Patience

A quick note on research: Demands to publish and get money, the credit crunch, facebook, google, blogs, twitter, mobile computing and all these things we need to have are to be taken with patience. I was at an event yesterday in London, the topic did not have anything to do with all these 'inventions'. However, having had the chance to talk to a few people, it made me remember that it is not technology or very sophisticated knowledge what could save the day in research and make our lives meaningful. It is the human component.


We were talking about social research. There was not much difference in a group of around 20 people in relation to how we gather data. Not much difference either in our research questions (I am sure there are differences, but we had to show some degree of unique thinking when formulating them). Not even great difference in problems related to the use of technology in organisations. What made the difference for me...? I mean what is it that we do but we do not accept...? We all manage research in very similar ways when it comes to people.

We do research because we are patient, and because we develop long term relationships with individuals: with students (who could get us access to organisations or give us a research contract); with friends (who will also give us their views about relevant problems in their organisations when having a beer); with colleagues (from other universities within our country or elsewhere, and with whom we might feel a linguistic common ground). Some researchers would find it difficult to accept that relationships include those more intimate (e.g. the wife) in order to flesh out ideas, get access to data or even co-author research papers. Wives also get on board in trips to attend conferences or put up with mourning when things do not go according to plan.

We all try to influence others to get research done or published, some more actively than others. No need to claim objectivity so loudly.


So my learning has been that we can know more but we need to cultivate our garden as Voltaire would say. Using existing contacts, making new contacts we meet in events, and the odd adventure to engage into something new, exciting and risky, they are all part of a patient strategy. That is why research impact might take time to be cristalised in a project or assessed accurately.

Patience...? Need to think of those research questions harder now so I can see how valuable my own efforts before getting others involved.

Voltaire also realised that life puts us in situations we never expected to be. So it is better to make the best of them, but with patience.

The unexpected: Are we prepared?

Recently I was delivering a course on complex project management, and I was asked the question: Should we embrace or manage the unexpected...?

Interesting question. I was trying to convey the idea that the unexpected happens and in your projects we consider some contingencies, but never the unexpected. Why? Because we plan based on experience. Traditional project management techniques deal with risks by identifying them, prioritising them and then designing control responses.

That is fine and well, only if we identify risks. And we are told that we should talk to those 'experienced' people in order to do so.

The problem is, the unexpected happens with no previous experience. Complexity theory seems to point out that we live in a complex world where small events trigger much bigger ones.

This would work well if we are aware of the small things, and we are able to foresee connections with potentially bigger events.

I can only say that we need to embrace rather than anticipate the unexpected. In projects, this would mean that we need to make cushion for exiting the project or taking it to a different level. We need to keep communication channels open, be able to raise alarms (as cyberneticians would suggest), and have some time and room for maneuvre.


Thinking back again of the unexpected this morning (snow in England, we thought the worst of the winter season was over), it also seems reasonable to ask continuously the question: How heavy do we become that we cannot embrace new things...? Perhaps our luggage is heavy and does not allow us to carry other things. We have heard of the importance of emptying our minds so as to allow new thoughts to be nurtured. Maybe this is why some systems thinkers are now into meditation and spirituality. Francisco Varela wrote about that in his latest book "The Embodied Mind". It is about how we become part of something in the world (what we observe), and perhaps the message for the unexpected is about how we can become part of something else.

My project management students must be wondering why I say these things, and if I have some recommendations to give. Well, researching into tools for modeling and remembering what my good friend Nick Davey said about projects, it is important to prepare the mind to map certain connections between aspects we perceive as important in projects. This is done in projects, but my suggestion is then to map connections and see if they have become too heavy that the unexpected does not have any room. We love to make things complicated, maybe we need to start letting it go abit so that we can respond to new situations.

So the suggestion is: Download freemind mapping software (freemind.sourceforge.net), choose a project or a situation that is in your mind, draw connections between aspects, and see if you have become overprepared, overconcerned or over knowledgeable about it. It might be time to forget it all and draw on a blank canvas!!









To see the diagram, double click on it. I am learning to use free mind! In this project example of off-shoring operations (something that many companies are doing now), I leave room for the unexpected, which could lead us to review what we do in relation to the expected! It might be we need to offload some things we are doing, whilst enhancing the 'informal' (communication, self-organisation) and the learning about the future. Hopefully these things could help us to deal with the unexpected. If not, well, we might need to accept things as they come: "What happens is usually the best", as a good friend used to say.

Good 2009 starts with the present

The year has already started. We (me, Mauricio and Cecilia) are watching TV whilst each of us begins to make sense of this year.

Yesterday we were in Guildford and enjoyed the final countdown of 2008:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KZaObHa8Mq4

For many people 2009 will be great, for others not so much so. I have listened to the end of year's speeches by prime ministers, presidents and the like. It is going to be tough, they say. This makes me feel excited but also thinking of this new year as a very fast and furious ride. Some of my predictions are:

• The year could be good for certain countries. My bet is on Brazil. LatinAmerica is not yet there in the crunch (is it?). Or maybe we live in permanent crunch. Making some adjustments is part of the day to day.

• Those people with a credit-based lifestyle will suffer. My bank still wants to sell me a credit card and keep asking me why I do not have one. Why should I have it if it is not my money I am spending? (I learned this from a good Colombian entrepreneur).

• The clothes, the laptop, the gadgets, they can still last for another year or at least a few more months. The car, you can get a used one. Unless you go to a war zone with your car, it is likely to last too. I found a good mechanic near where I live, it helps to keep the car in good shape.
  

• Another prediction: Education could become an opportunity to look for new horizons. Formal and informal education will be on the rise, but also in the form of alliances. Imagine being employed by a company that employs you and / or pays you bit less but part of the salary is a training course. So this year could be a year of transition. For both employers and employees.

• An academic prediction: Management research funding could take unexpected routes for development. Projects with research outputs to be taken back to Uni; mediation between projects and solutions; and use of technology to facilitate communication between remote locations, these could help. Now that research assessment is over, we know where we can improve, and what the reality of good research is. Time to look for better and possibly inexpensive ways of producing good research.
  
• Community groups and organisations will play a more prominent role in society. They can become employers, places of encounter, or creators of new forms of working and helping each other. I am not sure if we can include things like co-operative banking here, but this one will also help people to beat the credit crunch once we realise money does not grow on trees neither by doing nothing. If only we could think of money differently, this year could be better.
  
  

• Technology will continue surprising us. But it is now people who will make the difference. Companies could turn the crises to their advantage. But so far I have only heard use of technology to cut costs and make efficiencies. Mmmm...is that the only story...? What about re-using, re-combining, centralising, de-centralising...? Or just making it last a bit more...? Some investments are not expensive and could help. This can include for instance technology recycling...We seem to have forgotten about the green planet.
  

• People will find ways to acquire and use technology. I just found an ACER netbook for less than £300. OK, it does not have the latest OS but it looks much better than a new brand, smaller& more expensive one. Mind you, now we are talking about netbooks and notebooks, and the latter still are useful. We could make better designs with the technology that we have without having to change technology for the sake of it.

The future is the result of our present. So let us see what kind of present we want to live. Good luck to all of us!