Business, success and happiness..........

Walking through the local Waterstone’s trying to decide whether to buy the copy of On the Road I was carrying whilst simultaneously managing Beth’s expectations about the children’s section, although we would inevitably end up there the fact that I get no signal that deep in the bowels of the store and that I can’t let Beth go alone meant we browsed through numerous other sections first, an observation struck me.  I had been discussing with a friend the proliferation of self-help texts and was actually looking for a business text when I made a scary observation.  Of all the professional sections only business had self-help books!  The artists seemed to manage with various histories and collections, the builders and architects with technical manuals and lawyers with books of law; but not business?

About half the texts we self-help books of the type found in the self-help section only with success and riches replacing well-being.  Now at this point I have to admit to never having read one – no, that’s a lie, I once read one after a friend went on about it so much I thought I ought to.  It took a couple of hours to scan through and was about as profound as a telephone directory (do they still exit?).  This got me thinking (Waterstone’s not the book) and questioning why.  Why it is that people need self-help books in business and not in art or other professions.  Why is it that so called rational investors, entrepreneurs, businessmen and would be Dragons need to read a Californian pastiche of eastern religions in order to get through another day?  Thinking sideways to people I know, statuses and blogs I read and the narratives around business it became apparent that there is a simple disconnect here.

Most people involved in business (sweeping statements being a speciality) are interested in the outcome not the process.  They are interested in the car, the clothes and the position not fixing problems and finding new ways of working.  I mean have we not spent the last week hearing how taxes are a disincentive to do business?  Can you imagine an artist or a musician refusing to get out of bed for less that £1k a week?  The art of business is there, it exists, but artists are rare.  The linking of consumption with success is essential for the growth of consumption (guilt and fear of being perceived as a ‘failure’ being a powerful motivator) but these also seems to have sown the seeds of consumptions own limit.    

Self help books will happily tell you it is all about the power of positive thinking or about having a vision or personal brand (funny article in Guardian Weekend on personal brands this week).  Of course this implies that if you have not succeeded it is through lack of effort on your part – nothing external.  Nice trick – quick buy another book to help you on the path to enlightenment.  Of course this comes down to happiness I guess and worryingly we see that Cameron is going to measure that for us.   There isn’t space to explore happiness here, and I am certainly not qualified to do so.  However it strikes me that the link between happiness, success and consumption is flawed.  When I think of my own life I certainly know I gain more happiness from the odd funny or sweet email than I do from any purchases I make, I know I enjoy more being in the middle of a construction, education or general business challenge or problem  than I do from accolades associated with its completion or execution.

Rachel Cooke quotes Mill in her Guardian article today “"Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?"  Mill answered, for himself, “no” and I believe that this would be true for most people.  Let’s face it why are we surprised that some (so called) celebrities that seemingly have everything seem so miserable, so dissatisfied, so greedy for more?    Now, although I have never met them, it strikes me that some of the great actors of our time have actually been wealthy and content, that their wealth is a pleasant addition to something they enjoy and in no way an end in itself (maybe Eastwood, Samuel L Jackson, Audrey Hepburn?) – of course artists like this are not immune from battles to maintain mental health (Brando being a classic example perhaps) but I am wondering if those that love process rather than the trappings of success are simply happier and, ironically, better artists? 

Here is a simple test for you.  How much money would you need before not having to do what you do each day?  I think if you can answer that you may have already failed.  A dream to be a CEO ‘so I can retire on a good pension’ sounds like a failure to me (Buffet has a really funny quote on this but it’s a bit naughty – Google Buffet “work for McKinsey for a few years “ if you must).   The number of status updates I read complaining about having to go to work, about being at work or calling for wine at the day’s end suggests to me there are a lot of people ‘looking for love in all the wrong places’ – and probably some more sales in Waterstone’s that weekend.

Oh and by the way, after flicking through a few pages in embedded Costa Coffee cafe I chose not to buy On the Road.  Too many references to drugs.  Not that I am a puritan, but I do find that oh so very boring at times.

Default risks, war, banks  and education.....

I have returned to ranting, Don Quixote style, about the economy.  A very interesting couple of articles in today’s Guardian caught my eye (and distracted me from moving office and the associated politics).    The first, which I am having a bit of trouble linking to the article on-line but it is called White House plans emergency cuts as debt deadline looms and that link may work now. 

We have all heard about the US and their need to raise the debt ceiling – in other words to extend their credit limit in order to pay their bills.  I am going to stay away from the politics of this – ni have my own suspicions as to why there are delays – and look instead at what sort of debt we are talking about.  I have seen lots of on-line posts about the need to cut senators’ pay etc as a way of cutting the debt and that always interests me.  Not so much the relative pay merits of politicians but peoples’ trouble with big numbers.  I had great fun disusing with Beth the meaning of infinity – I’m pretty sure she gets the concept despite my attempts to help – do not use the idea that it is “more than the number of atoms in the universe” with an eight year old – an analogy too far!

The present debt ceiling stands at $14.3 trillion – what on earth does that actually mean?  Well it is a million millions (confusingly not a billion which is a thousand million in the short scale system).  That’s a big number.    Amazingly and quite coincidentally it is almost exactly what the US produces in a year – in other words its turnover matches its debt.   But that also means it is a debt of about $47,000 per person or about $1.5million per square km – dear real estate!  Ok enough numbers – but the scale thing is important – a trillion is a big number.

