In Praise Of Shadows

I bought In Praise Of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki in a Dutch museum. It's an admirable corrective for anyone who feels that their taste has been overwhelmed by any particular aesthetic.

"a man who has a family and lives in the city cannot turn his back on the necessities of modern life" p3

"I always think how different everything would be if we in the Orient had developed our own science" p13

"how much better our own photographic technology might have suited our complexion, our facial features, our climate, our land" p16-17

"Of course this 'sheen of antiquity' of which we hear so much is in fact the glow of grime. In both Chinese and Japanese the words denoting this glow describe a polish that comes of being touched over and over again,  a sheen produced by long years of handling--which is to say grime." p20

"elegance is frigid" p20

"Sometimes a superb piece of black lacquerware, decorated perhaps with flecks of silver and gold -- a box or a desk or a set of shelves -- will seem to me unsettling garish and altogether vulgar. But render pitch the void in which they stand, and light them not with the rays of the sun or electricity but rather a single lantern or candler: suddenly those garish objects turn somber, refined, dignified. Artisans of old, when they finished their works in lacquer and decorated them in sparkling patterns, must surely have had in mind dark rooms and sought to turn to good effect what feeble light there was." p23

"The quality that we call beauty, however, must always grow from the realities of life, and our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty's end." p29

"For the painting here is nothing more than another delicate surface upon which the faint, frail light can play; it performs precisely the same function as the sand-textured wall." p32

"This was the genius of our ancestors, that by cutting off the light from this empty space they imparted to the world of shadows that formed there a quality of mystery and depth superior to that of any wall painting or ornament. The technique seems simple, but was by no means simply achieved." p33

"And there may be some who argue that if beauty has to hide its weak points in the dark it is not beauty at all" p46

"we find beauty not in the thing itself but in the pattern of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates." p46

"A phosphorescent jewel gives off its glow and color in the dark and loses its beauty in the light of day. Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty." p46

"It struck me that old people everywhere have much the same complaints. The older we get the more we seem to think that everything was better in the past. Old people a century ago wanted to go back two centuries, and two centuries ago they wished it were three centuries earlier. Never has there been an age that people have been satisfied with." p59

"I would call back at least for literature this world of shadows we are losing. In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly, I would strip away the useless decoration. I do not ask this be done everywhere, but perhaps we may be allowed at least one mansion where we can turn off the electric lights and see what it is like without them." p64

Grouped & Creative Mischief

Reading Grouped and Creative Mischief at the same time made me realise that there are two main strands of thought about the future of advertising, marketing and media. They see the same phenomena but explain them with different stories.

Tyler Cowen would be proud of the sets of stories that these books tell as they project the world-views of their authors. The stories are too neat, too unambiguous and too polished to be true. However they're still educational. The difference in these two books is in the set of lessons they wish to teach us.

One book wants us to believe that the web is being rebuilt around people. Unfortunately its examples all come from one source so after a while you start to suspect he means the web is being rebuilt around Facebook. Grouped is about the benefits of homophily (being with people like you), about websites that use social proof to show their value and websites that use data from your friends to provide better services to you.

The other book wants you to believe that success in advertising (or anything else) is about your willingness to do the things that other people won't or can't. That may mean thinking thoughts others are afraid to think, seeking inspiration away from your peers and giving someone "the right answer even though you know he doesn't want it."

In Creative Mischief Dave Trott tries to teach the reader that "to be noticed, we need to do something different. To be different, we need to break the rules. To get away with breaking the rules, we need to be clever." In Trott's world "what seemed to be facts were only true if I subscribed to it being that way" and "the rules are meant to be a spring board, not a straitjacket."

His short book walks the reader through the last 4 decades of his escapades and his experiences in the advertising industry. It's fun and cheeky and insightful. It's also lacking in empirical data or research to back up his anecdotes. Adams, on the other hand, has all the data and the citations you could want.

The dichotomy between these differing viewpoints was summarised as Mad Men versus Math Men in a recent article. I think it captures something important about the gulf between researchers and storytellers. Storytellers believe it's more important to be inspiring than to be right. Most researchers disagree. Paul Adams is one of the few that sees the value of the storyteller's mode of communication. At the same time I think there's a dichotomy between a homophilous and a heterophilous view of the world.

