Look but don't touch

#vpect Terence Kealey, an academic at the University of Buckingham, has got himself into hot water by writing an article discussing the possibility that middle-aged lecturers such as himself might find some of the students attractive, and advocating a "look but don't touch" policy [BBC News, 23 Sept 2009]. Many people have expressed outrage at this article; partly because of the way he describes his students (curvy female students are a "perk of the job") but perhaps also because the very subject of sexual attraction between lecturers and their students is taboo.

So what's going on here? Is the problem solely with the choice of language, or is there a more fundamental problem? Before making a judgement about this, let us first subject this controversy to a VPEC-T analysis.

Contents	The primary purpose of the teacher-student relationship in terms of a given course of study.
Events	The student approaches the teacher for help with an essay. The teacher observes the student’s body.
Policy	The teacher should help the student with the essay.  The teacher should not lust after the student.  The teacher should help all students equally, regardless of their physical attributes.
Values and Beliefs	There is something wrong with a 45-year-old teacher sleeping with a 20-year-old student.  There is something wrong with a powerful person (such as a manager or teacher) obtaining sexual favours from a subordinate person (such as employee or student or intern).  There is something wrong with a person gaining an unfair advantage (promotion, better marks) by offering sexual favours.  It is unwise to mix business relationships with sex.
Trust	Students (should be able to) trust the teacher to provide support and to award marks based on merit rather than sex.  Students (should be able to) trust each other not to cheat by distracting or seducing the teacher.  Students should be able to have a crush on a teacher without anything happening.

That’s a good start, but it fails to make a critical distinction between three things: real sex, imaginary sex and symbolic sex.

Real sex	The teacher physically gropes the student, the student deliberately brushes her curves against the teacher, the teacher and the student go to bed together.
Imaginary sex	Blatant desire or interest, flirtation, fantasy, gaze. The teacher’s desire (unconsciously) influences the mark awarded to that student.
Symbolic sex	Coded messages, which may hint at desire, interest or availability. (There is a small but significant difference between "If you give me good marks, I might go to bed with you" and "If you go to bed with me, I might give you good marks".)

So what happens when we put the columns and rows together?

	Real	Imaginary	Symbolic
V	Sleeping with students is wrong	Fantasizing about sleeping with students is wrong. Curvy female students are a "perk of the job".	Talking about fantasizing about sleeping with students is wrong. Sex as a bargaining chip is wrong.
P	“Look but don’t touch.”	Blind marking – prevents teacher (even unconsciously) favouring some students.	Blind marking – prevents student trying to bribe teacher.
E	Teacher and student are caught in the act.	Teacher mentally undresses student. Student misperceives friendly interest as lust. Teacher misperceives friendly interest as availability.	Rumour and suspicion of sexual relationship between a teacher and a student. False accusation of sexual harassment by student.
C	The object of desire is the physical body of the student.	The object of desire is the (reciprocated) desire of the student.	The object of desire is a transaction (exchange) between the teacher and the student.
T	Acting on one’s desires can result in trouble.	Suppressing or concealing one’s desires can result in inauthentic (creepy or cold) behaviour.	Even just talking about the issue threatens the innocence of the teacher-student relationship.

Bringing this extra dimension into the VPEC-T analysis seems to offer a way of talking about the meaning of some complex questions. The RSI lens is complementary to the VPEC-T lens.

The apparent intention of the article in question was to encourage lecturers to separate the REAL from the IMAGINARY, and to keep any sexual thoughts about the students firmly in the realm of the IMAGINARY. The VPEC-T x RSI analysis allows us to see some of the tension points in this exercise. Does Dr Kealey's intention make sense, and could there have been a better way of achieving it?

From Black Belt to White Belt

When my son went to Karate classes, the instructor had a belt that had once been black but was now practically threadbare. Most of the black threads had worn away, and the belt was almost white again.

The instructor explained that this represented a cycle - even the most experienced black belt needed to return to the basics, needed humility and the desire to learn, needed to always think like a beginner rather than strutting around arrogantly like an expert. So there is an important meme here - the black belt becomes a white belt again.

The same is true of management best practices. There are people who think that the highest level of expertise is internalized and automatic - sometimes referred to as "unconscious competence". There are people who proudly call themselves "Black Belt" in various disciplines, such as Six Sigma. Perhaps they too need to become White Belts again?



See also Mike Selvon, From White Belt to Black Belt
and Vineet Nayar, When was the last time you de-learned?

