The Cerebral Dad

Perspective and Exclusion Bias

2009-10-31T21:51:00.004-05:00

I heard my colleague Martin Fowler present a keynote the other day where he called attention to the severe under-representation of different groups of people in the IT industry. As one example, he pointed out that it's odd that although women are 50% of the general population, they're nowhere near 50% of the population of technology professionals. Among other things, this means that the IT profession suffers from an extraordinarily narrow range of focus. IT solutions, by definition, suffer an acute exclusion bias.

We see exclusion bias in many different ways in technology. Consider smartphones. The bias of each of the leading smartphone firms - Nokia, Blackberry and Apple - comes through loud and clear in their products. Nokia is a mobile phone and network company. They make a fantastic phone that also happens to have mobile e-mail and PDA capabilities. Blackberry is a mobile e-mail company. They make an amazing mobile e-mail device that happens to be a phone and also has PDA capabilities. Apple is a computer company. The iPhone is an outstanding PDA (it vindicates the Newton) that happens to have phone and support mobile e-mail.

There's no doubt that, in general, IT solutions have a predominantly male bias, a result of the fact that IT is a male dominated industry. But the fact that it is male dominated isn't a result of innocuous gender preference. If anything, it's self-inflicted: we do things that perpetuate this bias. Intentional or otherwise, the introduction, education and work patterns of IT are probably geared toward how the male mind works. By definition, this excludes women.

Consider how we teach music. Teaching rhythm by counting off integers (1-2-3-4) is probably more effective for a boy than a girl. A girl may very well respond more to patterns (ta-ta-tiki-tiki-ta). The absence of a pattern aligned with how girls learn creates a barrier and, by extension, an automatic exclusion.

After hearing Martin speak the other day, I am more acutely aware that I am very likely contributing to that exclusion bias in how I communicate and collaborate. As another colleague, David Leigh-Fellows put it, we must "understand before being understood." I need to externalize more.

As an IT professional, I do want IT to be a destination career for people. I don't want IT to be unappealing to top talent because we have institutionalized behaviours that turn people away. I also want the profession to be as robust as possible, and therefore inclusive of as much experience and perspective as there is in the general population.

As father of a little girl, I am highly sensitive to this. I don't want my daughter to be excluded from pursuing something for which she may have aptitude just because she processes information differently.

Ideas for Rent

2009-09-30T18:43:00.002-05:00

The migration of video, music and books to electronic format will create sweeping changes. Music and video retail stores are in significant decline, and newsprint is on the decline. In addition to now having excess commercial real estate, we may yet see the day when we no longer have bookshelves holding our personal libraries or when our children no longer know the back-breaking pain of hauling textbooks to and from school.

The drive toward digital media shifts our consumption model from “own” toward “rent.” With physical media, we buy an album or a book and the medium was ours to do with as we would: let it sit idly on the shelf, loan it out to our friends or reference it to a state where it wears down. We didn’t have the right to copy the media (because we never held the rights to the intellectual property itself) but possession granted greater – indeed, for all practical purposes permanent – ownership rights to the media itself.

Digital media is an exercise of content licensing. Instead of owning a copy of the book, I now have the right to read the book. Very often, that right granted is specific to a device or platform: for example, my right to read the Wall Street Journal is not transferrable from Kindle to laptop to a printed edition.

The devices themselves are increasingly complex ecosystems, with library management and content acquisition tools such as iTunes, as well as wireless networks through which we connect our devices to management tools and storage. While I may own the media playing device, it’s about all that I do own: I’m renting the means by which to keep the device current and useful, and even the devices are restricted (e.g., “locked”) against use in a competing infrastructure.

This creates a high cost of change for the consumer. The further you make use of one particular ecosystem, the greater the dependency you have on it, the more difficult it becomes to change to another. Because I’m renting both the intellectual property and the medium through which I can enjoy it, I stand to lose all of my investment (e.g., sacrifice the right to enjoy the intellectual property to which I’m subscribed) if I elect to change. That isn’t trivial: technology is still evolving at a blistering pace. It’s a bit premature to take a “long” position in an ecosystem that will have a “short” shelf life. That, or I have to accept that I will renew subscription to – and acquire updated hardware – in a particular ecosystem into perpetuity.

It remains to be seen whether intellectual property increases or decreases in value. Intuitively it would appear that the shift from owning to renting the media would make content king. But that isn’t necessarily true. For one thing, people tend to regard things they own with far more respect than things they borrow. For another, electronic distribution gives content a disposable characteristic it didn’t previously have. A person is less likely to associate permanency with electronic possession. Although people have paid for the same piece of recorded music in multiple formats – LP record, cassette and CD – the media was perceived to be considerably different than one would have of changing electronic ecosystem. It seems somewhat incongruous to constantly acquire a short-term right to a timeless piece of music or work of literature. To drive people to acquire more content (and therefore build dependency on an ecosystem), there may be consequences to the quality of intellectual property churned out.

If content is more temporary in a digital world, are we moving into a state where we’re renting ideas and influences? Are they more transitory than consistent?

What we read, listen to and watch contributes to our evolving knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom isn’t something that we want merely to accumulate, it’s something we as parents want to pass along to our children. One way we do that is to share our journey by exposing them to the influencing factors in our lives. This we do over time – and at appropriate times – in our children’s lives so they are prepared to consume and draw their own conclusions. Does “personal digital consumption” create an obstacle to that? Does “idea rental” put us at risk of generational loss or continuity?

Individual philosophy and understanding of the world evolves, giving it a temporary quality. But while temporary, it follows a consistent path. It’s not something that we rent, it’s a store of intellectual wealth that we build. Is it harder to do that through content we never fully internalize and “make our own” because we never feel a sense of ownership of it in the first place?

Flower Power

2009-08-31T18:15:00.004-05:00

It's interesting to watch the changes a 7 year old goes through in the course of being a flower girl.

