The mind of a fox

Been reading "The mind of a fox: Scenario planning in action" by Chantell Ilbury and Clem Sunter. Not much that's original but it is very readable. There seems to be something of a trend in current popular business and self-help publications, to take a catchy idea (the mind of a fox), mix it with a bit of traditional wisdom and current zeitgeist, and dice it with an appealing storytelling manner.

The main idea is that the mind of a fox is a better model for success (in business and otherwise) than the mind of a hedgehog. Suspending disbelief we are invited to consider why as we make the leap from the animal to the human kingdom. The fox strikes out into the unknown while the hedgehog sticks to the known. The fox is willing to try alternatives, get to know the rules of the game in order to get around better, and generally to optimise the use of its options. The hedgehog on the other hand knows only the traditional way, bends or breaks the rules to its own advantage with little consideration for the consequences to other players (and, so the morality tale goes, to itself at the end of the day), and ultimately can conceive of only one option and one way of doing things. The comparison between hedgehogs and foxes, incidentally, comes from a well-known essay by Isaiah Berlin, cited by the writers.

A description of the fox taken from Isaiah Berlin's essay runs as follows: "[Foxes] pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory. Their thought is often scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the vast variety of experiences." Berlin's essay promises to be a more inspiring read than the present one, which occasionally has a tendency to act like its definition of a hedgehog towards a variety of philosophical thinkers that it references at will, categorising them as hedgehogs or foxes as the case may be, as if invoking their names outside of a plausible context lends a little more weight to the argument. Really! Clem Sunter, I see, studied politics, philosophy, and economics at Oxford University. He should know better, the wily old fox ...

But to get on with it. Scenario planning tries to conceive of the main plausible scenarios that a business (or a project) can face when looking forward. Just so we're on the same page: it's all about self interest and a future orientation. Oh, and the fox is an empiricist rather than a rationalist.

What I find personally useful is the main matrix - full of stolen ideas I might add, such as those in Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. We basically have 4 qudrants in a so-called Foxy Matrix along two axes, that of degrees of control and of certainty:
1. Rules of the game (Certain but Without control);
2. (a) Key uncertainties (b) Scenarios (Uncertain and Without control);
3. Options (Uncertain but with Control)
4. Decisions (Certain and with Control)


Foxy Matrix

1. The Rules of the Game, refer to the things that are fixed and we cannot change, but can get to know. In fact it is our job to ge to know them, and getting to know them is what the fox has to do - dancing on several incongruent levels to gather his empirical data of what is out there. Or so I'm guessing, 'cause no real guidelines are given outside of a few sports anecdotes and analogies. Presumably all business people love golf and find it easy to relate Tiger Woods' approach to golf. In the other example given, that of Apollo 13, the rules of the game are those of the universe: gravity, space, and the kinds of problems that physicists grapple with. Furthermore, as the problem developed on Apollo 13, the rules became the amount of oxygen left, the power available for use, and some other things. Boundaries and forces in the environment in which the eventual scenario will play itself out. As the authors say: "Far from being prescriptive, the rules of the game should be viewed as descriptive, as they shape the parameters within which we can operate." (p. 52)

2. (a) Key uncertainties relate to the things you don't know for sure but that are absolutely necessary to know and have the highest potential impact. To put it differently, these are things you have identified as essential but don't know how they will progress in future. Right brain creative thinking is worth more here than analytical thinking, because you literally need to think the less obvious, the implausible and the impossible.
(b) Scenarios are possible futures. The authors advise to sticking to two or three main scenarios or your mind will blow up. They are really just conceptual and descriptive outlines of those futures, each revolving around an essential theme. Focusing on the main goal (eg. in the Apollo 13 example it would be getting back to earth) is not the point - all the main scenarios have to be played out in advance. Essentially you are discovering the options open to you in a given situation, so scenarios are bridges between key uncertainties and your options.

3. Options are not meant to include the infinite variety of opportunities we are faced with every day. Instead they are limited to opportunities that can be implemented and follow from the scenarios outlined. Best is to create a list of all the possible options and gradually eliminate only those that are truly unfeasible.

4. Finally decisions need to be made - which scenario will be implemented? Following the decision there is execution. But that is not all - during execution there is constant revision. Referring to the Apollo 13 mission the authors remind us that "the success of the adjusted mission to bring the astronauts safely back to earth was the result of many decisions shaped by incremental actions and the results they produced" (p. 110). Constant adaptation through feedback. Foxes are encouraged to be in constant dialogue with the environment and with other people's ideas. The end.

Whereas I am not pleased with the rough handling of the ideas put forward in the book - there are too many casual examples, and too few real ideas - the ideas are at least useful and presented in a very readable format.

Oscars 2005

The Oscars 2005 ceremony is now just over 15 hours away. After I saw Million Dollar Baby a bit earlier I felt like compiling a little list of predictions. M$B, by the way, is just so terribly sad. Turtles Can Fly is a sad movie, but because you know it wraps a dire reality. M$B is sad because it is so moving - a movie feat: great acting, great directing, my favourite of all the nominated movies (not just the Best Picture nominees, but all categories' movies) that I've seen for 2005 (outside of nominations 2046 is my favourite). The Aviator is great but has no soul. Sideways is brilliant in its simplicity. But M$B leaves you truly affected.

