Forestry

Institutions are like forests. They create darkness below while absorbing light from above. They host the bloodiest battles of nature, all the while living off the corpses of the slain. The only organisms that can thrive in them, as opposed to merely survive, are the fungi which need no light and have their own subterranean network of carrion consumption.

First-World Parliaments

The oldest parliament (or place of parley) in the First World was held in the shadow of a huge black basaltic slab on the west face of the Thingvellir, the 'Valley of the Thing', in Iceland. Sources generally agree that this democratic assembly of all the local people, the Althing, started around AD 930 and has been in existence therefore for more than a thousand years. That span takes into account the periods of anarchy and times of war that disrupted the Althing and scattered the assembly. To this day, a thing is an object to be agreed upon.

But the longest continually-running democratic institution in the world is probably found a bit further south, on Britain's Isle of Man. There, the local assembly or Tynwald has been meeting regularly since AD 979, and this is its 1033rd year of existence.

These are true First World parliaments, the first ancestors of various assemblies that spread throughout the North Atlantic region, and eventually culminated in the Westminster Parliament at London, which some call the mother of all modern parliaments. The big difference is that at Westminster, those who meet represent a majority or plurality of their constituents, but sometimes not even half of those they claim to serve.

A First-World parliament thus became one at which the laws of the realm are fully and freely debated not by all those bound by such laws, the laws of the commonwealth of the people, but by their representatives. This is of course somewhat necessary as states get larger, but one also has to wonder about what has been transacted without the full, free knowledge of the people.

The Problem of Small Strong States

A strong state, said Max Weber in 1919, is one which has a monopoly over the legitimate use of force. As many others have added since then (like Migdal in 1988), a strong state taxes the population in some way and reassigns these expropriations to the general purposes and for the general advantage of the population. Migdal also pointed out that a strong state, with its centralising authority structure, is opposed to a strong society, in which authority is decentralised. You can find variations of strong and weak states, and strong and weak societies, all over the world.

The USA is a superstate which balances the strong-state/strong-society dichotomy well. It has the advantage of being composed as a kind of federation of plausibly independent states. Hence there is a balance between the Federal centre and the functions of the USA on one hand, and the state epicentres and state functions on the other. This balance can be found to some extent in Germany and Switzerland, among others.

However, there is less latitude for tiny states. A small state like Andorra or Luxembourg, Monaco or Singapore, does not take decentralisation well because the web of relationships between various components is too tightly woven. Even if you artificially privatise everything, the state still needs to look after the integrity and needs of the overall polity. High-density city-states cannot survive as a bunch of separate but federated components — you cannot build a nation of independent farmer-soldiers or baronies when the population density is too high.

Eventually, individuals in a tiny state will bump into the web of relationships and be subsumed into the ruling establishment. There is little choice, because there is only one centre. Citizens can try to create separate centres of power and legitimacy, but these will only be mitochondria to the mighty nucleus of state government.

Strong states, however, need diversity to survive. Small strong states have the problem of obtaining sufficient diversity within their population limits. This means that, as with the smaller organisms, either asexual reproduction by splitting (probably not viable, but it's been tried before) or sexual reproduction by mingling imported genes must occur.

Most small states have been formed and continue to thrive by receiving external input. The problem is that frequently it isn't possible to tell when you're getting a 'junk' gene input that will never do you any good, a 'good' gene input that will help you do better, or a 'reservist' gene input that might be of use someday but not just yet. So a more diverse net must be cast, and yet more exacting filters must be used.

What a problem! How can small strong states survive? Quite often, they end up as members of an agglomerate, as parasites, or in some sort of mutual relationship where members all provide different functions to the whole. Very seldom do modern city-states thrive.

As of this century, only one full-fledged city-state remains.

The Blue Ocean Fills With Blood

I think I first posted my thoughts about the awful Blue Ocean Strategy concept here. That was back in February 2009, when a fairly prominent Atlantean educator decided to make it his reason for living (or something like that). In that post, I pointed out that the idea was an ancient one, with a cautionary tale attached to it.

A month later, I then made a prediction about the likely success of this strategy as applied in the education sector. That post can be found here. In this second post, I also coined the term 'lazy innovator strategy', which has since found its way into my research findings.

Scandalised further by more repetitions (parrot-like) of this philosophy, I then wrote a third post here. In this post, I pointed out that the whole idea was also a case of stating the obvious, overgeneralising, and then making a lot of money out of it.

Finally (or so I thought), I came to some conclusions about the viability of the Blue Ocean Strategy in a fourth post here. In that post, I pointed out that the evolving situation was more like that of a stagnant pond or a Sargasso Sea, than an ocean of any sort (let alone a blue one).

A year after the first post I mentioned, I felt a great need to indulge in mockery. This I duly carried out, but not without some stirrings of guilt. That guilt led me, the very next day, to post some soothing words for baby wyverns.

Where am I going with this?