Related Posts: Three Notions of Maturity (March 2013), From Enabling Prejudices to Sedimented Principles (March 2013)

Related Metaphor: All the American Flags On the Moon Are Now White (Jesus Diaz, Gizmodo, 31 July 2012)

Satiable curtiosity

Many people like to quote Kipling's poem

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

and most of them probably assume that Kipling endorses this approach. But I think it is pretty clear from the context of the poem that "I" is not supposed to be Kipling himself but the Elephant's Child, an annoying creature, who goes around constantly asking What-Why-When-How-Where-Who questions. He gets obsessed by one such question (What does the Crocodile have for dinner?) and set off on a quest to find the answer, nearly gets killed in the process, and returns with a quite unexpected benefit: this is How The Elephant Got His Trunk. If the Elephant's Child actually learns anything valuable from the experience, this is largely thanks to the intervention of the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake who (apart from saving his life) asks grounded questions like "Try this" and "Don't you think" and "How do you feel".

If you read the whole of Kipling's poem (Wikisource: The Elephant's Child) the irony can hardly be missed.

So there are two alternative role models for the consultant here. Are you an Elephant's Child or a Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake?

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Of course, not everyone sees this my way. In The One Conversational Tool That Will Make You Better At Absolutely Everything (Fast Company December 2012), Shane Snow is on the side of the Elephant's Child.

Questions that start with “who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” “how,” or “why” have high probability of thoughtful responses, whereas those that begin with “would,” “should,” “is,” “are,” and “do you think” can limit your answers.

And the Wikipedia article on 5Ws identifies some classical precursors.

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See also

My presentation (Slideshare): The Kipling-Zachman lens
Daily Telegraph (28 Oct 2010): Picture of the day

Related posts: Why Wise (July 2010), Arguing with Mendeleev (March 2013), Nudge as a Speech Act (May 2019)

Updated 19 December 2012. Links added 1 March 2022.

What's Missing from VPEC-T?

#vpect is a deceptively simple systems thinking lens developed by a couple of friends of mine (Carl Bate and Nigel Green), and described in their book Lost in Translation. The letters stand for Values, Policies, Events, Content and Trust. For a good brief description, see VPEC-T the 5D lens by @RoyGrubb.

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There have been several discussions in the VPEC-T Google Group identifying possible additions to the VPEC-T lens. Some months ago, partly in order to find out what kind of lens VPEC-T actually was, but partly because I actually think it's important, I suggested adding the letter M for Meaning, and now Roy Grubb has just started a thread suggesting the letter O for Outcomes. Previously, Sally Bean asked about Roles/People/Community. (Have I missed any other suggestions?)

One response to this has been to claim that any of these are somehow already implicit in the original five letters. I don't actually think this is a very good response. I might as well argue that Trust is implicit in the Kipling-Zachman lens (in other words, implicit in the use of the lens by those practitioners I regard as using it "properly") and nobody could ever prove me wrong. The point of calling it VPEC-T is to draw attention to these five concepts in particular (or six if we count the dash as a concept).

The next response is to challenge the notion of completeness. Obviously there is an indefinite number of concepts we might want to pay attention to. There are many other lenses (Kipling-Zachman, CATWOE, SWOT, and so on), and each of these focuses attention on a different set of concepts. I don't think it makes sense to try and produce a single all-purpose lens that covers everything, and I don't see why adding lots of other stuff to VPEC-T would be an improvement. We can agree with Sally that Roles/People/Community are important without necessarily concluding that these concepts must somehow be bundled into VPEC-T. A better solution might be to select another lens that provides particular insight into Roles/People/Community, and use this lens in combination with VPEC-T.

However, I think it still makes sense to talk about ways to improve the VPEC-T lens, provided this doesn't just mean making it more complicated and more likely to lure people into a false sense of completeness. One of the reasons I like VPEC-T is that it draws our attention to the complexity associated with each of the five letters. Many traditional methodologies have a place for a simple unified statement of value (goal or objective); but VPEC-T tells us about many interacting and often conflicting value systems (V), many interacting and inconsistent policies (P), and so on. One reason I wanted to add M for Meaning (and the same argument might also apply to Sally's or Roy's suggestion) was that I see Meaning as the same kind of concept - we are faced not with a single unified meaning emerging from the analysis (which I think was Nigel Green's argument) but with a multiplicity of meanings - each event or policy can mean something different to each Role/Person/Community.

To take the Dinner Party example from the Lost in Translation book, each of the things that happens at a dinner party can be interpreted and experienced in different ways. Policy dictates whether the guest should offer to help with the washing up, but Meaning tells you whether people actually feel grateful or threatened when this occurs.

I also think Meaning is a key element of change management. We frame change proposals so that they can mean something positive for each of the stakeholders. (I hate all this talk about "overcoming resistance", but that's another discussion.) And we create Meaning by telling stories. So one way or another, I am determined to have a lens that helps me think about Meaning.

As far as I can see, I have three possible options. My first option is to use a completely different lens for understanding Meaning. My second option is to create my own idiosyncratic version of VPEC-T, which I might call VPEC-TM. (Meanwhile, Roy creates his own version, and the VPEC-T community fragments before it has even really formed.) My third option is to persuade the VPEC-T community to make a collective change to VPEC-T.

