Questallia

I heard this request every single working morning for about one year. My colleague was eager to work, but she needed precision. My precision. And my precision tasks for her were there, day after day. 

Then, there was the afternoon time, when a second line was breaking the silence: “Done! Let’s go!”

I was never able to comment on her “Done! Let’s go!”, although I always felt that something was missing there. It was unbelievable how she got me to tell her what to do, then she did all the tasks sharp and careful; briefly, she barely did any mistakes, yet I was not happy with her, nor I was able to express that in words. I remembered this period today, when reading in Seth Godin’s blog a post named Done. I know what I should have been unconsciously thinking of my robo-colleague:  

“The challenge is NOT to empty your inbox. The challenge is not to get your boss to tell you what to do. 

The challenge is to ask a two part question: What next? What now?  Asking is the hard part.” 

Now imagine the challenge of having such a robo-type boss. I had this pleasure once: every Monday morning, he spread tasks all over us, then all he wanted was to see those things done and to see us all coming on time to the office and laying there for 8 hours. No questions, no exceptions, no thinking. 

One day, I asked myself “What next? What now?” and the answer was there: “I quit!”. Why did I have to wait two months until doing this? Because, as Seth says, asking is the hard part.   

When I was a kid, I remember being fascinated by books. I was able to read 8-10 hours in a row, stopping only for physiological needs, then coming back to my book, eager to go through the story, to see what was next. I became part of the story, I was in the book, impersonating the character I liked most, feeling his emotions, speaking his words and thinking his thoughts.
When I grew up, the books giving me that feeling became very rare, maybe because of all the daily responsibilities and happenings, which made my focus on reading rather difficult and loose.

Recently, I had the occasion to experience that childhood kind of reading again, when I came across a fascinating story, written in such a way that it made me almost not being able to stop reading. I’m talking about Ken Wilber’s book, Grace and Grit, Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber. Ken Wilber is an American philosopher whose main work is to develop an “integral theory if consciousness”. Ken Wilber’s work has been translated in more than 20 countries. Grace and Grit is the story of a five-years fight of Ken and Treya with her breast cancer and their journey towards spiritual healing. The story is so touching that it made me even burst into tears several times, although I don’t usually do that. It alternates two points of view, two voices: one is the voice of Ken, the caregiver and the other one is Treya’s voice, the ill. The author does not make this clear from the very beginning, but as you read, you come to realize very soon that the same events are related from the two perspectives.

Besides the love story, Grace and Grit offers a support for caregivers, as they can easily identify with the character Ken, thus being reassured that they are listened to and they are understood. In some paragraphs, Ken specifically tackles his ups and downs, his feelings about getting rid of the burden, about quitting, giving up everything, followed by getting back to the love and understanding for his wife, Treya, leaving behind his career or everything else.

The story has also an informative side, as the two protagonists experiment a number of New Age ideas and practices. As a scientist and researcher and wanting to help Treya as much as he can, Ken puts together a list of alternative treatments to be researched, out of which they experimented a lot until the final scene of the story. There is also a list of different cultures and the meanings or interpretations they would assign to cancer: Christian, New Age, Medical, Karma, Psychological, Gnostic, Existential, Holistic, Magical, Buddhist, and Scientific.

The end is dramatic, with Treya’s death and the reaction of her beloved ones, with Ken’s spiritual enlightening and his promise that he will always find her. It is a truly motivating book, not only for the diseased and caregivers but for other people as well, it is a book that you don’t forget that easily.   

 

The theory of broken windows was elaborated by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, and it sounds like this:
“Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.
Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars.”
Furthermore, this theory suggests that as trash and degradation accumulates, it makes people who live in that area to feel more vulnerable. Sensing that, teens become bolder and increasingly harass other people, as they perceive this space as less risky for crime, because they don’t feel that somebody cares to maintain the order. So, it looks like one broken window can lead to crime and degradation, but which is the point when things start to accelerate, the so-called point of no return, beyond which, the growth rate becomes exponential?
Starting from this theory, in year 2000, Malcom Gladwell wrote the book “The Tipping Point, how little things can make a big difference”.
It is amazing to see how the author explains the word of mouth phenomenon by defining and profiling three special psychological types, called by him Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. The book explains with examples, how these three types, in conjunction can spread news, or a fashion, or a belief so effectively that when it reaches this ”tipping point” it then grows exponentially, it explodes like an epidemic.
Briefly, the Connectors are people who have a large number of acquaintances, Mavens are the experts that know what is all about and who want to talk about that and Salesman are people able to persuade us to buy into something. The applications of this theory can have huge social implications. The author imagines how this can be put in practice into a strategy to stop spreading smoking and explains why actual measures and campaign are useless.

Another interesting theory tackled in the book is the one of the magic number 150. According to this, 150 is the maximum number of individuals we can have authentic social report with. It applies also to big companies: if the employees are organized in departments of maximum 150 people they are more efficient. It seems that after this figure, connections are too many and too hard to maintain in order to establish effective communication within the group. Looking back in time, Gladwell finds out more examples to support this theory, even though it could not be explained.
As a conclusion, Gladwell sketches the possibility that we start our own epidemics by identifying the Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen in people around us; he speaks about the hope we can find in the world of tipping points, the hope that even the smallest change for the better can become the trigger for a whole new better life.
This book influenced me very much and I warmly recommend it to anybody who is curious about sociology, about the power of words or about revolutions.
I am currently working to start an epidemics of my own: as I have recently set up my own company, for this year I have the challenge of finding and properly using my network of Connectors and Mavens, looking forward to the moment when the tipping point will enter in action and preparing for that day.
You can take also a closer example: look at the blogging phenomenon. I read somewhere that 70,000 new blogs appear everyday. Isn’t this epidemics already? Go back in time and see if you can discover its tipping point. Can you?