Well, on Saturday night and the night just passing, I heard many things about the fate of the blue ocean of this particular iteration of the Blue Ocean Strategy. Apparently, the blue ocean has been filled with blood and fire. It is not the safe haven it used to be; indeed, the sulfurous stink of gunpowder now fills the air, and 'Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke' as Chesterton said.

I have another dangerous flaw in my character besides a habit of mocking people (the Good Book warns about sitting in the seat of mockers, so I try very hard not to): I also have a bad habit of saying, "I told you so."

We await further interesting changes at the Citadel. It is a mystery who will emerge with mastery. But some persons are too gross to serve.

Emergence

This is a brief note directed at some friends who have made queries about specific procedures in specific Atlantean institutions.

Essentially, Article 14 of the Constitution of the specified institution says that no member of staff may be dismissed without the following steps: a) recommendation submitted to Board, b) committee of inquiry appointed, c) committee to report to Board with their own recommendation if any.

However, it is clear that this is not a transparent process, and should the member of staff wish to say anything, there is actually no guarantee that a) he will get to say it, b) he will not face further disciplinary internal action because of saying it, c) that the public will come to know of any irregularities in said process. In fact, there is no guarantee that he will even know anything about the process which decides his fate, nor that he will get to defend himself at all.

In other words, if this kind of proceeding were to be held in other realms, it would constitute a lack of due process. But as we have seen before, Atlantis is a different place — there is a doctrine of Atlantean exceptionalism, and sadly, its institutions are not exceptional in that regard.

My advice to those who are advised to leave or be dismissed is that you should leave as quickly as possible. Transplanting yourself from a big pond to the sea is a wrenching step and a disorienting one, but it can be done. "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well / It were done quickly" as the Scottish play says.

There is another consequence. If you save your ammunition, you can use it later with less constraint. The a posteriori (or as some might call it with humour, ex post facto) defence is a safer one, because you can easily construct theory that fits prior facts, and reveal those facts as necessary. They have fired their ammunition and remain constrained by the institution. You, on the other hand, have a choice of lawyers and courts (including that of public opinion), and you need hold nothing back except for the personal restraint engendered by being a scholar and a gentleman.

To stand and fight merely impugns the honour of the institution, which is certainly a different thing from the honour of its executive officers. So my humble recommendation to those under threat, at whom irrational attacks have been launched with the flimsiest of reasons, is to pack up and go. Be like Abraham, and not like his nephew's wife.

And (as military reports are wont to conclude), that is all I have to say.

A Civil Society Forever!

Over the last few days, the idea of civil society and civil institutions has taken a hammering, or at least been struck like a gong. The reverberations still continue, but I think it is a kind of healthy clangour.

Let me describe the situation. A local women's-rights organisation was taken over at its AGM by a group of women who turned out to have a general commonality: a bunch of them were from the same Christian church from down the road. As the details emerged through the cloud of fine spittle that tends to develop around the hissing of the faucets, it turned out that a number of emails had been exchanged among some members of this latter group describing the original institution as... well, perverse in terms of sexual mores, I suppose.

This was deemed reason enough for a takeover. Many days and mutual recriminations (some probably slanderous) later, an EOGM was held and vociferously attended. The newly elected executive committee was roundly defeated in a vote of no-confidence and the old organisation, newly overturned, was back to its old self again.

The vote of no-confidence succeeded by the large margin it did simply because it had a huge and even newer coalition supporting it. Apparently, the threat of a church-based takeover of a secular organisation had stirred the pot so much that secular forces had decided to get their own back. And so they did.

Personally, what I found alarming was the fact that persons X, Y, Z and so on could just blithely take over an established institution and decide to destroy its culture because they thought it was a good idea. It happens a lot, but never with such naked and unrepentant zealotry.

So, who was right and who was wrong? Or, who was right and who was left? It is tempting to cast everything in some sort of Foucaultian power/society/sexuality/institutionality sort of model. But I think that quite simply, it is generally a good sign for those who are hoping that Atlantean society develops balls the capacity for a healthy degree of internal disagreement, debate and discussion.

What I don't agree with is that churches should be tainting themselves by taking over secular organisations. There is no Biblical precedent for it; rather, Christians are exhorted to be in the world but not of it, and to free themselves from conformity to the world and its institutions. In this, I use the word 'taint' in the sense of 'tint, colour or dye', a perfectly legitimate usage from the 16th century. Christians aren't supposed to be part of secular sides, but separate from all to the same degree.

Actually, proto-Christians were also supposed to be proto-Marxists, if you read this passage (and this one) clearly. I've always thought that Marx had cribbed his famous 1875 slogan off somebody. Naughty man.

But I don't think I saw any of the church people rushing to sell their stuff for redistribution. The American religious right tends to talk about Godless communism. I wonder if they've ever considered Godly communism before. What a powerful social framework it would be! Heh.

The Perils of Goal-Setting

In every local organisation that has come to pay tribute to the new form of evaluation, the practice of goal-setting is considered laudatory, and in fact, the pinnacle of excellence in process management. This is especially prevalent in organisations going for so-called quality awards (which ought to be debunked forthwith).

