What’s the Problem?

Like this passage from Moneyball (2011):

Grady Fuson: We’re trying to solve a problem here.
Billy Beane: Not like this you’re not. You’re not even looking at the problem.
Grady Fuson: We’re very aware of the problem.
Billy Beane: Okay, good. What’s the problem?
Grady Fuson:  Okay, Billy. We all understand what the problem is. We have to replace…
Billy Beane: Good. What’s the problem?
Grady Fuson: The problem is we have to replace three key players.
Billy Beane: No. What’s the problem?
John Poloni: Same as it’s ever been. We’ve gotta replace these guys with what we have existing.
Billy Beane: No! What’s the problem, Barry?
Scout Barry: We need three eight home runs, a hundred twenty R.B.I’s and forty seven…
Billy Beane: Aaahhh! The problem we’re trying to solve is that there are rich teams and there are poor teams, then there’s fifty feet of crap, and then there’s us. It’s an unfair game. And now we’re being gutted, organ donors for the rich. Boston has taken our kidney’s, Yankees takin’ our heart and you guys are sittin’ around talkin’ the same old good body nonsense, like we’re selling deeds. Like we’re looking for Fabio. We got to think differently.

So Transient a Work of Art As a Dinner

Are such efforts worth while to achieve so transient a work of art as a dinner? (Marie Louise Ritz, Cesar Ritz: Host to the World, p. 285 – giving an account of the attention to detail that the General Manager, Victor Rey, supervized for one memorable dinner).

Very much like Dewey’s idea of an experience. In fact, he uses the example of a meal in his chapter, “Having an Experience”:

There is that meal in a Paris restaurant of which one says “that was an experience” (Art as Experience, p. 37).

How appropriate! Mrs. Ritz is writing about the Hôtel Ritz in Paris (Both Dewey’s book and Mrs. Ritz’s book were also published in 1938). But it doesn’t end there.

What about …

  • Listening to music (Steve Jobs and the iPod);
  • Waiting in line at the bank;
  • Waiting at the hospital;
  • Booking a room via a mobile app;
  • The list goes on and on …

Cesar Ritz, Service Recovery, Key Touchpoints

At the Grand Hotel National, Ritz had come to realise the fundamental importance of cooking in the hotel business. While there, he had adopted a system which he never quite abandoned in later years. When it was impossible to give a client the accommodations he desired or if for any other reason a client seemed dissatisfied, Ritz would see to it that an especially good meal was provided for the disgruntled one who, invariably, over his coffee and cigar would see things differently, become good humoured and tolerant. It was also found to be a good plan to adopt with newly arrived visitors or with guests about to take their departure. First and last impressions are so important (Marie Louise Ritz, Cesar Ritz: Host to the World, pp. 104-5).

He had adopted a system – intentional design. A system of service recovery back in 1877-80. He was also intimately familiar with the idea of a guest journey, deciding to focus on key touch points – the beginning and the end of an experience.

Acts of Meaning

Reading Jerome Bruner’s Acts of Meaning. Gives a psychologist’s account of meaning-making in our social world.

Or one can imagine specifying the conditions on the meanings of particular utterances that follow the initial statement “Let us pray.” Under its dispensation, the utterance “Give us this day our daily bread,” is not to be taken as a request but, say, as an act of reverence or trust. And, if it is to be understood in its context, it must be interpreted as a trope (p. 64).

Interesting example. Will have to come back to this post and thought.

Modest v. Grandiose

The topoi/issue of particulars and universals in design and management is omnipresent. In his final chapter, “Conclusion: The Entrepreneurial Society,” he differentiates “revolution” from “innovation/entrepreneurship.” It’s too grandiose and uncontrollable. Reminds me of Kuhn’s notion of a paradigm where the dominant course of a society dramatically shifts.

On the contrary, innovation is smaller in scale described as “one step at a time,” “a product here, a policy there, a public service yonder.” He then contrasts “planning” v. focusing on opportunity that is needed in a specific situation (space and time). The focus should be on pragmatic as opposed to dogmatic. The contrast is between modest and grandiose. Love it.

I argued in my presentation at SDN that designers tend to focus on particulars and managers on universals. “Planning” is something that is grand in scale and Drucker points out that innovation and entrepreneurship do not operate at that level (makes me think of Rittel and Webber’s discussion on planning).

