There’s an old business parable about The Time Teller vs. The Clock Builder that influenced me early on in my career as an entrepreneur and business owner, and it’s had a big impact as well on my work as a consultant.  Recently I had the pleasure of working with a long-standing client and living that parable at a whole new level.

Jim Collins included the Time Teller / Clock Builder parable in the book he co-authored with Jerry Porras in 1994, Built to Last… I have a later edition, dog-eared paperback copy of that somewhere… here’s a short summary from an article Collins wrote for Inc. magazine :

Imagine that you met a remarkable person who could look at the sun or the stars and, amazingly, state the exact time and date.

Wouldn’t it be even more amazing still if, instead of telling the time, that person built a clock that could tell the time forever, even after he or she were dead and gone?

Having a great idea or being a charismatic visionary leader is “time telling;” building a company that can prosper far beyond the tenure of any single leader and through multiple product life cycles is “clock building.”

Those who build visionary companies tend to be clock builders. Their primary accomplishment is not the implementation of a great idea, the expression of a charismatic personality, or the accumulation of wealth. It is the company itself and what it stands for.

Generally speaking, as a “business architect,” I lean much more heavily towards Clock Building than Time Telling… although where I’m at on that spectrum does vary by situation, by project and by client.

Home Brewed

This client, since day one, has treated me like a member of their family. These are folks for whom I’m always willing and happy to go the extra mile as a consultant; they don’t see me an “just another vendor” and I don’t see them as “just another customer.”  It’s a lucky thing when things align like that.

Over the past four years I’ve gotten to know the members of their leadership team, group managers and individual team members across multiple functional areas, with special emphasis on sales and service support… and I’ve watched them all – every single one of them – develop as professionals, as managers, and as leaders.

One of the most satisfying aspects of our relationship, though, isn’t just the mutual respect, warm fuzzies and the raucous good times:  From a professional standpoint – as a learning and business performance consultant – I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of this client’s talent development process and have my role as their Clock Builder (as opposed to mere Time Teller) evolve to the point of being the Builder-of-Clock-Builders… aka, an instructor of instructors.

Although I believe very strongly that all adult learners ultimately teach themselves – my job is simply to facilitate that process – it’s particularly dramatic when I can start handing over the keys of facilitation to participants, step back, and get more “meta” is my job as consultant.

What Happens in Vegas Doesn’t Always Stay in Vegas

This month completed a really fun and effective sales training day in Las Vegas where my job at the event itself was less as a trainer and more as the emcee / circus ringleader. All the specific training content sessions were facilitated by participants themselves.  Feedback from this event ranged from “Woo-hoo!” to “Best training ever.”

One guy joked, “So Dan, now all you do is sit back and point at the light bulbs that need to be changed?”  

Hah.

At the beginning of the relationship, four years ago, my colleagues and I were helping this client identify their talent development goals and then execute on those goals through direct interventions (training, business performance processes). Now at this stage of the relationship, we’re helping them execute their goals through the creation of a self-sustaining learning organization – an environment that is more conducive for the team members to build themselves and each other.

So – *ahem* – yes, perhaps I’m now just sitting back and pointing out which light bulbs need to be changed… metaphorically.  But if we’re going to say that, then we should at least include the rest of the electrical plan. That is to say, I’m working with them on their wiring plan, switches, sockets, ballasts… and maybe even helping install some timers and clocks around the room, too.

“My repugnance to the writing table becomes daily and hourly more deadly and insurmountable. In place of this has come on a canine appetite for reading. And I indulge it, because I see in it a relief against the taedium senectutis; a lamp to lighten my path through the dreary wilderness of time before me, whose bourne I see not. Losing daily all interest in the things around us, something else is necessary to fill the void. With me it is reading, which occupies the mind without the labor of producing ideas from my own stock.”

- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, May 17, 1818

What we think or what we know or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence.

The only consequence is what we do.

- John Ruskin

All the really good ideas I ever had

came to me while I was milking a cow.                        

