Why Not?

What we can learn from monkeys (part 1)

There are arguably many things we can learn from monkeys and in many senses. I'm not going to go anywhere near things like dietary content and biochemical realities; I'm more interested in what we can learn in terms of behaviour, individual and group and the degree to which they are interdependent, and what monkeys can teach us about real world maths. So welcome to part one: monkeys, policies and traditions...

A friend of mine from university dropped by yesterday and we got to talking about common practices vs best practices and how faced with too many choices and a degree of uncertainty (i.e. choosing from competing and rapidly developing technologies) people tend to stick as close as possible to the way it is now or seek justification for choices based on the what most other people have chosen up to now. This gave me the chance to air my new favourite saying:

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it the superficial appearance of being right" Thomas Paine.

He countered by reminding me about the parallel between monkeys and many company policies and practices; programmed as opposed to reasoned behaviour. The parable of the cage full of monkeys and the bananas...

Take a large cage full of monkeys. Lower into the cage a large and attractive bunch of bananas. The instant any monkey touches a banana let loose thunder and lightening, fire hoses of ice cold water over all the monkeys in the cage, etc.. Pretty soon, the monkeys in the cage will stop trying to reach the bunch of bananas and content themselves with other sources of nutrition provided. Now substitute a new monkey into the cage. If this monkey tries to reach for the bunch of bananas the other monkeys, not wanting all the bangs, flashes and cold water, will stop them by force until the new monkey learns not to try and get the bananas. Then substitute another new monkey into the cage and the same thing will happen, with even the predecessor new monkey helping to prevent banana grabbing. Then another. And another.

Eventually you will have substituted all of the monkeys in the cage. None of them will try to get the bananas and any new monkeys will be violently prevented from getting the bananas. And none of them will know why...

Posted at 09:14AM Sep 22, 2008 by Chris Puttick in Management  | 

Research and develop, play and learn

We play to learn; this never more so than when dealing with a fast changing and fast growing set of opportunities to play (learn) such as information technology. Without play IT systems only progress at great expense, if at all. If we can immediately and clearly see a particular or specific use for a product or customisation, that's great, but often it's just a product that may or may not have any use, but until we play with it and see what we can make it do, we just can't be sure.

Going open source greatly facilitates play and makes a final solution considerably more sustainable and scaleable than going proprietary, hence my general interest in solutions from the open source arena. I'm certain that proprietary solutions with any degree of flexibility are at least as complex to customise to a given need, even if "out of the box" they are occasionally easier to get going.

Play is at its most productive slightly undirected, so the criteria for evaluating new technologies is simple. For any prospective new technology, ask this: do you think we might find a use for it? If yes, then play away, collaborating when necessary, with people in or out of the organisation. If no, stop! There's always something else to play with.

This is generally true with IT play. When you conclude a particular solution is worthless, abandon it and move on; when you find something that's cool, spread it around, and in either case talk to people about it (especially me!), as communication is another key learning method. On occasion I like to throw something at somebody; but whoever it is should feel free to throw it right back if they already have plenty to do. When someone has nothing to play with, they can ask me for suggestions, there's plenty out there. Or ask others if there's anything you can help "play" with; collaboration and participation are other excellent ways to learn. On really rare occasions I might just tell someone to put a particular toy down; on the other hand I am more likely to provide reinforcements so they can focus full-time on something particularly exciting.

If support is needed when working on something, people should speak up (communicate!). If it's a problem related to server side technologies, office productivity tools or just plain weird, you never know, I might be of actual use , or know someone who can help. This side of IT work is ongoing and in my experience (eventually...) highly productive. Think of playing and learning as just another way to describe R&D, where the final output is about giving OA a competitive edge, whether by reducing our costs, improving the effectiveness of data collection or making us appear better and shinier than the competition.

Research and develop, play and learn, that's what IT has to be about...

Posted at 09:00AM Jul 12, 2007 by Chris Puttick in Management  |