Drucker writes,

But innovation, almost by definition, has to be decentralized, ad hoc, autonomous, specific, and micro-economic. It had better start small, tentative, flexible. Indeed, the opportunities for innovation are found, on the whole, only way down and close to events. They are not to be found in the massive aggregates with which the planner deals of necessity, but in the deviations therefrom – in the unexpected, in the incongruity, in the difference between “The glass is half full” and “The glass is half empty,” in the weak link in a process. By the time the deviation becomes “statistically significant” and thereby visible to the planner, it is too late. Innovative opportunities do not come with the tempest but with the rustling of the breeze (p. 255).

This is a great passage on design. There’s some stuff in there that ties in with the idea of service blueprinting. In essence, one can read this passage and argue that Drucker is pointing out the importance of designing at the level of human experience.

And I think I’ve found a new topoi: modest v. grandiose (repositioning the traditional particulars v. universals).

Elevator Speech on “Managing by Design”

Last week, I had the privilege of attending a dinner event at Weatherhead. The event was a fancy dinner at a nearby hotel to recruit the next group of MBA students. I was pleasantly surprised by the ongoing mention of design integration across all departments within Weatherhead. In fact, there were several faculty – whom I have never met – who shared about their enthusiasm for design when given the mic during the course of the meal. I know these faculty have a different or vague notion of what design might be (I feel qualified to make this judgment since I am co-teaching the “Design in Management” studio course), but it was great to see their appreciation.

At one point in the evening, the MC, a well respected professor, ask a direct question to the faculty present: “How would you describe the design initiative at the Weatherhead in the timespan of a short elevator ride?” Naturally, many of the faculty were cut off guard. I began to think how I would answer it.

About a year ago, I jotted down on a post-it note, “How would I describe what I do in a 5 minute speech? 10 minute speech? 15 minute speech? I get asked, “So what is it that you do? Design and organizations – are you making better buildings or layouts within an organization? Is it kind of like organizational behavior?” The MC’s question made me revisit the post-it note.

As I was driving my brother to the airport (he was one of the invitees), I wasn’t sure if he knew what we’re doing to converge design and management. An elevator speech is less than 5 minutes … so I gave him something like a 1 minute speech. It helped that he is a designer starting to deal with management issues:

“When people talk about integrating design and management it is easier to think about “managing design.” A big area that is booming within organizations these days is the development of a creative group. As everyone is interested in “innovation,” there is a growing challenge of managing existing and new groups of designers (creatives) since they are high in energy, many times unpredictable, and desire autonomy and take pride in individuality (almost to a fault). Cool. However, what we’re trying to do at Weatherhead is to flip that notion of integration and think about “designing management.” The usual products – that is, things that are the outputs of a product development process – are just one type of products that can be designed by human beings. In an organization, there are policies, legacy protocols, conditions to afford certain dynamics among people (e.g. politics), documents, rules, structures, that were either consciously designed or evolved haphazardly. In this perspective, there are many many products. We can design management and the entire organization. This way of thinking about design and management is not usually considered or investigated and offers opportunities for design intervention.”

I don’t think he got it at the time despite my effort to clarify what others said during the dinner event.

However, he called me tonight to share that he approached his supervisors at work today. They had asked him a few months ago what he wanted to focus on this year – last year, he told them he wanted to focus on presentation skills. This year, he didn’t say anything specific because he couldn’t think of something. He pulled his manager today and said, “I am planning on going to management school next year. I want to know how the business is run here. For example, despite working here for several years, I don’t know why we charge more for certain accounts and clients more than others. I want to know how the company makes money and why things are the way they are. I want to work on strategy.” His manager’s eyes opened wide and he said, “I didn’t know you were interested in this sort of thing! We have a position for just that sort of thing and you would be perfect for it.”

As he shared this story, I reminded him of what I said about managing design and designing management. Using the example he used, I pointed out that there is a reason why one type of account charges more than the other. Perhaps one type of account began during the 90′s as opposed to after 2000 so pricing of services may have been cheaper then. The point is, someone either designed that in the system or it evolved organically. There was a decision somewhere in time that affected the way the organization handles client relationships. This is a product within the org that can be designed. He started to get what I was saying. I think I’m starting to get what I’m saying as well.

I will make another entry about the 5, 10, 15 minute presentation of design in management. The 5 minute one probably has the key essential points … maybe it’s just 2-3 sentences. The 10 and 15 minute ones build on the “elbow” of the 5 minute and expand it so that one can get the details of the “fingers.” :)

The real meaning of a text as it addresses the interpreter does not just depend on the occasional factors which characterize the author and his original public. For it is also always co-determined by the historical situation of the interpreter and thus by the whole of the objective course of history ... The meaning of a text surpasses its author not occasionally, but always. Thus understanding is not a reproductive procedure, but rather always also a productive one ... (Gadamer)

Gadamer claims that understanding is not a reproductive procedure but a productive one. This aligns with his “fusion of horizons” and dialectics. In order to make sense of the world, one has to communicate with others and collide with others’ horizons. Only then can one have true understanding.

