But age becomes the predator
A war between what is and was,
No kindness, fear, or place to bind us
A history unkind to fatal flaws;

The power of the word is love
The power of the word is joy
The power of the word is hate
The power of the word is lies
The power of the word is truth
And spur our spirit’s endless flight

The family man seeks hope and dreams
A legacy for future bright
Of better days and fields of schemes
And fortitude to see things right

Past and present blur together
Days fall like soldiers off to battle
What once was then is soon forgotten
A history unkind to banter

The power of the deed is now
The power of the deed is action
The power of the deed was then
The power of the deed is sloth
The power of the deed is truth
It spurs our physical delight

Society’s a loose connection
Between the mob and our recollection
The truth of moment’s single vision
A recipe for our protection

The slippery slope of man’s insight
Collective conscious of vagueness hence
Pull future strings of our intention
A history shattered in our defense

The power of the thought is how
The power of the thought is who
The power of the thought laid low
The power of the thought not told
The power of the thought is truth
To spur our mental model’s height

We do not sing, in choir song,
We do not grow, just with the flow,
We do not stand, but in a row
We laugh and belch and fart and cry
We pat ourselves until we die
To spur our innovative might

The power of truth is in the words
The power of truth is acts and deeds
The power of truth is pure of thought
The power of truth is found and lost
The power of truth is you and me
Amid ten billion voices

– Kevin Feenan

Seriously – think about this for a moment. Are we the type of species that could, knowing full well life existed elsewhere in the galaxy, resist the temptation to meddle?

Almost all of our explorations throughout history have been with the express purpose of finding and returning with something of value. Once found, the ‘gold rush’ is on even if there is plenty of it in our own backyard.

Europe had more than enough room for civilization in 1492, but when Christopher Columbus sailed to the new world, we had to accumulate more.

Diamonds which have now been found in Northern Canada have sparked a new mineral rush to the Arctic even though there are plenty to be found elsewhere in the world.

Existing oil reserves are plentiful enough to get us by the development of new technologies that no longer require us to rape the earth but we insist on doing it anyways.

If we are to explore the Universe, could we realistically do this when our technology is always just on the cutting edge of getting us to that shiny object in front of us but yet leave it alone if it proves to be something our ethic tells us we shouldn’t touch?

For example, let us assume for a moment that Gilese 581g is eventually discovered to have a moon which is approximate in size and mass to that of our Earth. For those not in the know, Gilese 581g is a planet approximately 4-5 times the size of our earth, sits in the habitable zone, and is less than 100 ly away from our solar system.  If it had a moon with the same proportions as our moon, then we have just found probably one of the best potential planets to send a mission in order to explore for life.

If we found it thou – some type of pre-nuclear civilization – what would we do? Simply turn around and go home? Or would the compulsion to explore (meddle) be too much?

Most likely we wouldn’t have much of a choice. In the development of our technology we have typically taken a minimalist approach such that we carry with us just enough to do the job at hand and very little to spare.  Explorers off to the continent of Australia picked up fresh supplies along the way. Finding green shores would typically mean we would want to avail ourselves of whatever is available for trade or plunder.

Getting to Gilese 581g and finding plants and animals – I doubt very much that any explorer would be willing to simply walk away without having the opportunity to touch down.  As much as people would like to think that the morals of Star Trek would be the pervasive attitudes that would carry us into space flight, the reality is that the search for knowledge is tempered by a quest for value and rarity.

We are all looking for the bigger, better deal and without some form of control on our more basic human desires, we just simply cannot control that urge to open Pandora’s box once where know where it is.

It is our history.

Does that make us a grievously savage race? Possibly. Its hard to tell without comparison to other cultures which have done the same.  Unfortunately, as Carl Sagan pointed out in his series Cosmos, the meeting of other cultures would surely be one sided, with either them or us being vastly superior in technology.

Maybe there is a galactic police out there whose job it is to protect lesser races. Maybe the law of the land is conquer or be conquered. The rush to meet aliens could result in an exchange of culture with technological benefits for the whole of humanity or it could result in enslavement.

Hawkins wants to suggest that we shouldn’t draw as much attention to ourselves on the basis of how it worked out for the native North Americans.  I’m not so sure. There are as many possibilities for cultural exchange out there as there are likely to be stars in the sky. We can only control what we can control. What it is in our power to affect.