She's confident during rehersals and pictures and all business during her walks up and down the aisle. She's intrigued (if a bit distracted at times) during the ceremony. She's overjoyed to be riding in the limo with the wedding party, devastated not to be sitting at the head table with them, assertive at including herself as a member of the receiving line.

And of course, she's the Energizer Bunny on the dance floor at the reception.

Through all the changes, one thing stayed constant: she made me a proud papa the entire time.

Best summer ever!

2009-07-31T21:49:00.003-05:00

Bike rides, swimming, playing catch, playing soccer, monkey bars, field hockey games, Ravinia, frogs, lightning bugs, new & old books, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Tchaikovsky with cannons, parents night at camp, Istanbul, Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry, and a teddy bear picnic.

And we still have a month yet to go.

Best summer ever.

Generation Gaps

2009-06-30T18:47:00.004-05:00

Every generation has gaps to bridge with the next.

Sometimes, these gaps are self-inflicted. The greatest generation experienced economic depression and suffering they didn’t want their children – the baby boomers – to ever experience. Boomers, knowing what they were up to in their youth, kept Gen-X/Gen-Y-ers on a short leash. The absence of an experience in a child's life can cause them to react in unexpected ways (e.g., the 1960s). It also creates a gap between parent (who has an experience) and child (who does not). It's a bit like government policy: no matter how well intentioned, the law of unintended consequences prevails.

Some gaps result from technical or societal advances. Consider that a generation ago, we didn’t have mobile phones, web browsers, instant messenger, or Twitter. Those of us who grew up without them have a pre- and post-context into which these things arrived; that is, we lived before they were available, and we lived after they were available.

The experience of not having something and then having it is significantly different from not knowing what it means to not have something in the first place. Living without instant access to complex market data, detailed sports stats, comprehensive weather, and global news and opinion is simply foreign to the children we’re raising today. Similarly, our children don't understand the inability to be in continuous (if low bandwidth) communication with a network of friends anywhere they happen to be at the moment.

The presence of something like wireless communications at the time our children arrived on the scene gives it a prominance in their lives that we don't ascribe to it. We see it as evolutionary from the context we know; they see it as a permanent part of the landscape.

One consequence is that our children’s context for how they interact with each other is mechanically different from ours. And this is our gap to bridge. Having that pre- and post- context may limit how much we can appreciate how young people come to grips with these things: they engage something like Twitter with less life experience than we have, but with greater creativity and unteathered thought than we do. That, in turn, makes it difficult for us as parents to truly understand the impact these will have on their values, on their ways of communicating and interacting, of learning about things, on their emotions and reactions, and on their interpretation of the world.

The old adage that “the more things change, the more they stay the same” has stood the test of time. Media come and go: as one generation mourns the death of newspapers, yet another will lament the death of television, and yet another will be crushed by the obsolence of internet search in favor of something else. But we mustn't confuse media for message. It’s up to us as parents to understand the basics and richness of human interaction, and help our children come to grips with it, whatever the media du jour happens to be.

Societal norms of politeness and behavior reflect the available technology at the time, a veneer over our core being. Our needs to interact with each other, indeed the social fabric of our society, follows age old needs and desires that no technology will replace, or define.

Shaping the Future

2009-05-31T10:44:00.004-05:00

My daughter spends the same amount of time each week in jazz and ballet lessons. The other week, she said that she enjoyed jazz more than ballet. This was obvious from her performance at her recital the other day: while not a slouch at either, her jazz dance was noticeably better than her ballet, evident from the fullness of the dance moves to the expression on her face.

She’s going to face a lot of this as she grows up. She’ll like one academic subject more than another. She’ll like some jobs more than others. Life is filled with things we’d prefer not to do, but that we're obliged to do. Not surprisingly, we tend to show less resistance and make more investment in those things that we enjoy. Our results typically reflect this.

As she grows, there are three things I hope to help her figure out.

What do you enjoy doing?
How can you make a living at it?
Where do you want to live?

Once she enters the work force, she’ll spend a disproportionate amount of her waking hours in a variety of different jobs, hopefully in a definable career. If she’s not just holding down a job, but doing something that energizes and motivates her, she’s going to be a much happier person.

“Where” she lives will be just as important to her happiness as “what” she spends her time doing. Although a cratering global economy will restrain mobility for some years to come, generally speaking there are opportunities to live and work in a lot of different places worldwide. If we're good at what we do, we can create opportunities for ourselves anywhere in the world where there is demand. To a great extent, it's our choice to restrain ourselves geographically.

I can help her, but ultimately this is her voyage of discovery. I hope she finds things she enjoys doing, that give her runway to learn as well as opportunity to contribute. I hope she can define career opportunities for herself that leverage these areas of interest. And I hope she is able to see enough of the world first-hand to decide where she'll be happiest living.

If she does, she'll shape a fantastic future for herself.

Extraordinary Accomplishments

2009-04-30T22:20:00.000-05:00

The NASA-Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama is testimony to the fact that when a lot of really bright people come together to focus on a challenge, they can do extraordinary things. For example:

The F-1 rocket engine puts out 1.5 million pounds of thrust. That’s a fair bit of power. When NASA took possession of the F-1 in the 1950’s, it was the most powerful engine ever developed, and at the time, nobody had built a vehicle you could bolt it to. Eventually, somebody at NASA built such a vehicle. And I’m sure there was no small amount of pride when some smart guy at NASA rang up the nice folks at Rocketdyne to say: “I’ll be needing 5 of those F-1s – at a time.”

Somebody figured out a way to safely produce 7.5 million pounds of thrust for 2 minutes 30 seconds (getting all of 14,000 gallons to the mile!), and do so as the first stage of three to escape the Earth’s gravity.

Once in space, somebody figured out that the Service Module could separate, turn around, and dock with the Lunar Excursion Module, back it out, and then turn around again toward the moon – all while travelling at 17,000 miles per hour.

