The Gamut of Beauty

Originally published in the Informanté newspaper on Thursday, 2 March, 2017.

“Some people choose to see the ugliness in this world, the disarray. I choose to see the beauty.” Since the dawn of the human race, we have always been captivated by beauty. With the rains washing over Namibia, we all have experienced that graceful bliss that envelops us when we see the effect is has on our thirsty land. 

It should thus be of no surprise that we have always sought to capture beauty in any form possible. In the beginning, all we had rudimentary pigments, and crude tools, but still we tried to capture and record the beauty we saw in the world. With pigments on rock, we captured as much as was possible. Here in Namibia, our busmen paintings, such as the White Lady, provides evidence of this. 

As humanity progressed, our tools and materials became more complex, and we could capture beauty more effectively. As a result, we could not only capture the beauty as it appears, but also as we imagine it to be – we could be creative. We could create art. 

Our first foray into busmen paintings blossomed into a veritable portmanteau of skills with which we could capture the beauty of a moment. From the White Lady, we progressed to Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, and Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. But these forms captured beauty in a two dimensional plane, and sometimes that’s not enough for an artist. In parallel, another form of art developed – sculpture. First done with ceramics, made from clay and developing from pottery, it soon expanded into a form all of its own, with Michelangelo’s David probably the most well-known of these.

Still, these forms could only capture a moment, and too often, beauty last more than a moment. While we had yet to develop the technological sophistication to be up to the task, we harnessed that other master computer we all carry with us – the human brain. We turned more abstract, letting the human intellect and imagination fill in that which we could not capture. We began recording narratives with words, enabling a story to be told. We invented literature, and poetry. 

As we went abstract, we found beauty in even more things. The abstract world of mathematics opened up for us, and as Bertrand Russell said, “Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.”

Being capable of recording the abstract enabled us to record the ineffable – music. By developing musical notation, those sublime notes that touch the heart could now be spread far and wide, and as the centuries progressed, we had more and more instruments to strum the strings of emotion with. Beauty had come to pierce the soul of humanity. 

Lest it be said that we started to rest on our laurels, we continued to progress technologically, and new forms of art opened up to capture the beauty of this world. We used the literary arts to ‘replay,’ as it were, the events recorded, and the theatre opened up to the world. Master of the theatre, William Shakespeare, certainly left his legacy there. And when theatre used music instead of literature as a basis, we got the musical. 

Soon, we could capture beauty perfectly, via a new-fangled invention called the camera, which produced photographs. We had, however, become used to artists enhancing beauty, and when cameras were developed that could film moving pictures, another art form emerged – the movie. But it was not only the visual arts that got an upgrade. Soon, a device emerged that allowed for the visualization of mathematics – the computer. It too, spawned its own form of art, as immortalized in Donald Knuth’s volumes on The Art of Computer Programming.

And so, the great convergence began. Movies were combined with drawing, and animation began, with Walt Disney’s masterpieces sure to be seen by many a child. Drawing combined with literature, and the graphic novel emerged, culminating in the legends of today’s comic books, such as Jack Kirby and Frank Miller. Computer programming and literature combined to produce interactive novels. When they combined with drawing, the video game made its debut.

Today, we are all conversant with capturing beauty. Social media is filled with photographs and videos of people capturing remarkable moments across the world, and sharing them with friends and family. Even as this is occurring, we are discovering new ways to capture the beauty of this world – sculpture is today done via 3D printing and its modelling is instrumental in moving the art of video games beyond a 2D plane on a screen into the 3D virtual reality devices slowly coming into prominence. 

Beauty is all around us, if you just know where to look. Once you choose to see the beauty in this world, you’ll find that you feel spaces opening up inside you, like a building with rooms you’ve never explored. It’s time you started exploring, for there is much to discover yet.

The Nimble Dinosaur

Originally published in the Informanté newspaper on Thursday, 23 February, 2017. 

It is well known that in today’s market, you cannot afford to be slow. The pace of technological change is rapid, and if you fail to make the changes required to your business, a newer, young competitor will pull the rug from under you and take over your market. You cannot let your company be locked into a single way of doing things, lest you sign its death warrant. Why is it then, that big companies are often the ones that fail? That get out-innovated by their smaller rivals into insignificance? Do they not recognize that they need that speed to survive?