The debt is blamed on a few things and in truth all are responsible.  Your debt and mine is linked to every single piece of expenditure we do – and every choice we make not to earn more – it is not caused by one single bit of expenditure, those bits simple tip us further.  So let’s have a look at the US.  Of that debt a tenth is the wars fought since 2001, which is half the Bush tax cuts themselves more than expenditure on education, welfare, and medicine.  Put another way the wars and social security, education and medicine do not amount to the total cut in taxes by Bush – and I’m pretty sure the US wan’t a high tax country to begin with.  Of course the recession has dented tax income to the Government – about a quarter of the debt is explained by this.  So a fall in tax revenues and cut in taxes together amount to almost half of the US debt. 

Let’s go back to our senators and representatives pay and see if we can solve some of this problem.  There are 100 senators and 441 representatives (hmm strangely less than in UK....).  Ok so what can we do to save money here?  Well there are 551 ‘overpiad bums ’.  if each cost a million apiece in pay and expenses (they don’t cost anything like that I’m just rounding up because if I rounded down it would be 0 and a number divided by 0 is infinite and, well atoms and such nonsense again...).  Right so 551 times a million is $551 million – about one forty thousandth of what it pays to farmers in subsidies – 10 days worth if you prefer.  Given my crazy rounding up we are probably over twice what is needed here.  So farmers cost more in 5 days than Government representation.  Why am I picking on farmers you may ask? No reason other than I spotted the word subsidy  and did a  bit of math (sorry).   But I am interested that the States rounds on ‘fat cat congressmen’, ‘the war’ and ‘welfare’.  We have seen already that these are significantly smaller added together than previous tax cuts.  I am not advocating war by the way, not arguing for it, what concerns me is that this trans-Atlantic narrative about democracy being too dear, about tax cuts for the wealthy being the best option and about spend thrift hospitals and schools disturbs me –for its attack on democracy, its fuelling of greed and its under investment in our future – as simple as that.

So what am I suggesting?  Well strangely nothing relating to tax and spend.  I don’t have a political agenda here.  I am more interested in the way language is used to distract us from the real numbers towards ones that shock – probably for political motive.  I am also interested in our lack of connection.  As I sit in a cafe and type I am amazed by the number of people who leave the door open on cooler days (I don’t notice on warm ones).  The cold that comes in cools the room, the thermostats kick in and it warms the room, the cost of this impacts on the business expenses, these expenses impact on price.    Do the people who leave the door open appreciate they are adding to the cost of their food and drink?  I appreciate it is a stretched analogy – but the same happens in society.  We seldom fully appreciate the linked behaviours that return to impact on us.  Tax payers are happy to get a lower price for cash and then sneer at benefit cheats.  We are part of society; we are protected by the police and by welfare and health payments to others.     

War is a tragedy because it costs lives, not because it costs money.  Tax cuts mean service cuts.      Underfunded education and over-testing means a lack of progression (I better return to that in another blog).  Oh and you didn’t think I had forgot, did you?  Government debt has grown as a direct result of the banking collapse.  The excesses of finance have cost the US at least two trillion dollars.  Not their national debt but more than war, more than education and, bizarrely, less than the tax cuts.  I guess the incompetent need a bit of a prop......

Rare day off today. Plan another couple next week. After a trip to the cafe I went to visit  a local timber frame factory in relation to a project I’m doing with my  brother.  I was amazed!  This approach, making most of the structure in a quality assured factory  environment, is the way to go and I think I will return with some students later in the year.  The whole concept of building a house in a damp wet field has always seemed ridiculous and inefficient.  There are inevitable delays due to weather; there is the loss of control of quality and of effort and the general slowness of traditional approaches.

The system used sees the walls and floors built as panels and cassettes respectively and craned into place. The floors have a type of beam construction that means services can be simply thread through and the walls are ready battened to allow services and the plasterboard.  Externally a skin of blocks, bricks, a render or other finishes can be applied (including dry approaches).  Looking forward to working with them further – maybe one day getting something designed instead of off the shelf.  I may return to this subject (frames) in future blogs.

The evening was capped off with a trip to St Ives, inspired by BBC4’s excellent documentary on the Art of Cornwall – here if you missed it.  Inspiring for both its eclectic architecture and its art and provided an interesting end to a design led day. Oh and a few goes on video games – I can’t help myself at times!

Stanger attractors........the story continues..........

We left off yesterday having looked through Strange Attractors and Chaos.  Various bits of media and thoughts have continued to inspire and plague me and, given I have a bit of space, I thought I would return to this topic.

What is been troubling me, as one prone to analogies and metaphors, is the slipperiness of the words.  In truth life is complex and days are chaotic – but not in the systems sense.  My definition of a chaotic day may differ from yours, will differ from yours, but this cannot be used to define a system in a chaotic state.   My office looks chaotic but is actually in a very stable deterministic state – in just offends your sense of order, it has no dynamism.  My days are a complex web of meetings, e-mails, ideas and actions – but I’m busy – there is no self-organisation criticality occurring; no emergence of new patterns of behaviour.

This had me searching through the texts for the conditions required to be within a complex adaptive system.  Conditions are important here as they are a substitute for a simplistic definition.    A relatively straightforward explanation is provided here, here and paraphrased below.     A complex adaptive systems needs to be:

·         Emergence:  some sort of stability develops that allows us to see this as phenomena that are not chaotic.

·         Self-organising: there is no external control; patterns of behaviour emerge from within but in an unpredictable way.