In Adams's view we want to be nudged into making the same decisions as our close friends and families. He rejects the conventional marketer's search for influencers and tastemakers who can move the masses because

"even when there are influential people and specific situations where they can wield great influence over many others, finding them is so expensive that it becomes a poor investment compared to other available strategies."

This is a world where 'social proof' is the most important thing. This is a world where "we’re only connected to people like us" so "it’s hard for ideas to pass between groups who are separated by dimensions like race, income, and education."



In Trott's view we want to be guided into making decisions that separate us from the herd. This is a world where every appeal to the wisdom of the crowd is countered by citing the danger of pluralistic ignorance.

I much prefer Trott's world because I believe the most valuable relationships are created by the differences between us rather than our similarities. In fact I've been maintaining a Tumblr devoted to the idea of heterophily for a while. I believe heterophily is one of the key ingredients in creating groups that are creative, fulfilling and productive. Despite this I still have to acknowledge that Adams's book is the one you should read if you're interested in improving the performance of your marketing campaigns or understanding the incipient social web. However Trott's book is the one you should read if you want to dream of a better and more interesting world.

 

Only The Paranoid Survive

I've recently started reading Only The Paranoid Survive by Andrew Grove. It's fascinating in many ways.



"Sooner or later, something fundamental in your business world will change." p1

p29

"Then there is a growing dissonance between what your company thinks it is doing and what is actually happening inside the bowels of the organization. Such misalignment between corporate statements and operational actions hints at more than the normal chaos you have learned to live with." p34

"There will be a growing ferocity, determination and seriousness surrounding the views the various participants hold. People will dig in. These divergent views will be held equally strongly, almost like religious tenets. In a workplace that used to function collegially and constructively, holy wars will erupt, pitting coworkers against coworkers, long-term friends against long-term friends." p35

"when a strategic inflection point sweeps through the industry, the more successful a participant was in the old industry structure, the more threatened it is by change and the more reluctant it is to adapt to it." p50

"The first mover and only the first mover, the company that acts while the others dither, has a true opportunity to gain time over its competitors--and time advantage, in this business, is the surest way to gain market share.

Conversely, people who try to fight the wave of a new technology lose in spite of their best efforts because they waste valuable time." p51-52

"While Jobs was burning the midnight oil inside Next, in the outside world something changed." p58

"It was as if Steve Jobs and his company had gone into a time capsule when they started Next. They worked hard for years, competing against what they thought was the competition, but by the time they emerged, the competition turned out to be something completely different and much more powerful." p59

"the person who is the star of a previous era is often the last one to adapt to change, the last one to yield to the logic of a strategic inflection point and tends to fall harder than most." p68

"Most strategic inflection points, instead of coming in with a band, approach on little cat feet. They often are not clear until you can look at the events in retrospect." p107

"if you had just one bullet in a figurative pistol, whom among your many competitors would you save it for? Asked point-blank, this question usually provokes a visceral response and I find that people can normally give an answer without much hesitation. when the answer to this question stops being as crystal clear as it used to be and some of your people direct the silver bullet to competitors who didn't merit this kind of attention previously, it's time to sit up and pay attention." p107

"The Cassandras in your organization are a consistently helpful element in recognizing strategic inflection points. As you might remember, Cassandra was the priestess who foretold the fall of Troy. Likewise there are people who are quick to recognize impending change and cry out an early warning." p108

"Classify the time you spend listening to them as an investment in learning what goes on at the distant periphery of your business, whether you think of distances in geographical or technological terms. Think of it this way: when sprint comes, snow melts at the periphery, because that's where it's most exposed." p110

"It got there by the autonomous actions of the finance and production planning people, who sat around painstakingly allocating wafer production capacity month by month, moving silicon wafers from products where they seemed wasteful--memories were the prime example of this--to other products which seemed to generate better margins, such as microprocessors. These people didn't have the authority to get us out of memories but they had the authority to fine-tune the production allocation process by lots of little steps." p110

"Peter Drucker quotes a definition of an entrepreneur as someone who moves resources from areas of lower productivity and yield to areas of higher productivity and yield." p110

"you can't judge the significance of strategic inflection points by the quality of the first version" p113

"you must discipline yourself to think things through and separate the quality of the early versions from the longer-term potential and significance of a new product or technology." p114

"It takes courage to enter into a debate you may lose, in which weaknesses in your knowledge may be exposed and in which you may draw the disapproval of your coworkers for taking an unpopular viewpoint." p115