Last night, I had the opportunity, thanks to a certain elf, to read an article by four academics concerning the perils of goal-setting. These four are from the Eller College of Management, the Wharton School of Business, the Kellogg School of Management, and Harvard Business School. It is an eye-opener, this paper entitled Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal-Setting.

Their conclusion is summarised in the form of a 'warning label' which they would like people to use more often. The text on that bright yellow warning label says:

WARNING!

Goals may cause systematic problems in organizations
due to narrowed focus, unethical behavior, increased risk taking,
decreased cooperation, and decreased intrinsic motivation.

Use care when applying goals in your organization.

It immediately put in me in checklist mode. I realised that the organisation I've been looking at is very much like that. And the details in the paper (especially those on page 11, thanks to the elf!) make it very clear where the blame should lie.

The Institutional Organization of Knowledge

To the acronyms TOK (Theory of Knowledge), WOK (Way of Knowing) and AOK (Area of Knowledge), I shall add IOK (Institutional Organization of Knowledge). It is not that new a concept; from about 2005, several books I came across spoke in detail of the tacit and detailed internal knowledge structures of large organizations.

However, my New York link sprouted an email in my direction pointing me to Amnon Karmon, an Israeli specialist (no, not that kind, you servicepeople!) in alternative methods of teaching. He's the director of the Kerem Institute of Jewish Humanistic Teacher Training in Jerusalem. This is how he begins his 2007 article:

For over a hundred years, there have been efforts to change the way that schools transmit knowledge. Most of these efforts have failed. The most common explanations found in educational research for this are either: 1) macro-social, according to which social interests and powers hinder these changes. 2) teacher-oriented, according to which the teachers themselves either resist those changes or/and lack the training and qualifications necessary to carry them out. Although these explanations have a lot of truth to them, they ignore a crucial point, a “missing link” between teaching and subject matter, and society. Every educational institution has a special structure for organizing knowledge. This structure is independent in many respects from macro-social factors, as well as from teacher behavior, and it has important effects on the ways educational institutions deal with knowledge. Educational research has not yet provided a detailed and focused examination of “the institutional organization of knowledge” in education.

Teachers College Record Volume 109 Number 3, 2007, p.603. http://www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 12826, Date Accessed: 3/14/2009

Wow, some abstract eh? Fear not. Abstract of abstract: "Don't just look too big, at national and international scale; don't just look too small, at the teacher level. Look instead at the educational institutions which occupy the space in between. Those are the things which need looking at."

This is exactly the kind of research I'm doing, and probably the reason why some people don't want me to do it. You see, the problem in some institutions is that they have no idea what kind of knowledge structures they're using. When the head is missing, there is no alternative to the complex snarl wrapped up in that unit. Well, actually, there is — but those in authority do not like being 'undermined' by things like tradition and thought.

When my long 'disqusition' comes to an end, it is my hope that we'll all know more about how an institution can either a) function at a high level without a proper IOK, or fake it so well that you can't tell the difference for all practical intents and purposes. Then again, there may be any number of other options. Amazing stuff!

Illegal Operations

Over the last 35 months or so, I've become a lot more acquainted with the local penal code than I'd ever thought I would be after I put my dreams of law school away so very long ago. That has relevance to my current research as I look at the motivations and actions of many of the key players. You see, following on from my previous post in which I wrote about the punishment-reward and the altruistic motivations of the human brain, it only remains for me to make the connection between those concepts and the concepts of traditional virtue.

The punishment-reward motivation is dominated by the virtue called justice or fairness; the altruistic motivation is dominated by the virtue called mercy or grace. Each virtue has two faces.

In the former, two manifestations dominate: justice, in which people want everyone to suffer equally as some benchmark, rule or code allows; and fairness, in which people want everyone to suffer proportionally with respect to some other standard or benchmark. These manifestations can result in injustice or unfairness simply because the scale is actually bipolar and extensible in either direction; negative justice (in which not everyone suffers appropriately) is seen as injustice.

The latter also has two manifestations: mercy, in which an appropriate punishment is withheld; and grace, in which an inappropriate reward is given. 'Appropriate' and 'inappropriate' here of course are seen in comparison with the codes or laws implicit in what we have referred to as justice or fairness. In other words, mercy is unjust and grace is unfair, as far as strict legalistic approaches are concerned.

In practice, humans tend to temper one approach with the other. The problem is that as far as humans are concerned, overuse of one approach tends to corrupt the accuracy of the other.

This extends into the realm of explanations which people give for various phenomena. For example, consider the case of a man who has had a narrow escape from death. A justice/fairness explanation would be, "I survived because it would not be just or fair if I died just yet." A mercy/grace explanation would be, "I survived not through any personal virtue and I should be grateful."