·         Dynamic: the steady state that emerges is held in place my dynamic interactions (metaphorically the reason you don’t fall off your bicycle)

·         Non-linear: as discussed in previous blog more than a+b=c

·         Multiple stable sates possible: the state the systems exists in may flip, but the a new stable state will emerge

·         Large number of elements:  multiple agents and forces

·         Reccurancy (feedback):  changes feedback to the original agents and can alter starting values (remember the ravens)

·         Agents operate locally with neighbours:  But are ignorant of whole system.  However they are impacted upon by the system and other agents.  A bird is not aware of the shape of the flock, but moves in lock-step with it.

·         Hard to define boundaries: The flock metaphor works quite well here but can be extended.  The flock itself exists within a weather system and with predatory systems.

It is possible to see that my days are not really complex, although the edge is hard to see that is because I don’t turn my phone off, non-linearity (where it exists) is normally linked to the behaviour of humans, though relatively simple models work on a daily basis (I’ll come back to this), I am not ignorant of the whole system (though my knowledge is less than perfect).  Admittedly it’s tempting to argue no, no, no it is and that is where we are heading (ironically) as this blog emerges.

There are lots of good texts on this subject and I have found a few free ones here, here and here.  What troubles me (I’m looking for debate here – I’m not telling you facts – and I’m likely to change my mind before the end) with these texts is that they appeal to that sense of individualism that, rightly, exists within us.  No one likes a hierarchy, especially if they are not near the top.  It makes sense to suggest that there is too much distance from top to bottom.  It makes sense to suggest that relationships are non-linear or non-deterministic because things don’t seem to go the way we plan. We love the idea of being flexible and working in self-organising networks but these words do not make our system complex they are a metaphorical description of our feelings and beliefs.  Especially troubling are phrases such as “what complexity would advice” as if a science is being called into play here that, ironically, allows us to determine optimum organisational structures.  Let me just clarify a little bit of underpinning philosophy.  I find meetings pointless, most hierarchies too layered and organisation un-responsive – I am not arguing a status quo position, instead I am trying to navigate some path between orthodoxy and the new(ish) exploration of complexity in this context.   (And as if to prove an organisational point an email’s just arrived that asks me to write a longer explanation of something, not because content is missing but because a longer document would look better.)

Let’s step back and look at the pressures on organisations.  Porter’s 5 Forces is still of use here, as are some of the (tired) people management theories.  Porter suggests that firms have pressures on them from new entrants (Google+ v FaceBook), customers, substitutes (public transport instead of car), suppliers and rivals (all in brackets open to debate).  Do these pressures work to create a self organising criticality?  Well there are forces missing arguably increasing the number of elements.  Certainly the pressure of shareholder (or market) expectations is missing but important.  Stakeholder pressure is not fully reflected and there is little on the legislation this can bring.  I appreciate this is not the purpose of the model, what I am suggesting is it is one of a number of models that attempt to explain organisational survival.    

Arguably all of these elements act within a poorly defined boundary, have some non-liner attributes, influence one another without knowledge of the whole and some sort of temporary self-organised equilibrium emerges (around price and market share normally).  So far so good.  It seems we can suggest that firms may exist with a self-organising criticality (I say ‘may’ – I suspect some firms and industries may be outside of this due to monopoly positions – but that is temporal).  Here’s the silver bullet though.  Because firms (may) exist in complexity are firms themselves complex systems?  Ant colonies exhibit complex behaviour, and an ant’s pattern of behaviour is complex but is an ant (hope my grammar is correct or that will make even less sense)? 

Looking back at organisations we see that they are full of people behaving in all sorts of ways within a loose set of rules, sound promising.  They interact with each other and, may, have little view of the overall.  They lack boundaries – hmmm bit more tenuous.    Whilst the market self organises around the firm does the firm self organise internally?  Or, perhaps, more importantly what opportunities does this assumption provide for better understanding the firm?  One thing that troubles me is large case studies – take Apple.  You would expect Apple to be free thinking and based on loose self-organising groups of ‘creatives’ (apologies to L).  However, with the exception of a central team Apple is very traditional, controlling and hierarchical.  When was the last time you saw a ‘different’ Apple store or campaign?   

My considerations are now wandering towards the idea that although companies exist in complex markets the actual structure of organisations themselves does not have to be radically altered to meet this.  In truth, the ant lives its complex life but with a very deterministic nervous system.  I remain convinced that rigid structures are unhelpful, I believe that silos are destructive and value adding is key, lean systems, less red tape and more effective bureaucracy are the ways to go.  But some of the language used around flexibility (remote working), empowerment (responsibility but not authority) and de-layering (reducing costs) are scarily the wrong sort of ‘efficient’ at times?  I recall a bank’s share price jumping on the news that a couple of thousand staff were to be made redundant – sounds more like defeat and contraction than growth to me.

This clearly isn’t finished and I have asked more questions than I have answered – sorry.  But I am interested in where this debate will go next – and I’ve yet to venture into the fields of new enterprise creation and growth (where I belong) or financial markets (where I bait bulls and bears alike).  Over to you maybe?   

 

Strange attractors.............

Back from lunch (you need to have read the last Blog first which confusingly is below this one).  We had left off having jumped from the deterministic to the chaotic.  Now we will go back to the transitional phase between the two.  A place that is both stable and unstable at the same time.  A phase space – that little place were ice decides its water now but is for a time both. 