"Don't sit on the sidelines waiting for the senior people to make a decision so that later on you can criticize them over a beer" p115

"The point is, strategic inflections are rarely clear. Well-informed and well-intentioned people will look at the same picture and assign dramatically different interpretations to it. So it is extraordinarily important to bring the intellectual power of all relevant parties to this sharpening process." p116

"Altogether too often, people substitute opinions for facts and emotions for analysis." p116

"But data are about the past, and strategic inflection points are about the future. By the time the data showed that the Japanese memory producers were becoming a major factor, we were in the middle of a fight for our survival." p117

"Constructively debating tough issues and getting somewhere is only possible when people can speak their minds without fear of punishment." p117

"The most important role of managers is to create an environment in which people are passionately dedicated to winning in the marketplace. Fear plays a major role in creating and maintaining such passion. Fear of competition, fear of bankruptcy, fear of being wrong and fear of losing can all be powerful motivators." p117

"Simply put, fear can be the opposite of complacency. Complacency often afflicts precisely those who have been the most successful. It is often found in companies that have honed the sort of skills that are perfect for their environment. But when their environment changes these companies may be the slowest to respond properly." p118

"It takes many years of consistent conduct to eliminate fear of punishment as an inhibitor of strategic discussion. It takes only one incident to introduce it. News of this incident will spread through the organisation like wildfire and shut everyone up.

Once an environment of fear takes over, it will lead to paralysis throughout the organization and cut of the flow of bad news from the periphery." p119

"From our inception on, we at Intel have worked very hard to break down the walls between those who possess knowledge power and those who possess organization power." p120

"A manager in a business that's undergoing a strategic inflection point is likely to experience a variation of the well-known stages of what individuals go through when dealing with a serious loss." p124

"Denial is prevalent in the early stages of almost every example of a strategic inflection point I can think of." p124

"Good leaders are also subject to the same emotional wiggling. They, however, eventually emerge to the acceptance and action phases. Lesser leaders are not capable of that and they are often removed. Then they are replaced by individuals who are not necessarily more capable but who do not have the emotional investment in the previous strategy." p127

"The replacement of corporate heads is far more motivated by the need to bring in someone who is not invested in the past than to get somebody who is a better manager or a better leader in other ways." p127

"As we begin to respond, maybe too little too late, we face another emotional hurdle: to admit to ourselves consciously and explicitly the magnitude of the problem we are struggling with Even as our actions begin to reflect the process of adjusting to the new environment, we still struggle with the task of describing them in clear words." p128

"I have seen many companies fall into the trap of saying one thing and doing another while they are in the midst of coping with a strategic inflection. I call this divergence between actions and statements strategic dissonance. It is one of the surest indications that a company is struggling with a strategic inflection point." p128

"Occasionally when I stand in front of such a group and field questions, I find it awkward to attempt to defend the position of corporation in the face of some specific questions and comments that come from people who are wise to their world and their environment. Often these questions come in the form of follow-up questions after I have been asked about our specific strategy regarding a particular product, customer or technology." p129

"Such questions usually represent sharp probing for the true intent behind the general answer I've just given." p129

"Strategic dissonance is so much an automatic reaction to a strategic inflection point that probing for it is perhaps the best test of one." p129

"While this dissonance between what the company does and what management says is understandable, it accompanies a terribly unproductive and distressing phase. The growing discomfort associated with strategic dissonance creates confusion and uncertainty" p129

"To make it through the valley of death successfully, your first task is to form a mental image of what the company should look like when you get to the other side. This image not only needs to be clear enough for you to visualise but it also has to be crisp enough so you can communicate it simply to your tired, demoralised and confused staff." p140

"You are trying to define what the company will be, yet that can only be done if you also undertake to define what the company will not be." p140

"the transformation implicit in surviving a strategic inflection point involves changing members of management in one way or another" p143

"The implication was that either the people in the room needed to change their areas of knowledge and expertise or the people themselves needed to be changed. I remember looking around the room, wondering who might remain and who might not." p143

"Admitting that you need to learn something new is always difficult. It is even harder if you are a senior manager who is accustomed to the automatic deference which people accord you owing to your position. But if you don't fight it, that very deference may become a wall that isolates you from learning new things." p145

"While strategic plans are abstract and are usually couched in language that has no concrete meaning except to the company's management, strategic actions matter because they immediately affect people's lives. They change people's work" p147

