than books. For the purposes, of this assignment you should consider textbooks as being books that have a primary role for teaching (as opposed to other books whose primary role is to report research, as opposed some books that provide a summary of the 'state of the art' (an example of this would be the Handbook of Organization Studies)). Text books are often a good place to start; they should point you to more scholarly works.

I hope all of this helps.

Regards
Peter

A rushed Bibliography (You'd better double check these)

Janis, I. L., (1972). Victims of Groupthink: Psychological study of foreign-policy decisions and fiascoes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Janis, I. L. & Mann, L. (1977). Decision making: A psychological analysis of conflict, choice, and commitment. New York: Free Press.

Darl and I have spent sometime talking about the game of Mornington Crescent¹. In particular, I've been thinking about it in relation to David Boje's Stories of the Storytelling Organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as Tamara-Land'. From recollection, Boje's thesis (in the article) is that organisations can been seen as a collection of concurrent, and competing stories. Perhaps, for some people in some organisations, rather than playing out stories, they are actually playing out games of Mornington Crescent - games where the rules are wholly unclear (and possibly misunderstood).

Perhaps if we view organisations attempts at strategy as games of Mornington Crescent, that might explain why there is such contradictory evidence for the efficacy of strategy².

BTW, did you know that David Boje's current university is one of the greatest centres of research on chili plants?

¹ For details of the real basis of Mornington Crescent have a look at Wikipedia

² There probably should be a reference here.

I've known Darl for over ten years now. I have a lot of trust in him. I've known Emma for two years, and she has never done anything to make me think I can't trust her. So why was I worried about today's class? Perhaps, at the heart of it, is trust in the technology. One thing we know about virtual teams is that problems with technology are not unknown - especially when trying something new. Having been in the IT industry for a long time, I'm well aware (or is it overly sensitive) to the problems that can arise. I've seen so many projects stumble on the first trial. And, because of the unique characteristics of MGMT 301, every session is 'first time' in someway or another -- and thus, there is the 'opportunity' for failure (or is it to learn). And so, trust isn't only about people, its about trusting systems too.

After class, Darl, Emma, and I were talking about what went on in the class and in the subsequent meetings with students. Darl made some really good points and I hope he has time to journal them (for all to see). Typically, in total, we spend several hourse together each week talking about the class (how we did - what we learnt from the students - what might be different - where the class is going - etc). Is sometimes wonder if students talk about use as much as we talk about them. We seek to be reflexive in our work - in fact peer review (by our peers) forms an important part of our process. Relatively speaking, very little time, when we are together as a team, is given over to 'content'. We trust that if our processes are good (we've been working on them for years, and I think they are good) then the content will follow. Most of the content work is done individually and then bring it together for integration. That almost sounds like a Mike's Bikes team, doesn't it.

So, to my point. I trust my collegues and I trust our process; but, there are somethings that lie outside of those two things. Micro processes, such as today's email in class, need to attended to - possibly more than the big things. As the saying goes, "For want of a nail, the shoe was lost ..."

The results from the first roll-over of Net Mike are available now. Until Monday, teams will only know the results in their own world. I wonder what lessons lessons are taken away from this first roll-over. How many people will consider their assumptions confirmed? What will happen in those firms that did not perform according to the managers expectations?

All over the know Mike's Bikes universe maps will be confirmed or disconfirmed. Maps will be considered reliable or will be discarded and new maps will be sought for.

On one level, I'm a big fan of the scientific method especially in its guise of falsificationism. As an aside, I occasionally teach a course called Managing Science & Technology. At the start of the course we (it is taught by the faculties of Science and Business & Economics) often ask What is the scientific method?, and usually this is followed by along silence in the class. Anyway, the rough idea of the scientific method is that we develop theories about how 'things' work and test those theories by look for proof that the theory is broken. For example, if we believe that all swans are white, one approach to proving that would be to look at swans. Every time we saw a white swan, that would mean our theory was working. If we found a black swan, we'd have to discard that theory and come up with a better one. Of course, it would be nice to get all the swans together and check them all ? but sometimes that luxury is not available.

As yet another aside, the expression It is the exception that proves the rule is often mis-used. The use of the word prove in this case is similar to test; in other words, the expression should be It is the exception that tests if the rule [is right or wrong]. Thus, if there is an exception, then the rule is wrong (or incomplete).

Anyway, for a more complete explanation of falsificationsim read about Karl Popper and here.

