Kafka on the train
We were philosophical at first. It was, after all, nobody's fault.
At the station, the electronic information boards had been down so they'd directed us to board our ten-minute ride to Croydon by hand signals and shouts. Unfortunately, it's an hour to the coast (and an hour back again) and that's where our train, an Express service, was going. Like I said, most of us were philosophical about this. Until the conductor demanded we pay an extra £45 for our seats.
There was an awed silence. Then there was pretty much the opposite of silence. One of the other passengers put it best:
Don't you get it? I don't pay for the *!%&$*ing seat! I pay you for a quick and painless journey to get to where I want to go! You should be paying me!Harvard Business Press are similarly awe-inspiring. One way to look at their books might be through a DIKW lens. The Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom model isn't perfect but it does give a sense of some of the possible reasons for reading the book I've just finished - 260 pages which,
". . . will show why you must begin building a game strategy now - and offer practical guidelines. . ."Data and Information
Facts and descriptions? Symbols and meanings? Pretty much any way you define data information, you'll still come to the same conclusion. Books are a terrible medium for both, with their primitive search and lack of opportunities for play.
Knowledge and Wisdom
Wisdom's difficult to define, but it's unlikely a book will make you any wiser than, say, a blog post or an article in a magazine. Wisdom's far more likely to be about the number of sources you've read than than the number of pages (in fact, it's just as likely to be a function of the books you haven't read. . .). You can compress wisdom into a book but getting it out takes time.
Which leaves knowledge.
Selling the Invisible
The first book which popped into my head when I was thinking of something which (a) helped me with 'knowledge' and (b) was relevant to this blog about learning. Selling the Invisible* has two qualities I feel I need:
- Half-baked: it's not all there. There are spaces for notes. The chapters are short. My copy is dog-eared and marked by jotted ideas for mini-projects which would confirm or deny the book's information. I've written questions and scrawled cryptic keywords, which only I would understand, referring to specific bits of personal experience data. One of the notes says simply, "Where the *!%& were you? Telephone helpline support!"
- Retellable: there's some good anecdotes. Anybody who was unlucky enough to have me as their manager knows this book.
Base units
I tweeted (by the way, you should follow me on Twitter):
"Reading another book that would work better as a slide-deck and a blog. . .
NASA wasted $326.7m on the Mars Climate Orbiter because different teams used different measurements. One team used the imperial pound-force while another was using the metric standard newton. The Bangkok Post on Sunday manages a similar trick of buffoonery when it proudly boasts of being the thickest newspaper on the market.
Harvard Business Press are like my Kafkaesque rail conductor demanding money for the seat I don't want. Like NASA and the newspapers, they've got their metrics wrong. Their publications are sold in billable units (ie books) rather than what is useful to me. The base unit of knowledge isn't bits, pounds, centimetres or facts - but the actionable idea.
I went to the business section of my local bookshop yesterday. I couldn't find a single book that I didn't think would be better as a slide-deck and a series of blog posts. This leaves publishers with a problem - how are they going to make me pay for it? I don't know and I don't care - it's not my problem if books turn out to be an accident of paper. In Czechoslovakia, a friend told me a 'socialist' joke: did you hear about the secret policeman who went to the bookshop and asked for a metre of books? Harvard Business Press, the joke's on you.
The more perspicacious among you will, of course, have noticed I've not mentioned 'Training Departments' yet. Or degree-awarding universities. Or school. But I never stopped thinking about them the entire time of writing this.
*I'm slightly embarrassed about choosing this book. I racked my brain for a couple of days and it's the one that kept springing to mind. I tried to censor myself and thing of something cooler, but some of the others were even less cool.
8 comments:
As someone in the process of writing two books, I struggle with the issues raised here on a daily basis.
BTW Hopefully you'll get round to lambasting Training (and Training Depts) soonish.
- Bob
Hi, Bob
I frequently lambast training and training departments - it's pretty much the reason this blog exists. Learning - too important to leave to the gatekeepers of the Training Department.
Looking forward to reading about the flowchain, by the way. One of my pet theories is that there are many ways to carve up the world in a Wittingstein Rabbit gestalt shift kind of way eg there are two kinds of people. . . And that one of those 'two kinds' distinctions is between those who see flux and those who see structure. (Of course, all of us see both. But I don't think we're good at seeing both at the same time - hence the gestalt shift - or that [m]any of us are equally good at seeing both.)