Of course, a lot of people had worked out all kinds of little things, like the barbecue roll to keep the spacecraft from overheating, the thousands of component parts necessary to create a sustainable personal atmosphere (a space suit), not to mention a collapsible battery operated lunar rover.

For the people involved in a project like this, it’s probably all in a day’s work. From the outside looking in, it’s stunning.

You really begin to appreciate the magnitude and complexity of everything that goes into space exploration when you try to explain just a few of these things to a 6 year old child.

Perhaps nothing captures it better than the comparison of two rockets. In one part of the museum, there’s a display of Dr. Robert Goddard’s first rocket, which went only about 41 feet into the sky. That’s not all that high, and in fact at the time he launched his rocket there were fireworks that could go far higher. But Dr. Goddard realized that his experiment was a success. If he had a more fuel, more thrust, and a more stable combustion chamber, he reckoned he could build a rocket that would break free of the Earth.

In Huntsville, you can pretty easily go from looking at a replica of Dr. Goddard’s rocket to looking at the Saturn V rocket. More fuel. More thrust. More stable combustion container. At 363 feet, it stands taller than Dr. Goddard’s first rocket flew into the sky. And it made it all the way to the moon, many times. Dream realized.

But the important lesson to teach a child in this isn’t just that “all the cool kids go to space camp.” It's that when really bright people are given the opportunity to concentrate their efforts, they’re able to do extraordinary things. Like make it possible to travel in space.

While not all of us grow up to be rocket scientists, we can each of us move the needle on our profession or our pastimes in our own modest ways. But it’s up to us to make that possible. We can’t hold other people (e.g., employers or family members) responsible for creating that environment for us. We enable ourselves.

We stand a far better chance of reaching our potential if we’re free of constraints, distractions, and self-inflicted limitations. If we don't live beyond our means, mortgaging our future through massive amounts of household debt, if we don't fall victim to debilitating addictions to drugs or alcohol, if we’ve not wasted our time in pursuit of entertainment and possessions but invested in acquiring knowledge and developing our talents, we can focus our energies – working alone, or better still, in communities – and achieve truly extraordinary things.

By teaching our children to pursue not just their individual identity but also their individual freedom, we give them the tools they need to enable themselves to maximize their experience of life.

Intelligence and Integrity

2009-03-30T09:04:00.002-05:00

“Here only a natural order of nobility is recognized, and its motto, without coat of arms or boast of hearaldry, is ‘Intelligence and Integrity.’”
William H. Whyte, Jr., in The Organization Man citing Henry Clews, in 50 Years on Wall Street

More often than not, we’re not as smart as we think we are. We misjudge risks, or create Rube Goldberg solutions to the simplest of problems. While intellectual failures are humbling, they’re also learning opportunities. Of course, we learn only if we’re not so full of hubris that we deny responsibility, and also that we possess sufficient situational awareness to recognize when our approach to a solution is perhaps excessively complex. Still, though, like Wile E. Coyote, we can dust ourselves off and go back to the ol’ drawing board when we commit an error of intelligence.

But failing a test of integrity is another matter. Society is founded on basic trust: there is an expectation that the person the other side of a business agreement will fulfill their obligations, just as there is an expectation that each person will honour their contract with society to not violate the law. We can assign a risk factor that a certain number of “defaults” will occur, but that rate of default is, historically, very low. This gives society a basic integrity. Integrity is crucial, because it levels the playing field so that intelligence rises to the top.

However, when there is high counterparty risk at the most fundamental of levels, society fails to function. As a result, we make adjustments, so that the basic trust we would normally extend is not misplaced. For example, as consumer products expanded, we’ve seen increasingly sophisticated product packaging to prevent tampering and theft (thus increasing confidence in the integrity of the basic consumer purchase). Similarly, as more people travel, we’re subjected to all kinds of inspection and interrogation to ensure safety of travel (thus not discouraging people from travelling). And the increase in technology has been accompanied by its own set of threats, ranging from theft to outright destruction of our data, and counter-measures such as phishing filters and virus protection, to make it viable to use this technology.

Today, we face a global financial meltdown. Much of the wealth destruction we’ve experienced was caused by a failure of intelligence: inadequate risk models, incomplete accounting rules, lazy efforts by investment professionals, and many other things have created a loss of wealth which the world won’t recover any time soon. But there is also a lapse of integrity, with everything from falsified documentation supplied in mortgage applicastions, to fraudulent investment schemes (most famously that of Bernie Madoff). The total wealth destruction caused by the blatantly malicious is no small sum. No doubt that financial services will undergo the same phenomenon as consumer products, travel and technology as they come to grips with different means of reducing the opportunity for malice.

The bonds of trust are constantly under siege, in all walks of life. This means no small number of people dedicate their life’s energy not to advancing the knowledge of the world, or enhancing the quality of life, but to preventing one person from injuring or exploiting another. Entire industries exist to ensure the success of the most basic of transactions.

In a world that rewards “now” (e.g., book revenue for commission now, get cash flow to pay the bills now, etc.) the equation behind many transactions is distorted. Somebody may aggressively book revenue because it pays the bills, even if that revenue systemically destroys the capability of the firm to execute (e.g., a firm contracts for work that is unattractive to highly talented employees, who simply quit). Knowing that a firm with which you do business is focused on revenue at the expense of capability is something that would materially affect your willingness to do business with them, because a company gutted of talent is a less capable business partner.

Compounding the “now” mentality, the rise of relativism has made it possible for people to justify nearly any behavior, while the expansion of our “we’re all winners” culture has made us less able to deal with our own shortcomings.

What this means is that for anything in which we engage, we must always be wary of the motivations of counterparties (and in many electronic transactions, an “uninvited party.”) We must look not just at the transaction itself, but at the motivation behind the transaction. In short, we may trust, but we must also verify.