However, what happens in reality is different. When asked to prove something, people will seek confirmation rather than disconfirmation. So, rather than looking for a swan that is not white, people take every sighting of a white swan as further evidence that they were right. So, if you want to know if the map you are using is a good map, look for the ways in which it is wrong, rather than the ways in which it is right ? then you'll know the limits of the map (because we already know maps are wrong in some ways, and right in others).

So, for example, if you believe that increasing marketing has a positive impact, how can you prove it?

It's been a busy week. John Gray has been visiting from Australia as we are working on a research project together. Because of this, I've also spent some time with a RA (Research Assistant) who is working on the project with me. As, it happens she is an alumnus of MGMT 301. Somewhat unexpectedly, she raised the question of "Would the simulation be reset after the practice roll-overs, or would it just carry on?" It seems that she and has a number of friends who are currently in MGMT 301, and the question is apparently up for many in the class, and apparently it has been the cause of some concern, as illustrated by the question and reflections below.

?I have been told that the simulation was not reset after the practice rollovers in previous semesters?.

For the next two hours, we were exactly like those people stuck in the Pyrenees but not with one map but two. I told the team that we needed to come to a decision a common ground, otherwise the strategies put forward would have conflicting underlying assumptions. Oh, I could see the other teams moving ahead with their strategies in blissful ignorance while we were going to die in the mountains due to information!!! So desperate was I that I (& the team) we visited Dahl and Peters office three times. As it was outside office hours we were out of luck, I resorted to email. I really didn't want to because I felt that I would be able to better gauge the response with some cues. I actually said this to Dahl (in the email) and I got back a response from Peter about trust, reliability (Full story at CONSPIRACY THEORY)

The RA and I spent a pleasant 15 minutes talking about her experiences of MGMT 301 and the facts that people in her class believed about Net Mike. Our discussion got me thinking about the way rumours seem to spread through the class. I rarely think, or imagine, that people in the class talk about the class to one another; that's probably a reflection of my own undergraduate experience - we never talked about the class as there was too much else going on. But, when remained about cases like this, it is fascinating to me that there is a grapevine and that it is alive and well.

It seems to happen most semesters that some new truth bubbles to the surface about what is will happen in the future. I've never been able to find out where these rumours start from. On the few times I've tried to track them down, I can never get past the ?I had a friend who did the course a few years ago?; people are unwilling to share that confidence.

Of course, what comes to my attention are the cases when the grapevine disseminates bad information; I probably never hear about all the times the grapevine is 100 per cent accurate. I'd be interested to hear from the class (in the form of comments to this entry), about the useful information that has come through the grapevine (and perhaps how it has been useful). I say this, because I'm wondering if there should be something extra in the black book.

Talking about the black book, I'm wondering if there is too much in it ? does information overload occur. Or, perhaps the black book needs to provide a better map to aid people's understanding.

I could go on at some length about the things it would be helpful to know from the class ? we glean a lot of information from the meetings with the teams, and from the assignments (that are yet to come). But often, the impact of little details (like the article How to win at Net Mike) do not get revealed to us in anything other than a off-hand way.

What I'm saying is, that perhaps it would be helpful to have a more complex and complete dialogue with people in the class - to see if there is a better way than the grapevine ? but I'm not sure of the extent to which people want that sort of connection.

I'm a little anxious. Okay it's not "extreme uneasiness of mind", but nevertheless I'm a little tense ...

We had expected to have Net Mike setup by now, and to have emailed all the class with their login details. Alas, it's Sunday and we still haven't been able to that. The 'whys and the wherefores' of the situation, how it came to be, don't really matter for purpose of this discussion. Rather than looking backwards, I am more interested in reflecting on this moment, as it is now.

So, why am I anxious?

Well, I suspect that there are a number of students who are chomping at the bit, waiting to get started. Some, I imagine, are keen and enthusiastic and want to get going. Others will be still unclear on what needs to be done and they will be hoping that getting started on making the decisions for their firm will help bring clarity to the task; i.e. learning through doing. Few, might be indifferent to the situation; but I doubt it. Whatever the reasons, I expect, there will be students who will be concerned at being unable to get into Net Mike.

Notice the language of the last paragraph.

It is my anticipation of the classes reaction that is at the root of my anxiousness. The interesting thing is that it isn't something 'real' that is causing this emotion. Rather, it is how I imagine things will be. The class may be fine with the situation. I don't know that. Nor do I know if they will have a problem with it.

