Jack Park
Palo Alto, California
650 388 1108
jackpark@thinkalong.com
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2002 10:12:33 -0700
03 00050 60 02092304
Mr. Morris E. Jones
morris.jones@intel.com
Intel Corporation
2200 Mission College Blvd
Santa Clara, CA 95052 8119
..
Subject:
Bridge to a New Way of Working Begins with Study
Dear Morris,
Thanks again, Morris [for
your letter
today on Rod's request help building a
bridge to a new way of working that begins with study... ]
..
I think it to be quite amazing that what you say here mirrors many of my
own views on the situation.
..
When I read Rod's records, what I see is his constant warping of what he
observes to fit into his own metaphors and views. Rod has asked me to take
a look at some writing of Dave Snowden and Rod's own take on Snowden's
work. Meanwhile, Rod complains that Snowden must not understand knowledge
management (as Rod understands it) because there is no apparent "work
product". Always, Rod returns to his record as proof that he (Rod) is the
only person on the planet that understands knowledge management (as Rod
defines it).
.. Yesterday, when Rod completely ignored what you wrote, I pretty much
decided that I wanted to write to Rod and ask him to take me off his cc
list and stop phoning me. I didn't act; he called last night. We had a
very long talk. During most phone calls, I get wind that Rod seems to
understand that something is amiss, and he will even agree quite strongly
with some of my opinions. But, nothing comes of that.
..
I am going through this kind of problem with another very intelligent human
right now, one who completely agrees with me that he needs to back off his
instructivist mannerisms and become more constructivist. In that situation, as
with my experiences with Rod, nothing changes. Nothing, it seems, will ever
change.
.. I'm just not smart enough to know what is right in the present situation;
rather, I live on my own intuitions and my own process of reinventing
myself (a divorce will do that to some people). I knew a man who went to
his grave extremely unhappy that he never became the likes of Bill Piper,
Clyde Cessna, Walter Beech, or any of the other aviation greats, even
though he was the designer of a couple of extremely important aircraft
(Piper Cherokee, and Lockheed P2V). I just don't want to go to my grave
unhappy that I didn't make it in some field, so, I take quite seriously the
notion of periodic self-reinvention. Bill Lear's autobiography reveals his
strong belief that people should change careers every 5 years. That
notion, it turns out, seems to hold for me. That tiny story fragment lays
the foundation for the way I view Rod and his activities; I have a powerful
distaste for ossified thinking and stuck records.
..
Right now, I think Rod's best hope resides in Gary Johnson, who, I think,
is about to take possession of a copy of SDS. I don't think Gary is
burdened, as I am, with the notion that looking at SDS would interfere with
his own processes (as it would with me: what I see in a product, I often
hack into some open source project, and I just don't want to be known for
stealing proprietary ideas).
..
Rod's process, in my view, is one of story telling. Snowden claims that
story telling is the right process. So do I. I'm playing with "augmented
story telling" where there are two spaces, one for story telling
(protected, not interactive) and one for story discussion (fully
interactive). SDS lacks the other space. When I mention this to Rod, he
gets thoroughly confused and thinks I'm asking him to let others edit his
records (I am not: read what I just said), and then he says: "write to me
and I'll mention your ideas in the record" (yea, right! as filtered with
Rod's own view of what I just said). When I talk about interactive, that's
precisely what I mean. SDS is not that in any sense of the term.
.. In any case, it seems to me that we have pounded on Rod enough for one day.
As mentioned below, there doesn't seem to be progress, but for me, it's not
all that entertaining anymore.