In a trusting world, we can all focus our intelligence to advance the greater good. In an untrusting world, we must allocate a great deal of our intelligence to watching our back. An investment may be highly rated or highly recommended, but it’s up to the buyer to be satisfied with the rationale behind that endorsement. Indeed, lots of people had the opportunity to invest with Madoff or buy structured credit securities backed by all kinds of strange instruments, but refused because they didn’t fully understand how the numbers worked.

Children are naturally trusting. They will extend trust to those around them. But we have to teach them to take nothing for granted. They must not only understand the context of a situation, but have sufficient insight into human behaviour so that they recognize the potential for malice. They must similarly be prepared to subject themselves to the same level of scrutiny to anybody with whom they do business.

As the great moderation gives way to a period of volatility and fear, integrity makes a person a bright light in a storm, and therefore an attractive counterparty for all kinds of situations, commercial and otherwise. It means extending that integrity only to worthy counterparties, and that can mean some very difficult decisions. However, if we behave in a trustworthy way, and if we surround ourselves with people who are trustworthy, our intelligence is largely the determining factor in our path through life.

Needing to navigate a tapestry of duplicitous relativists is not best use of our life’s energy. Better that our children learn how to position themselves so they can concentrate on the value that they can bring into the world.

Facing Life's Certainties with Dignity

2009-02-28T20:03:00.006-06:00

For a six year old girl, death is perhaps just the absence of somebody in this world, that there is somebody who will be missed. Of course, even for a child, an encounter with death isn't so selfish: for a child with the gift of faith, there is an expectation that the deceased - especially one so spiritually pragmatic - has simply moved on to a better place.

Death is not simply a change of state. There is much to be learned by the event of death itself. Indeed, a graceful death is a poignant event. I hope that she recognizes how life's other certainty (death) can be faced down with dignity. Not pride, not hubris, not escapism, but the dignity of one who says, "I did what I did. I love who I love. I am who I am. I am ready."

And, perhaps, there is a strong lesson that dignity and poise are conspicuous by their absence in life artificially supported. Prolonging life can be a function of fear. Fear is understandable: none of us really knows what lies beyond. But there is a difference between uncertainty and denial, and denial isn't helpful, especially as it puts pressure on a broader community (e.g., family) to share in the denial of an inevitability experienced by billions of people who have come before. This imposition is outright irresponsible: many lives are subserviated to propogate a falsehood clung to by a few.

This (perhaps tastelessly) puts life's first certainty (taxes) into perspective. A budget deficit in excess of 12% of GDP artificially prolongs a lifestyle. In actual fact, it means that one generation's lifestyle will be borne substantially by another. Such an act lacks not just dignity and poise, but honour. Many future generations will be subserviated to propogate a falsehood.

We each of us bear both of life's certainties: we have a fiduciary obligation to our government, and we must someday meet our maker. If we face these responsibly, neither need be burdensome. May we conduct ourselves honourably in both, not passing a spirit of denial to our children, but teaching them a sense of responsibility.

When Reassurance Meets Reality

2009-01-31T22:45:00.007-06:00

In recent months, we've witnessed wealth destruction on a massive scale. In the coming months, there are likely to be a great many bankruptcies and liquidations, both household and commercial. While unfortunate, many are the result of questionable decisions, principally in the form of debt willfully issued by borrowers and underwritten by lenders. This was done in large part because asset values were expected to rise indefinately, while risks to future income streams were not fully appreciated. With unviable (or simply irrelevant) businesses finally called to a reckoning, unemployment is increasing, and deflation is the force du jour. This means cash flows are evaporating and valuations are declining. At the moment, a bottom has not yet been identified, meaning uncertainty prevails, and with it we have unprecedented volatility, an absence of individual economic freedom, and a lack of economic confidence. We have lost our unprecedented propsperty and are in free fall; all we can say with certainty right now is that we're in transition.

In his 31 January column in the Financial Times, Harry Eyres writes: "...if we are wise, we must surely question what it was about our apparent wellness that contributed to and led up to the crisis. Was the crisis really nothing to do with us, with the way we were living - was it an overwhelming catastrophe emanating from outside of us, sent by some angry deity such as Poseidon, the god of earthquakes and tsunamis?"

Might we, through our apparent wellness, have contributed to our current situation? Yes, of course we did, for reasons which go beyond this simple blog entry. One characteristic of our "apparent wellness" is worth calling out: the "we're all winners!" societal norm we adopted is not sustainable. Bankruptcy, while perhaps necessary and healthy for the economy, is not a hallmark of success. Clearly, not everybody is a winner.

Perhaps in addition to creating asset bubbles, we've created a "self-worth" bubble. We've interfered with our societal synapses: the "we're all winners!" messaging has made us into an entitled society. Our "everybody gets a trophy" ceremonies have inflated our perception of what we're truely capable of delivering despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Ditching the trappings of false performance and learning to contend with the reality of limitation will be a systemic shock, but a very positive one that will go a long way to restoring the synapses that created such tremendous human achievement in the first place. Human accomplishments have been bred from many factors, including talent, fortitude and no small amount of luck, but not entitlement. Not once.

It will be interesting to see how our societal psyche comes to grips with economic reality. We no longer have the luxury of maintaining the illusion of entitlement. The issue isn't that any person lacks worth, but that each person must earnestly and honestly accept where his or her talents lie and do not lie. Trophies, slogans, and emotions will not sustainably overcome a shortage of talent in an increasingly competitive global economy. This is not to say that we mustn't encourage risk, only that we need to encourage responsible risk. Anything else is speculative at best, irrational at worst.

And the last thing we need now is another bubble fueled by misplaced confidence in our ability to do things that we simply cannot.

Filtering Bias from Fact

2008-12-31T12:38:00.008-06:00

News organizations have long had a reputation for biased reporting. As news outlets become increasingly ideologically polarized, bias has become more acute. To distill the facts of a situation, the consumer has to be skeptical as to the completeness and even the accuracy of any given report. He or she must also be aggressive in seeking out alternative reports to piece together the full set of facts and draw informed conclusions.