But here's the strange thing. Now that I've mentioned it, it is more likely to happen the way I anticipated it happening. Perhaps when we get to the lecture on the social construction of reality it will be worthwhile revisiting this.

Sometime the interface to MovableType can be a little hard to work with; especially for that simple task of creating a journal entry. I find a lot of spelling mistakes slip through. So, at the moment, I am trying out Zempt. Zempt allows me to create the entry on my computer, check the spelling and then upload the entry to my blog. I'll be interested to see how it works out.

Of course, a program like Zempt can't fix all the other problems, such as: grammar, coherence, flow, etc. (but maybe one day).

I'm also trying out a program called w.bloggar. I'm not sure which is better yet - I'm still weighing up the pros and cons of each.

What I will say is that the spell check on each system is rather idiosyncratic. Zempt seems to work best; but it doesn't remember new words¹ (i.e. the dictionary add function doesn't seem to work). W.bloggar, on the other hand, doesn't handle URLs well and doesn't have a British dictionary (and the US dictionary throws British up as an error).

Also, Zempt, being targeted solely at Moveable Type, does seem to handle the features of the underlying blogging system better (e.g. formatting, categories, etc.).

¹ It seems that the dictionary problem is known to the folks at Zempt, and they are working on it.

I've just finished reading an article by Karl Weick (1996). In it, he discusses Norman Maclean 's 1992 book, Young men and Fire. I'm not going to dwell on the story of the Mann Gulch disaster that forms the story at the core of the article. Rather, I'd like to recapitulate a few of his ideas regarding sense making.

Firstly, he points out that sense making is about 'contextual rationality'. That is to say, the sense making perspective accepts that rationality takes place within a context, and that context is often grounded in ambiguity and imprecision. Thus, the decisions that get made in such an environment are, necessarily, shaped by that, confused and confusing, context.

For Weick, the solution is in leadership that fosters four things: improvisation, wisdom, respectful interaction, and communication. As often happens in the writings of academics he imbues each of these attributes with meanings that are specific rather than relying on their common-or-garden meanings.

• Improvisation: "brining to the surface, testing, and restructuring of one's intuitive understanding of phenomena on the spot, at a time when action can still make a difference" (p. 147).
• wisdom: "ignorance and wisdom grow together. The more people learn about a particular domain, the more questions they raise about other areas of the same domain" (p. 148).
• respectful interaction: This really comprises of three things:-
  • Trust: "respect the reports of others and be willing to base believes and actions on them" (p.148).
  • Honesty: "report so that others may use your observations in coming to valid beliefs" (p.148).
  • Self-respect: " respect your own perceptions and beliefs and integrate them with reports of others without depreciating them or yourself" (p.148).
• Communication: "nonstop talk is a crucial source of coordination in complex systems that are susceptible to disasters" (p.148).

Whilst we, that is DPE, didn't have this specific article in mind at the time, I feel that much of these ideas are reflected in the learning outcomes for this course.

I wonder how many of the teams in the class will wrestle with this four things over the coming weeks?

For completeness, I'd just like to make a link between this article and one of the recommended readings for the course. Weick does also say in this article that "People are often thrust into unfamiliar roles to fulfil difficult tasks, and small mistakes can combine into something monstrous" (1996, p. 144). This idea foreshadows his later work on High Reliability Organizations (HROs); as is discussed in Diane Coutu's conversation with Weick, entitled Sense and reliability.

References

Coutu, D. L. (2003). Sense and reliability: A conversation with celebrated psychologist Karl E. Weick. Harvard Business Review. 84(4). 84-90
Weick, K. E. (1996). Prepare your organization to fight fires. Harvard Business Review. 74(3). 143-148

Next week's topic for class is around sense making. We're framing it in terms of maps and compasses, and so as I've been doing things this week, I've been thinking about things in terms of maps.

Well one of my maps is broken. So I'm not sure what to do. Let me explain. A student has emailed me with a question. "So, what's the problem", I hear you ask. The difficulty is that I don't know how to respond because:

• I'd expect the student to know this, form stage I, and
• It is easy to find this information from the help built into the simulation, and
• A quick Google, brings up plenty of help on this.

In any case, it was pretty easy to answer, which I did, but it has left me thinking.

I know my map is broken because I'm become very defensive over this. I'm not sure which map is broken; is it the one around teaching or the one about being a student. It would easy to externalise thinks and say the problem lies with my map around students, and that the student broke it. But that would be very unfair.

