Reading East of Eden, Part 3

I notice that the two of you who actually read my blog don't pay much attention to the constant invitations to "discuss." Oh well. I'm discussing; perhaps someone is listening.

Forewarning: The following quote is fairly long, and I tried to think of how I would abbreviate it, but I cannot present this idea in part. As always in these quotes, the emphasis added is mine.

I don't know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose faces we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused.

At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost. (pp.130-31)

Steinbeck surely has some strong words there at the end of this passage. But these few paragraphs present some bold thoughts. Thoughts that I believe bear some investigation, and can be applied to several different aspects of our lives that come to my mind. I'm sure you have other things that you could add.

The first thing that came to mind relates to the idea that there are forces shaping the future that displace "other things we hold good." Steinbeck indicates that we are able to recognize that some of these forces "seem evil," but what about the forces that we don't recognize?

Last month, Jill and I attended a lunch hosted by the BYU Management Society (DC Chapter) sponsored by an anonymous donor (although my money would have been on the Marriott family or Nolan Archibald, both of whom were in attendance). It was a rather fun lunch, held on the 9th floor of the Hart Senate Office Building, and we ran into some old and new friends.

The special guest at the luncheon was Clayton M. Christensen, HBS Professor, Author, and Area Authority Seventy. (I also happened to work for his company, Innosight, briefly after college before embarking on my political journey).

Now, back to the "forces." Christensen's topic was "Shared Mechanisms behind the Failure of Successful Countries, Companies, and Families" and he discussed in depth how great companies had failed -- for doing those things that ostensibly they were supposed to be doing. He said that executives in companies like the integrated mills, disk manufacturers, laptop manufacturers, and others were following what the Harvard Business School teaches it students and what Wall Street "demands" (things like listening to your best customers and giving them more of what you want; sacrificing parts of the company that produce low profit margins for activities that have a higher profit margin), and ended up failing because they began to follow a strategy that wasn't suited to their circumstances. He explored, briefly, the conflict of doing what makes you more profitable VS doing what makes sense. Sometimes it's hard to see the difference, and that these statements aren't necessarily mutually inclusive: making the choice now to do what makes you more profitable may not actually make sense.

Christensen told the story of a laptop manufacturer who started outsourcing some of the very basic stuff. The chips were pretty standard and cheaper to make overseas with this other company, so they gladly handed over the reins (and the manufacturing outlays) to this other company. The relationship was working pretty well, and then the chip maker (CM) came back with another proposal: they had gotten pretty good at the basic chips and had developed the ability to make more parts of the "guts" (N.B. Although I'm pretty familiar with the inside of a laptop, I can't remember the order that this took place in, so bear with me). They showed the laptop manufacturer (LM) that they could produce these new parts for 20% less. The LM reviewed the numbers and once again with the option that made them more profitable. The CM came back some time later and said, "You know, it's really pretty easy to snap these pieces together, and we're making some of the basic components, so why don't you let us do some partial assembly out here. We can save you 20% on the cost." The LM crunched the numbers, liked the idea, and once again made the choice that made them more profitable. This pattern continued. Supply chain management. Assembly and shipping. Even design of the new systems. After a period of time, the LM had outsourced just about everything, and was essentially a company whose core competence was its brand, for it did nothing else.

So?

The CM realized it could make more money by moving its business from the LM to an electronics chain and now uses their core competence of laptop manufacture and design to build "store brand" laptops. (And I imagine they don't even need their own IT support, because the customers will contact the store's specialists and operate on the store's warranty. Genius, right?)

So?

Where else are we outsourcing things (perhaps because it would make more profit) and may find ourselves in the dangerous predicament where only the "brand" exists?

The Family.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know when the term "soccer mom" came into existence? Looking back, we can see how families have come to outsource practically everything that used to be part of the "family" several generations back -- some from when even our parents and grandparents were children! Take a second and think about it: What are (generally) the current core competencies of the family? And, what should they be?

Without professing to present a complete or unbiased list, here are a few things I've noticed families have outsourced. The convenience (and "profitability"?) of grocery stores have replaced family gardens, making bread at home, and home canning, etc. And restaurants, fast food, and "healthy" fast food are replacing family meals in the home. We send children off to space camp, fat camp, music camp, scout camp, horseback riding camp, and who knows what else -- instead of finding ways to instruct and entertain at home / in the family unit. And, are we outsourcing the teaching of morals, ethics, and citizenship in the home to schools, the media industry, and church (which might not be so bad, right?, to outsource teaching morals to a church. But I do recall many of my adolescent classes involved a lot of hangman and candy, and don't recall many morals from those lessons). So what is left of the organization we call the family? With so many things outsourced, and questions remaining regarding its core competency, it's no wonder we have a rising "class" of "soccer moms" who deliver their children from one activity to another and only represent the "brand" of the family while other organizations "manufacture" the substance.