- Grant Wood

(There’s something about those two guys that make them a good pairing)

((Segue from last week’s post))

They say psychologists are above the rules of psychology.  Well, business communication consultants are not above the rules of effective communication — in fact, their multi-layered cognizance of interpersonal communication dynamics makes almost every internal conversation a bit of a band jam session, a play on the craft itself.   In other words, as a consultant who delivers communication skills programs to clients (these are called “Delivery Consultants” or “Deliverers”), you can’t just say stuff to a peer.  When you say something, you’re also saying something about saying something… or at the very least, demonstrating something about saying something.  Mind you, it’s not a constant self-referential circle of pointlessness… that intense awareness turns on and off, just like a country band jamming away on guitars and banjos… one minute you’re just playing with the band, the next moment you’re playing off the band.  You’ll go back and forth a bit, and usually a really good song will come out of it. 

This hyper-awareness, this constant sense of observing and continually learning, reminds me so much of my years in the world of Architecture.  For many Architects, the self-referential element tends to be limited to observations and interactions with the built environment, and outside of that domain, they are just “regular” folks taking things in like anyone else. There are also plenty of Architects who see Architecture wherever they look — in a building, in a tree, in a rocky outcropping, in a Mandlebrot Set…. and if you add Architectural History & Theory into the mix, well, forget about it. There is no escape from Architecture!

As with the world of Architecture, here in the world of People Who Help Other People Communicate Better — aka, the Deliverers — the sense of being surrounded by the one’s professional domain is constant and ever-present… it’s there in every email, every txt msg, every meeting, every bit of praise, criticism, clarification or negotiation. We live in a world of constant communication.  The music is playing all around us, and when two professional musicians bump into each other, it can be a wonderful thing.

Imagine this scene:  Someone says, “I don’t think you understood me.” Two business communication consultants step up and face each other. One of them has a twinkle in their eye… the next thing you know, it sounds something like this:

Say, mister…
I love the way you wear that hat.You don’t know nothin’.

Lewis, just ask him about his hat.

I don’t think you understood me.
I wanna get some drivers…
…to drive this car…
…and that car down to Aintry.
Drivers. You understand?

You might get the Griner brothers.

Who?

The Griner brothers.

Where do they live?

They live back over that way.

$4.99.

Right.

Talk about genetic deficiencies.

Isn’t that pitiful?
Who’s pickin’ the banjo here?

Come on, I’m with you.

I’m Iost.

I could play all day with that guy.

I believe you could, too.
I believe you could.

That’s good.
That’s very good, sir.

Goddamn, you play a mean banjo.

[handshake DENIED]

 

 

As an elegant solution to stabilizing the tower against lateral stresses such as wind shear and earthquakes (because human civilizations have a tendency to build along windy coasts and major fault lines), the designers of the Taipei 101 skyscraper threw a ball at the problem: A 730 ton, $4 million suspended sphere made from 41 welded steel plates, hung on public display in an atrium between the 87th and 91st floors, where it acts as a tuned mass damper. 

In other words, it’s a carefully calibrated (tuned), massive hanging ball (mass) that counteracts against the swaying motion of the building (damper). As the building moves in one direction, the inertia of the ball creates resistance, reducing the overall movement by up to 40%. The owners of the building have dubbed the ball “Damper Baby” (apparently it’s a Libra). The building shakes, the ball jiggles, the schoolchildren giggle.  It’s all good.

Thank you SMG for sending me this link on Gizmodo (complete with all the obvious big ball comments). The post includes a video of the ball — or rather, the building — shaking, supposedly during the recent Sichuan Earthquake in China.

I like this big ball. For one thing, it’s big.  And it’s not just big.  It’s heavy. Ponderous. It’s cradled by several well-lubricated, finger-like, heavy-duty hydraulic pistons. You can’t just get balls like this shipped in overnight. You have to grow ‘em, one steel plate at a time (because cranes can’t lift the whole ball). You need big, thick cables to hold up this ball. The ball is a powerful, potent metaphor, just hanging over your head. Don’t drop the ball — there are people with offices right under it. Hang the ball up high, where it can do more work at the top of building, where things move around a lot. The ball is not easily swayed.