Part of the problem is that my maps (around teaching and being a student) are very strong. The consequences of strong maps is that information that doesn't fit tends to be ignored and discarded.

But, that's not happening in this case. Maybe I need to let go of the map and draw a new one. McCaskey calls this a little dying and I can see (well feel) why.

At this stage, I don't know how the map needs to be different - but at least I'm working on it.

I suppose I should have completed the plug for the seminar by saying it is on the 25 March 2004, from 3:00 p.m until 7:00. If you're interested in attending, and you're a postgrad, PhD student, or staff then you should contact Judith McMorland. Places are limited.

Judith McMorland and I have decided to run a short seminar or workshop for Post-grad students, Doctoral candidates, and staff. The title of the seminar is Exploring the year ahead: creating responses to challenges and change and the flyer promises:

An experiential participatory workshop for PhD and Masters students journeying into ?unknown territory? of postgraduate study (thesis writing, data gathering, interviewing, maintaining self, holding it all together?). We will identify typical and specific challenges and changes and explore ways of devising enlivening responses.

The basic plan is to do some role training. And before you ask, what's role training:-

Role training is an effort to help us perform adequately in future situations. It is a method of learning that aims to bring about a rise in the spontaneity level of an individual and combine this with practice of a new expression. Making an apparently minor change in an area of our functioning, which we recognise as a role or part role, can result in a ripple effect in a larger sphere or system. Role training focuses on the development of one aspect of a role, but has in its larger view the transformation of the groups and culture in which we live. Wellington Psychodrama Training Institute.

Anyway, at the bottom of the flyer is says that I'm a sociodramatist in training. So, I shouldn't be surprised that some (thanks Karla) has asked "what's a sociodramatist"? So, as a trainee, I suppose it would be generally a good thing if I briefly outlined what sociodrama is about. Firstly, let me start by saying that sociodrama is not intended to be the therapeutic; whereas psychodrama, which is from the same stable, is intended to therapeutically useful. Thus, the sociodramatist tends to work more with typical roles, e.g. a student who is Peter, rather than psychodramatic roles e.g. Peter as a student. Secondly, sociodrama is an action method - there is a lot of "doing", as situations are enacted out at various levels of abstraction and concreteness.

The sociodramatist is concerned with the social networks of the protagonist; and so overall the sociodramatist seeks to improve the efficacy of people in groups. It is a method that helps one work with groups - this is probably a gross simplification, and perhaps those who are more experienced would say it differently, but it is my current working definition.

I've been doing sociodrama for a little over a year know, and I am slowly 'getting it'. But, I suspect it will take many more years before it really makes sense; hence the title "sociodramatist in training".

I've been doing some prep¹ for next weeks lecture, and I stumbled across Blog-Fu. Whilst that site is mainly about information design² it does also link to the work of Edward Tufte. He was the person who revitalised interest in Minard's stunning 'map' of Napoleon's March.

It suppose it is at least two years ago that David Barry and I were talking about these issues (of maps and meanings). Strangely, I had forgotten about that discussion until I saw the Napoleon's March map again.

The maps that we have, either on paper or in our head, shape our understanding of the world. I wonder how many people have taken a half-an-hour journey on the tube³ (changing trains or lines) because the map indicated that was the most direct route; when it would have been quicker in time, and shorted in distance to walk from the station. The problem is that people forget that the map isn't geographically accurate.

This applies to many maps we use. Whilst they are accurate on some level, e.g. the connection between stations, the implicit simplification that a map introduces also means that it must be inaccurate at some other level (e.g. the physical distance between stations).

It is this duality of maps, being accurate and necessarily inaccurate at the same time that piques my interest.

¹ I was looking up some information on the London Underground. In particular, see Tufte on the Beck's map of the London Underground

² Is information design an oxymoron?. Can information be designed? I expect many people may want to argue that point.

³ The tube is the colloquial name for the London Underground

After talking with Darl, I've sent an email out through Cecil to the class about journalling.

Possibly, more importantly, I've offered to host anyone in the class who wants to maintain their journal on-line. I can think of several advantages of doing this. Firstly, being a public forum, it might encourage people to be more thoughtful about what they are writing. Secondly, and also as a result of being public, it might help them to commit more to doing the journal, i.e. It's that psychological thing of making a public commitment. Finally, it could just be out-and-out fun.

