thinkfetti

The blending stump is an artist’s tool, used for blending shading lines into smooth shading, or “value.” It’s made of something like paper, sharpened into something like pencil shape, but the end of it is not perfectly sharp or defined, but rather like a small top knot.

Blending with a blending stump is hard (for me, at least). It’s easy to run over the border or contour I’m trying to blend toward, so the distinction between one, smoothly varying shape and the neighboring, also smoothly varying shape is violated, blurred.

Or, being afraid of running over the borderline, I don’t blend close enough to the border contour, and so there’s a region of blended values and then a border of unblended pencil strokes close to the border line itself.

I think of my time as department chair at my university, and of the problems I faced as ombudsman and general, all-around smoother of disagreements and angry people. It’s true: there was always either too much smoothing (real distinctions were “brushed over” in the effort to cool tempers), or not enough smoothing (sometimes, it’s just not practical or even possible to smooth and soothe to the point where everything looks balanced.)

The choice is then whether or not to keep practicing, in spite of the limitations of yourself and your materials.

I was teaching a music appreciation course this morning, and we found ourselves talking about syncopation. Syncopation in music is a delightful, playful rhythmic effect where a note is emphasized by being played “off the beat.” It’s kind of a springboard effect: the diving board went down “on the beat” and now bounds up after the beat. The note that gets its pizzazz launching from the rebounding board is described as “syncopated.”

But just being “off the beat” doesn’t itself make a note syncopated; there has to be some emphasis on the note that is caused by its spring-like relationship to the beat. There are plenty of ways to play notes between beats so that they aren’t syncopated.

One interesting aspect of syncopation is that the effect requires a beat in order to exist, even though the syncopated note is necessarily not sounding together with the beat. No beat, no syncopation. Now the beat can be overt, as with an accompanying drumset, or it can be implied, something constructed real-time in the mind of the listener by imagining what beat could be present, given all the other notes. But if there is only rhythmic mush, with no beat either overt or implied, then there is no possibility for syncopation. There may be emphasis, accent, but it would not be the special kind of emphasis that draws its power from the surrounding structure by being playfully off.

And this brought me to consider adapting these concepts to management, specifically to a couple types of problematic management:

If there is a structure but no room for difference then syncopation will be absent. Having everything happening on the same beat removes the opportunity for the special enhancement of an idea that bounces up off the beat.

But equally stifling is management without a structuring beat, either an overt one with clear and consistent stated policies and procedures, or an implied structure that organizational members can construct and understand themselves by observing all the notes. Without any beat, there is no way to syncopate, to express the positive and playful energy that can be generated by being off the beat.

I just concluded several days of intensive, one-on-one training in problem solving with Tim Mezel, a senior problem solver at Albuquerque’s Intel fab. After the first segment of our work together, Tim said, “now you’re getting very dangerous!”

This is a very different - and very positive - read on what it means to be dangerous. Effecting change. Actually solving problems instead of spinning around and around, wringing hands and living with problems. Dangerous to the status quo.

For many reasons, individuals and groups are usually unwilling or unable to let others help them solve problems. This overarching “metaproblem” isn’t going to be solved once and for all, and it’s probably not worth getting depressed about that.

Helping where possible (by being aware of the “metaproblem” and effective in tackling ordinary problems) and moving along when it’s not possible to help (no real need to blame anyone in this case, and it might work out to come back again later) may be a good way to go.

So much of my reading is “constellation-ally” self-organizing: I have at any one time some well-defined themes of interest and some fuzzy themes just below my conscious awareness, and in my reading I pick up books in different disciplines without staying in any one discipline or genre.

The “sense” in my variety of reading selections comes - emerges - later. It’s an experience of definite, luminous (illuminating) connections arising between areas that seemed related before, where the relationships before were vague and incapable of generating new ideas.

Some of my reading now is in areas of leadership, problem-solving, intelligence vs. mindfulness, and fertile connections between Eastern and Western thought. I was reading in several of these areas in 2000 when I first started exploring ways to model creativity, and I have experienced a lot to enrich my thinking in this constellation of ideas and themes since then, particularly through failures and successes in teaching and leading.

It looks as though I may have some opportunities to reflect on these connections in the coming months, especially in the context of a new problem-solving course I’ll be developing (more on that later). One thing that I anticipate and hope will allow time and some mental headroom for this reflection is the end of the semester next week!

Many things that are interesting to think about are also discouraging, at least initially. The “tragedy of the commons” is one such subject. The commons is communal property - imagine a square of pasture where everyone can graze their livestock. Each individual is allowed to add another animal to graze, because the commons belongs to everyone. Of course, it’s in the public’s best interest not to overgraze the pasture, but at the same time, individuals aren’t punished or fined by incrementally adding to the number of animals grazing. The tragedy of the commons reflects the tendency of individual, or local incentive, to trump global concerns: it seems that the commons generally tends to lose out, to the extent that there aren’t protective provisions in place.

In countries where taxes are collected, some of the revenues support public benefits. But in no such country is it optional to pay taxes, because the group of individual potential taxpayers would succumb to the tragedy of the commons.

As a department chairman, most of my work is in a supporting role for my department. I do some required tasks (reports and such) so that others in the department don’t have to. (Other department chairs choose to delegate this kind of work to other department members - that doesn’t really matter to my point.) But I am also the go-to person for faculty requests - everything from preferential consideration on course assignments to course release time, travel funding, student or colleague-related problem solving, or other special requests.

I do what I can to help the department as a whole function effectively and efficiently, and I also do what I can to help individual faculty members succeed in their careers. But I am the commons. I serve all, but each has some incentive to try to get something from me, and once I have been overgrazed, I will have no resources left to help the community.

I can see that I must generate my own protections in this type of service role, because no one else has acted to create them.