Reorganizing the department: bringing people together to rethink and change their work

So we had several resignations for personal reasons or career advancement and therefore open slots in our department. We looked at that as an opportunity to rethink the work that everyone did. We brought the staff together once again, everybody in one room at one time with the big giant whiteboard. We began by writing creating a list of every activity that we were currently doing or that we wanted to do in the near future. It took a couple hours. After that we wrote each of those one sentence actiovities on a sticky and then we rested for a couple days.

Our next step was to take big Post-it notes and start organizing and putting together the functions that seemed like they could be done by the same person. The idea was not identifying who currently did these activities but rather seeing which activities might fall into different buckets. We then gave titles to the people who could do each of these operations, and the miscellaneous category wasnt too bad, fewer than 10 items.

The end result was that the staff concluded we could shrink the staff by 2 people if we realigned responsibilities and created one new position because there were many “to-do” items nobody was working on. The reorg worked. Was it because of the people or the process? That is something I do not know.

Group work in college. Are multiple perspectives represented when students are from one course?

Collaborative learning and higher education. Many universities require students to work on projects in teams. This was true in my doctoral program at Northwestern University, and I think it was very successful in that environment because the people who worked together came from different disciplines and brought different skills to each project. For example, a typical project would include one person with a background in computer science, a 2nd with a background in education, a 3rd with a background in communication, and a 4th with a background in social sciences. We divided up the tasks according to our skills but the project ultimately had to come together as one coherent package.

Many universities require students to work in learning teams to write papers or put projects together. One well-known difficulty is that one person on the team may not pull her or his weight so the others have to pick up the slack. I think that there is another problem which is that the collaboration, the learning team creating an object, involves a relatively homogeneous group: everyone is taking the same course at the same time and demonstrating the same skills. True they bring slightly different backgrounds and knowledge to the project but they all have the same identical learning objectives and course outcomes to demonstrate.

I would like to see more heterogeneous groups working together on projects in classes. So imagine combining, for example, nurses, urban planners, teachers, and computer scientists, to create some to work together on some joint project. The difficulties are obvious which is that nurses have to learn different things than do urban planners are teachers or computer scientists and so figuring out the project and how an individual’s participation demonstrates the desired learning not outcomes, that is difficult. Nevertheless, it’s something that I would like to think about exploring.

Big cities, multiple communities, networks for innovation

Here’s an idea I like a lot, especially since I’m big city guy. Still talking about Steven Johnson’s book, on page 160 he summarizes research from a Berkeley sociologist named Claude Fischer. Fisher had one overwhelming conclusion published in 1975: “big cities nurture subcultures much more effectively than suburbs or small towns.” One of the points is that a large city allows people outside the mainstream to find others with whom they can connect. And part of this is just mathematical if there’s 100,000 people it would be easier to find somebody if you’re on the edges it would be easier to find somebody with you and in a community of 100 people. And so Fischer’s point cited by Johnson is that, “clustering creates a positive feedback loop as the more unconventional residents of the server suburbs or rural areas migrate to the city in search of fellow travelers.”

This is very closely related to research that was done by a Stanford professor named Martin Ruef who concluded that “the most creative individuals… Consistently had broad social networks that extended outside their organization and involved people from diverse fields of expertise. Diverse horizontal social networks… were three times more innovative than uniform vertical networks. In groups united by shared values and long-term familiarity, conformity and convention tended to dampen any potential creative sparks.” To continue, “employees who primarily shared information with people in their own division had a harder time coming up with you with useful suggestions… When measured against employees who maintained active links to a more diverse group.”

This leads to Johnson discussing Watson and Crick who are notorious for amongst other things connecting with people outside their regular circles and “taking long, rambling coffee breaks, were they tossed around ideas in a more playful setting outside the lab–a practice that was generally scorned by their more fastidious colleagues.” Time to go for a walk and ask the bus driver what she things about punctuated equilibrium.

Serendipity, keeping records, inventing a million things

On page 78 Johnson (Where Good Ideas Come From) begins discussing the role of hunches that are alternatively fed and left on the back burner, and on page 86 he described the notebooks of the Darwins and Joseph Priestley which are filled with hunches and unconnected ideas.

On page 104 Johnson summarizes research and conclusions by Robert Thatcher that, “the more disorganized your brain is, the smarter you are.”

On page 122 Johnson discusses the importance of a “creative walk” for spurring new ideas and making new connections. Johnson suggests that people, “…carve out dedicated periods where you read a large and varied collection of books and essays in a condensed amount of time.” And later, “But there’s no reason why organizations couldn’t recognize the value of a reading sabbatical…”

Johnson himself uses DEVONthink as a tool for collecting his ideas and “an improvisational tool as well.” Page 115

On page 123 Johnson asserts that patents, DRM, IP, trade secrets, proprietary technology claim to support innovation with the assumption, “… in the long run, innovation will increase if you put restrictions on the spread of new ideas, because those restrictions will allow the creators to collect large financial rewards…” Johnson believe “The problem with these closed environments is that they inhibit serendipity and reduce the overall network of minds that can potentially engage with a problem.”

On page 136-137 Johnson quotes and paraphrases William Stanley Jevons’ conclusion that, “The errors of the great mind exceed in number those of the less vigorous one.” In other words, ideas from great thinkers occur in part because those thinkers are always coming up with new ideas, one after another after; their minds don’t create just one great idea – they create scores and scores of ideas, some of which are unfinished, others not pursued, and others which are eventually connected and become brilliant insights or innovations.

The point? Generating new ideas and innovation occurs when people (1) generate lots and lots of ideas, (2) keep track of them, (3) share them with a diverse group, (4) get ideas from a diverse group. There may be a genetic disposition (defect? JK) to write down all your thoughts… and most people don’t live in a community for #3 and #4 (although living in a city makes this easier). So, this is why I am loving Twitter. I have input from a larger, more diverse community than ever before, and this might be making me more creative.

The biggest employers in the world: US Military #1. Walmart #3 and McDonalds #4. #depressing

Employment

Visual representations of a new academic paradigm

New educational paradigms, drawn by RSA Animate

The Biltmore at night. Nice front yard

Chickadee grabs seed and splits

Chickadee eating and flying