Work – Page 25 – Achilles & Aristotle

Caterpillar

The throbbing caterpillar in my vein
Concertinas toward my brain
Which tells me that I must be calm
Not much time for repose
Life all over me like a rash
Oh for some time to ponder,
To dream or meander, as I dash
But instead I keep on marching
Doing, fixing things
But snatched words with good comrades
Some solace brings.

When I’m busy and under pressure at work, the ‘caterpillar’ – which is a prominent artery on my forehead – sometimes comes out. It’s a bit of a standing joke, as I suggest it’s marching like a thrombosis towards my brain, shortly to bring blessed relief in an aneurism. But it’s also a warning sign. When the ‘caterpillar’ comes out I’m working myself too hard. Time for a brief pause. Friends are an important part of keeping the caterpillar at bay. Three of them, in three good humoured, thought-provoking and rich conversations, this week, helped keep me sane. I salute you Comrades.

Odysseus, Poetry, Psychology, Work

Misty Mountains

Monday – Morning – Early – Start –
Car – Troubled – Children – Missed –
Four – Big – Days – At – Work –
Many – Meetings – People – Buzzing –
All – Day – Long – And – Beyond –
Thursday – Evening – Nearly – Done –
Literally – And – Figuratively –
Peaks – Scaled – Views – Good

A week of hard work, with people from many places wrestling with the challenges of achieving an ambitious future – in an uncertain world. Two thoughts helped me along.

First, self-deception. I read in the New Scientist the other week that humans are masters of self-deception. It’s an important survival adaptation. The fact we can kid ourselves, helps us kid others and cope with life.

It’s obvious that when you’re looking several years ahead, there are lots of imponderables. So, as I said to several people this week, the art of conceiving and believing a vision of the future is to render it like Disney’s ‘enchanted castle’ – glowing, magical and distant.

The huge mistake is to seek to describe it in too much detail. Do that and Disney’s Castle dissolves in detailed questions about how the sewers will work. Drawing on our natural gift for self-deception – as a force for optimism, enthusiasm and positive change – requires that the future keep some of its mystery.

My second thought comes from ‘cross cultural’ training which I did when I was first sent East in the early 1990s. Eastern cultures, in general, value cohesion and alignment more than Western, where individualism and drive are more prized. The heroic leader and tough minded strategy can feel good in our hemisphere. But as President Bartlett said in the ‘West Wing’: “Leadership when no-one follows is just taking a walk”.

Back to that training. If you think of people as ‘bar magnets’, the Eastern view is that time spent aligning is vital to getting the whole moving sustainably. If all your magnets are pointing in different directions, that’s a lot of dissipated energy.

I’ve found, in recent years, sharing more context invariably nudges ‘magnets’ into better alignment. People are rarely persuaded by specific arguments, but always become more aligned by more shared context.

Disney castles and bar magnets are two good reasons to spend time sharing stories and context. But not too much time. Spend too much time and the vision gets unpicked in its details. And subsequent attempts at persuasion leave the magnets askew again.

Magnets, magic and misty mountains are an important part of the art of seizing today and coping with tomorrow, I reckon. That, and taking time – but not too much – to come together.

Life, Odysseus, Poetry, Work

Not on my bike

Memory lane
Commuter train
This one is composed of four coaches
Set of jokers

Odysseus’ suffered all the trials and tribulations of life at the hands of the gods. And he came through a better man. So I’ve opened a new poetics category in his honour. A packed commuter train is a small inconvenience compared to his quest for Ithaca, but if he were around today that’d be his lot too. The small indignities are the worst. Still the sun is shining.

P.S: The train should’ve been eight coaches. When I used to catch them, Monday morning was always dogged by me being late, trains being randomly cancelled and then the critical one arriving with four carriages instead of eight causing commuter carnage. As it was, so it still is.

Achilles, Poetry, Work

Awayday

Team awayday
Cautious start
Scrape of chairs
Opening gambits
Familiar tunes
And some new ones
New dance partners
Take careful steps
The odd squashed toe
All trying gamely
Until we lose one another
Lengthy meander
Round the houses
Some infinite loops
Time gets short
Tempers shorter
Cavalry charge
Then it all slows down
And the record stops
Moment of silence
Ice breaks
Put back together
Fire each other up
Clear the fog
Next steps
Sense of closure
Spot of disclosure
We all feel closer
Wrap it up
And game over
Decent result

Aristotle, Ethics, Life, Philosophy, Psychology, Work

Crystallisation

At the core of Aristotle’s account of ethics and virtue is ‘Prohairesis’ – the central moral character.

I increasingly think of it like a copper sulphate crystal growing on a piece of thread. When you do the classic school experiment, knotted threads provide the core around which a copper sulphate crystal can form, from a saturated solution. But you often get several smaller crystals and imperfections in the main one.

In my thesis, the central moral character forms – like a copper sulphate crystal – when choice and actions start to cohere around a central narrative of who we are and what we stand for. The sub-crystals are alternate versions of ourselves and the imperfections are just that – out of character behaviours, foibles and failings.

Last week I gave a talk where I owned up to once having ‘presentational positions’ on most aspects of work. They were largely free floating from any common ethical foundation. I had ethics ‘in the mix’, but no core crystal.

Expedience, presentational benefit and plausible deniability were as likely to inform my public utterances as beliefs, values or virtue. Not these days. I have Prohairesis – a central moral character which, on my better days, informs and guides my choices.

But to meet Aquinas’s test of virtue I have one major challenge left – slowing down. Talking to a friend at the weekend it transpires that one of the strengths of ‘clever’ people is they are quick. This means they can quickly weigh options and decide on the best action. But the challenge to ‘capable’ people as they progress in life, and into more complicated situations, is to use this processing capability to judge more wisely – not more quickly.

Aquinas has it that a man can make ‘good’ or ‘bad’ moral choices without any guiding core moral character, but they cannot be truly ‘virtuous’ without ‘Prudentia’ – practical wisdom – as the unifying prism. As Herbert McCabe says deliberation should be long and considered, action sharp and decisive. Sometimes I am too quick to decide.

I have Prohairesis forming in a nice crystal on the thread of my life. I’m not bad on Prudentia these days either. But like copper sulphate crystals these things take time to grow, so I should take my time too.