‘A person should be flexible like the reed and not stiff like the cedar’ said Rabbi Elazar ben Shimon, back in the 2nd-3rd century. He was not a certified seismic designer, but he was the son of an uncompromising religious fundamentalist who was wanted dead by the Roman Empire authorities — they ended up living together as fugitives, father and son, in a cave for over a decade. This guy understood people and conflict.

The maritime expression ‘on even keel’‘ is a frequently used phrase to describe those who have the ability to be steady ( ‘level-headed’ ) in shaky situations, though if you ask a seaman, he’ll tell you that a more correct comparison to Damper Baby would be the nautical concept of ballast. Big ‘ol ballast, unlike bombast, is tangible and heavy… and like the ball, it is within. 

Having this big, inner ball is not the same as being merely well-founded or well-grounded  (though Taipei 101 is that too — it’s held up by piles that have been thrust some 262 feet deep into the earth).  Nor is it about just going with the flow. There is some sway, but without getting carried away.

Of course, to paraphrase King Missile, sometimes it’s handy to have a detachable ball. The ball is good for those tough situations, but other times you may want to let loose, unchain yourself, ’cause otherwise that ‘ol ball is just going to hold you back and get in the way.

I may have to restrict comments on this post.

This was also an opportunity to be a part of the Yankee Stadium Experience – which will be a thing of the past starting next season, when the new Yankee Stadium opens right across the street. The new stadium will have roughly the same number of regular seats (slightly fewer, in fact), albeit arranged out in a less steep slope, and with more money-making luxury boxes and retail space. This is the same thing that happened when they replaced the old Montreal Canadiens’ Forum with the new Molson/Bell Centre:  The original stadium was (still is, in the case of Yankee Stadium) a not-so-comfortable-but-thrilling vertiginous experience that almost literally put you right on top of the players and made you feel a part of the game… an experience that was augmented by the sale of alcohol (to enhance the vertigo) and a boisterous fan base.  The new stadium still has the boisterous fans (albeit with more V.I.P.s lurking in their lux boxes) but now these fans will be more like mere spectators rather than true game participants (if you can’t fling a beer cup onto the ice from the upper stands, you’re too far away) in a design that takes up more site acreage and complies with ever-more-stringent building codes (we’re all gonna get crushed in the crowd stampede anyway). 

But the real question I have is more meme than architecture:  We’ve heard the expression “enough to fill Yankee Stadium” any number of times, used as a form of evidence/illustration to make a point.  What, exactly, does that mean?  And will that meaning change with the New Yankee Stadium, both in terms of volumetric quantity as well as spatial quality (less cup/bowl-like space)?  The answer to the second question is “probably not,” since as far as I can tell, many people who use the Yankee Stadium Analogy to illustrate anything other than multiples of 50,000 people (the approximate seating capacity) have no idea of how big the stadium actually is or what it would take to fill it. Really, it’s all about the iconic stature of the building more than anything else — and that iconic status is being carefully transferred to the new stadium, both though the careful restoration/replication of certain original Yankee Stadium design elements (facades, friezes, monuments, etc.) as well as some valiant attempts to establish a supernatural/mythical aura (surreptitious burial of Red Sox paraphernalia, possible entombment of mobsters anyone??). 

As for this “enough to fill Yankee Stadium” meme, a quick survey of Google search results on the exact phrase shows that about 50% of its distribution occurs in relation to environmental subjects. For example, supposedly, each year the amount of worldwide fishery by-catch (that’s the stuff that gets caught in nets and is thrown out) could fill Yankee Stadium 30 times. That’s an evocative, if malodorous, image. Another one: The amount of ground material excavated from the Alberta Tar Sands (which has a total area that is often compared to the State of Florida) every 2 days could fill Yankee Stadium once. Not as smelly, but still pretty dramatic.  Though if we take these statements at face value, we’re forced to consider that the amount of annual worldwide by-catch could, theoretically, be used to fill in the space dug out of the Tar Sands every two months. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Hmm, I wonder how many times one could fill the new Yankee Stadium with the debris of the soon-to-be-demolished old Yankee Stadium?  If one were to take the total cost of the new Yankee Stadium in Sacagawea dollars, stacking them against each other, how many times would it wrap around the stadium?  Oh the fun, it never ends…