In both cases, the man can rightly say that he has in effect a 'second chance'. It would be clear to observers exactly what kind of second chance he thinks he has from the way he behaves. If it is business as usual, then he clearly feels that he has the 'mandate', because of natural justice, to continue in his usual behaviour. If it is a radical change in favour of more qualitative approaches, then he clearly has a bit more of an altruistic approach.

It is of course not as cut and dried as all that. People are a lot more complex, and most of us will not adhere strictly to a code of rules or laws; neither will most of us totally scorn such regulations. Which brings us to the question of what an illegal operation is, given such a human context.

In computer science or mathematics, an illegal operation is one which is either proscribed by definition, or which has no definition at all. In medicine, I suppose an illegal operation would be surgery in which the release papers have not been signed or other conditions have yet to be met. The term 'illegal' can actually mean 'unlawful' as well as 'for which there is no law', unless it is in law, where 'illegal' means 'proscribed by the legal code'. In the more complex human context of occupational interaction, there are comparatively fewer clear-cut cases.

It's interesting though to see that for altruistic institutions, case-by-case illegalities tend to be more common. If the theory is correct, this is because an altruistic institution has to function more on a mercy/grace paradigm than a justice/fairness one. The problem is when the altruistic institution is no longer altruistic, but still retains the counterlegal paradigm. At this point, it become a hotbed of deliberately illegal operations justified by all kinds of wild claims about the greater good.

These last 12 months have been an education in that regard. I've had all kinds of illegal threats and manipulations observed and catalogued, with apparently no end in sight, within my research area. They don't fit into my dissertation, but they might one day fit into some beautiful paper on institutional dynamics.

Annual Infarction (Part III): Ways Of Unknowing

A few readers pointed out that my last post on this subject didn't seem to give much advice to the 'young civil servant' who was supposed to be learning from this series of posts. On reflection, I've realised that this is true; this post will therefore attempt to give more such advice.

The previous post concentrated on how the organisational knowledge base can be either corrupted or lacking in terms of how it handles staff, strategy, or the sanctified principles (or 'flag', to use a naval metaphor) under which the organisation supposedly sails. I suppose the advice for an aspiring civil servant to be gleaned from all that should be: a) treat staff as individual and valuable, and if you ever reach the point when you cannot (because, for example, there are too many of them), you should get out of the place; b) work with a detailed strategy in mind, based on a clear vision of what should come to pass; and c) remember the basic principles under which your vocation operates, which make it a calling rather than a pastime, occupation, or profession.

I say 'should be' because the fact is that, for a young civil servant to thrive in many institutions, it is often more convenient to a) treat staff as units which contribute various things to your comfort and/or success; b) work tactically based on whatever your superiors seem to require (some call it a retrograde defensive position, or 'covering your rear'); and c) do whatever seems to work and have no sense of mission besides the missions you are sent on. I am not advocating any of these convenient approaches, but merely noting that this is what about 80% of civil servants (the percentage is often larger and varies depending on country, system, institution and leadership) seem to practice.

The remaining 20% (often, in practice, a much smaller percentage) actually drive reform and positive change, work towards a mission, and end up doing their own thing in the private sector. Ha, got you there. You probably think I'm being cynical. Well, I'm not. In a free-market and reasonably prosperous country, this is exactly what happens; in the majority of nations, this is not an option and so it doesn't happen.

The reason for all this is that in order to survive and thrive in the global era, two extremes may be practised. One is much easier; the other is much more fiddly and difficult. I am writing, of course, about approaches to knowledge.

The second approach is all about knowledge management. I delivered a workshop on this in June 2002; in the seven years since, I regret to say that the material has become more relevant and yet less widely accepted. I will save all that for my next post. Instead, for today, we'll look at the much easier way: avoiding the issue of knowledge management altogether.

Here are some possibilities which I've seen in action:

1. Handle data and spin its presentation, so that it doesn't amount to real information but has enough coherence to fake it.
2. Ignore the reality of human experience and stick to buzzwords as the main pillars of a constructed reality.
3. Neglect the careful use of language and stick to platitudes, non sequiturs and banalities.
4. Debase and denigrate the complexities of the abstract by demanding the simplicity of the concrete.
5. Micromanage at a level that requires too much information and fake it when you realise you can't handle it.
6. Macromanage at a level that allows you to play golf or take many overseas trips while letting someone else do your job.
7. Throw money at a consultant so that your staff don't have to think.
8. Spend money on statuary and other physical trimmings so that it looks as if you are doing something impressive.
9. Manage history so that you can obliterate inconvenient facts with a sweeping statement such as, "My predecessors spent years doing nothing, so let's begin with 19xx, the year that I first accepted this appointment."

The problem with these approaches is that anyone with half a functioning brain and the functions that come with such a brain can see what is happening, or at least intuit that something is not happening. Quite often, the results will keep showing up as strong positives right up to the day that everything collapses; this is the lesson of the 2008 financial crisis and many other such events.

So what is a young civil servant to do about these ways of unknowing? Well, as usual, here are two kinds of advice.