I think that at some point in the next several years, we need to start determining who we are as a species. Earth as a holistic culture – what are our values. How do we want to be perceived among the races that inhabit the galaxy. What ethos do we take with us. What compromises are we prepared to make. What sacrifices.

For example, what do we consider to be our ‘territory’ in this region of the galaxy? Everything within 50 lys? 100? Can we apply our tenets of international law to the way we interact with other species? Are we even entitled to the resources available within our own solar system?

When you are the only known sentient race within 100 lys of your home planet, the answers are pretty clear cut. But what do you do when the inhabitants of Gilese 581g come knocking on your door one day and inform you that your probes to Mars are an infringement on their rights in this sector?

It may be another 500 years before we make first contact as a society. But seeing how the human race is slow to change, it certainly wouldn’t be premature to start to think in terms of a galactic collective of which Earth is a part.

And maybe – just maybe – we can find the strength to work through our own local differences in the process when they are finally seen to be so small in comparison to what is awaiting us out there.

– Kevin Feenan

Specifically, I mentioned that

It is not going to be fought over territory, or politics, or religion. It will be an economic war, a cultural war, a global war, and one in which the civil populations those beliefs support the power base of the status quo will shake those institutions to their very core. Issues over DRM are not the opening shots fired. They are a wake-up call that something radical needs to change – that the fundamental nature of how we value and distribute knowledge and ideas will, in the long run, not be subject to the traditional economics of today’s society.

SOPA is the next round in that battle and is evident proof that the wake-up call has not been heeded. In a nutshell, SOPA is an attempt to reinforce traditional values of copyright and ownership on a system that doesn’t want to be forced in that direction. Rather than trying to work within the direction the socio-informatics wants to naturally go, large corporations are trying to bring those values back in line with the establish processes because that is what they know. Laws, policy, policing.

What is missing is the human element. It is also what makes SOPA so dangerous as a framework from which individuality and the expression of ideas could eventually be eradicated.

Legacy is the essential problem.

The way you keep populations in control is by ensuring that their needs within a society are being met. Let’s take the simple example from Maslow. Those core needs being, in order of importance, physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. To this list one has to add an additional more primal basic need that supersedes all of these others and that is the need to propagate.

The philosophical statement, cogito ergo sum, represents only half of what it is to be human. It is the rational side of the equation and doesn’t address this idea that within human culture it is not simply enough ‘to be’, one must have prove of one’s existence. That is, we define ourselves not just in terms of how we perceive the world rationally (a priori) but we need to have verifiable proof through external means that we exist (a posteriori).

Up until now, copyright has provided some measure of proof of our existence through the assignment of ownership to physical objects and the definition of legacy that it provides. But what happens in a virtual world where the right to create derivative works is superseded by mega-corporations whose only interest is the next fiscal quarterly report to their shareholders? When you no longer have the right to create works that provide proof of your existence? Or when you as an individually can be wiped out simply for not paying your ISP?

These may seem like extreme examples until you consider that most of what we say and do in the developed world now revolves around some type of electronic exchange of knowledge. The ability to express oneself to society is predicated not just simply on the physical expression of thoughts and ideas but also on their persistence. The creation of physical forms of self-expression be it a book, a record, a painting, a house, a chair, were easy to assign copyright to. The uniqueness of such self-expression was contained within definable geographic constraints. And even with mass production, copyright infringement through the development of substantially similar or derivative works was constrained.

There are only so many different ways you can mill a table leg. After awhile with 7 Billion people on the planet, people in various parts of the world are going to come up with similar solutions to similar problems irrespective of blatant intellectual property theft. So what do you think is going to happen once we add another 2.5 billion people to the planet between now and 2050?

In the last 20 years we have gone from a society in which the persistence of knowledge was predicated on activities that were understood to be one of two types, physical or vapor-ware, to a society which now has a reasonable right and expectation to every word they say lasting generations. Our root belief system has been fundamentally altered such that legacy is no longer about what you physically leave behind but what you virtually leave behind as well.

That is no small paradigm shift. And it’s not localized. It’s global.

Consider by 2050 9.5 billion people all wanting to establish a legacy of their own and wanting to have proof of their existence.

SOPA doesn’t account for this. The players behind SOPA don’t want to account for this. They don’t see it as their responsibility to speak to the future. They only seek to protect an economic system which is no longer viable in an information age.

