"I will not let school interfere in my education" (Mark Twain); or "yes, I trust I can think for...

8/9/2019 "I will not let school interfere in my education" (Mark Twain); or "yes, I trust I can think for myself!"

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³I will not let school interfere

in my education´(Mark Twain)

© Dr. Adrian S. Petrescu

Imagination Club Brussels Workshop

27 January 2010

+ Critical (self-) introspection on what we know, how we know it, andwhat barriers our prior knowledge may pose on what we do.

+ Self-driven action to avoid cognitive impairment in day-to-day life.

+ Need for systemic changes in organizing education & management?Thanks go to Edgar Garcia, alum of Univ. of Texas at Brownsville (www.utb.edu) and of the Bush School at Texas A&M

Univ. (www.tamu.edu) for reminding me the great Mark Twain quote, to Bill Dunn, Alberta M. Sbragia, Paul Y. Hammond

and Chris Ley of Univ. of Pittsburgh (www.pitt.edu), to my (grand-)parents, and to many others, for opening my eyes.



A few things we learned in school There is an East/West Germany; Berlin Wall will never fall.

(disproved by 2+4 agreements of 1990)

South-Western neighbor of Romania is SFR Yugoslavia.(disproved: Yugoslav, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia crises)

North-Eastern neighbor of Romania is the Soviet Union(disproved by August 1991 Coup d¶Etat in Moscow etc.)«

Only humans use tools. Conscious tools use is human.(disproved by Jane Goodall study of chimpanzees)«

Let us see Karl Fisch (school administrator in CO, USA)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJVMj1tQrcQ

«

Let¶s find own cases of things learned and later disproved!

What if we¶d listened?

³Cognitive Impairment´

²original from Lindblom and Cohen (³Usable Knowledge´, 1979)



What If . . .

We¶d listened?



Something we may learn in school is:compliance

Compliance:

Synonyms:

acquiescence, amenability, assent, complaisance,concession, concurrence, conformity, consent,deference, docility, obedience, observance,passivity, resignation, submission,submissiveness, tractability, yielding

Antonyms:

defiance, denial, disagreement, disobedience,dissension, dissent, fight, nonconformity, refusal,veto



Brief Story with Monkeys and Bananas

³We¶ve always done it that way!´

Corporate culture



A Story with a Manager and his Elevators

A hotel manager had to deal with thehundreds of complaints from hotelguests about the long lines in front of theever crowded and too slow elevators.

In trying to solve the problem, he asked

the opinion of his engineering manager,and of his architect. Along with his financial manager, each

provided him with a detailed systematicanalysis, and their respective resultingproposed solutions.

Can we help the manager? Let¶s do it!

What is a Type III Error?

³Great Answer. Wrong Problem.´ (Tim Hurson)

²original from Mosteller (1948), Mitroff et. al. (1974), Raiffa (1968) etc.



A Story with top Decision-Makers, HighStakes, and the Original Think Tank

RAND Corporation (US AF Think Tank) wasasked in the 1950s to place optimally US militaryairport in West Berlin to meet some criteria,including fast response in case of early warningthat SU military planes are in the air.

After solving problem, RAND tried to convinceUS government of solution¶s feasibility.

Can we help RAND? Let¶s do it!

³We cannot do that!´ was US government¶sresponse (~170 meetings)

How can we consciously avoid Type III Errors?

³I will not let school interfere in my education´ (Mark Twain)

see McCue, B. ³U-Boats in the Bay of Biscay´ (1990), then write your own answers!



A Helping Story with a Walking Bear,and middle school geometry

A bear walks ten miles South, ten miles East andten miles North, and gets where he left from.

Question: what color is the bear? How on Earth would I know the bear¶s color?

He can be of any color. The color his mom made him.

We do not have enough information to solve this puzzle. We can go and watch him walk and we¶ll see his color.

... or many other similar answers to these reactions «

BUT:

Do we think "we can tell"? Not that often.

Do we persevere to figure it all out? Not really. Have you figured it out? How? Why can we tell?

What are right attitudes?

³Is this a case of µan apple falls from the tree and nobody is watching¶?´

try Malcolm Gladwell, ³Outliers´ (2008)



³unknown´ in Apple story--Great [Wo]Men of Science: Rise &³Fall´ of fame

At Royal Scientific Society in London, where Sir IsaacNewton ³started´ and cemented solidly in late 1600s-early1700s his road to timeless unmatched fame, the oncePresident of the Society was ³put on trial´ some twocenturies later in 1919.

Following a presentation by Sir Arthur Eddington onfindings based on the two geographic expeditions

observing the Solar eclipse of 1919, Royal ScientificSociety ³dethrones´ Newton¶s classic universal theory of gravitation and confirms instead Albert Einstein¶s theory of relativity (Waller 2002, 48-63).

In essence, Einstein explained/predicted a higher curvature of space around the Sun than Newton did.