This takes time, but is easy to do because technology makes it easier to access different sources of news and perspective. But while the demand side of news has never been so democratic, it’s also never been so easily distorted. As consumers, we can choose to seek the comfort of “reinforcement” under the aegis of seeking “truth” by subscribing solely to ideologically aligned sources of news/information/opinion. We can just as easily choose to completely ignore outlets that are unaligned with our worldview. Consider how this could impact our interpretation of the current state of global economics: depending who you listen to, either capitalism has completely collapsed, or it’s time to buy equities. Exclusive focus on one perspective or another because it reinforces your opinions or satiates your fears puts you at risk to miss the complete picture.

There are many important lessons to teach our children in all of this. Three stand out.

One is that it is important to teach our children to look for the “story behind the story:” what is the motivation behind the choice of facts that are presented in any story by any news organization. Some years ago, a major US airline on the brink of bankruptcy was seeking concessions from its unionized workforce. In every story covering the situation, one US newspaper always made sure to point out that the labor union’s own investment bankers were advising the union to accept the terms, while another US newspaper always mentioned the executive compensation packages. Each was an important piece of data in the full picture, yet one newspaper had a completely different worldview than the other. The point is to understand the motivation behind what it is that each news source elects to include – and exclude. Filtering through this requires time, patience and balance.

Another is that our children have to expect that the people with whom they interact may not be working from the same set of data (and I use that term loosely) in any given situation. Whether engaging in debate, negotiation or just casual conversation, the fundamental facts may be highly suspect. There is no doubt that in the history of time, challenging "facts" has led to all kinds of breakthroughs and revelations. Less dramatically, challenging facts and assumptions was a contributing factor as to why many people elected not to invest with Madoff, or not to invest in opaque securities.

Finally, while our children need to be open-minded to new facts and opinions and need to be ready to acknowledge when they’re wrong, they also need to have the courage of their own convictions in any given situation. As John Kenneth Galbraith said, “The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.” It’s easy to get carried away by momentum and emotion. Precious few had a good year in the markets in 2008, but for those who did it wasn’t entirely accidental. Many (such as John Paulson) identified the signs and implications of a deteriorating credit market and found plenty of willing counterparties for their positions. (Granted, the signs were there for a long time and getting the timing right always requires luck, but taking the positions in the first place was no accident.) Sustaining contrarian thinking in the face of overwhelming conventional enthusiasm is difficult. It requires one to have fundamental objectivity – and tremendous inner confidence in the integrity of one’s objectivity.

The best way to prepare our children for whatever lies ahead is not to impart ideological dogma, but critical thinking and critical analysis. If we do this honestly, of course, we’ll quickly realize that we each have our own biases. We must be willing to acknowledge that we each have our own motivations and so shall our children. Learning to distinguish between the two within ourselves is no easy task.

It also gives us an opportunity to return the repetitive questioning, challenging them with "why? why? why?" with each answer they give.

Unstructured Time

2008-11-30T20:45:00.006-06:00

There's a series of children's books written in the 1970s called Frog and Toad designed to help young people learn how to read. One of them - Frog and Toad Together - contains a short story called "A List." In it, Toad makes a list of all the things he has to do by the end of the day: wake up, eat breakfast, get dressed, and so forth. He then follows this script as his daily plan, never straying from it. As his day progresses, he scratches off items from the list.

Then a strong wind blows the list out of his hands.

Enter Frog. Toad immediately reaches out to Frog to chase after his list, because "running after my list is not one of the things I wrote on my list of things to do." Frog is unable to recover the list.

Despondent that he has lost his list, Toad does nothing. Frog writes a new list for Toad with a single entry, "go to bed." This Toad does, and he completes his day.

In addition to helping young people learn to read, it offers insight into very common workplace behaviours: Toad is a contract employee, Frog is his manager.

Toad does only as he is told to do, nothing more and nothing less. He isn't engaged in solving problems, he's simply performing tasks. Additional tasks that come his way that are pertinent to the problem he's working on are deflected to other people. (As an aside, if he works for a firm that supplies contract employees, those additional tasks would increase revenue for his firm.) And, of course, the loss of his task order left him idle and helpless rather than liberated to engage in more creative pursuits.

Frog, meanwhile, doesn't redirect Toad's energies in any meaningful way (nor does he furlough him, although that would be a bit of a stretch.) His priority is to restore order to his team.

There are some interesting lessons in this. Our children's lives are increasingly structured for them. They follow fixed routines of school, athletics and activities, which limits the times during which they can complete homework (a surprising volume of which is assigned to them in the very early stages of their academic careers). Because their daily lives are mapped out for them, they're constantly being told exactly what to do from minute to minute, which means they don't learn how to make best use of time. So it's valuable for a child to learn how to deal with - indeed, capitalize on - unstructured time, precisely because their lives are so highly structured in the first place.

It's also important that our children recognize the difference between performing tasks and solving problems. We can map out a series of steps that we need to take to accomplish a goal, but that series of steps is only as relevant as our current understanding of the problem space. If the problem space changes, we have to change with it if we're going to accomplish our goal. We also have to recognize this and make these changes independently and not constantly look for instruction from others. Sounds obvious, but we see it all the time at work, particularly in the Information Technology space, which is increasingly long on service-level agreements and short on results.

This is all a bit out of reach for a 6 year old, but it makes the story a lot more interesting when we read it together. But she does come up with some very creative things when she's left to her own devices.

Antiquity and Youth

2008-10-30T21:45:00.000-05:00

Antique shows, flea markets and eBay have done big trade in nostalgia and collectables in recent years. Until recently, there has been a market for just about anything from toys to cookware that could bring back memories of the halcyon days of one's youth.

These things have some characteristics in common. To survive that long (and be available for sale somewhere), those items have to be of durable construction. To still be usable (and not simply very large paperweights) they have to be of simple technology. To be held in value, they have to be of recognized quality. To have staying power beyond a single generation, they have to be of timeless identity, and not products of fads.