The harder course is to relentlessly but carefully weed out such practices as far as you can. You may not be powerful enough to take on your superiors, but you certainly have some scope: use it. Be authentic, be caring, maintain standards. That will lead to my next post, which I suppose should cover 'how not to be unknowing'.

The easier course is to become an expert at the practice of unknowing. It is easy. Take one of the practices, say 'debase and denigrate the complexities of the abstract by demanding the simplicity of the concrete'. Here's an example: you go up to your boss and say, "Errm, I think that we need to give poor people more money." He replies, "That's very caring of you, it is a visionary idea, but I tell you, it's all about details! How much can you give a person before he becomes dependent on the state? How can we tax people fairly? Where do we get all that money? Go and do the research and find out all the details, and then come back and talk to me! Maybe the poor are not so poor and the rich are not so rich! Give me facts, not ideas!"

Notice, the boss is very competent. Nowhere has he said he will do anything about it, and he seems to have told you that it's your job to implement an entire policy starting with research and information-gathering. Actually, it's not your job. It's his job to accept or reject your idea and help you work it out in conjunction with other people. He's called the Chief Executive Officer, not the Chief Executioner or the Chief Let's-Not-Execute-Anything-Unless-It's-My-Idea Officer.

So, my hypothetical young civil servant friend, just remember that you have choices. You can do many things. You can make life a lot better for others, remembering that 'administration' means 'provision of service', just as 'minister' is Latin for 'one who acts on authority from above'. The opposite of the Latin minister is magister ('master' or 'great one'); a minister or administrator is not the master, but the servant of all.

Annual Infarction (Part II): What Is Unknown

This post is going to grow much longer, I think.

I started the morning thinking about why institutions tend to hive off their best staff especially at critical points in their history. It comes down to two areas of lack of knowledge: 1) Not knowing how good their staff are, or not knowing just how good they are; and 2) not realising how critical the moment is, historically and strategically speaking.

Back in a while. Need to go and see the madness up close.

=====

Well, I think I was wrong. It comes down to THREE areas of lack of knowledge: 1) staff, 2) strategy, 3) sanctity. Heh, I look as if I did that just to have a convenient sibilance in the alliteration. But I think an elaboration will make it clearer.

Firstly, staff. Quite often an organisation chooses the wrong rubric or wrong reasons for deciding to eliminate staff. Very often, it comes down to an experienced administrator deciding on the basis of personal experience what should be done. This is a key mistake. Why, you ask, since the administrator is experienced?

As a wise man once told the whole local civil service, experience is the least of at least five factors that make a man fit for his job. The reason is that experience functions best when inductive logic is called for: if you see five black swans in a row, you will think the rule is that the next swan will also be black. It is the same reasoning that uses the weight of past events to predict future results, and it fails in some very common situations.

One of them is this: flip a fair coin, and if it comes up heads the first time, what is the probability that it will have one head and one tail in the first two flips? The answer is still 50%, since the first one was heads and the second one has a 50% chance either way. In fact, it doesn't matter if the you flip two fair coins at once, flip one and it comes up tails first time, whatever. The chance is still 50%.

When an experienced adminstrator decides to retrench (or provoke into resignation) some member of the staff, it is normally because a comparison is being drawn, using past experience, between the staff member and other people. But these other people cannot in any sense be part of a fair comparison unless they are also a fair sample. And my friends, this never ever happens. In fact, most of the time these exercises are conducted with minimal (or no) transparency, with spurious, dubious or otherwise contestable reasons being advanced.

A former boss of mine used to say, "Can't trust the whites because they are not reliable; can't trust Indians because they're Indian." If he sees himself here and is upset, well, there are literally dozens of witnesses who have heard this more than once. Obviously, this is an example of inappropriate use of past experience or (frankly) personal prejudice, carried over into the staff selection (or deselection) process.

Very often, a senior administration team will look at all the wrong factors because they are not doing it as a strategic planning or vision exercise. They are doing it as a) a cost-cutting exercise, b) a deadwood-ablation exercise, c) an enemy-removal exercise, or d) a discomfort-amelioration or comfort-increasing exercise. What they are not doing is putting the institution first; rather they are claiming that they and the institution are one, or that they have special claim to be identified with the needs of the institution. This is what happens when people think of themselves as masters and not as servants of a greater cause... which brings me to the second point.

Secondly, strategy. The obvious thing for any institution claiming to pursue some kind of strategy (whether blue ocean, coloured hat, rainbow, or any other kind of chromatic legerdemain) is to actually publish the benchmarks and targets for things which can be quantified, and post videos or portfolios or other more qualitative evidence for things which are not so easy to quantify. In other words, use quantitative measures for quantitative processes and qualitative examples for qualitative concepts.

Most institutions don't do this. Rather, they will measure work done and value added by whatever means suits them or helps individual senior officers entrench themselves in more secure positions. Examples of this are legion in the institutional annals of the world.

