Secrets can remind us of the countless human dramas, of frailty and heroism playing out silently in the lives of people all around us.

Frank Warren from Post Secret tells the story of over 500,000 secrets submitted….and he reminds us of the value of secrets, of keeping them, of sharing them and of the truths they contain.

The professor’s popular talks have detailed his experiments teaching with Twitter, YouTube videos, collaborative Google Docs—and they present a general critique of the chalk-and-talk lecture as outmoded. To get a sense of his teaching style, check out a video he made about one of his anthropology courses. In it, some 200 students designed their own imaginary cultures and ran a world-history simulation by sending updates via Twitter and a voice-to-text application called Jott.

Wesch has spent some time in the classrooms of other teachers observing how they make connections with students.

As Mr. Wesch began to rethink his teaching, he visited Mr. Sorensen’s class and was impressed by how the low-tech professor connected with students: “He’s a lecturer. He’s not breaking them up into small groups or having them make videos. That’s my thing, right? But he’s totally in tune with where they are and the struggle it takes to understand physics concepts. He is right there by their side, walking them through the forest of physics.”

I believe this to be true of any work relationship – the human connection between people – whether that is teacher/student, manager/worker etc and the quality of that relationship is what create the conditions for learning.  If the respect and interest (and wonder as detailed in this article) doesn’t exist then the conditions for learning cannot exist either.  All this is a way of reinforcing my view that we spend too little time attending to the human elements of organising and too much trying to get technology to do the job for us.  It’s heartening to see someone like Wesch re-evaluate his teaching stance while not abandoning his interest in technology all together.

Composing a mission statement isn’t as easy as it sounds. Should a mission describe what a museum is doing, or what it should be doing? Is it about tangible goals to which institutions are held accountable, or Platonic ideals to which they merely aspire? Should a museum’s mission offer an inventory of assets and activities, or will it work best as a crystallisation of core principles? How will it reflect a museum’s take on cultural progress, audience demographics, funding sources and technological opportunity?

Short or long, however, what lurks behind the carefully scripted sentences is a swirling cauldron of organisational politics.

All that aside there are other issues pertaining to mission statements.  My research into disappointment has generated some interesting insights into the relationship between disappointment and idealisation.  The more we create ideals, missions, visions and values that are aspirational rather than attainable the more we guarantee disappointment.  I’m all for ‘blue sky’ thinking but I’m also all for realistic and achievable plans that can be delivered and realised.  That’s not to say that all mission statements are guaranteed to generate disappointment it simply means that any strategic planning process must build in a ‘reality testing’ phase.  Keeping it real can’t eliminate disappointment but it can help us examine the relationship between fantasy and reality and in turn, create plans that can be realised and delivered.

Oh so much to learn from this sort talk from David Damberger….Organisations defend so rigorously against failure (or admitting it at least).  Its worth speculating about what our systems might be like if we admitted to being ‘ordinary’ rather than aiming for spectacular results which very often fail.  Damberger comes up with some interesting practical suggestions for how failure can be marshalled in the service of learning and cites the Engineers without Borders annual failure report.  I would like to suggest that we need new emotional leadership in organizations.  What do I mean? A type of leadership that sees emotion as a core element of organising.  Emotion is systemically manufactured and individually felt.  It is as much a part of the world of work as the physical or tangible products that are made.  A new type of leadership would put emotion back where it belongs at the hear of organizing and would also challenge the fear that it is personal, irrational, negative and disruptive.

If you feel like reading about failure head over here to Admitting Failure.  The site is full of fascinating stories of ‘failure’ and the learning they inspired.

We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create and to forgive ourselves for creating them.  Regret doesn’t remind us that we did badly. It reminds us that we know we can do better.

Our study shows that the way we view art is not rational, that even when we cannot distinguish between two works, the knowledge that one was painted by a renowned artist makes us respond to it very differently.

The fact that people travel to galleries around the world to see an original painting suggests that this conclusion is reasonable.

Professor Martin Kemp, an Emeritus Professor of the History of Art, reflecting on results showing that the brain signals of the viewers couldn’t distinguish between genuine and fake artworks.

 

This raises all kinds of fascinating questions – like, does it matter if it’s ‘real’ or not if we get enjoyment from it? What is the power of the institution or the curator in determining how we view art? etc etc.  The same can be said of promises made in business or by consultants.  But perhaps more interestingly (for me) it raises questions about any rational only approach to understanding or meaning making.  If we discount the irrational, the emotional and the unconscious then there’s a swathe of intelligence extruded from the conversation…must do more thinking/musing on this.

Hat Tip Culture 24 - the paper will be published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

The Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR)

Center for Socio-Analytic Studies

Monthly Case Conference

Wednesday, November 30

11:30-1:00

Annette Clancy, MSc

Organizational Consultant, Psychotherapist &

 Doctoral Candidate University of Bath (England) School of Management

‘In the so-called arts it has always been acknowledged that many of the things we value most — the gods and God, love and sexuality, mourning and amusement, character and inspiration, the past and the future — are neither measurable or predictable. Indeed, this may be one of the reasons they are so abidingly important to us. The things we value most, just like the things we most fear, tend to be those we have least control over.’ Adam Phillips

Socio-analytic dimensions of making the case for the arts in Ireland:

IPTAR West Conference Room

140 West 97th Street

11:30-1:00

The Case Conference Series:

• Consist of a presentation of case material from an organizational consultation, an executive coaching engagement, or a presentation relevant to socio-analysis.
• The format is designed to be interactive.
• All participants attending the case conference are invited to present.

For further information:

James Krantz, Ph.D., Director,

Laurence J. Gould Center for Socio-Analytic Studies

JKrantz {at} Worklab(.)com

I hereby nominate this video and this song to serve as an invocation to every professional arts conference in 2012. It’s short. It’s to the point. It carries an important message. And it sticks with you (boy, does it stick with you).

Hat tip Andrew Taylor

We have such a history of creating functional but ugly objects – Dublin has been blighted by functional architecture which replaced resplendent Georgian Houses; housing projects were thrown up in the suburbs during the 1970s and more recently small towns in rural ireland were populated by empty apartment blocks.  My frustration with the ugliness and unreliability of previous electronic goods eventually made me switch to the more expensive Apple product and since then I haven’t looked back.  Not only have the products done what they are supposed to have – they are simply beautiful machines to hold and to use.

Jobs famously decried being a technician or an artist – he saw himself as a leader of artists.  In many respects he was a curator – he collected talented people and created the conditions in which they could create beautiful objects.  Curation is as much about what is left out as it is about what is included and this is where Jobs excelled.  I admire him because he made things beautiful again.  He reminded us that functionality is not an end in its own right.  Beauty, aesthetics, simplicity are all linked to civilization and what it means to be human. If ever there was an advocate for the arts; the requirement for beauty in our lives; the importance of civility particularly at a time of recession and uncertainty, we need look no further than Steve Jobs.

May he rest in peace.