This doesn’t describe the over-engineered, cheaply produced, pop culture dominated world in which our children are immersed today. We don’t build for durability, we build for consumption. We don’t define value systems, we define marketing messages. And we believe we improve everything by adding a battery.

Our creations today are infused with situational context: you need the right operating system, the right power source, the right hardware, and watch the right television shows if you are to get any use out of the things we create. Quality has become relative to context, not absolute to a standard. And, of course, today’s context will be tomorrow’s obsolescence. This means that the stuff we make today is “quality” more by matter of opinion or limited experience of the consumer than it is by fact. It also means that this stuff has a built-in expiration date of usefulness. It’s hard to imagine that 30 years hence our children will be ecstatic to discover a Hanna Montana DVD. It’s hard to imagine they’ll remember what either is.

There are some things – furniture, musical instruments, even houses – that are functional and timeless. They represent craftsmanship and values of those who came before us. If we are fortunate enough to have something like this in our care, we are aware that it is in our possession not so much to be consumed as to be taken care of for another generation.

This is, of course, a subtle lesson that "it isn't all about us" after all. But there is also something to be said for sustainable consumption. If we don't teach our children to value "sustainability" in ordinary things, how will they learn to apply it to their relationships with one another?

"Partnershipping" is a Perfectly Cromulent Word

2008-09-13T00:59:00.010-05:00

In the The Simpsons, the Springfield city motto is: "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man." In the episode Lisa the Iconoclast, elementary school teacher Edna Krabappel challenges the legitimacy of the word "embiggens," only to be swiftly dismissed by another teacher: "it's a perfectly cromulent word."

The other night, my daughter's school held a curriculum night, intended to give parents direct visibility into the people, process and content of the school. During an address to the parents, faculty and staff, the superintendent used the word "partnershipping." Not "partnering," but "partnershipping."

It's a perfectly cromulent word.

I feel embiggened.

The Real versus The Contrived

2008-08-31T19:16:00.004-05:00

Stealing away for a few final days of summer at a place with a lot of outdoor activities (swimming, canoeing/kayaking, hiking, etc.) makes clear how far removed we are from the world around us. We go to great lengths to recreate natural experiences artificially, and we add layers to insulate us from the world around us.

This disconnect from the world is a Faustian exchange as it denies us the full experience of life. There is simply no comparison between swimming in a spring-fed lake and taking a chemical bath in a pool. Nor is there between the experience of canoeing and powerboating. Gliding over the water under your own power, a wake the only footprint of your presence, lets you pause to witness first-hand the intricacies of life. By comparison, repeatedly going in circles through the water at full engine-assisted throttle not only ignores nature, it creates an exhaust “leave behind” that scars the waterscape. Even perambulating has surprising upside. A short hike on a footpath is a form of time-travel: taking a trail trodden for over a century gives exposure to all kind of “postcards” left by those who came before, the thoughtful time-capsules that document history and change of a place.

The real world is never that far away, and it’s great fun when we’re fully exposed to it. But breaking free to find it takes concerted effort. We’ve contrived our own world to insulate us from the real one. We’re completely insulated from it in our day-to-day. That contrived world, as sensory-encompassing as it may be with sounds, imagery, priorities, urgency and so forth, is of comically limited depth: no artificial system is as resilient as even the most primitive ecosystem.

As parents, we have an obligation to make the real world accessible to our children. From a young age, they build points of reference that are resilient to an ever-expanding plasticine layer. As they mature, these sustainable connections will enable them to recognize and appreciate the difference between the real and the contrived.

It isn't edutainment, it just fills time

2008-07-31T18:01:00.003-05:00

Somewhere along the way, programming for children became sanitized claptrap designed to sell merchandise more than entertain by story telling.

What passes for plot are combinations of shallow storylines masquerading as problem solving, situational "dramas" (as much drama as there can be in the life of a person in a midddle-class, stable household who is under the legal age to vote, drive, work and consume alcohol) where nobody comes out a loser, and mindless, lightweight action sequences that stretch episodes to fill network program slots. There are no fables, parables or stories being told. There are no distinct characters. There are no winners and losers. Children's programs are just time fillers.

Of course, by being nothing but eye candy, these programs run little risk of being offensive. This creates commercial upside. By ostensibly offering educational value, they blunt the guilt parents feel for putting their children in front of the photon-blasting nanny for hours on end. This increases viewership counts and “brand awareness.” The absence of even a hint of something which may offend defaults these shows into a state of “mass appeal.” This, in turn, translates into other revenue streams, as merchandise bearing their likeness are a "safe" gift to children in just about any household.

Contrast this to children's entertainment of previous generations. The studios owned by the brothers Warner produced hundreds of action-packed mini-dramas that told a story with genuine characters. In a seven-minute short, they offer a far greater insight into life lessons: the progression of axe-pistol-shotgun-cannon-flowers-chocolates-engagement ring-wedding dress-wedding is representative of life coming at you fast. These brief episodes also introduce us to the types of people we deal with on a daily basis. Sylvester the Cat or Wile E. Coyote needing to secure at any cost mouse or bird for their next meal is the salesperson needing to close the next deal to make quarterly targets. Elmer Fudd, a vegetarian who hunts for sport, is the corporate leader with wealth considerably beyond his needs for sustenance who is hyper-competitive strictly for reasons of ego. Foghorn Leghorn is a loud mouth schmuck to his cube- I mean, barnyard-mates.

But these cartoons aren't educational! That’s ok, they tell good stories. Children recognize the difference between mindless, shallow forms of entertainment and content that is both deep and complex. They're too violent! Children aren't idiots. For the most part, they have an intuitive understanding of basic concepts of physics such as gravity, or force == mass x acceleration, or the destructive power of different forms of weaponry (ranging from anvil to firearm to disintegrator). It isn’t the responsibility of television to instill this appreciation, it's our responsibility as parents to teach them these things. Cartoons won’t "desensitize" factual knowledge tought by people. Indeed, statistically we've seen neither rise nor drop in incidents of free-falling anvil-related injuries in the last 50 years with the comings and goings of these cartoon shorts on broadcast television.