Think, for example, of how a good teacher is determined to be one. The very best systems actually compare a candidate's portfolio of achievement to that of an officer who has been assessed in detail, in every area of practice, and whose acts and achievements have been archived for comparison. In a good system, all stakeholders are asked about their reasoned opinions and conclusions concerning that teacher. The worst systems are those which use restrictive and inappropriate selection as part of the methodology; for example, those that ask if a teacher can get along with other colleagues while failing to ask the students if they have learnt well because of that teacher.

Consider the strategy that emerges if there is a lack of strategy, but lots of tactical behaviour designed to weed out staff that make us uncomfortable and promote staff that make us feel good. It will be a 'green ocean strategy' or 'red sea strategy', one in which the algae bloom all over the place and all the other organisms die for lack of nutrients. Eventually, the whole area suffers ecological limitation or death. This leads to my third point.

Thirdly, sanctity. In every profession, things are professed; in every occupation, one's time is occupied. But in a vocation, one is called to serve, and one's enthusiasm takes on the patina of sanctity. This sanctity need not be a religious one; the Hippocratic injunction to 'do no harm' has taken on the force of of holy writ in most medical circles. This is because every true and worthwhile calling has got underlying ethical principles.

Most people don't know what these principles are, or if they do know them, have managed to conflate them with other rubbish such that even their mothers wouldn't recognize them. An institution is only as strong as its principles when it comes to having the kind of quality that lasts for generations. The worst thing is that the adulterated principles are then applied to staff and strategy, and dire consequences creep up on you like a thief in the night.

Let's say you have a very good officer in your institution, which is a big law firm. He brings in cases, acts as a model ambassador to clients and their relatives, educates them completely and discreetly, wins for the team, serves the firm well as a member of the legal entity that is the firm. He also disagrees with you about 5% of the time, and reserves the right to say so and to reply to what you have to say. He associates with lawyers from the government and from other firms, and has good relationships with them. Should you fire him?

Ethically, there are no grounds for his removal or for provoking him into resignation or any of the other sanctions a senior partner can employ. Then again, some people might say that the profession of law does not amount to a vocation and is not known for that kind of ethics.

I don't know. But it seems to me that in the annual infarctions of our lives, one way to clear the blockages is to make sure that staff are treated as staff, strategy is treated as strategy, and sanctity is treated as sanctity. None of these should be substituted by a Punch & Judy show, a Monty Python Flying Circus, or a wild yak from Tibet.

Annual Infarction (Part I): What Is Known

In every human appraisal system, a complex net of checks and balances must be woven so that a fair appraisal is guaranteed. This is not as easy as it seems.

Here are a few questions that a young civil servant should ask before being appraised.

1. Do I get to know everything that is said about me?
2. Do I have the right to publish a reply to what is said about me?
3. Can I take legal action for defamation of character if my appraisal looks as if it defames my character?
4. What is the theoretical basis for this method of appraisal?
5. Does it work when converted into a ranking system?
6. Do the practitioners of this appraisal system understand a) the difference between qualitative and quantitative data, and b) the idea of reification leading to loss of accuracy?
7. If the data about me are presented to a neutral third party who uses this appraisal system, will the same grade be awarded?
8. If my reporting officer presents the complete appraisal to the countersigning officer, will amendments be made?
9. If I present an argument for adjustment of my appraisal, will it be answered point by point before a neutral arbiter and will it be taken into account if it cannot be rebutted?

The first three points speak about social validity, the next three speak about scientific validity, and the last three speak about the reliability of the system.

There are a lot more questions, but these will do for Part I of this interesting subject. In fact, this part is titled 'What Is Known' because the only thing about an appraisal system that is known is the documentation produced about it and produced by it. The exact thought processes that go through the mind of the appraiser or reporting officer are never recorded and impossible to access. The final outcome is never in doubt. This falls far short of the rigour which is obtained, for example, in mathematics or good science, where the working-out of the process leading to a conclusion can be examined step by step for error.

In fact, although many systems have tried to compensate for it, the only system that can be said to really work for social situations is one of massive peer review, or so-called 'open appraisal'. In such a system, everyone gets to debate the outcome, and their thinking is recorded for posterity. When the final appraisal is produced, the signatories are clearly identified along with their comments. In addition, contrary opinions which arose in the minority population are also recorded in full. This is the system used by the Supreme Court of the United States.

One might argue that this is too much a burden of time and effort. Yes, I agree.

Why do I agree? In my previous employment, I realised that such a system indeed takes up too much time and effort if the people administering the system have one or more of the following problems (not necessarily in order of importance):

1. Limited resources: that is, insufficient processing power, time, clerical assistance and/or administrative ability.
2. Mediocrity: that is, an insufficient interest in a just outcome, lack of intellectual rigour, lip-service to excellence while not actually being concerned about it.
3. Lack of transparency: that is, an incidental or a deliberate need to conceal a) a minority opinion which cannot be defended, b) interests which ought to be irrelevant to the case but are influencing the outcomes, c) personal ideology or other traits which cannot be publicly enunciated, d) a ranking outcome which looks invalid despite the validity of the appraisal, and/or e) irregular manipulation of reward systems (such as bonuses and awards).