So here is the fundamental problem: what happens in a society when its sense of self is under attack by those seeking, albeit maybe unintentionally, to eradicate proof of their existence?

Usually its revolution.

Unfortunately we are like the frog in the frying pan where the heat is being turned up slowly. Our hierarchy of needs is being eroded piece by piece under the guise of improved quality of life. The powers behind SOPA likely feel that so long as there are no signs of imminent collapse that all will be right with the world. But as any good doctor can tell you, to look after the care of a patient you need to also pay attention to the symptoms even if there are no outward signs of disease.

We could very easily take a page out of the medical handbook of practicing physicians as to the how to evaluate and assess a law’s ability to influence and improve the social condition. Unfortunately that hasn’t been done here. Which is a shame because an OPRQST assessment against the human hierarchy of needs is exactly what is called for here.

If SOPA passes, and mega-corporations start to use this to assault an individual’s innate ability of self-expression, regardless of what form that self-expression may take, then it will simply be a matter of time before the revolution starts. Similar to DRM, SOPA won’t be the shot heard around the world, but it’s definitely a sign that the musket is being loaded. SOPA is a very badly structured piece of legislation that should never become law.

That’s not to say that there aren’t legitimate issues at stake here. However, we need to start by realizing that our economic system needs a major overhaul. Any legislation needs to accommodate the way society functions today – not the way the nuclear-aged society functioned 60 years ago. That is going to require a heck of a lot more work than a quick fix solution created by the group of people that are at the root cause of many of these issues in the first place.

Revolutions don’t need to take place at the point of a gun. The transformation in society between 1979 and 1999 is ample proof that revolutions can be both transformative and peaceful. I just hope the transformation that needs to happen between 2019 and 2039 will be one of cooperation and not confrontation.

– Kevin Feenan

For example,

Good Project Management isn’t about following a process.
It is about managing the process to fit the culture.

If I had been told this 25 years ago when I first started out in my IM/IT career, I would clearly be able to understand the intent, but not the meaning. It takes time to understand the relationship between culture and process to really understand the deeper connection that is implied by the statement. The quotation also belies the complexity that is inherent within a culture and the various facets of which a culture is derived.

Here is the essential problem: There are more connections between process and culture than can be reasonably taught during a 4 year diploma program. While you could go through each one step by step by step, it is far more effective to provide some fundamental basics and then throw the neophyte into the midst of the lion’s den with naught but their skivvies and see how they make out.

Formal academic training only goes so far in proving solutions to things such as

• multiple directors having competing agendas on the same project, or
• the manager that is building their own fiefdom which competes with your project, or
• the business users which have no head for rationalizing their business processes, or
• the peer colleague which is setting you up to take the fall for their ineptitude.

All of these are very real life scenarios that happen way too often. But you will hardly ever see them in a book. It is doubtful you will see them very often in a seminar or conference. Most likely you will get your training in these areas from either learning it the hard way, or, if you are lucky, by having a mentor help guide you through these waters as they are happening on the ground.

Learning is a lifelong process.
We never stop, nor should we.

At the same time, we shouldn’t be too quick to rush into learning situations for which we aren’t ready prepared. Opportunity unfolds all around us which provide openings to do things we would like to do but maybe aren’t ‘qualified’ for when resumes are compared side by side. That doesn’t mean that we should simply be satisfied with our current station in life if it is not to our likening.

The trick is to establish a pattern of behaviour, through thought, word, and deed, which shows you are prepared to take on those challenges to a greater extent than those around you.

Some of the greatest minds in the world wouldn’t have amounted to anything if they hadn’t taken control over the circumstances that proved to others they were capable. Any neophyte can regurgitate quotations. It takes a lifelong approach to learning to be exceptional.

— Kevin Feenan

It is for these reasons that the future is difficult. Not only do we need to overcome the challenges put in our path but we also need to overcome the failings of our own society. We make choices based on the margins of what confronts us at each individual moment.

Let’s take something very basic. You are at the gas station and in the process of getting gas for your car you decide you are thirsty. What do you do? Most gas stations in North America have beverage options ranging from a public water fountain to bottled drinks. The bottled drink itself may be more appealing but consider what went into bringing that bottle to the shelf.