Looking for a metaphor let’s consider a person carrying too many things.  These things are arranged and held in a stable way (or they would no longer be being carried) and yet at any point can tip into instability and chaos.  This edge of chaos is actually the highest point of complexity - the boxes resting on the floor being perhaps the lowest.  There are many parameters working on the boxes being carried and at same time the structure of the pile may be quite complex (but complex and complexity are not the same in this context).  What exactly makes the pile stable is quite difficult to fathom – but to the causal observe it can actually appear stable.  Let’s face it if the carrier believed it to be too unstable they would stop and re-arrange – wouldn’t they?

 Useful for carrying strategies but does this have meaning beyond the removals industry?  If we consider the arrangement of box files, folders and latte to be a system, working with various forces of balance and pressure, then we can extend our theories to other systems.  This will require another addition to our Gedankenexperiment.  Systems also have rules.  The rules associated with boxes are fixed and known; they refer to Newtonian physics.  The difficulties come in measurements of states not in understanding of interactions.   The boxes fall because we are sensitive to initial conditions and cannot predict the tipping point simply through measurement error (so not true chaos).  If we start to look instead at social and economic structures we can start to suggest that there are (made) rules and these rules can emerge over time or operation of the system.  Now we have a model both hard to measure accurately and where the rules and goals are shifting – a good challenge!

 Adding just one more twist we can start to think about the way these rules emerge and groups self organise.  About the way that stability seems to exist and can be based on the simplest of rules even in what appears the most complex patterns of behaviour – cue fractals.   Langton’s Ant is one of the easiest fractal type images to understand and can be seen moving here, here or here.  The poor little ant has only two rules:

·  Rule One : if on a white square turn left and move one square forward. The square it was on turns black.

·  Rule Two : if on a black square, turn right and move one square forward. The square it was on turns white.

So white square left and black square right.  Simple enough and, not surprisingly, quite a complex pattern emerges.  So far so straightforward.  However after 104 moves the ant always, and I mean always, forms a straight path and marches off into infinity.  Those simple rules have emerged to produce self organising behaviour (see Waldrop’s text Complexity).  So from quite simple rules quite complex patterns of behaviour can emerge that seem unpredictable.  We could ‘predict’ that the ant would make a funny pattern but that it would lock into a road was less obvious.  (Un)fortunately no 104 exists in patterns of human behaviour or in economic markets but perhaps we can explore some of the rules and self-organising behaviour that emerges.

Let’s start with the most difficult and look at human relationships.  What rules apply and emerge here?  We are fortunate to have at our disposal a test bet is social media.  Before our eyes new rules are emerging with regards to communication.  Let’s ignore the rather pathetic ‘rules’ of American romcoms (how many days do you leave it to call her/him after a date, etc.) and consider some more basic and perhaps emerging ones.  Now I regularly perplex my friend by telling her I have asked someone (of the opposite sex) to lunch or dinner.  “You can’t do that” she declares, clearly quite correctly.   “How else am I to talk with someone and eat” I ask, but it seems there are rules, signifiers and meanings here I am missing.  Place this against the backdrop of social media and its emerging rules and you can see my dilemma.  In social networks and SMS texts it seems absolutely fine to declare love and to use ‘x’ as punctuation (if you are not on FaceBook or have few ‘friends’ find a real one with an account and have a look :-) xxxx love u).  Rules in social networks seemed to have emerged that convert passing familiarity to love and any type of relationship to require a kiss if not many (and it is interesting to note the expansion in number of x’s we now see).  How has this emerged and has it stabilised yet are two interesting questions.  Will it, like the use of LOL, begin to retreat or has point stability (called self-organising criticality) been reached?  Will it tip into a new ordering of behaviours?  

 Did the same happen to News International we can ask?  Clearly a set of rules emerged that allowed a tolerance of sensationalist journalism.  Clearly that hegemony broke recently with the collapse of the News of the World.  What now becomes a question is whether media culture has managed escape velocity.  If we think of attitudes to media being an orbit around a point in culture what we need to analyse is whether this strange attractor (the body being orbited) exerts enough hold on attitudes to hold them in orbit.  If it doesn’t or if the change in attitude is great enough we will cross one of those complexity tipping points and spin off into Chaos until another attractor is reached and stability returns.    The phrase strange attractor slipped in there; Lorenz’s is perhaps the original example and can be seen here (much more is available in Gliek’s Chaos).  What makes an attractor ‘strange’ is that we cannot predict where it occurs.

 So that has taken us through social interactions and culture, albeit too quickly, what of economics?  Ormerod has really explored this area and I can’t recommend his texts highly enough (starting with the ironically titled Death of Economics – Ormeod predates Telabs’s Black Swan etc and writes the texts Telab would like to write if could and if he wasn’t trying to maximise sales – but read both if you can).   The opportunities for strange attractors are multiple in economics; consumer behaviour and taste perhaps being a starting point for considerations of this in the real economy.  We can easily see that fashions come and go but that they also stabilise for a time.   What combination of culture, pressures and economics conspire to make one genre of music popular for a year or two and when will it tip?  Considering skateboarding as an example we see rapid growth and saturation in the 1970s (caused by the introduction of new wheel manufacturing technology); some cultural shift saw a resurgence during the 1980s with street skating, only to be killed off partly by regulation; and the late 1990s saw the re-emergence of skating this time driven by... well the interesting thing it is hard to measure why the sport has resurfaced around the strange attractor of street skating.   Let’s assume some of those skaters became market traders, unlikely in many respects as there exists a cultural hegemony around the City but nevertheless possible.  What attractors are there in stock markets?