These are not the only problems, but they are the more common ones. I have seen with my own eyes the maladministration of appraisal systems to take into account any or all of these factors.

So what advice, at this stage, do I have for a young civil servant? Well, to be honest, if you want to succeed you will need to work like a dog, remain civil at all times, show unswerving loyalty, never speak your mind no matter how much people claim they value your opinion or intellectual approach, and remember that you are a servant first and foremost. Even when they tell you that you are a leader, remember that you are also a follower of some other leader. Remember that you can be head of the civil service, but unless you have strong personal ties with many other nodes of power, you will merely be chief servant.

As such, your duty (even though it does not make me happy to have to say it) is to be perfectly obedient and close-mouthed. Before you come up with an opinion, make sure at least one superior will also have this opinion in mind. Before you write anything, remember that exceptional brilliance is a threat to your superiors and will catch their eye. Above all, never try to take credit for your own work if credit is due. That will come much later; for now, it is all to your superiors' credit that they have cleverly employed you.

I've heard many times at very high levels the exact opposite of all this. Very senior and powerful people have said that this kind of civil service behaviour is reprehensible and slows progress. They are right. But unfortunately, the majority of civil servants will need to behave this way in order to survive and prosper in their jobs.

For me, I have always tried to be my own man. I am not beholden to special interests or the need for whatever dangly bits have been offered to me as incentives. I don't travel gratuitously overseas at government expense or place personal considerations foremost when dealing with colleagues. I have never bothered with attempting to manipulate my appraisal, and for whatever appraisals of my subordinates have been manipulated against my intention, I have kept copious notes in a sealed archive. Since those notes constitute my own opinions and contain no official documentation, I think they are happy to remain sealed up.

If you, a young civil servant, have read all this carefully, then you can probably figure out that 'what is known' is a rather hazy and ill-defined construct. You may well be someone to whom all these ideas of mine do not apply. You may be right as well. The history of mankind shows that the wisest of thoughts may have the most unintended of outcomes, and that no one is really wise. One of the ancients had this opinion. It makes a good conclusion, and I'm sure he intended it that way.

Annual Infarction (Preliminary Statement)

Every year, around this time, there is some sort of necrosis as the blood supply to the institutional brain or muscle is cut off. There are actually two annual infarctions, which more or less correspond to the two equinoxes.

In March, institutions prepare for the great accounting which they must make to the Grey Lords. In September, institutions prepare to defraud appraise their staff and give meaningless what they think is appropriate feedback to various underlings.

After almost three decades of conscious and deliberate examination of educational institutions, from within and without, as a participant and as a spectator (and sometimes even as a participant observer), I suppose that in many ways I am qualified to comment on the process.

In the next few days, I think I shall publish a guide for young teachers and students intending to become teachers. I think it will be... ahem... educational for everyone; an education for living, if you like.

Elective Agriculture

Sometimes you keep planting the same stuff in the same place. It wears out the soil by consuming the same nutrients until the rate of replenishment falls below the rate of extraction. Then the crops start coming out 'weeny, weedy and weaky', as that great Roman once said.

This is the same kind of phenomenon as can be observed when an institution begins to feed on itself. If the same structures and powers have been in place too long, the amount of profitable divergence begins to drop. Like the crops, the gene pool is too small for adaptation; the same resource burdens begin to consume ever-decreasing resources, and the crop starts coming out tainted with mediocrity.

It then becomes time to practice elective agriculture. This is like elective surgery but applied to plants. You need to prune plants that can survive it; remove or rotate crops that are leaching out the last resources, so that the soil can recover; and if you are desperate, cut down and burn some plants to return the resources to the soil.

I've always believed that self-selecting cabals (such as the College of Cardinals, many political parties with a cadre system, some administrative teams in some corporate entities) can be very focussed and powerful. However, if the talent pool begins to thin out, this essentially propagative strategy can become self-defeating. That's because limiting your choice to a small pool in a social context normally results in a fall in memetic diversity. The same people say the same things, and 'thinking outside the box' becomes 'thinking more fantastically within the same box under the illusion that it is becoming larger'.

The result is that you begin with powerful leaders who are replaced by shadows of themselves who are then replaced by shadows of shadows. If the powerful leaders outlive (or purge, or otherwise eliminate) their shadows, they will be replaced by the shadows of shadows. A simple and crude mathematical analogy is to consider a 'shadow' as the 40% version of its original. Then the 'shadow of a shadow' is a 16% version of the original. It will take about six of these to replace the original, and that will still only be 96%, assuming that these shadows are additive and do not overlap.

This is why elective agriculture must be practiced. Crop rotation and the selection of new strains must be de rigeur for any organisation seeking to retain its growth potential. At the same time, that selection process is difficult. You can't be choosing new strains for the sake of having something new; you might plant weeds instead. Or the shadows of the shadows of crops.