Petroleum turned into plastic, washed, coloured, moulded, labelled, pressurized, packaged, packing labelling, transportation, storage, distribution, and refrigeration. And that is all before it gets to your mouth to be consumed in anywhere from 2-5 minutes. Then we have the problem of disposal – garbage, recycling, transportation, sorting, washing, chipping, repackaging, reprocessing, etc.

If we extend the actions of each characters in the play that is our thirst at a moment in time, what we find is that the threads are highly varied, dynamic, and near impossible to track fully.  So a simple future goal such as improving the environment for future generations is not as simple as it sounds when faced with these particular types of choices.

The mind can only hold so many pieces of information at one time. And this was a very simple example. To extrapolate this type of analysis to every decision that people make, at all times, is well beyond individual comprehension no matter how noble the goal.

Yes the future is bright, however
no one promised it would be easy.
If it was, everyone would be doing it.

In order to shape the future one must train themselves to think differently. It is not a matter of trying to hold all of these different ideas in your head but rather to emphasis which set of pre-conceptions are more important when faced with a general classification of problem.

What do I mean by that? Simply put, people run on auto pilot unless we see a situation which requires us to evaluate a choice. Think on this for a moment: in the last 10 car trips you’ve taken, how many of them can you remember the details of? Probably not many, and those that do come to mind will normally be the result of something unusual that happened on the way to work or wherever it was you were going.

The same as we drive on auto-pilot until something out of the ordinary happens, the way we make decisions about whether to drink from the fountain or buy a cola is also an in-grain auto response to our environment that has developed over time. Unless we see that choice as being something unusual – outside of our normal experience requiring a new way of thinking.

At that point, learning begins and we shape the future as a result. Not through trying to convince others to see things the way we do, but to influence others to see the act itself as being unusual compared to the standard mental model they already have. People will make up their own minds as a result. After all, the future is not about doing what is right for you, but what is right for them, in their circumstances, with their environmental factors, within their social network.

And this is why the future is so difficult to change – that tiny choice between cans and cardboard, bottles and plastic, is tempered by 7 billion voices all of which see the world differently than you do. In aggregate, the mob builds up critical mass and then one day we find that what we believed was okay one day is no longer the case the next. People can and do change as a result.

Does that mean that your tiny effort in a sea of voices will go unheard or un-noticed? No – it just means that until other people see the issues of the world as errata to be re-written within their consciousness, the amount of effort will be proportional to the number of minds that remain closed. People are highly observant however and in living a new way of doing things, you’ve already stimulated a closed mind when they see you doing something unusual that no one else is doing.

And that my friend is why the future is bright.

It doesn’t take changing every mind. Critical mass can be built up with as little as 12% of the total population you need to persuade to see things differently. It is a straight forward application of exponential mathematics and social networks.

When the average person introduces a new concept to their social network, between 2-3 people will be open minded enough to share the idea with someone else, who in turn will share it with someone else. At 12% penetration, a new idea only requires 2-3 new introductions before global consciousness shifts and a new paradigm is engrained.

So here’s to the future. Live it and change the world.

– Kevin Feenan

Part of the problem has stemmed from two pieces of “advice” I was given very early on in starting to work on Government contracts directly at the Federal level.

The first was that Government is not about the lowest dollar value – it is about the principles of transparency, accountability, and fairness. Value for money is always tempered by high accountability to Parliament, fairness to all Canadians, and transparency of process.

The second was that the public service is here to support the public interests, not stakeholder agendas.

Now being an idealist I take these principles to heart in that when I’m on a contract for an organization I have a vested interest in doing the right thing for the right reasons even if that means walking away from obvious opportunities for financial gain. If you are doing something wrong or not for the right reasons there is only so much time you can get away with that before it becomes obvious and then you don’t get invited back to the party later. It’s bad business and so I just don’t go there.

Notwithstanding the idealist perspective one of the things I found was that while most government services workers would agree with both sets of principles ‘in-theory’, the practical application of such on a day-to-day basis was less than stellar. So much so that the most common refrain heard in the non-executive levels of the government in multiple Departments was

“it’s all pensionable time”

More so than this, was the general attitude that one doesn’t put one’s head up above their cubicle for fear of it being smacked back down again – especially the idealists.

Having worked towards a doctorate encompassing organizational design, behavioural psychology, and knowledge management these attitudes towards the development of good organizational practices are both self-defeating of the main principles of government and, at worst, representative of a poisoned working environment.