Besides, where else is a 6 year old going to learn how to conduct an orchestra? It's a handy skill when learning to appreciate Beethoven.

Rhythm in Life

2008-06-28T21:31:00.007-05:00

It’s a rare opportunity to be able to share with a child the experience of a live performance of something that is timeless in character. We heard Dave Brubeck play live last week. He’s an outstanding pianist, and surrounds himself with equally outstanding musicians.

He's best known for music of different rhythms: Take Five is in 5/4 time, Blue Rondo à la Turk is in 9/8. These are unusual rhythms, common time being four beats per measure. Both Take Five and Blue Rondo are (for most people, anyway) intrinsically appealing, even if the source of the appeal remains a mystery to most.

Recognising what makes these pieces unique is itself a form of meta-awareness. Rhythm, like harmony, isn’t always something we notice. Rhythm isn’t the centerpiece of music. It isn't even in the background. It just is.

So it is in life. We encounter people who "march to the beat of a different drummer." We may hold them out to be oddballs, or we may find them mysteriously appealing. The question remains whether we see everything there is to see about a person so that we understand why it is we see them the way that we do. We don't usually look for "rhythm," so we don't always recognise it in other people. Something that forms a significant portion of our impression of other people is below the radar. It’s just there. It takes meta-awareness to notice it at all.

It isn’t clear yet whether my daughter even marginally appreciates the experience of hearing Dave Brubeck perform live. Maybe the next time she hears “Take Five” on the streaming audio server at home she’ll notice what isn’t there: the improv of the live performance that isn't in the studio recording. Perhaps she’ll be aware of the music she doesn't hear.

Or perhaps not. She's only 6.

But she will know what is in the frame, snapping her fingers as she counts out the rhythm while Dave and the band play: 1-2-3-4-5-1-2-3-4-5 …

Situational Awareness

2008-05-26T22:06:00.003-05:00

Sometimes, we are to our children as the Acme Corporation is to Wile E. Coyote: we supply equipment that enables the pursuit of some objective, only for the pursuit to end in misadventure. While these are certainly opportunities to teach responsibility, determination, or just better hand-eye coordination, they are also opportunities to help our children develop situational awareness.

From the perspective of executor, it is difficult to critically root-cause the reasons for our successes and failures. We must learn how to externalize so that we recognize the difference among execution failure (the Coyote flying of his own volition with the aid of the Acme Bat-Man costume, only to slam into a mountain because he didn’t have his eyes open), situational failure (being run over by a truck whilst setting a trap using “free bird seed” as the bait), and structural error (powering up the outsized electro-magnet and attracting every sizable metal object – steam rollers, boats, busses – in a very large geographic region and thus becoming the target of his own plan.)

By looking holistically and retrospecting an entire situation and outcome, we learn that it is worth iterating through some pursuits (note to self: keep eyes open), while others are just outright bad ideas (question to self: could what I am about to do become a self-targeted missile?) And it’s important to know when we failed but have no data points on the fitness of our solution, as the proverbial truck will trump the best laid plans of coyotes and men.

Society doesn’t necessarily value this. It encourages us to deny responsibility and be victims of outcomes rather than responsible for them. Is not the Acme Corporation responsible for the misadventure of the coyote? Does the manual to the Bat-Man costume explicitly require that the operator keep his or her eyes open at all times? And what business do they have selling such a powerful electro-magnet in the first place? Whether the coyote is a Super Genius or not is irrelevant; the Acme Corporation is culpable!

Understanding as completely as we can the spectrum of events that form both situation and result allows us to take better informed decisions and improve our quality of life. It gives us independence and greater confidence in our future actions, things we do not get if we deny the responsibility we have for our fate. But it is up to us to develop this capability - and stress the value of it - to our children. In a blameless society, constructive-critical self-assessment is not something our children are likely to learn from anybody else.

Learning How to Teach

2008-04-27T22:02:00.006-05:00

Earlier this month, I learned how to teach my daughter how to ride a bike.

We worked backwards. First, we made sure we knew how to work the brakes. Then we learned how to maintain balance. Finally, we learned know how to make a standing start. Put it together, and you have an end-to-end ride.

She tattooed two brick walls, a fence and a shrub on her first day with a low, even, prime number of wheels. She didn’t immediately recognise what it is she was learning with each passing impact.... er., experience, so she needed a bit of coaching. She also needed some encouragement to get back on the metal-and-plastic horse. But get back on she did, and her maiden voyage from start to (intentional) stop is now in the books.

In learning how to teach a subject, we increase our own mastery, giving us as teachers the potential to learn as much as our students from the act of knowledge transfer. But teaching offers even greater possibilities. Sometimes our students surpass our own knowledge, and become the masters from whom we learn. While this may be upside for the teacher, this is not necessarily an easy transition for the student. They may find it difficult to cope with the change in role-state, struggling to cope without defined boundaries. Rather than evolve into a master, the student may rebel or drift because they are not properly prepared for this change.

We hope that our children's capabilities will surpass our own. For that to happen, we must pay attention to more than just their tacical execution: we must also be situationally aware enough to recognise when they have outgrown us as teachers. This allows us to change that aspect of our relationship so that even if we’re in their wake as executors, we remain sufficiently engaged with them as they carry on their journey into undiscovered country.

Although she had a difficult first day, she couldn’t spend enough time with her bike on the second. May she direct it on many voyages of discovery.

Three Questions

2008-03-27T23:40:00.000-05:00

There's a children's book by Jon J. Muth called The Three Questions. It's based on a story of the same name by Leo Tolstoy.