After all, the economic benefits of a fast-moving enterprise are many. Being first to the market has obvious economic value – you get the media attention, build customer loyalty and often earn bigger margins. This also means that firms will quickly identify and move on opportunities, ensure that no opportunity is one missed. They can reduce the impact of potential problems, because any solutions will be out the door quicker, mitigating the damages. And, of course, it allows them to quickly respond to changes in market conditions.

Often, the charge is laid that big companies are bureaucratic, more interested in their pet projects than innovation and reinvention. But the lessons of the market are clear, and big companies have recognized the folly of allowing bureaucracy to doom them. After all, they too were once young start-ups that fought their way through entrenched businesses to get to the top. 

No, companies usually rise to the top due to a new competitive formula they’ve discovered, one that allows them to outmanoeuvre the competition. A combination of business strategies, efficient processes, well-handled relationships and strong corporate values build them into a strong behemoth – one that competitors are too happy to ape. 

But success reinforces the belief that the company has found the ‘one true way.’ This starts to blind the strategic thinkers, and new strategies are hamstrung by being forced to fit into the ‘one true way.’ Information gets ignored as it does not fit into the strategic vision, and the way is lost. These strategies, of course resulted in efficient processes, and those get locked in. Instead of processes, they become something far worse – routines. Instead of continually searching to improve processes, no newer efficient methods are tried because that’s not the ‘one true way.’

Even customer relationships become shackles – the need to maintain existing customers keep them from trying new innovations, for fear or losing them. And even a company’s values, as you’d expect from finding the ‘one true way’ can turn into dogmas. Values turn into rules and regulations, within which innovation dies. 

 But it doesn’t have to. Back in 1989, Dave Cutler was a legend in the software industry. He’d programmed the VMS operating system for Digital Equipment Corporation and was spearheading a new team on the west coast of the USA, developing a new operating system for their PRISM computer. Then DEC cancelled the project. Microsoft heard about this, and Steve Ballmer, their Sales Manager and later CEO, contacted Cutler and offered him a job developing a new version of their current operating system, initially called NT OS/2. 

Microsoft had identified nascent threats from two sources: the potential of new chips replacing the Intel chips their software was based on, and the danger of the Unix operating system from mainframes coming to personal computers and destroying their MS-DOS based hegemony of the PC market. Dave Cutler, with a few colleagues who joined from DEC, was tasked with building a ‘Unix-killer’ that would operate on any chip.

By the end of 1989, Cutler and his team has a working prototype, and was ready to show it to the world. But something else happened – Windows 3.0 was released, and it sold 16 million copies in 6 months. Microsoft decided that it would not do to have this NT New Technology based on OS/2, which it had developed with long-time partner IBM, and Cutler was tasked with turning it into Windows NT.

It took him another 3 years to reach that goal – his team having expanded to 150 people from the initial 6, and the project ultimately costing Microsoft US$ 150 million, at the time the most expensive computer program ever. But it reached it goals. It became the core of the Windows operating system we continue to use until today, and Windows 10 is the latest descendant of Windows NT. Because it could be ported to any chip, when 64-bit chips made their debut, Windows was ready. Due to Dave Cutler and Windows NT, Microsoft became the company that it is today.

Many companies had tried similar projects before, and had failed. Cutler’s move to Microsoft was the result of one of those failures at DEC. What was different? First, Cutler was given the resources to do what he must – US$ 150 million is no small sum. Furthermore, Gates had ceded authority to Cutler and Paul Maritz, who kept an eye on the market, and made sure Cutler stayed informed. 

Then there was the teamwork – but not the usual kind. Teams are generally homogenous – quite antithetical to creative work. Cutler’s team were full of very opinionated people. They broke old rules and made new ones when the old no longer made sense. They didn’t ask permission before taking important decisions that they believed would improve NT. And they ignored any prohibitions that seemed nonsensical.  And finally, when they had to make a choice, Microsoft broke from the shackles of their IBM alliance to chart its own course. 

Microsoft was already an established giant when the NT project launched, and the 150 people that it blossomed into is far larger than a start-up. Yet they still managed to bring about that innovation that saved the company from ruin, and gave it life for another 15 years. They changed the world. No start-up would have had the resources for a project such as this. Perhaps the lesson to be learned here is that all big companies can turn into dinosaurs, too big to move. But if you want to survive, you have to learn to be nimble.