In theory the stock market exists to make investments in companies more liquid thus attracting more capital at a lower price and allowing economies to grow – in theory.  In practice the market is beset with speculation and gambling.  Much of the trading activity that occurs is not of the slow and calculated kind exemplified by the likes of Buffet and Graham but rather more akin to that found in Las Vegas.  Why will this create attractors?  Well in truth even the considered style of investment practiced by value investors can lead to attractors; it is that speculation seems to increase their occurrence and reduce their longevity.  We see narratives develop in markets and spread via the media.  These narratives usually take the form of post-hoc rationalisation about the cause of events.  Based on these narratives ‘truths’ develop and money flows.  This flow is not, however, based on economic principles but on narratives (ok I know economics is a meta-narrative).  A reality is created around a position and it holds.  For example we can see how stubborn the property market is against full correction or how insane gold prices have become with commentators even suggesting they are overvalued.  The crashes we see are simply shifts out of self organising criticality and into Chaos.  The market usually self stabilises around some other lower point after a short time – it finds another planet to orbit.  Broker’s even try, somewhat naively, to describe the parameters of these orbits with the use of support and resistance points (these points assume that share prices are moving within a normal distribution and disregards outliers – see here to show nothing is new and here ).

Have we finished?  No I think in truth this series may have only just begun however I am pretty sure some rules have emerged governing the acceptable length of blogs and in truth my neck now hurts from bending over the lap-top.  I shall return and will look at Chaos and Complexity again, in the meantime if there is a certain point you would like me to dwell on then drop me a line...........

PS – if  ask you to lunch i am hungry, if I end a text with a x I know you and it’s your birthday and if I actually kiss you it’s probably because I’m happy for you to be the last person I ever kiss – I’m not completely without a sense of  romance....

Let’s start with Chaos....

In this blog I hope to explore and share an area of research that runs as a thread through most of my thinking and interest.  I hope to produce a series of these if the interest is there.  I want to take you on a journey from the predictable to less predictable to the damn right strange – and, for those that know me,   I am not publishing minutes from one of our meetings or a series of text messages.

If we start with the predictable, the boring, the linear, we see that this action causes that reaction and it is perfectly proportional.  The radius of a circle will give its circumference, if your service provider charges you £10 per month plus calls at £0.10 it will be £10 + £0.10 x calls, even if the relationship is not perfectly linear we can match a straight line to it and our model will look similar (for example the relationship between price and demand is unlikely to form a perfect straight line if we survey a large number of people but the general trend will show lower prices equal greater demand).

So far so good.  But of course not every reaction is directly proportional (I struggled to think of those examples).  If you press the accelerator in your car speed increases but it is not exactly proportional to the amount you press.  Wind and rolling resistance means that more ever more pressing is required.  It is not a straight line anymore but a curve.  The same may be true for revision (if I revise more I do not get an exactly proportional increases in grade – the link between hours’ revision and grade is non-linear).  We would call that the ‘law of diminishing returns’ you can call it life.  The opposite is also true.  In some circumstances the gains achieved outstrip the effort out in.  You are probably familiar with the saying ‘money comes to money’, if I ‘teach’ you then you may become bored (diminishing returns); if I teach you to learn for yourself each extra bit of effort by me results in larger chunks of learning for you.

Reality may present us with a combination of curves and lines and more than one thing at a time.  Your grade at University may depend on a combination of attendance, IQ, hours available for study outside of class, lecturer’s ability to generate interest, etc.  As long as we can measure each of these for a sample of students we can produce a, albeit crude, model.  This will look like our service provider model but with more 10 pences.  These ‘10s’ are called coefficients or parameters and we will come back to those.

 So far we have journeyed from the the simple linear, via non-linear to multiple regression modelling.  Throughout all of this there are two big assumptions.  First we assume that the relationship is free of interaction effects.  We assume that there is not a relationship between the lecturer being interesting and attendance – but clearly there may be.  We also there are no feedback loops.  Consider for example the relationship between stock price and company value.  This should be a perfectly linear rational relationship – it isn’t.  Speculators buy stock because it is rising knowing it is overpriced relative to company value but the greater the activity the greater the stock price.  This price increase in turn signalling the ‘wisdom’ of the ‘investment’ (gamble).

To recap:  more of something gives us exactly proportionally more of something else (minutes and phone bill), or more of something gives us even more of something else but at a slower (or faster rate) (press accelerator to go faster), or maybe it is a mix of these variables (factors that influence students’ grades) but maybe the world isn’t always that simple (feedback loops).  Sorry for taking you through all of this but it’s a foundation.

The relationships we have talked about so far have been influenced by parameters,  Pi is a parameter in the circumference of a circle – a nice constant one and so was the 10 pence.  In the orderly world we have described so far things do what they are told when they are told.  Let’s now step through the looking glass. 

Picture a car driving along the road, for safety a toy car, if you turn the steer wheel a little bit it turns a little bit, if you turn it a lot it probably turns into the hedge, if you adjust the accelerator it goes faster but not proportionally.  It does though behave as expected.  Imagine though if a tiny adjustment to that parameter (steering left) resulted in the vehicle travelling in a (seemingly) unpredictable way?  We would say its path had become random.  But has it?  The variables are still all measureable, the parameters known and present.  Luckily this does not happen with cars (excluding ice).  What we have is a model (already non-linear) that is no longer behaving as expected.  Feedback loops are working on the parameters.  This is shown in a rather famous chart that can be viewed here.       

