Limitless Mind 3

I will say that I'm very much a sucker for this kind of book. As someone who is excited about trying to improve myself, a book that is basically about how it's good for you and thus far some practical ways to get other people who are at least a little interested in the idea on board as well sounds great.

Now, if someone has real objections there isn't a lot here for that. The strongest objection thus far dealt with in the book is that the problem is systemic (um, duh) and so any action that doesn't deal with that issue is just setting someone up for frustration and failure. And he's spot on and while they dealth with the issue a little bit in one of the recent chapters I'm reading, they barely scratched the surface.

Honestly, while having a goal direction is good, and thankfully many of the suggestions in this book can be implemented in different levels and different ways, if you don't have a solution for the systemic problem, Alfie Kohn's criticism is still a huge and unresolved problem.

When I think about the various revivals I've experienced in my working life, the story is mostly the same. A consultant is paid a lot of money to come in and implement some new way to do things. There is good buy in, usually from middle tier managers who are hopeful. In good situations, there's some early wins in implementing the new program, but either over time or in response to some event, the practices are dropped because they are overly burdensome for the value to the organization.

The problem I see with all of these, and what I'm trying to understand is that in many cases, these types of interventions lead to systems that are fragile in nature. That over time, while they promise improvement, they tend to get heavier over time, rather than reduce cycle times and pay for themselves. I think employees blame managers and vice versa, or a more estute person may blame the system, but at any rate nobody has any clue what to do about it.

There are a few organizations that seem to create antifragile systems, at least for a time. The longest running that I know of is probably Toyota. Ironically, many of the most well known failed management consulting ideas proported to originate from trying to understand their system. I have my own theories on why they fail, but the fact of the matter is that Toyota's system has been developed over a long time (was a product of post WW2 reconstruction, so 70+ years in development). That's a huge amount of time and effort for such a strategic asset.

I'm going to continue working through this book, and I'll probably check more into what Mr. Kohn has said otherwise. I would love to find other examples of antifraglie systems so that maybe I can figure out some similarities. But at this point, I have my doubts that this book is going to have those nuggets that are really going to excite me.