Of course there are some downsides. The system I'm using here, Movable Type, is one of the best blogging systems and it can be pretty straight forward to use - but if anyone wants to customise the look (and why shouldn't they) it can take the notice sometime to get to grips with the complexity of the system.

Oh well, I think I'll just sit back and see if there are any takers.

I've just looked at the main web page for the reflective practitioner and realised it doesn't parse the entries well. In particular the Textile codes don't make sense to PHP (which processes the page). Hmm, I shall have to think about that problem.

We'll. I had been using the PHP code to process this page based on the work of Virtual Venus, but alas, that had some problems. However, a few minutes Googling found this solution by Sun Pig which seems to work well.

As we DPE know it is hard to journal well. It doesn't come naturally to every. So, I thought it would be useful to do some of my own journalling for everyone, especially in the class, to see. My hope is that it will help the students to develop their own practice of journaling.

By practice, I should say that my idea isn't for them to copy what I'm doing in some version of monkey see, monkey do , but rather it is to help them to develop their own practice in the sense of bricolage¹.

In the following reflections, I shall refer to me or I a lot. That doesn't mean I am claiming credit for the ideas, events, etc. Rather, I am honouring that these thoughts are mine, and that it would be unfair of me to assume I know what the others of DPE think about this.

My first hint for those new to journalling is Writing a journal isn't the same as writing down one's stream of consciousness. I've spent some time thinking about what I want to say. So far, I spent about 20 minutes, as I walked to my car, thinking about what stood out for me in today's class. I spent the drive home, another 30 minutes, thinking in more detail about the topics I would cover. And in actually writing (pen to paper, or hand to keyboard) it has taken me about 40 minutes so far. That's not to say I'm crafting every word, and worrying about every punctuation mark; I'm not. I imagine this journal is rife with typos, etc. But, I am taking care of what I'm thinking, and that takes time.

I was pretty pleased with the choice of music for today's class. Duelling banjos from Deliverance hinted at many of the themes I wanted to explore in the presentation of today's topic of teams. Note here, I was concerned with how we would present, - the process of the delivery, and the music was to accompany that, rather than the content of class. There has been a lot written on teams (today's topic), and the question in my mind was, How do I get the class interested in knowing more about teams? Clearly, I can't tell them everything that is known about teams - there just isn't enough time (and it would be pretty inefficient). So, the aim was to get them engaged with the topic, to the extent that they would read some of the recommended readings.

Overall, I was pretty pleased with all the class. However, there were two parts that didn't work well for me. Firstly, I was rather overwhelmed by the number of students who hadn't hit $20 SHV². Consequently, I'm not sure how much those people who had problems with their SHV, actually 'got' what I was saying in the computer lab. Based on the results from other years, perhaps I could have predicted this; but then again, the lab session was added at the last moment - next time we can consider structuring it differently - maybe a prepared work sheet, or a structured discussion on what the students found that works. Still thinking about the SHV, I was surprised by the number of people who got just over the required $20, e.g. $21.60 or even $20.22, and stopped. I hindsight I can understand why this would be, and, I if it had been me, I would have stopped like that too.

The other thing that didn't work well for me was sending the groups away for Team Time³. This was a flow on the problems with the lab - we didn't get back in time, and, in order to vacate the classroom on time, we were somewhat brief in our instructions for Team Time.

The thing I was most happy with was the dialogue with Darl during the first hour. I think that flowed well and the students generally seemed engaged. There was enough structure there to ensure we covered the territory we wanted to; but not so much that it seemed forced. I'm really looking forward to next week's class to see how that plays out.

Well, I've been at this for several hours now. So I think I will draw it too a close.

¹ As an aside, the notion of bricolage is very important to me in my own research and study of strategy-as-practice.

² ShareHolder Value. This is a simple measure of peoples' proficiency with the simulation.

³ Team Time is a period when the students are schedule to be working together, but independently. Thus, we can always be relatively sure that teams can (and do) meet.

MGMT 301 - Management Theory & Practice is a course at Stage III (that's typically, or ideally, in a student's final year at the University (if they are doing a major or similar in management).

The course is based around the use of Mike's Bikes and seeks to help students reflect on their practice as managers as they work in teams running a simulated bicycle company - and as they compete with other student run companies.

DPE - Darl, Peter, and Emma. We are the teaching team for MGMT 301 - Management Theory and Practice for semester 1 of 2004.

Darl and Peter have worked on the course for many years. This is Emma's first time working with Darl and Peter in this way.