A young boy is searching for answers:

"When is the best time to do things?"
"Who is the most important one?"
"What is the right thing to do?"

The book concludes:

"Remember then that there is only one important time, and that time is now. The most important one is always the one you are with. And the most important thing is to do good for the one who is standing at your side. For these, my dear boy, are the answers to what is most important in this world.

This is why we are here."¹

We denominate our business achievements in some currency (Euro, Pounds, Dollars, Francs, Yen...) but the richness of our lives is determined by how we interact with other people. We don't always get this right. Sometimes we get it horribly wrong. When we do, we hope it is not so wrong that we are disallowed the opportunity to ask and answer these questions again.

To live this is difficult enough. Being on the receiving end while somebody else gradually comes to grips with it is a challenge - and privilege - of parenting.

¹ Excerpts from Muth, Jon J. The Three Questions Scholastic Press, 2002.

Confidence Building Doesn't Replace Real Learning

2008-02-29T21:10:00.009-06:00

In the Girls Just Want to Have Sums episode of The Simpsons, Lisa Simpson asks her math teacher: “Confidence building can’t replace real learning, can it?” This is quite an indictment of current educational values.

Nearly everything in which children participate - sports, arts, school - is accompanied by a constant barrage of reinforcement, to the extent that children are showered with awards and trophies for just about everything they do. Unfortunately, no matter how hard we try, the “you’re all winners!” messaging won’t change the cold, hard reality that in any given activity, some people are better than others.

Of course, there are two sides to the participation trophies: if everybody won, then everybody also lost. Our children’s cabinets are filling up with “loser trophies.”

Skill and performance aren’t matters of opinion, they’re matters of fact. Denying this undermines a person’s development of self-awareness. At younger ages, participation in everything from arts to sport is primarily concerned with skill discovery and skill acquisition. Achievement is important, but achievement is meaningful only after sufficient skill development has taken place. To wit: recitals from introductory music students have more cute value than musical interpretive value. Cheapening achievement creates false confidence, and undermines work ethic to achieve. Nothing is served by this, as everybody will, sooner or later, come face to face with their limits. The question is, will they recognise that success comes from hard work and dedication and not just from showing up.

We shower children with awards and recognition because we hope to build confidence. This reinforcement is external and temporary. Confidence comes from within. It is a byproduct of self-awareness, a result of knowing our strengths and weaknesses. Self-awareness comes from success and failure, independently achieved. There are no awards for self-awareness, but it engenders strength of character. Better to nurture this in children than to fill their cabinets full with loser trophies.

True Joy is Serious Business

2008-01-26T22:40:00.000-06:00

In the 26-27 January edition of the Wall Street Journal, James F. Penrose reviews After the Golden Age by Kenneth Hamilton, a book that traces the change from passionate, individual interpretation of classical music towards dogmatic recital of what is believed to be the composer’s original intent. In describing Mendelssohn’s very strict interpretation of music, Mr. Penrose quotes Seneca: Res severa est verum gaudium. In English: "true joy is a serious business." This is a charge to all parents.

The joy that young children experience knows no bounds. As they grow, that joy is gradually overrun by cynicism. To master that cynicism, and to still experience joy in this world, children must learn to balance discipline with passion. Passion without control is recklessness. Control without passion denies a person the experience of life.

We guide children on this path in everything they do. Mindless execution in pursuit of technical perfection stifles creativity. Performance may be technically excellent, but lacks the soul of the performer. Similarly, execution requires discipline. Performing in the absence of any sense of discipline denies the fact that excellence requires a context. To wit: an unstructured collection of stanzas isn’t a Haiku simply because one asserts that it is; in actual fact, it’s nothing more than a poorly written poem.

Those who achieve this balance can produce works of profound joy. When one hears Seiji Ozawa’s interpretation of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, one hears unquestioned technical talent balanced with aggressive interpretation true to the baroque style. One never hears the piece in the same way again. When one reads Kenneth Yasuda’s thesis on North American Haiku, The Japanese Haiku, one realizes that in the hands of one who is master of language, the rhythm and rhyme of the Haiku is liberation, not limitation. One destroys nearly every Haiku he has written and begins anew. When one hears Benny Goodman’s interpretation of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto (K. 622), Mozart’s enthusiasm for the clarinet is uniquely evident in Goodman’s recital. That enthusiasm is immediately conspicuous by its absence in one’s own recital. One sets about re-learning the piece from the first measure. Those among the generation of people in our charge who learn to balance excellence with passion will contribute their own rich interpretations and add to the world's collective experience of life.

It is our responsibility as parents to engender this in our children. The scope of this responsibility goes beyond what it is our children elect to do, it applies to who they are: each individual’s life is a work art, thus a potential source of joy. Guiding a child as she or he masters the tools of the artist in the media of life is serious business indeed.

Silence is Golden

2008-01-12T22:58:00.000-06:00

Read this on a Gem sugar packet in Athlone. In Gaelic: “Is binn béal ina thost.” In English, “Silence is golden.”

We are all of us subjected daily to an aural onslaught. Some is incidental, byproducts of the way we live. Some is intentional, targeted attempts to command our attention. Some is psychological, ploys to “set a mood” in a commercial experience. All of it is an invasion of serenity.

One wonders if we have not become that much more mentally steeled. To maintain our modicum of peace, we must subconsciously allocate mental cycles to tune out the noise now indigenous to our environment. This means we constantly expend energy to maintain a semblance of tranquility. It also means there's a brisk business done in noise-cancelling headphones.

Gold was, at one time, the coin of the realm. ‘twas precious to be sure, but far more accessible. ‘tis accessible no longer, not since the abandonment of Bretton Woods. ‘tis now a commodity, and far more dear indeed.

The same fate has befallen silence.

Cerebral Dad.init()

2007-12-29T00:53:00.000-06:00

Spending hours with a 5 year old on a trans-Atlantic flight gently resets one's experience of life. Children have unrestrained creative energy. It is infectious.