"Simply put, in times of change, managers almost always know which direction they should go in, but usually act too late and do too little." p149

"When you drive in the fog, it is a lot easier to drive fast if you're chasing the taillights of the car ahead of you. The danger with a 'taillight' strategy is that, once you catch up and pass, you will find yourself without a set of taillights to follow--and without the confidence and competence in setting your own course in a new direction." p149

"In recent years, we at Intel decided that we have a tremendous opportunity to exploit the personal computer as a universal information appliance." p 150

"it is very hard to lead an organization out of the valley of death without a clear and simple strategic direction. After all, getting there sapped the energy of your organization; it demoralised your employees and often set them against one another. Demoralized organizations are unlikely to be able to deal with multiple objectives in their actions. It will be hard enough to deal lead them out with a single one." p151

"If you're wrong, you will die. But most companies don't die because they are wrong; most die because they don't commit themselves. They fritter away their momentum and their valuable resources while attempting to make a decision. The greatest danger is in standing still." p152

"Clarity of direction, which includes describing what we are going after as well as describing what we will not be going after, is exceedingly important at the late stage of a strategic transformation." p 153

"When you have to reach large numbers of people, you can't possibly overcommunicate and overclarify" p155

"Your new thoughts and new arguments will take awhile to sink in. But you will find that repetition sharpens your articulation of the new direction and makes it increasingly clear to your employees. So speak and answer questions as often as possible; while it may seem like like you're repeating yourself, in reality you will be reinforcing a strategic message." p155

"If your employees don't have an opportunity to test your thinking in live sessions or electronically, your message will seem like so much hot air.

Resist the temptation to do what's easy here. Communicating strategic change in an interactive, exposed fashion is not easy. But it is absolutely necessary." p157

"Simply put, you can't change a company without changing its management. I'm not saying they have to pack up their desks and be replaced. I'm saying that they themselves, every one of them, needs to change to be more in tune with the mandates of the new environment." p 157

"They need to adapt. If they can't or won't, however they will need to be replaced with others who are more in tune with the new world the company is heading to." p157

"It seems that companies that successfully navigate through strategic inflection points have a good dialectic between bottom-up and top-down actions." p159

"The Internet fosters the emergence of a third class of use: applications and data that are stored at some other computer someplace, prepared and owned by unrelated individuals or organisations, that anyone can access through this pervasive set of connections" p179

"All this suggests that the Internet is not a strategic inflection point for Intel. But while the classic signs suggest it isn't, the totality of all the changes is so overwhelming that deep down I think it is" p181

"Packaging Internet activities separately and elevating them on a par with our other three objectives is a way to communicate their significance to the entire company." p183

"It is likely that the Internet appliance is a case of turning the clock backward, given that the trend over the last twenty to thirty years has consisted of pulling down intelligence from big computers to little ones. I don't believe the Internet is about to reverse this trend. But then again, my genes were formed by those same twenty or thirty years. And I'm likely to be the last one to know." p184

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Building my working library

If you've read my book, Apprenticeship Patterns, you'll know that I'm a big fan of both Twyla Tharp and Richard Sennett. Finding someone else who has read and liked works by both authors is a rare pleasure.

That's why I was so happy to find Mandy Brown's A Working Library. It's a blog plus an ongoing collection of notes on the books she's reading.

Brown's blog is structured in such a way that a book like Sennett's masterful The Craftsman becomes the spine for a series of posts: http://aworkinglibrary.com/library/book/craftsman/ She then takes the idea even further so that when a post is really about 2 books it creates a page which references both of them. For instance here's a post which references both Tharp's The Creative Habit and Sennets's The Craftsman. Notice the way it appears in both the section on The Craftsman and in the section on The Creative Habit.

That kind of faceted classification solves the navigational problem but it also removes one of the main obstacles preventing me from writing more book reviews. I'm most interested in a book whilst reading it but I don't write a review until afterwards. That's the point I most wish I'd kept ongoing notes but care the least about going back and creating the notes.

So based on Brown's example I'm going to start capturing notes about the books I'm currently reading using this blog. I don't have the structural flexibility that Brown's use of Expression Engine affords (nor the inclination to set it up) so I'm just going to start a post when a book captures my interest. I'll update it with photos and quotes as time passes.

Hopefully this will lead to more reviews of more books than I managed in 2010.

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