“When a method becomes senior to a desired outcome, and when that method gathers a crowd.”
I came to this definition as a result of my latest article on process vs. output. That article has been reworked and is ready for publication. Stay tuned.
Author Geir Isene
Information overflow
What happens to us as we stand in a storm of information?
The information overflow is steadily increasing. We are bombarded by information from countless channels – newspapers, TV, radio, billboards, Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, sms, Linkedin, Google+, Diaspora, Trello, e-mail lists, forums, face to face conversations, phone, phone apps, blogs…
With such a massive amount of data, how do we cope? How do we sort? How do we sift? What to trust, and what to ditch?
On February 16th, I will be holding the opening speech at the CIO forum in Oslo. And with people like you reading my blog, I would be stupid not to ask for your views.
I am not simply looking for how you think we should handle massive data, but also what it does to an individual, to our society.
Gimme your take on the human aspect of the information overflow.
Update: My post after the talk.
Processes, automation and human potential
I have been working with an article that captures the essence of my recent professional work, during the last year or so. Brendan and I have been consulting several organizations with the aim of helping them achieve better results – be it more revenue or profit, more efficient use of time, customer satisfaction, better cooperation or above all releasing individual initiative, responsibility and creativity.
I release the article here first to invite feedback from the wonderful and smart contributers on this blog. If you read the article and give some valuable input, you may be credited if you want.
The article is here: “Processes, automation and human potential”
What’s with the discussions?
This blog has been active for 1,5 years now. It replaced my old Scientology blog as I wanted to move my open writing into any area that tickled my fancy. Like free will and other existential philosophical subjects, HP calculators and other technical subjects, as well as life and living.
This space is marked by many long and interesting discussion by very smart people with very different viewpoints. When I write somewhat controversial posts, the discussions usually counts several hundred comments, some even more than a thousand. This has become the blog on the Internet that gathers the most replies on specific Scientology-related subjects. Perhaps because it tackles the core philosophy of Scientology and possibly because it retains a fairly objective stance, being neither effusively pro nor toxically against. But rather exploring, evaluating and searching for areas to improve.
However, my interest lies not with Scientology. What occupies me is enlightenment, truth, free will and general improvement. Any tool should remain junior to an intended result. Except for my HP-41… it remains a solution is search of a problem. Being a nerd at heart, I luv my tools – but I still try to keep my eyes focused on the goals. I try to do what generates the best results toward those goals.
Do the discussions on this blog? Are they worth it? What are they worth? Almost a hundred comments per day is a lot. Maybe it’s time to end the discussions while on the top?
New Year present: WOIM 1.7 with real life examples
With some nudging from India (thanks Shantanu Kulkarni), I have gotten around to make WOIM more easily accessible for anyone. The manual now includes several real life examples on how to use WOIM for describing anything from business processes and todo-lists to food recipes and philosophical arguments. With this, anyone should be able to get going with WOIM. It starts out like this:
On the way in to the shopping mall, you take a quick glance at the list given to you by your mother/father/brother/wife:
5 liters of Milk
2 packages of Butter
2 liters of Orange juice
Bananas (5-8)
A simple list. But the next time you go to the shop, the list has grown to a paragraph:
If they have pepperoni and that special pizza sauce, buy that and also flour, yeast, cheese and ham. If not, then buy the Indian spicy chicken with 5 or more suitable vegetables. If the chicken is sol out, be creative and decide what we should have for dinner. Also buy apple juice, eggs, washing powder and paper towels.
You wonder if that paragraph can be written a bit more concise.
The WOIM document is available on Scrobd.com as well as the usual place.
For the geeks, the WOIM plugin for VIM is updated and now includes a full HTML conversion and several improvements.
What did you dream of when you were twelve?
Try to remember back when you were twelve years old. Maybe that New Years Eve, eagerly looking into the future, busy creating that dream of an adult life.
What did you envision? What goals did you forge? What did you dream of becoming, of doing, of accomplishing?
Take hold of that old childish dream for a few seconds. Touch it, re-dream it. Feel it.
Now snap into the present and take a look at your life as it is. Did your dreams come true?
Why?
Or why not?
What can you, in hindsight learn when you once again stand at another New Years Eve forging another goal to reach?
Or what can that twelve year old child in your past teach you tonight?
What groundbreaking could be attributed to L. Ron Hubbard?
Now and then the discussion crops up of what L. Ron Hubbard really contributed of value to the world. Like with most Scientology discussions, the debaters tend to fall pretty squarely into two camps. This polarizing is sometimes puzzling or seems right out weird for those not so familiar with the subject and its history. Hell, it still puzzles me.
I would like to see if we can have a level-headed discussion to try to sift out Hubbard’s groundbreaking contributions, if any.