Having seen the transition from Liberal to Conservative it is interesting to note the mechanisms that occur in the background of government subject to the direction and policies of the currently sitting government. To the point, the attitudes that predominate throughout government departments accelerate to match those of the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS), Public Works Government Services Canada (PWGSC), and most specifically those of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

Closed, dictatorial practices in the PMO are eventually mimicked throughout other departments not as a matter of direct influence (i.e. the PM saying “do it this way or else”). Rather these practices filter down because there is a way of interaction between the PMO and the rest of the Government that ensures the business of Government moves forward. Those practices that are aligned with the current administration’s ideology get first priority and those that don’t are left to mire in the bureaucracy of “the process”.

This type of cultural change takes time to establish. When Government changes every 3-5 years it becomes extremely difficult for any type of organizational best practices to be established within the bureaucracy of Government. This is because it takes on the order of 3-4 years for a solid working relationship to be established between the executive levels of Department management (i.e. down to the Director General level) and the PMO.

All the real work however is done by the 7 or so layers of the bureaucracy that lie below the DG level. Usually changes in Government organizational design seldom make it down this far before Government administrations change again. It is true that departments get renamed and reorganized at the lowest levels. Grant and Contribution programs come and go. But seldom are the organizational best practices and knowledge retention of these incarnations preserved. Rather the organization is in a constant state of re-organization which prevents best practices from being established.

The job of getting the day-to-day requirements completed is hard enough through successive waves of re-organization and political posturing without having to pay attention to silly things like total quality assurance.

Hence you have Directors and Assistant-Directors creating mini-fiefdoms, not because they want to but, because without solid leadership from the top down, it is the only way to get things done. There is an ever present need for the establishment of best practices that have some hope of withstanding the next round of re-organization while the upper executive levels are sorting out strategy of getting things approved by PWGSC, TBS, or the PMO such that they can meet the stated priorities of the current Government.

The best method of testing the health and whether the current Administration deserves to be retained in office is to poll the lowest levels of the organization and ask one very simple question:

“Do you feel you made a difference today?”

If the answer comes back that “it’s all pensionable time” then obviously the Government is not doing their job in supporting the public agenda because its these people at the bottom of that hierarchy that are responsible for making it happen – face to face with the Canadian public – not the ones at the top.

The second best method of testing the health and whether the current Administration deserves to be retained in office is to poll the executive (EX) level of the organization and ask one very simple question:

“How many times have you re-organized or switched teams/roles since the last election?”

The industry average for upper management in the private sector is 18 months. The average for Government of Canada EX level management is 6-9 months in an environment where plans and priorities can change based on the next crisis that besets the public interest (mad cow disease or listeriosis outbreaks  for example) never mind the next change in Government Administration. The closer the reorganizational number is to the industry average the healthier the organization.

It is next to impossible to establish best practices and quality assurance in knowledge management, accountability, transparency, and fairness outside of financial reporting mechanisms, when dealing with turnover at such high rates. Unfortunately financial metrics are the only thing the Government is adept at. The result is that accountability, transparency, and fairness are typically defined in financial terms even though it is readily acknowledged that financial metrics are not the only metrics that should be used to vet the Government’s plans and priorities.

Additionally, Government plans and priorities are generally set on a 3-5 year basis with minor modifications year-over-year notwithstanding crisis management situations. While it could be argued that it is the nature of government to need to accommodate shorter business cycles than what is found in the public sector, the reality of the situation is that such business cycles are in statistical control. This means that there is no reason why Government shouldn’t be looking at the larger picture to make the bureaucracy more effective in handling organizational change and best practices.

There are other metrics that can be used as well. For example a sampling of management behavioural patterns over time to be transparent as to the current plans and priorities as interpreted by each Department. If the PMO has a closed mentality to how information should be disseminated then those EX-level wannabes which most closely align with the PMO’s direction tend to receive preferential treatment which then ‘filters down’ each layer.

The bottom line here is that in order to be effective the health of the public bureaucracy needs to be one of the paramount objectives of the Government. Policy, in absence of the knowledge management, quality assurance, organizational design mechanism, and communications that make such policy happen, is leadership though absence. Laws and Acts of Parliament do not constitute change without enablement.

Has this government lived up? That is for each individual to decide. Certainly it is another lens from which to view all the political candidates to add to the myriad of others that are important to people as they make their own decision on May 2^nd.

– Kevin Feenan