Moving from the car analogy let’s try populations instead.  Assume that some set of variables and parameters control the population of ravens.  Variables might be a mixture of habitat, food, gestation, breeding pairs and the parameters the impact changes in these have on populations (the equivalent for values for pi in a circle).  After estimating the parameters we can run the model and expect to see increases in ravens (yea!).    It is easy to imagine that after a certain point there may be a reduction due to over feeding, for example, and the population may settle into a natural rise and fall – a cycling. 

Civilisations may follow a similar pattern with some making comebacks again and again (China) whilst others seem to vanish (Easter Island and the Inca Empire comes to mind, and the perhaps the fall of the Roman Empire though that requires more debate and analysis).  Through all of this it remains predictable – a simple up and down or up and out– it does what it’s told.    But what if it doesn’t (to borrow my favourite Whinnie the Pooh quote)?  What if changing a parameter ever so slightly means we can no longer predict (as in see on a graph – if we enter the data we still get the result) where the next turn will be?  This is not randomness but chaos – strangely a more understandable state than randomness despite its connotations.   How many times should you tell someone you love them?  Too few and it is over, too many and it is annoying but is there a parameter that gives us a golden number of times a day/week/year/decade and what controls that parameter – of course there isn’t.  This requirement to get the parameter absolutely perfect is what we call sensitivity to initial conditions.  Most models work quite well with crude estimates but we should not be surprised that, on occasions, models fall apart.  The reasons for this are manifold but the ones of interest to me are lack of ability to accurately measure parameters and an incomplete understanding of all the interactions (and long may that continue).

We have now moved into the world of Chaos, skipping over complexity which is what I intended to talk about in this blog.  I couldn’t predict that.   I’m going to have a bit of lunch and come back to complexity this afternoon.  If you find Chaos a strange state to live in the frontier town of complexity will really interest you.  Translational zones, fringes and shifts are always the most interesting....

    

No one deserves to die.........

It has been a disturbing 48 hours; we have seen senseless killing and senseless death.  As the horror of what happened in Norway unfolds we are reminded as well of the dangers of substance abuse (i am going to make the prejudiced assumption that there is a link between Amy Winehouse’s death and substance abuse).   Death is natural but no one deserves to die.

Web media and social media (someone is going to have to help me with definitions here) opens us to a wealth of views and ideas delivered instantly.  At first we debated why al-Qaeda had attacked Norway (I’m in my own glasshouse here – see my assumptions about Amy), we then learnt it was domestic.    We will find out tomorrow his motive; at least that is what he promises.  A picture of right wing hatred seems to be emerging; I fear we will hear that he had to make a political point, that they were a unavoidable sacrifice.  Death is natural but no one deserves to die.

I can remember the news of Amy’s untimely demise emerging via Twitter.  I cross-checked the facts against a few on-line new agencies.  Within the hour it had spread to FaceBook.  A new article appeared and when i clicked the link it turned out to be one of those viruses that posts itself to your wall – claiming that she ‘got what was coming’.  Twitter and FaceBook flowed with a combination of RIP and moralising ‘deserved it’.  I worry.  The idea that anyone deserves to die opens our minds to the idea that a sacrifice for a course is acceptable.  Death is natural but no one deserves to die.

My mind strayed back to bin Laden’s killing on May the 2nd.   Should they have shot him? Yes.  Did he deserve to die? No.  Bin Laden was a paradox.  He had many years to hand himself in to a court of justice, he had evade justice but was not alone in that.  He needed to be arrested and had made it clear that he would not allow himself to be.   Can we allow someone to live outside of the law, clearly not or the law is an ass.  Can we expect service men and women to be sacrificed so that he can make one last political point, clearly not.  Death is natural but no one deserves to die.     

If we can drop the language of hate, if we can accept that everyone deserves to live, if we can accept that everyone deserve justice perhaps we can move towards, if not a peaceful world and more civilised one.

 

Not sure if this is a travel blog or a review of contemporary customer service – what am I saying it is clearly both.  Imagine the scene, a middle aged academic economist with polymathic tendencies (by his own description) and an 8 year old (who really is a polymath) on a tour of London – both known for being able to hold a conversation longer than it is practical or safe to do so.

The adventure, and by that I mean adventure in customer service, began in Glastonbury.  It was around 5pm and we were on our way to London but had stopped for a break.  Dinner was required.  First cafe was the usually “if we ignore them they will go away as we are shut”, second we managed to insist on an audience.  Turns out they were also shutting.  Fair enough, so where else was open we inquired.  “Other cafes and pubs” was the somewhat uninformative answer.  No matter it was a lovely evening and Glastonbury is known for its peace not its 21 century customer services – little did we know then that this was the pinnacle of customer care.

The time is now 11pm and we have pulled off the M4 to services near the M25 turning.  Again in search of nourishment – surely now so close to the economic powerhouse that is London with its high expectations and 24hr culture we would be accommodate in our every whim..........hmmm no.  Turns out the suggestion of hot food in a restaurant in a 24hr service station is alien and quite unexpected.  After looking somewhat confused our server, gatekeeper is closer, came up with the suggestion of sandwiches in the chiller – it would seem the state of the art kitchen behind was only for show. 