From crops to outcrops – that is what will happen when wrong-headed replacement policies (either poor or no replacement) are followed. It's always a good thing for the farmers to have a look now and then at their livelihood, before it's all gone.

Family Feedback

Yesterday I was standing around chatting with two acquaintances at the place I usually hang out. One of these people is a ranking officer in the Monastery, while the other was a High Lord of the Family. I told them that I was engaged in research and was exploring both the role of the Monastery and the Family Crown in national education. Their responses were interestingly similar.

The monk said, "Hey, of course I will help out. Here's my arcane sigil; just send word to me and I will help you. Somebody ought to do this sort of thing, and if not you, who?"

The lord said, "Hey, it's about time. Any right-thinking persons should want feedback on their performance, no matter how good the agricultural output looks. How can I help?"

The consensus, after half an hour, was that institutions of public character should be under public scrutiny, or have that status revoked. Transparency and good corporate governance are the order of the day. Back-room deals and lousy human resource management should be things of the past. And the light of the morning should banish the obfuscation of the dark.

The instrumentalities of the night are powerful, says Glen Cook. But we have the wherewithal to baulk them and perhaps diminish or scatter them. And if they engage in open warfare, then the stakes are high indeed.

My two companions concur; one man said, "Silver and faith can turn the tide."

Archival Instincts

I am very glad for the archival instincts that genetic and environmental factors seem to have planted in me. This was the thought that crossed my mind as I read through the text at this site. I have always felt some affinity for the people of Russia – not the apparently monolithic colossus of the Soviet state, but the warm and troubled people of a wide and richly-endowed country.

But why that sudden urge to celebrate the archival instinct? It was the simple joy very much like that of a man who, while being made into a non-person by the State, suddenly realises he has the State by the goolies and a vise in his hand. For 20 years after the Glorious Revolution, a mighty tome was written, and in that tome (and in the hundreds of other documents in the archives), the truth was hidden.

The State might have said that the Commissar was a bad one and that during his time in office, grain production dropped. But the official statistics of the State show that they were never higher than during his reign! The State might have said that he had said subversive things. But these things were attested by later historians to be true. The State might have done many things to disguise his star, but the facts were too obvious, too many, too bright. Perhaps they should never have made him the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs or for War; his efforts there cemented his legend. Even in his most difficult year, he was a hard worker and a voice of neutrality.

In the end, they exiled him, held show trials, and sent an assassin with an ice-pick for him. The assassin succeeded where the State had failed: the Commissar was transformed from a minor legend to an iconic myth. How had it all come to pass? It came to pass because the Commissar had in his head an archivist's mind. He was prolific in his exile and spoke too much truth against too much power. Fortunately for posterity, much of what he said has been preserved.

The same is true of good men or bad. It is a truth of the Bible as well. The archives of the written word hold truth; and the truth will (someday, and perhaps posthumously) set you free.

Whois 000

I don't know who the numerate respondent was, who first identified our very own dear lunate as the subject of Whois 010, but it was a good guess. The more reasoned approaches were pretty clever too. Orff's infamous (or at least, well-known) beginning and ending song in the Carmina Burana cycle is of course O Fortuna. The first lines of that song can be translated, "O Fortune, like the moon – always in a state of change, increasing and decreasing..."

Some of the description is, of course, based on empirical observation of the subject. But the association with the usual flavour of Colgate toothpaste was deliberate (I've seen 'cool mint', 'spearmint' and 'peppermint' – note that they are all different). The last part was pretty (un)obvious, but you should think about the phrase 'LAN game', reverse the elements, and look at this for the smoking gun. Heh.

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I am going to hold off on the Whois challenges for now. I have literally got 100s of them churning away, but I have to suppress such ideas because I have been writing testimonials, and if those are written in cryptic allusions, I don't think anyone will thank me. However, I have to say something in follow-up to a recent comment by the subject of Whois 007.

You are right about the scarifying ability of the network formed by alumni of the College of Wyverns. The friends you make may turn out to be related in the oddest ways to other people who might be significant. And the relatives too. Here is just one of many examples. Please note that is not a Whois challenge (although you might want to treat it that way).

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Person 'A' has two siblings.

His male sibling ended up marrying someone whose rather immediate relative was the brother of the aged Merlion himself. 'A' thus ended up marrying into the bedrock of the Island. His female sibling ended up marrying someone whose equivalent relative was Champion of the Realm. This Champion (now retired) was classmate to my maternal ancestor and cousin to my paternal ancestor. The Champion's former boss was the Very Intelligent Man, whose unfortunate biography of late has revealed all these connections. Person 'A' got married too. His wife teaches at the College of Wyverns. Ho ho. Everyone mentioned here is connected somehow.

However, 'A' has relatives from the Gryphon Seat, and this happens to many of us, families divided by allegiance to different mythical monsters. The Merlion and his brothers are that way. So too, my ancestors and relatives (though, thankfully not, my parents). Thus does the network spread and the myriad fruiting bodies deposit their miniature spores all over the world. It is very sporean.