To Think Is To Solve

Originally published in the Informanté newspaper on Thursday, 16 February, 2017. 
 

How often have you seen the following in job ads? “Someone keen to take responsibility and with the confidence to challenge established practices and come up with new ways of working…” “An enquiring mind and the ability to understand and solve complex challenges are necessary…” “We are looking for innovative minds and creative spirits ...”

What do these have in common? They all ask essentially the same two things: The ability to use your own initiative, to think for yourself, to be creative and pro-active, and the ability to resolve problems, to think logically and/or laterally, to use ingenuity to overcome difficulties and to research and implement solutions.

In other words, analytical and problem solving skills. Now one would assume that these skills are vital to surviving in the modern world, yet study after study has shown that these skills are lacking in a significant percentage of the population. The American 2012 Critical Skills Survey, which polled 768 managers and executives, found that employers rated most of their employees as either average or below average in communication skills (62%), creativity (61%), collaboration (52%), and critical thinking (49%).

And yet, these skills are essential for every business. Any business will have challenges or obstacles which need to be overcome.  If they employ people who are adept at solving problems at all levels, it reduces the need for complex chains of command or lessens demand on managers' time. In short, it will help save time and therefore money. Analytical skills are becoming quite important - we are all bombarded with huge amounts of information every day! Being able to quickly yet comprehensively identify and evaluate the most important or relevant information for the business and your job will be an increasingly essential skill.

Even here at Trustco, it is how Dr Quinton van Rooyen evaluates employees: “We’ve identified 5 basic types of employees. 

The Blind Employee - These employees can’t see a problem even if it is staring them right in the face. They work like robots, following a set procedure, and never notice if there’s something wrong, or something that is impeding efficiency. You don’t need these employees – they can be replaced by automation.

The Averse Employee - These can see a problem, but they try to avoid it as they are afraid doing something about it might make them responsible for it. These employees are actively trying to avoid adding value to your business. Replace them.

The Identifying Employee - These employees can see a problem, but they can’t take the initiative to solve it, and simply report it up their reporting line. These are the minimum acceptable employees, your basic employees. They should form the backbone of your company.

The Transformative Employee - These employees can identify a problem, and once handed a problem that’s been identified, solve it. These employees should be your supervisors and line managers. They’re the employees who are making your business great. 

The Revolutionary Employee - These problem-solving employees are not only great thinkers and innovators, but they also have the ability to get employee buy-in. They can thus solve social/people problems, and involve others in the problem solving process. These employees can change the world, and should be your senior and top management. “

So if these skills are truly so indispensable, why do so many people lack them? The answer can be found in our model of education. For too long, education has been at the whim of the memorization model of education, where students are taught simply to receive, memorize and repeat information. Teachers simply drop the information on students, with little in the way of discussion and they are expected to sit down, shut up, and remember. This might have been appropriate for an age in which student were to be merely compliant, obedient factory workers – but those jobs are increasingly being replaced by machines, and the mind is the one area where machines have yet to supplant us.

Then there’s the problem-solving model of education – where students and teachers work together in communicating and learning information. Teachers ask questions, and engage students to think critically and evaluate the material – they create critical questions and answers that not only better help students understand the material, but also enable them to remember it better.

Teachers, naturally, are a bit resistant to these methods. After all, this is not how things are done! Students shouldn’t talk back to teachers! Well, yes – if what you want is obedient drones, instead of productive members of society. That model is quite authoritarian, and has no place in a democratic society. The other concern, of course, is that teachers worry that students will come up with ideas that the teachers won’t understand. Well, if a child can outthink you, you’ve either got a very clever child, or…

The fact of the matter is that they should be able to explain their methods, and thus teachers should be able to follow their reasoning. And even if they did not know, there’s no shame in stating that, and assuring them you’ll find out. After all, teachers are expected to stay up to date on their field – and by finding out the answers to their students’ questions, they too will learn something new. 

With the importance of analytical and problem solving skills only increasing year-on-year, it becomes essential that we all possess these skills. After all, if you had to choose an employee or a co-worker, would you rather have one that was analytical, insightful and problem-solving, or would you prefer one that could rattle off a bunch of fact, but was dumb-founded when asked something they didn’t memorize?