Arrival at our hotel at 3am (long story) was uneventful.  A pleasant receptionist offered to cook a hot meal.  By then I was suffering from sleep deprivation so I may well have dreamt that bit.  Breakfast was confusing, well it confused us and no amount of looking confused would trigger an offer of help from the staff.  Eventually I started foraging through the buffet and was not stopped so deduced this was the modus operandi for this establishment.  Suitably fortified we headed for the Underground.  I will admit I always find this a little confusing, but I am improving.  Of course this begs the question should a customer have to learn by experience?  Perhaps there is a course I should attend before attempting to negotiate the finer points of this august transport system?  The system makes sense once you work out which line you are on (apologies to those who already know this but I live under the illusion that my words may help others) the difficulty lies in working out which line you are on or need to be on.  The much praised schematic, and it is a thing of beauty, only makes sense if you already know where you are much like a conventional map.  However, a conventional map has the advantage of scale and position relative to reality.  I understand completely why Harry Beck could not do it this way, but still there must be a way of incorporating a location key or, maybe, some helpful staff.  As for zones – well anyone’s guess.  Approaching the platforms we walked up and down until a wonderfully rotund ruby faced smiling Underground employee pointed us the right way, much to Bethan’s delight it was where she had told me 5 minutes earlier!

The Tube is what it is, dirty, noisy and full of people who seem to so hate their lives they neither smile, look up from the paper, or manage to remove their iPods, no doubt containing motivational recordings, from their ears.  However, it would seem our chosen hotel location was in a predominantly Muslim area and this lightened the journey.   Although there was little conversation the mothers with their children seemed to connect with us and sympathetic smiles were exchanged all-round.

First destination the Natural History Museum.   As two Indian Jones wanabes this suited us perfectly (I know Indy is an archaeologist and not into fossils but it’s the spirit of discovery).  Free entry, clean and well presented things are looking up.  Plenty to see and do, except the dinosaurs are being enhanced, Jurassic Park style perhaps?  No mind there is an animatronics display of dinosaurs’ – at a price.  Pester power kicks in and we buy two tickets.  Now to this day I am still unsure what I paid over twenty pounds for.  Yes there were a couple of robot dinosaurs but the whole experience lasted less than five minutes.  Put it this way it didn’t manage to impress an eight year old.

More food required and so it is off to Knightsbridge.  Suitable pavement cafe located and pizza and drinks ordered.  Now bearing in mind this is one of the hottest days of the year what possessed them to serve my (expensive) bottled water warm with no ice?  At least Beth’s Coke was chilled.  Another interesting observation here is fashion related.  In this more expensive part of London we again saw a variety of ethnicities, a wonderful collage of accents and styles.  What caught my attention though was a rather chic form of traditional dress that seems popular.  Lots of dark headscarves combined with designer glasses, heels and heavy makeup.  For convenience what I will call a Jemima Khan style, although I understand Jemima adopts a different look herself these days.  Whilst I am no fashionista I remain interest in purchasing habits and motivations and being in the heart of retail paradise I could not help but be intrigued. 

Next stop Harrods.  Not my first visit and Beth had no idea what it was, and again it did not fail to disappoint.    I think my view is jaded somewhat by a belief that this is a world class department store that can supply anything.  Perhaps it can.  But on entry it seems a parody of itself, shelves full of baubles and tat.  I can see an episode of The Apprentice where contestants try to pass off Harrods product as market stall wares – I think they would easily succeed.  Plan of action required to save the visit.  Off we go to the outdoor and sports section, surely here two budding explorers and extreme sports aficionados can be wooed with the best the world has to offer in survival gear and sports equipment?  It would seem not.  Rows of football strips, spy gear (even Beth wasn’t impressed and I did try) and one saving grace a mini submarine – at last something that makes me feel I am not in the love child of Tesco Extra and Pool market.

Off again via Buckingham Palace, Number 10, Palace of Westminster (always seems small) and Victoria Embankment – clean and well presented as you would expect.  We chance across Michael Portillo filmingnear the Thames and he gives us a quite warm and genuine smile, I can only assume his career as TV presenter and pundit brings him greater happiness than politics.  Eventually we arrive in theatre land and hunt for a show.  Shriek the Musical – ideal for an 8 year old and a tired economist.  Tickets a reasonable £25, show magnificent but theatre very tatty and why do adults go to these shows?  Through risk of sounding out of touch I can quite understand a trip with your partner, why not, but groups of young adults watching a children’s’ show – I’m sorry I’m lost.

 Ah the tube late at night – what an experience.  Gone are the miserable workers to be replaced with a collection or tourists and drunks.  This is a Monday I should add.  We have three of London’s most trendy next to us, covering generationally the 1960s through to today, who are debating whether heroin is more of a health problem than alcohol.  Various other substances are ‘cut’ into the conversation.  The odd celebrity name was dropped, not sure who this was aimed at impressing.

Back to base and my earlier dreams relating to hot food seem not to have been a result of sleep deprivation.  Two hot meals in the room and a bit of TV.  Tomorrow was to be another busy day.

We decided to shorten our Tube journey and got off at Tower Hill.  This was a great idea as, in addition to some excellent service from two characters in a hot snack van, we got to tour the Tower.  A free lecture from a Yeoman, sight of the ravens, a look at the Crown and various other historical artefacts in a spotless enclosure made this a highlight of our trip.  However, Beth’s aunty had informed her that such a thing as Hamleys (shouldn’t that have an apostrophe?)existed and Beth has a memory like an elephant with a Filofax. 