I'm wondering if the flowchain idea is a fluxophile-systems meme and, therefore, structure-stasis-analysers will always be inimical towards it?
Here's me doing a little light lambasting:
Training Analysis
The Armageddon Problem
Back to front learning and scaling
JIT education
Bushido Training
And, ugh, Competency Frameworks
And some stuff related to writing business books:
The Story Gap
Apprehension Span
Microwave Training
I also think the DIKW model also serves a purpose. I modeled it it a slighty different way - http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/performance/understanding.html. I still don't think I got it right, but perhaps a bit closer.
Bob - I don't think we need to lambast training as it does serve a very useful purpose. I think what has really happened is that training departments have called eveything they do "training" thus its not training's fault but rather the fault of the other learning efforts we do.
I'm fine with DIKW. I feel that, as with all models, criticising its 'rightness' isn't helpful. If it functions as a social object (ie making a version of reality 'explicit and accessible') then that's all we need worry about.
But. There's a problem with these hierarchical models (cf Bloom) whereby you see people making inferences that aren't valid eg 10^4 Data = 10^3 Information = 10^2 Knowledge = 10 Wisdom. At each stage-boundary of the hierarchy we have a 'and then a miracle occurs' moment of transubtantiation.
That's the problem of users rather than the model itself, of course. But it does have that affordance, especially when depicted in the distillery-analogue of the pyramid.
With regard to training, in the UK I suspects it's a little more insidious. not only have training departments called everything they do 'training' but vice versa - if it's not owned by the training department then it's not learning.
Here's my experience of how the enterprise sees 'training departments' in the UK - over at Jane Bozarth's blog (see comments).
Is it really all about you? It sounds like it. Your post here sounds like an ideal example to explain to people how social media (the whole thing-blogs, twitter, everything) has allowed every self-centered person to a) become more so because the medium suits it and b) to demonstrate how selfish they are and be applauded for it.
As a book author I've sold over 300,000 copies. And millions have accessed my websites. I will tell you that the ethical and successful approach to communicating is to balance their needs and my needs.
I know YOU don't care. But, you know what. I do. I care that publishers, readers, me, end up well served.
Amazing comment eh? Why is it the most active social networkers who talk so much about people are the most selfish and self-centered and truly do NOT care about others?
Robert,
I'm struggling to see what the point of your comment is. How is a post about how business book authors (and Training Departments) serve up one-size-fits-all books and courses evidence of self-centredness? Or that I don't care.
You're a relentless self-promoter who uses their blog and website to drive business. I have absolutely no problem with this - but this blog has nothing at all to do with my business and everything to do with thinking aloud, connecting with people and learning.
Shock/horror - sometimes I even realise what I've said was stupid and recant. My eLearning opinions are examples of this.
But in this case, I don't think I'm wrong. Some of the training courses that UK workers have to attend - neatly packaged into a 7-hour session but would probably be better off as something different if only we didn't have to pay the trainer for the whole day - is just plain wrong.
I know you hate big words. So I'll make this simple. Cut the crap. Address the issue. Or go and bother somebody else.
I'm afraid you haven't said much in your response. I re-read your rambling blog post, and I can certainly see why you would prefer blogs to books.
I apologize for being opaque in my points. I skipped the baby steps, assuming you'd get it, but on reading the blog post over, I realize you don't have a clue about knowledge, wisdom, learning, publishing or writing coherently, and it's clear you belong on a blog where there are no standards but your own (which is part of the point.
You did say:
"This leaves publishers with a problem - how are they going to make me pay for it? I don't know and I don't care - it's not my problem if books turn out to be an accident of paper"
You clearly don't know, and you clearly don't care, and that IS my point. My point is that it's all connected, and that YOU may be suited to blog posting, because you lack the ability to create knowledge production and wisdom production in any other way, or meet the standards of publishing.
As to your point in the post, it's a dog's puked up breakfast. What comes across is the usual sour grapes about an industry you can't crack.
You and your colleagues will excel each leading the other in ignorance on the blogs of the world, and criticizing knowledge and wisdom that comes from true expertise.
Excellent.
And excuse me if I'm wrong on this, Robert, but isn't this argument impotent in the face of this post's proposition:
"As a book author I've sold over 300,000 copies. And millions have accessed my websites."
Sales and pageviews are irrelevant. It's the knowledge imparted as a result of this that is important.
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