PREVIEW HERE: http://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=Minisite_Generic&content_type_id=57582&display_order=1&mini_id=57517

The emphasis of the show will be, of course, on the “money shot” moments of collapse of, say, the upper section of the Eiffel Tower… as opposed to the visually boring but scientifically more complex process of slow corrosion of the iron bolts and rivets and the periodic wind shear and torque stresses that, over the course of many decades, weaken enough of the beam connections to cause a partial structural failure. But apparently they’ve baked all that science into their visually stunning effects, with maybe just enough unrealism to make us nerds argue about the details of this or that scene. 

The fact of the matter is, with ALL good structural design, a key part of the process for the architect/engineer is to consider how something will fall apart, before finalizing the design. Elevator brakes are designed to be triggered before the cable fails. Although glass is pretty strong, we avoid using it for structural purposes because it’s very brittle and when it goes, it goes.  One of the things we like about wood structures is that, as they fail, they tend to “complain” a lot… giving people a chance to get out of there.  The phrase ”single point of failure” keeps many engineers up at night, and not just structural engineers. 

This metaphor is a powerful one, and I’ve had many opportunities to apply it to business processes, relationships,  contracts, IT specifications and more.  Deliberate weakness points. Feedback systems. Contingencies. Fallbacks. Redundancies. Paths of least resistance. There are many ways to design something so that you can influence the way it will ultimately come apart. In fact, some designs earn almost all their value just in terms of this consideration.

How else can we apply this idea?  Well, in terms of mitigating environmental impact of manufactured goods, now more than ever, chemical engineers are spending the time to figure out how the things we create and consume will decay in the environment, or in our bodies. That’s a prime example of the ”Architecture of Deconstruction.” Not to be confused with the once-trendy Deconstructionism, of course.

Lastly, going back to the whole post-human apocalypse / dark humor thing, I just want to plug my favorite website on the subject:  EXIT MUNDI ( http://www.exitmundi.nl/exitmundi.htm )  Choose your time frame of reference (“any day now,” ”near future” or “distant future”), pour yourself a premium beverage and enjoy. 

With this latest announced world’s-biggest-building-ever, “Crystal Island,”  I’d say we’re finally catching up to the imagined utopian future of “the year two thousand.”  No flying robot cars, but then again, I’m sure the place will have great Internet access, something they didn’t predict back in the early days of color television and Isaac Asimov.

Moscow’s rapidly growing skyline will soon feature an eye-popping new addition: Crystal Island, which will be the world’s biggest building when completed. Sir Norman Foster’s mountainous 27 million square feet spiraling “city within a building” will cost $4 billion and it is scheduled to be built within next 5 years. [read more] 

Will it actually get built?  As the above article describes, it sure sounds like it. The above rendering shows a beautiful structure which, in order to reach the scale of a small mountain, must eschew the standard “male monument” form of a highrise tower and adopt a more gender neutral, nature-inspired spiral/floral geometry. The building is crystalline and gives more than just a nod to its predecessors, not just in Foster’s own work, but going back to the 1960s in the utopian fantasies of Buckminister Fuller and even further, to Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace of 1851.

Which brings us to the question of permanence in architecture, or lack thereof.  The Crystal Palace was ultimately destroyed by fire, after less than 100 years. Today, the IRS will let you depreciate new construction on a 39 or even 20-year basis (27.5 for residential rental properties) and in downtown Tokyo, entire highrises can get replaced after even less than that. New buildings get old fast.  A building of this scale won’t stay crystalline for long. We should expect nature to colonize the exterior glazing, building envelope, structural skin and ultimately, interior of the structure, in due time.

Just like a small mountain. 

All the pundits seems to agree it’s a good thing. They write about how users were too constrained by starting their status with the verb “is,” how people would create grammatical atrocities (Bob is wants ice cream).  I found that a lot of people’s statuses, while not grammatically incorrect, often sounded awkward or lame (Bob is wanting ice cream).  As one friend of mine noted, the required “is” created a situation were, too often, “the passive voice is used.”  Bob wants ice cream.  That’s all there is too it.  Of course, Bob’s desire for ice cream is not really his “status” (Bob is hungry). But hey, the users are defining how they use this field, not Facebook. 