Just the same as in the walking bear story«seeing the

curvature of space allows finding out color of bear.

What are our embedded unseen limitations?

³Finding/tracing implicit limitations on our thinking opens new avenues for

looking at our questions.´

try Paul Diesing, ³How Does Social Science Work?´ (1991)



Newton, not a modest person (Cropper 2001, 18-40),said ³I have stood on the shoulders of giants´

(Galileo, Copernicus, Halley, Kepler etc.)

Newton explained arriving at theory of universalgravitation with ³by thinking of it continuously´.

Consequently, Thomas S. Kuhn writes in 1959 in hisclassic Structure of Scientific Revolutions a verythorough ³generalization´ of the lessons learned fromthe stories of Newton¶s and Einstein¶s work.

Just as it happened previously with the fields of inquiry³established´ by Sir Isaac Newton and (Time Magazine

Man of the XX Century) Albert Einstein, the field of philosophy of science was never the same since Kuhn.

What lessons come from a past rich in process inspiration?

³What factors affect knowledge processes? How do these influence us?´

Thomas S. Kuhn, ³Structure of Scientific Revolutions´ (1959): understand what is an expert?

³unknown´ in Apple story--Great [Wo]Men of Science: Rise &³Fall´ of fame 2



A Story with a Hundred Dollars Bill and ³agesold´ value assessment

Have you read ³The 7 (8) Habits of Highly EffectivePeople´ (Covey, S., 1990, 2006)?

Have you ever ³read´ a 100 $ Bill?(how do you get on a bill?²if feasible--, or similarly famous²yet again,was Franklin famous, or was he simply happy & open with/in all he did?)

Benjamin Franklin¶s Autobiography T. Edison¶s and Henry Ford¶s Biographies Arnold Bennett¶s ³How to live 24h/Day?´

«FREE at

www.gutenberg.org

How can we search/find resources to inspire us?

Ask a child! Absent one handy, there is one inside us!

³Why isn¶t there Barnes and Nobles here?´ (Mica, my daughter, 7 y.o.)

best Adam Smith (1723-1790) ³An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of

Nations´, on value of diamonds and water; Sun Tzu (6th Century B.C.) ³The Art of War´



Things we think we (ought to) know. Both of these are extremely important since they should be avoided

at all cost. Only such conscious avoidance produces usable (generalized) knowledge, without diverting

resources from the production of usable knowledge to producing useless (fallacious) knowledge.

Useless Ignorance

(Sought type III error analyses, sought solutions to

ill-defined problems etc.)

Sought non-PSI knowledge

LEARN NEW WRONG WAYSNon Desirable

Useless Knowledge

(Type III error analyses, known solutions to ill ±

defined problems etc.)

Lindblom and Cohen¶s non-PSI knowledge

WE ALWAYS DID IT THIS WAY

(³Great answer. Wrong problem.´)Highly Non Desirable

U

s

e

l

e

s

s

Usable Ignorance(Ravetz and Dunn¶s concept)

Highly Desirable

Usable Knowledge(Lindblom and Cohen¶s concept)

Desirable

Us

a

b

l

e

U

s

a

b

i

l

i

t

y

UnavailableAvailable

Availability (of Generalized Knowledge Type)



We always did

it this way!

It¶ll never work!

WHY?Thanks go to Aart Pijl & Loes Bon of Change Company (www.changecompany.nl) for

facilitating ECCI XI (www.eccixi.eu) workshop, to Per Ingemann of FLSmidth for helpasking good questions, and to Stoian Petrescu of PUB (www.pub.ro) for clean drawing.



Hypothesis: Congruence of Org. Structure,

Strategy & Processes to ³Problem Type´Problem type

ell structured medium structured ill structured

hierarchy

(computational)

lo PEIII medium-high PEIII high PEIII

judgmental lo -medium PEIII lo PEIII medium-high PEIII

compromise medium-high PEIII lo PEIII lo -medium PEIII

T

y p e

o

r g a n i z a t i o n a l

t r

u c t u r e s ,

t r a t e g i e

s

a n d

P r o c e s s e s

(

P

s )

adhocracy(inspirational)

highPE

III medium-highPE

III loPE

III

egend: PEIII = likelihood/probability o type III errors in policy decisions; hite = high, gray = lo congruence

elationship bet een congruence o Ps to problem type and likelihood o type IIIerror driven policy decisions



Questions we can ask Which is my system? Draw it! Seriously!

What is my system of reference? Same?

What am I overlooking? Sit on cloud!

Is the ³pizza/water boy´ in? Get one!

Of what is this a case? Generalize smart!

Who else dealt with it? Borrow wisely!

What will it be/look in 20 y.? R etro-plan!

Deal with ³Can¶t be done´ Why?

³Why?´ helps get NO into kNOw How

³We got here. What¶s next?´www.InnovationTrek.org

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