By now regular readers of this blog should have become used to my referring to Doc Searls’ Because Effect; more recently, I essayed a simple definition as well.
Last night I stayed up to read Dov Seidman’s HOW, a fascinating book. While I am still going through it on Pass One, I cannot resist sharing an excerpt from the preface to Dov’s book:
A new vision of HOW requires a new way of embracing why we get up every morning and go to work. I believe the inspiration to do so lives in the thought that there is a difference between doing something so as to succeed and doing something and achieving success. I am in the business of helping companies and their people do the right things in the right way. The mission of my company is to help others and we make a living so doing. We do not help others so as to make a living. The latter speaks to a journey of intermediate gain and the former to a journey of significance, something of long-term value that makes not just money, but a difference. Significance lies in the ability to see one’s endeavours in terms of service to others, to be guided by a desire and ability to connect. In the vastly different conditions of our hypertransparent and hyperconnected world, I believe success can no longer be pursued directly, that it can best be achieved — and only achieved — through the pursuit of something larger and deeper.
And versus so as. The Because Effect is all about And. And not at all about So As.
This is interesting… Recently in a post titled “The desire to create” I pondered [or rather rambled] as to why as an individual we are increasingly driven to create. Not limited to physical and online artefacts by which we could be judged, this could equally for example be creating happiness in someone else, improving our community or aiding those less privileged.
And I believed that this is largely because we now have our luxuries, have had our fill and consumed most of what we can. And still not satisfied we have turned our attentions elsewhere. I assumed that this new direction is simply inevitable and the next logical step in the pursuit of fulfilment. But the suggestion that ‘hypertransparency’ and ‘hyperconnectivity’ are factors makes sense. They enable us to be aware of the actions of peers near and far, the plights of many, and to collectively judge and take action. Whilst at the same time making our own actions more visible. Our senses are heightened as we become more conscious of the world around us and of how others perceive us. And we can no longer be satiated via isolated consumption. We are driven to create whether out of a desire that is pure, a sense of duty or guilt.
The quote makes me feel better about a post (The online drift and minding your own business) in which I cheekily referred to “The work-to-live crowd” as being “legacy”. And it resonates with a label I keep hearing increasingly here in Scotland in connection with small business ventures with a social conscience – “More than profit”. E.g. an upcoming conference in Aberdeen:
http://www.aberdeenccn.info/web/site/home/MTP.asp
And this imo, is why a film like Office Space has struck such a chord with the Digital Generation (and wannabes like us!)
OFFICE SPACE is the MASH (the Altman version, not the watered-down television series) of a new generation. What MASH did to the workplace of the military, OFFICE SPACE did to cubicle-land. It may have lacked that Altman PANACHE, but it still hit home. The thesis is sort of a syllogism:
The workplace is run by stupid people
Stupid people are easily outsmarted
Therefore, workplace activity can be reduced to making a game out of outsmarting the stupid
Needless to say, this syllogism gives one whopping kick to that paragraph from Seidman’s book; but that paragraph is the moral equivalent of wearing a big KICK ME sign on one’s back! Wake up and smell the burnt coffee at the bottom of the pot in the break room!