In many ways, this resembles Dewey’s idea of doing and undergoing – the idea of the audience of an art piece experiencing in his/her own way the art that was created by a designer from a different space and time.

In the current service design discourse, “co-creation” and “participation” are limited to interpersonal interactions. For example, we say that a bank customer who goes to an ATM to get money is co-creating the experience of that touchpoint with his bank. However, the idea that one can co-create with customers/users/audience long after the artifact or service was devised is a powerful way to think about co-creation. I reflect on this in light of the recent passing away of Steve Jobs – he left behind a culture of design in his organization and many will continue to use his signature creations despite his passing away.

How does one create a product and design it with the understanding that it may have “excess of meaning” (Gadamer) and exist beyond its intended purposes and functions in a specific moment of space and time?

How can we rethink “co-creation” in the way Gadamer describes hermeneutics and multiple interpretations? History is replete with examples of this – people recreating meaning in their own historical contexts.

Novelty was not Steve’s highest value. Beauty was. (Mona Simpson, sister of Steve Jobs)

From the NYTimes: Mona’s Simpson’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs

Rhetorical Analysis of Eiffel Tower as a Product

I’ve mentioned a few times here and there how I think of the Eiffel Tower as an example of an interesting product. Whereas engineering who design bridges place great emphasis on the logos of the bridge (it has to withstand forces and stay up), the Eiffel Tower is an engineering feat that is also sensitive to it’s audience (pathos) as well as the voice of its environment (ethos of Paris and France).

Urban Modernity, written by M. Levin et al., discusses these three dimensions of the Eiffel Tower.

  • Logos: Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) “managed to use his giant structure to launch radio transmissions and experiments in aeronautics, helping tame technologies of the future” (p. 29). In addition having a logical, architecture that stands tall without falling (using principles of engineering such as trusses), there was a technological function that the tower’s structure allowed.
  • Pathos: At the level of experience, it’s more than just a structure; there’s a beauty from engaging with the product. “Eiffel himself saw the tower as a thing of beauty, its asymptotic curves the material equivalents of geometrical laws and the laws of physics” (p. 43). It’s a beautiful piece of architecture that affords the public to approach it and want to experience it. In addition, when erected, it was the entrance arch and centerpiece of the 1889 World’s Fair, which had other attractions. Hence, it initiated a carefully devised experience that unfolded over time (think visitor journey).
  • Ethos: It has come to symbolize French mastery of science, technology, and culture (the 1889 Fair was the 100th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, symbol for the beginning of the French Revolution). It symbolized Paris, “the capital of Western civilization” (p. 4), “hub of industrial capitalism” (p. 15), and “the nexus of a democratizing evolutionary process” (p. 39). Noteworthy to read Emile Zola’s passage on Paris that Levin quotes on p. 21. The Eiffel Tower was established as the defining monument in the context of this emergent, industrial, and modern city.
    When a group of artists and writers signed an infamous petition against the Eiffel Tower, stating that it was visually, culturally, and morally a break between Paris’ rich preindustrial culture and the modern capitalist one, proponents of the Tower stated that its “iron skeleton laid bare the same rational principles and values at work, though hidden, in great historical monuments such as the Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame” (p. 52). So, there was an argument made that the Tower was a legitimate continuation of Paris’ rich engineering tradition and represents the new technology of this forward-thinking culture.

Better To Be a Cow Than a Poor Person

Joseph Stiglitz in Making Globalization Work writes,

The average European cown gets a subsidy of $2 a day (the World Bank Measure of poverty); more than half of the people in the developing world live on less than that. It appears that it is better to be a cow in Europe than to be a poor person in a developing country (p. 85).

I read this last night and my jaws dropped. Is this true? This is unbelievable. Sure, I’ve heard the fact that most of the world is poor. But when juxtapositioned next to a cow – a creature I most certainly take for granted – the comparison makes the data more meaningful for me. My first thought was the parable of the Prodigal Son – when the son realizes his condition as he eats next to hogs his thought is, “the servants at my father’s place eat and enjoy pleasures better than I do right now.”

Trying to make sense of global economics, trade liberation, how services (skilled and unskilled) fit into the big picture.