This is of course raising a question about the VPEC-T community. Now Sally, what lens do you think we should use to think about this question of Role/People/Community?

Linking Facial Expressions

Two studies about facial expressions have been reported by the BBC in the past few weeks.

Facial expressions 'not global' (14 August 2009). In research carried out by a team from Glasgow University, East Asian observers found it more difficult to distinguish some facial expressions. (Findings published in Current Biology journal.)

Delinquents 'misinterpret anger' (19 September 2009). A Japanese study of young offenders found they often misread facial expressions. (Findings published in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health journal.)

I have not read the academic papers, but it looks as if there might be an interesting link between the two studies. There are some missing perceptions in some people (perhaps by culture and/or personality type), and these are linked to patterns of behaviour. The Japanese researchers are looking at personality type, while the European researchers are looking at cultural differences.

But how do such links ever get identified, especially as it is perfectly within the bounds of possibility that there is nobody who reads both of these journals? I only spotted it myself, because I read the second story and recalled having read something similar not long before, and because I was able to find my way back to the first story.

The first general point to pay attention to here is the process of memory retrieval, in this case involving a collaboration between my brain and a simple internet search.

The second general point is about the fragmentation of knowledge and the "architecture" of joined-up research. How do such accidental links influence not only what we happen to know, but also what becomes available to be known?


Related post: Affective Computing (March 2019)

The Map is not the Territory

@seabird20 recently reminded me of the illusion (identified by Alfred Korzybski, founder of general semantics) “of mistaking the map for the territory”. In his book They Have A Word for It, Howard Rheingold names this illusion as "Maya: the mistaken belief that a symbol is the same as the reality it represents".

The context for this was a Twitter discussion on the Gartner Hype Curve. Of course the Gartner Hype Curve is just a map, not the territory it purports to describe. But I argued that we still have a right to complain if any map is not fit-for-purpose: if the map sends us to the wrong part of the territory, we blame the map.

Chris replied: "Now that is ascribing a lot of power to the map. But yes we do blame it when we get lost and are following it!"

We can contrast this with Miroslav Holub's story (borrowed by Karl Weick) of the Hungarians in the Alps, in which the soldiers reach their destination despite using the wrong map. (You can find the poem on the MonkeyMagic blog.)

@j4ngis comments: "With wrong map you get a good chance to discover new things. And experience some surprises. Right map only takes you there."

I guess the best-known example of that would be Columbus trying to reach India by sailing West. Got his sums wrong. Idiot.

Yup! (says @j4ngis) We need more idiots like that to make real progress. And to save this planet. @j4ngis then adds a beautiful story about (US) indians using buffalo skin as "map". Follow (random) wrinkles as paths to find meat in NEW places. Graham Hill interprets this as "an interesting use of a random walk on a fitness landsape to find new high peaks". But, just as in Holub's story, it only works if the people using it think it's a real map.

Are best practices obsolete?

There are many ways (some crazier than others) of dividing the human personality into categories or styles. Modern ones (Belbin, Myers-Briggs) are typically based on psychological tests, while ancient ones (Chinese or Western astrology) may be based on the position of the stars, or the shape of the skull.

Although the modern ones are more scientifically respectable than the ancient ones, they are equally subject to the fallacy of fatalism - imagining that we are condemned to remain in a given category. As Shakespeare puts it, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves ...". Finding out your personality type may help you understand why you made certain choices in the past, but doesn't force you to make the same choices in the future.

With that introductory warning about personality types, let me say something about a classification I sometimes find useful - Michael Kirton's distinction between Adapters and Innovators, known as the KAI scale.

Adaptors are the kind of people who say things like this.

• "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
• "No point reinventing the wheel."

Innovators are the kind of people who say things like

• "If it ain't broke, fix it anyway"
• "If it works, it's out of date."
  

Kirton makes three important points. Firstly, this is a spectrum, rather than a simple binary Either/Or. Most of us are somewhere between the two extremes. Secondly, adapters can be just as creative as innovators, but they tend to express their creativity in different ways. And thirdly, the classification is about preference rather than capability - adapters are capable of innovating in a given situation when they choose to do so (and innovators are capable of adapting).

I think Kirton's scale helps to explain the distinction I've been drawing between "best practice" and "next practice". Adapters like to do things better - to take a practice and improve it - to achieve mastery at some "best practice". Innovators like to do things differently - to experiment with "next practice".

I believe that, for various reasons, there is a growing demand for "next practice". If this means a shift from Adapter behaviour towards Innovator behaviour, then a lot of people are going to have to venture outside their comfort zones. But not everyone - the demand for "best practice" isn't going to disappear overnight, and some Adapters will be able remain in their "cylinders of excellence", continuing to develop and deploy their mastery of "best practice". Good luck to them.

Related post: The Corporate Sorting Hat (September 2021)