I sometimes joke in class that Excel is the cause of most of our woes and frustrations. Everything seems so need and tidy with inputs and outputs clearly defined. My own experience as a banker for ten years told me that projections are never right — of course they aren’t. We know so little of the real inputs and outputs. But Excel, as Lotus 1-2-3 did during the go-go ’80s LBO craze, give us an illusion of certainty and predictability.
We seem to apply this to everyday life, financial projections, career planning, and even scheduling our families. We seem to expect that if we have the right tools that we can find order in the chaos and tides of change.
I’m enjoying reading and re-reading systems theory thinkers right now. I’m enjoying Bela Banathy’s Designing Social Systems in a changing World (1996), which among many other things looks at how Design works. He framed science as examining of the past, art as reexamining of the present, and design as changing elements to create different futures. I do like that framework. Once you realize that change is a tide pulling outward on our societal structures with creative destruction for new creations, you can start realizing that change can be affected.
But the world of Excel seems to illustrate that change can be predicted and mandated into place. Public policy and corporate activities crank out spreadsheets assuming that action A will create activity B and official actions will turn into official results.
Change happens, but isn’t clean, pretty, and Excel-like. Change really happens when the systems we create are so out of alignment with the swirling changes in the systems around them that they crack. They break. Then new systems congeal and swirl, addressing the changed needs that have pressured the systems for so long.
Educational institutions mostly are designed for Excel-like repetition, adding new trials and budgeted elements but not creative destruction. That definitely applies to US K12 education, but also to many higher education institutes that I tinker with. Government? We budget versus prior year, with money driving the decisions instead of looser systems to reflect the needs of the community. Then we are surprised that we use the word Reform around both of these systems, as they are built without their own reform processes within…and projected based on Excel spreadsheets to replicate the year before…
My mother used to tell the story of the newlywed woman and her first Christmas ham in her new home. Her new husband said, “Why are you cutting 3 inches off of the end of the ham?” She replied, “That’s what my mother always did.” She called her mother who replied, “Well, that’s what your grandmother always did.” She then called Grandma, who thought for a minute before replying, “Dear, when I first got married, we had a very small stove…”
We have designed our banking systems, financial systems, based on Excel thinking, predictive modeling, and assuming more of the same.
How do we design our thinking without an Excel mentality? How frightening and awkward is that?
How does this free us to rethink our assumptions? Can we dwell in long moments of uncertainty and discomfort and design anew?
I am transfixed by Twitscoop, watching real-time tag cloud changes and by the minute graphing of conversations on Twitter. Right now, evidently there is a road race going on and Shaun of the Dead is on Comedy Central — both are popping through the cloud. Almost surreal…
Here’s the widget, which will change after this posting and will keep showing current Tweeting.
Google mobile search is transforming the way I work. It is very irritating — I’m checking details all the time that people mention in conversation. I try not to correct them…that seems rude. Or at least my husband keeps telling me it is rude.
So I’m not surprised, but still amazed, at the New York Times article yesterday by John Schwartz on jury mistrials due to mobile search, Tweeting, and blogging. This seems incredibly obvious, but perhaps spins into a different type of “I know before you” wisdom.
And how do these mobile searchers know what they are reaching online is better than what they are hearing from the jury box? That’s an unspoken issue here as well. I trust Wikipedia ahead of the courtroom experts?
Where is this going? Ten years ago, there was a very nice restaurant I went to in Europe where everyone had to check their phones. If they rang, the waiter answered them for you. I’m not advocating this in juries (though I miss the idea in restaurants — that would be great), but why are people not having to park their phones at the door. Sorry, can’t hear testimony, I’m tweeting…
I asked in my MBA class last night — so what do we refer to about the current financial mess? One of the students called out: “The Depression.”
I put out two temporary names:
“The New Normal” — The past few years have been an overinflated blur of too much buying with no real value. Jobs were created selling things that people didn’t need to people who really weren’t generating the value to afford them. We really can’t go back there again and shouldn’t. The TARP Stimulus Package is going through old pipes into old sectors to bribe people into creating old types of jobs so people can want more stuff again. This isn’t creating new “innovation” or new value for society…minimal retraining…minimal rethinking…so far. So I might call this The New Normal.
The Great Panic of 2009-2011 — Maybe we will “recover” but to what? Maybe we will just gain confidence in the “system” and that we will have jobs and future wealth on the markets going back up again. But we will be jumpy, just like after a major earthquake. A car rolls past, rocks the floor a bit, and you jump and look for doorways. This is my more optimistic name (made more cynical by the timeframe…maybe to 2010?).
I stand a little firmer by The New Normal. There isn’t a chicken in every pot and some people may be fighting for that chicken. I want to figure how we raise more chickens, not just figure out how we go back to selling them pretty dresses to make them look nicer. (I know, bad metaphor.)
We are still applying bandaids and praying for rain. I’m not sure the rain is coming. So if the rain doesn’t come…how do you plan your life and actions differently? What if we aren’t in a world of “more” but are in a world of “divide” and “share”? How do we create Real “more” that society needs, not just wants?