That said, I’m going to miss “is.”  The present tense, third-person, singular form of ”to be” was a simple, beautiful constraint.  And like all constraints, “is” created an opportunity for clever solutions, because the worst designs are often the ones that don’t need (or want) to respond to any constraints. This is what they teach on the first day of class in architecture school. This is also what you see in the business world, and even with people. Operating under constraints creates more interesting outcomes.  Facebook created an interesting constraint, which became a hallmark of its culture. ”Is” was an opportunity.

Even the folks at Twitter (a third-party service where you can broadcast text message content to various places, including your Facebook status) had a workaround on the “is” constraint (Bob is twittering: I want Ben & Jerry’s).   Yes, prepending the “twittering:” to the status was a bit annoying, but it gave Twitter some free advertising.  Probably this (along with the pressure of other third-party developers), more than anything else, is what pushed FB to drop the “is.” 

“Is” was like a little personal haiku challenge — a tightly constrained structure with manifold possibilities. You could use it to describe your location, activity, mood or other attributes – including your state of being – but you always had to start with “is.” You could make it a rambling sentence, or you could make it a single word.  Depending on how you wrote it and how often (weekly, daily or minute-by-minute), the “is” could take on a different dimension. There was a whole kunst to updating your status with the “is” constraint. Taking “is” away dumbs down the process, ever so slightly.

Other than the Queen of England, most people don’t usually refer to themselves in the third-person (and even the Queen uses the plural form — “we are not amused”) — it’s just not natural. So, OF COURSE it made us stop and think. That’s the point. Stop and think.  Hmmm, what *am* I right now?  Dan is settling in. Dan is elsewhere. Dan is not entirely convinced. Dan is obvious. Dan is neatly packaged. Dan is 40% alc. by vol.  Or how about this one:  Ilana is composed entirely of subatomic particles.  Constraints create context, and without the “is” as a context, that status wouldn’t have been as funny. 

“Is” will live on in Facebook, both out of necessity as well as by default in the status update field.  But as a quirky little riff to play with, ”is” will gradually fade away.

Dan is eulogizing “is.” 

 Well, it’s time that you reached out to them and thanked for what they taught you, directly or indirectly… it might be a small thing, a little remark… but it has stuck with you to this day. 

 I was struggling in my third year of McGill School of Architecture, trying to simultaneously design and draft a complex floor plan for a theoretical hotel located on Sherbrooke Street (the site is now a recently completed condo complex, which I noticed a few months was being marketed in the New Yorker… “image your own pied-a-terre in Montreal”… but that was before the Canadian dollar soared to above par…).  I was faced with an unresolved design and a long list of drawings that needed to be completed by hand (because at the time, a lot of profs had not yet bought into the idea of CAD, and a proper CAD setup wasn’t really available anyway), and there I was, hunched over my drafting table, standing sandwiched between the diagonal slope of the dormered ceiling of the studio and the diagonal slope of my drafting table, stressed to the hilt, with a retractable HB lead pencil in my right hand and my left hand pressed down against crinkly smudged layers of trace paper. 

 Manon, one of our TAs, came over and watched me for a moment.  She reached over to my trace paper with a thick pen/marker, and as she made a few bold lines over it,  said in a soft voice,  “There is something about using a pen instead of using a pencil, that gives you a hard line… it’s not so much about being black-or-white in your ideas, as much as it is about bringing things and into sharp contrast, into focus.  Sometimes you need to switch over to a pen.” 

 I’m sure her exact words were different, and that there is some part of the message I’m forgetting, or even part of the message that I’ve added.  In fact, I’m quite sure it wasn’t the first time I’d been told this idea, in some form or another. However, for some reason, it never really stuck until that moment. When faced with a tricky design problem or decision, I pay attention to the tools and methods I’m using… and switch them appropriately. The solution usually follows soon after. Thanks, Manon.

 When is the last time you’ve thanked a teacher?

 How about today?