From the street outside, Regent Street I believe, we are greeted by entertainers.  The store is colourful and dramatic.   In we go and select our floor, choosing to start at the top.  There are toys to play with, magicians to entertain and row upon row of toys to browse.  I notice on our way through that the carpet is worn and the paint scuffed, I ignore this and put it down to my background in construction making me overly critical.  We find some demonstrators (toys not activists) to play on, and by this time I am happy to join in, except they don’t work.  It seems bits are missing.  No worries there are others, which also don’t work, batteries this time.  Never mind we carry on.  I find some radio controlled cars that interest Beth for a minute, but only that she finds the one she owns already and we salvaged from eBay.   Then, as welcome as a beacon to two lost sailors, we spot a display case in the distance.  Not just any case but one containing Indiana Jones merchandise, of course there are other heroes there as well and other heroes are available as the say on the BBC, but Beth is fixated on the illuminated signs clearly stating her hero has objects with which to dent dad’s wallet.  We rush over.  This next part I still find impossible to believe.  There are about six themed cabinets; but in each cabinet is a collection of Harry Potter wands.  Did I desperately want to buy some Indy merchandise, was Bethan inconsolable? No.  What shocked me was the laziness, the lack of professionalism and the contempt for consumers shown by what is meant to be a flagship store.   Surely it is worth getting signage correct?  

We ended our trip with a visit to Ferrari, which didn’t contain any, and Natural Geographic’s store.  Did we have a good time? Of course we did but then we have a good time in the local Tesco.  Beth has memories of police motorcycles tearing through the streets and ‘the Queen’s house’ and is more than happy.  I am left again wondering with what am I meant to be impressed.  Dirty streets and public transport, shabby shops selling tat and indifferent staff leave me underwhelmed but at the same time energised.  Not energised with the positive vibe of the city, that is clearly missing, but energised by its negatives in comparison to the wonders I have seen beyond.  Do not come here seeking best practice, do not come here seeking inspiration, do come here to remind yourself that this is not the centre.  For fans of Douglas Adams it’s a Zaphod Beeblebrox and Total Perspective Vortex thing, for fans of Catatonia we come alive outside the M25....

I’m sat waiting for the tide to turn, literally not  metaphorically; it seems to have turned metaphorically this week already, at
  least in journalism.   Whilst  musing and pondering a variety of topics I came to an underlying theme of  language.  Now I am no linguist, in  fact I am handicapped still further (but I do know it’s not farther – I think)  by an amazing capacity for missed typos, but I have ears and a sense of  aesthetic and it strikes me some words and phrases are just plain ugly,  especially when you consider what a rich lexicon English offers us.  So, for no reason other than to alleviate may own boredom, and with the  vain hope you’ll avoid them in conversation with me, here is my top x list (x  being the unknown at this point):

 1.      
Deliverables – what  exactly is this mess of a word? 
Used by people in meetings already too long as a shortened version of ‘things that the project will deliver’.  Will  the seconds saved really help?

 2.      
Mumpreneur – I haven’t  made that up. 
It even has its own  website.  I blame a friend whose identity I will protect for introducing me to it.  Really why is a female entrepreneur with children any different to a male one, or one without, or one looking after parents?  Apart from the fact that it butchers the original word to create this rather ‘cuddly’ (I imagine) sounding word it suggests that these entrepreneurs are somewhat different than ‘real’ ones (otherwise they would use same word surely?).  Where will it end?

 3.      
Kind Regards – please can we stop, especially the shortened ‘regards’. 
What was wrong with the perfectly erviceable ‘yours sincerely’, ‘yours faithfully’ and, for those confused by friend or stranger, ‘thank you’.   Each time I read this at the end of a letter or automatic signature I simply assume the writer is trying to sell me double glazing, has no command of English and had a previous career  saying ‘have a nice day’.

 4.      
 Networking event – not so much the phrase this time as the concept. 
Actually the word ‘networking’ is also a problem.  “Had a good networking evening.”  Do you work for CISCO or some other cable company?   In truth no networks are created – a network has nodes and links.  Most ‘networking’events consist of  someone trying to flog something to someone else.   That’s not a network that’s just annoying.

 5.      
CEO – again I have no issue with the acronym, makes perfect sense. 
What bothers me is way everyone from  the window cleaner to the head of Apple is now referred to as a CEO.   Let’s think about the words, Chief Executive Officer, the ‘boss’ of a collection of executive officers.  In other words not a general manger, not an owner, not a managing  director.  Please, unless you have a 1,000 plus employees or are listed on a major exchange simplify the language.
  
6.
Spin-out company – you were  laid off and now you are doing a similar thing and scratching for work.

 7.      
  Executive – why is everyone in marketing an executive? 
If you are paid something around national average wage, even plus £10k, I’m sorry but regardless of nameplate you are not an executive. 
 
8.      
Vice president (VP) – is  there anyone in the States who isn’t a VP?

 9.      
Mentor – who isn’t or doesn’t have one nowadays? 
Well apart from me that is. I receive and give advice – that’s part of being the social animal that is human but this word has become massively overused.

 10.  
Business angel – does  anyone even have a workable definition for this? 
Seems to range from a more acceptable form of venture capital (and why in a capitalist society should that be a problem?) to people with a little bit of money and too much ‘advice’ to  give.  Sleeping partners, silent partners and business partners were all perfectly workable terms.   Venture capital provides the  social distance for the more detached version – the suffix angel doesn’t fool  anyone –or perhaps it does?

 I’ll stop there as 10 is a nice round number and I fancy a coffee and a slice of cake before it sells out J