There is no doubt that the man was a prolific writer with some 65 million words of non-fiction and around 500 novels and short stories published. He covered a great many fields from religion, spirituality and enlightenment to mental therapy, organizational philosophy, family therapy, study technology, physics, photography, ethics, justice, politics, history, electronics, human behavior and evaluation, communication and much more. According to Wikipedia; “Hubbard is the Guinness World Record holder for the most published author, with 1,084 works, most translated book (70 languages for The Way to Happiness) and most audiobooks (185 as of April 2009)“. In addition to being a writer, he was a navy officer, an organizational leader, photographer, explorer – a prominent contributor in many fields.
What do you see as his greatest gifts to mankind?
My basic principles
I have adopted three basic principles of late:
- 100% responsibility
- Simplicity
- Immediate relevance
With the principle of 100% Responsibility I seek to establish who should be fully responsible for a wanted result. In distributing responsibilities in an organization, I focus on responsibility for results, not for tasks. And the focus is on total responsibility for the result. Not shared responsibilities, group responsibilities or partial responsibility. Google “100%” and you get “100%=1”. If two soccer defender are confused about their responsibilities, you can get a) both looking at the ball while the striker dashes in between them to score or b) both going after the ball and leaving plenty of room on both sides. Clearly defined responsibilities ensures less overlap or holes.
The principle of Simplicity pervades everything I do – trying hard to reduce every solution to its simplest possible form. As Einstein once said “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
This blog is mainly a vehicle for simplifying my thoughts.
Immediate Relevance ensures focus and value creation. It does not equate to short sightedness or lack of creativity. If the task at hand is the generating of a company strategy, then keeping the meeting focused on what’s immediate relevant to that strategy ensures a more productive meeting. Keeping all minds highly creative in a mind storming meeting is keeping with the same principle. Immediate relevance is about sticking to the goal. And sometimes it is fruitful to simply let the mind wander – and then I would ensure Immediate Relevance even in that wild abandon.
Just letting you in on how I operate these days.
This is inspired by my mentor Hans Trygve Kristiansen and the Amazing Brendan.
Thought Experiment series: Evaluation of Scientology
This blog post was submitted by Alanzo, one of the frequent commenters on this blog). It proposes a way to evaluate Scientology – by the way proposed by Scientology itself. This should prove interesting:
As Hubbard said, Scientology does not produce Understanding, but it produces UnderstandingS.
A good way to produce understandingS on Scientology itself, is to apply Logic 8 to various parts and areas of Scientology.
Logic 8 is “A datum can be evaluated only by a datum of comparable magnitude.”
So I propose the next thought experiment here on Geir’s Blog: Take a piece of Scientology and apply Logic 8 to it. Take any datum of comparable magnitude to any part of Scientology and compare the two data.
Here’s an example:
Compare the first Auditor’s Code (Original Thesis 1947) to the last Auditor’s Code (HCOB 1980).
Evaluate these two pieces of Scientology by comparing them with each other. Look at how one point of the code has been left out. Look at how another point has been added. Sometimes there will be explanations for these changes, sometimes not. You do not have to accept any explanation for what you see when you compare, just look at the differences, similarities and identities and decide for yourself.
See?
This exercise is totally free of any agenda, either pro Scientology or anti. It’s purpose is the same purpose as Logic 8 – to evaluate Scientology.
It is the application of Logic 8 to Scientology itself.
You don’t have to be limited to comparing something in Scientology only with something else in Scientology, though. In fact, I believe that the real value of Logic 8 begins to emerge when you start comparing parts of Scientology with things outside of Scientology.
For instance:
Compare the Citizen’s Commission on Human Rights to Amnesty International.
Or compare the Volunteer Ministers to the Red Cross.
“A datum can be evaluated only by a datum of comparable magnitude.”
LRH says that this is the ONLY way to evaluate something.
So let’s evaluate Scientology, then!
Who’s ready to start?
Vinaire’s summary on Scientology
This is a post from Vinaire, one of the frequent posters here, that I decided deserved its own blog post for discussion:
Here is my summary assessment of Scientology.
(1) Scientology consists of much ground breaking work by Hubbard.
(2) Scientology introduce a whole new plateau to addressing the problems of the mind.
(3) The work on this breakthrough is, however, far from complete.
(4) The success from application of Scientology is far from consistent.
(5) Any lack of success gets blamed on the practitioners of Scientology.
(6) Unmanageable difficulties seem to exist in the application of Scientology.
(7) Correction lists have become a part of “standard Scientology.”
(8) A closer look at Scientology shows a lack of application of the principle of poka-yoke .
(9) Looking is the key to successes in Scientology auditing.
(10) Scientology does not seem to put emphasis on Looking.
(11) Scientology takes up Looking on OT TR0 and Obnosis, but it fails to treat Looking systematically and highlight its importance in auditing.
(12) Principles of Looking, when applied, seem to provide poka-yoke to Scientology processes.
(13) These principles of Looking are now being developed under the heading of KHTK
(14) KHTK is a work in progress. All are welcome to improve upon this work.
Merry XMas and a Happy New Year!
Geir Isene - uncut 