After roaming the web in search of informed opinions I made 2.5 changes, and added the "personal" choice in select cases (Natalie Portman is without a doubt my personal choice for supporting actress although I can see why Cate Blanchett should win it; nevertheless the single most compelling scene for supporting actress goes to Virginia Madsen in the scene in Sideways where she and Paul Giamatti talk about wine, and so it'd be really refreshing if she got it). To be interesting I tried to predict more than just the main acting and picture categories - but I didn't venture where I truly know nothing.

Just so I can say "See, I knew it!":

Actor in a leading role: Jamie Foxx (Ray)
Actor in a supporting role: Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby) (personal: Alan Alda)
Actress in a leading role: Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake) (personal: Hillary Swank)
Actress in a supporting role: Cate Blanchett (The Aviator) (personal: Natalie Portman)
Animated Feature film: The Incredibles
Art Direction: The Aviator
Cinematography: House of Flying Daggers
Costume Design: The Aviator
Directing: Scorcese for The Aviator (personal: Eastwood for Million Dollar Baby)
Foreign Film: Downfall
Best picture: Sideways (personal: Million Dollar Baby)
Adapted Screenplay: Sideways
Original Screenplay: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Thoughts on "Millennium People" by J.G. Ballard

This is my first J.G. Ballard novel, although I saw David Cronenberg's Crash when it played in cinemas. It did not take me long to realise the difference between Ballard's more condensed prose and the almost lyrical meanderings of C.R. Zafon in The Shadow of the Wind. Zafon is a true storyteller with a romantic imagination, whereas Ballard is a writer whose embellishments are more restrained and deliberate and operate in the realm of ideas and their relation to bourgeois or middle class cultural values and symbols, and whose lucid prose is strikingly British in its reserved tone. "I smell a Londoner".

But that is not saying much, least of all about the clever way in which Ballard gradually draws the reader into the slightly insane world of some of the main characters. The achievement is remarkable, and it becomes increasingly apparent when the events start to crystallise in the latter part of the novel. It is all the more effective because the world that he explores - the middle-class life spaces of Londoners in Chelsea Marina, and the cultural havens of the middle classes in general - includes precisely the familiar London places that I, too, value: the Tate Modern, the Royal Festival Hall, National Film Theatre, and Hayward Gallery, museums.

By making them physical targets of destructive and violent acts he succeeds in creating a truly unsettling atmosphere which does not play on mood but rather on the reality that the middle classes in general rely on for their livelihood and meaning in life. This is an achievement, an eye-opener.

The central meaning of the novel is not easily reducible to a particular transcription or idea. It is as much about David Markham's, the narrator, gradual exploration and realisation of the intentions and wayward ideas of the people into whose world he has stepped, as it is about the impotence of the middle classes and their ability to become aware of it, i.e. to still find some real meaning in their lives and pursuits despite their apparent meaninglessness and collective impotence. The latter idea - because despite the failed revolution in Chelsea Marina most of the residents eventually return and resume their middle class lives, apparently quite happily - was most meaningful to me as it gels with my own sense that the comfort zones of white collar professionals must be lived in despite their glaring inadequacies. But not without a knowledge of the inadequacies, at the very least.

I plan to do a personal update on this idea at a later stage, which in outline attempts to validate the economic necessity of professional income standards for middle class individuals and cohesive human groups (including families), but to indicate that the end goal is not, or should not, be the comfort zones and expensive life styles usually associated with the aspirations of affluent middle class professionals. More of that another time.

There are even cases in Millennium People that hint at what I have in mind - like these thoughts of Dr. Richard Gould's:

'... I was working with these desperate children. I was their delegate and I wanted an answer. If you're faced with a two-year-old dying from brain cancer, what do you say? It's not enough to talk about the grand design of nature. Either the world is at fault or we're looking for meaning in the wrong places.' (p. 255) 

Unless Nature or the Universe is sentient and aware of us humans as significant role players, it is pretty meaningless to speak of human meaning as anything other than human meaning: micro meaning, meaning amongst ourselves, anthropomorphic meaning, a human construct.

But what of the apparently meaningless universe - or our possible relation to it - even if it does not include us or consider us? That is the harsh place that David Markham and Richard Gould try to explore in their conversation about a void that only a psychopath can face unflinchingly:

'But I remember one or two things you said - the idea of God as a huge imaginary void, the largest nothingness the human mind can invent. Not a vast something out there, but a vast absence. You said only a psychopath can cope with the notion of zero to a million decimal places. The rest of us flinch from the void and have to fill it with any ballast we can find - tricks of space-time, wise old men with beards, moral universes ...' (p. 136) 

This meaninglessness cannot be filled except with our own projections. But what if we can conceive of the designs of this nothingness? That is a thought for another day (and I feel a little shudder as I say it).

From the similarities between Crash and Millennium People I deduce that Ballard's other novels also explore middle class lives and comfort zones when they come into contact with ruthless and apparently meaningless violence through strange and slightly messianic characters that lure the middle class characters into their warped worlds.