I swung by Scribd.com and found that my articles now have a total of more than 5000 reads. That would account for around half the number of total reads of those articles (the rest being read on isene.com and elsewhere). If you haven’t yet looked at the articles, now is the time to nudge you to swing by the same place 😉
Writing articles in collaboration with great people
Thursday and Friday I had the pleasure to visit Vega – a beautiful island off the coast of Helgeland in the northern part of Norway. The nature is stunning, but even above that – the food we got at Vega Havhotell was the best I’ve ever had.
Brendan and I was invited by the amazing Per Ulrik Arntsen to speak at the itSMF conferance. Brendan did some out-of-the-box stuff and ended up getting the whole audience sing along with an off-the-wall song, while I jumped around and covered the importance of communication.
We stayed at a nice hotel run by a warm and energetic couple. Anna is funny and very service minded. Jon is very direct, funny and an excellent cook. He makes all the food from fresh local ingredients. The dinner we got was legendary, and the talk Jon gave before we got the food set a new standard for how to treat customers. I hope to record an interview with Jon one day so that many more people can get to experience his no-compromise attitude toward service.
All-in-all – it was a very memorable trip. I’ll be back there in the not unforeseeable future.
If you ever visit Norway, make an effort to drop by Vega. You’ll be blown away.
ITIL is lacking in people-focus. PRINCE2 is lacking in creativity, LEAN is missing out on innovation, and Scientology management philosophy (LRH admin tech) is lacking in compassion.
Objection! ITIL talks about people, and that people are a core asset to any organization. PRINCE2 certainly inspires creative projects to be more successful. LEAN is stressing innovation through continual improvement. And L. Ron Hubbard covers the concept of affinity and also compassion in several places like the policy on “the model hat of an executive”.
All true. But a grape in an apple pie does not make it grape pie. And a mention of love does not make Anders Behring Breivik a loving person.
Because it is not what a subject happens to cover. It is what it predominantly covers. One has to look at the whole picture and see what the major portions are dealing with. The major parts of a subject marginalizes the parts that happens to be included. The intentions behind a subject is made evident by the major focuses of that subject. And that is the culture it fosters.
Scientology management philosophy fosters robotic and militant obedience to policy. LEAN fosters blinders and a squeezed organization, PRINCE2 fosters bureaucracy and ITIL fosters red tape through process compliance. None of them makes for an inspiring, creative and people-focused organization. Because even though these concepts are mentioned, they are dwarfed by the major parts that focus on hard and cold values of yestercentury.
It seems that most organizational frameworks are created as a substitute for more directly handling the problems of responsibility and communication between people.
This is not say that all such frameworks are useless. They may very well contain useful tools. But organizational frameworks will always be inferior to human attention, a warm heart and a hug.
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In the spirit of strict policy:
I have had an interesting discovery about myself recently; Despite the fact that I have received countless hours of help in the form of Scientology counseling since 1984, I have grown increasingly hesitant to receive help from others proportional to how much I have been helping other people in my life.
The more help I give and the more I listen to others with issues at hand and the more I give advice, the less easy it becomes to accept others helping me. It’s like my mission in life has become so focused on helping others that it feels awkward to have that flow reversed.
The support I offer is mostly very practical and very direct – both in business and for interesting individuals. It ranges from coaching individuals to success, coaching teams to perform at their best and organizations to break important barriers. I am very lucky to be able to do this together with Brendan in our new company. But as my focus on helping others sharpens, my acceptance for others helping me seems to dull. This is something I have to work on – to be as open to others supporting me as I am eager to support others.
I don’t have any specific reason for sharing this, and I’m not particularly trying to rally any discussion. But it does feel nice to be able to let others in on my inner thoughts.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
– Oscar Wilde
Geir Isene - uncut 