I would add outsourcing to the list of "forces shaping a future whose faces we do not know. [And] seem evil to us, [...] because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good." Outsourcing--especially under the guise (as I hope was illustrated by the LM/CM example) of choosing what is profitable over what makes sense--can be dangerous to an organization.

What about Government?

I'll set this one aside for another day, and leave it now for you to consider if government (or politicians or political parties) may be found guilty of "over-outsourcing" and on the path towards becoming a "brand" while other organizations perform the actual functions of the "parent" organization.

Now I'll move on to something else that got me thinking, this idea of the conflict between the collective and the individual. I recently read a book about innovation where the author discussed the many benefits of the group brain storming session, and how (if done properly) this can bring energy to projects and create solutions that are truly game-changing. A group exercise in my Organizational Behavior class tried to show us that groups performed better than individuals on a quiz. (Although this might be better stated as the average or aggregate of the individuals, and noted in our case that groups did not perform better than the best individuals. I point this last part out because in some cases a group can drag down an individual's performance right along with raising the performance of portions of the rest of the class.)

Do these claims about innovation and studies about group vs. individual knowledge successfully counter Steinbeck's claim that "Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations"?

While recognizing and respecting the arguments made by people like Tom Kelley (innovation) and psychologists/sociologists/business teachers/and the like (groups performing better than individuals), I do not believe their observations are applicable when applied to Steinbeck's statement. First, the group dynamic is talking about the transfer and/or sharing of individual of knowledge in a group setting to affect the outcome that is (hopefully) greater than the individuals alone would obtain. It might be said that this was a good collaboration. But isn't it essentially just picking the right answers of the individuals in the group and combining them in a fashion that gives the right answers a greater "result" by grouping them into one score?

For example (overly simplified and generalized, I know), if a difficult test included three parts--math, music, anatomy--and there were three people taking the test--a mathematician, a composer, and a medical doctor--what do you suppose the individual test results would look like? I venture that the mathematician did well on the part relating to his field and was less knowledgeable on the other parts. The same goes for the other two individuals. Now, some might have experience in some of the other subjects, but are not experts. Individually, they may have decent scores, correct? But as a group (and for good measure, suppose they couldn't tell each other they were experts, they just had to work together to choose an answer), the study now shows us that these three individuals got a much higher score together. Voila! A good collaboration, right? But if tests are the measure of knowledge understood (which, isn't that what teachers tell us?), then the results aren't really better. It seems they just show that each section scored well because there was an individual who happened to convince the group that his/her answer was right and thus the group should choose it. Therefore, while the "result" may have been good (higher score), the "collaboration" itself is not good since it (1) is not a good reflection of what the individuals who make up the group know and (2) has not been claimed or proven that the individuals who made up the group actually learned/retained anything by the exercise. And at this point in my ramblings I'll just move on. Feel free to argue with me in the comments.

It would appear that the Kelley/innovation argument has better footing. However, this too finds itself subject to the same predicament as the group test: while an innovation session / brain storm is a group exercise, it is made up of individuals. An individual comes up with an idea, shares it with the group, which sparks ideas in other individuals, who share them, and the group combines and shapes and modifies these. But the ideas came from individuals. I think this is what Steinbeck meant when he concluded this thought with, "Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything."

The only creation that requires more than an individual to actually bring it into existence is the creation of human life. (And then, I suppose one could argue that this was actually two "ideas" that the female gestated on [aside: do you ever wonder why we sometimes use "gestation" to describe the thought process?] and then created something with.)But back to Steinbeck.

Groups are indeed important. They can be efficient. They can provide outcomes or produce products or refine ideas with outcomes typically better than the individual. But that "creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man" should be fostered, not diminished; celebrated, not relegated to group thought.

Obviously, this idea has implications across different aspects of society and public policy. For example, does our public education system encourage the creative instruments of individuals, or does it favor group thought and conformity as superior methods of "faux creation"? What else can you think of? How else is the "free, roving mind [...] being pursued, roped, blunted, [or] drugged"?

I too place high value on the "free, exploring mind of the individual human" -- and of the blessing of agency (while also remembering that natural and other law provides a consequence (reward or punishment) for thoughts and actions).

But more on this another time. Moving on.

Lastly, I wanted to point out the questions that Steinbeck asked and then answered for himself, "What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?"

At this time of reflections and resolutions, of ringing out the old and bringing in the new, the answers to these questions just might provide a little more personal direction to those goals and give a little more steel to our spine as we face the coming blessings and challenges of a new year.

What do you believe in? And what will you fight for and fight against?

And with that, I'll leave more of my ramblings, personal musings, and thoughts on Steinbeck to another day and another time. Cheers!