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PATHS THRU: Mind Life Work Tech Domain PARADOXES, Volume 4: SMARTNESS that is actually SMART via getting OUTSIDE
The author writes--a nice thing when I was starting out in life and career was my discovery that the very top people in every field and profession (I and my MBA students interviewed 8000+ of them in 63 fields for research at the University of Chicago) was DANGEROUS--super smart in one slice of knowledge/world and totally dangerously ignorant of the other 9,999,999 slices they had not studied and contributed to. He goes on to temper this by saying--of course a few exceptions shone, stood out, thank goodness.
Hundreds of people in recent decades have noticed mountains of knowledge that are not either used or useful when used, piled up research articles no one, thank goodness, reads and applies. The few most famous ones when applied by sincere competent organizations--Harvard creativity research at P&G's Corporate New Ventures--end up producing the copying of a hit Japanese product 8 years after it hit in Japan. Harvard called that "a creative results", I have much higher standards and called it "forced delayed copying". With elites and tops and leaders and heros like that--no wonder democracies collapse, banking systems pulsate with every decade disasters, and "rich nation economies" end up producing people dying 7+ years earlier than less rich societies. Something is disastrously wrong, stupid one could well say, about our "smartest" people. They are dangers to themselves but even more dangers to us all. We MUST FIX THEM.
YOU do not have to tackle that--it is useful if you 1) learn to spot dangers from top ones and elites 2) learn to side-step harms from their incompetent or corrupt actions and thoughts 3) develop your own crossing all professions kinds of competence and curiosity--keeping you beyond contaminating tops and elites. This book, volume 4, is tools, distinct, apply-able, practice-able tools for doing that well.
Volume 3 tackled a long list of incompetencies of modern knowledge and professionals and grad schools producing them. This Volume 4 goes deeply into WHAT FIXES all that best. These are INDIVIDUAL PERSON things to do, not giant policies. YOU can use this book's 5 chapters yourself, right now.
Chapter 1 is about recognizing and "educating" all those aspects of you, mind, competence that are OUTSIDE your head--things schools should examine and educate but they unfortunately do not. Research on those a the top of 60+ professions found they had a large variety of tools and persons around them who performed distinct cognitive inspiration or news functions--amplifying beyond what brains alone can handle. The smartness of these "mind extensions" is most vital than what your brain instantly can produce.
Chapter 2 is how all influence, communication, persuasion, and sales depends on DETECTING LAYERS OF CONTEXT in both you as sender and others are receivers. What something means depends on those layers and the layers in you will NEVER be the same as the layers in others--so the beginning of power and influence and understanding is learning to WRAP your meaning in packaging that penetrates and helps what is needed and interesting in the receiver's differening context layers.
Chapter 3 is the specific features of a place--Silicon Valley--that made it lead the world in innovation for 50 years till invaded by East Coast USA snob MBAs filled with money seeking and status seeking. The features of Silicon Valley are matched by "border cities" that are partly in one nation-culture and partly in another (across a river, bridge, hill etc.). The feature are matched by mass workshop events that bring together 100s in a day or two of 16 hours of design workshops each team using different expert procedures from entirely different professions and domains--wedding together at the end partial results into never seen before whole-group done inventions
Hundreds of people in recent decades have noticed mountains of knowledge that are not either used or useful when used, piled up research articles no one, thank goodness, reads and applies. The few most famous ones when applied by sincere competent organizations--Harvard creativity research at P&G's Corporate New Ventures--end up producing the copying of a hit Japanese product 8 years after it hit in Japan. Harvard called that "a creative results", I have much higher standards and called it "forced delayed copying". With elites and tops and leaders and heros like that--no wonder democracies collapse, banking systems pulsate with every decade disasters, and "rich nation economies" end up producing people dying 7+ years earlier than less rich societies. Something is disastrously wrong, stupid one could well say, about our "smartest" people. They are dangers to themselves but even more dangers to us all. We MUST FIX THEM.
YOU do not have to tackle that--it is useful if you 1) learn to spot dangers from top ones and elites 2) learn to side-step harms from their incompetent or corrupt actions and thoughts 3) develop your own crossing all professions kinds of competence and curiosity--keeping you beyond contaminating tops and elites. This book, volume 4, is tools, distinct, apply-able, practice-able tools for doing that well.
Volume 3 tackled a long list of incompetencies of modern knowledge and professionals and grad schools producing them. This Volume 4 goes deeply into WHAT FIXES all that best. These are INDIVIDUAL PERSON things to do, not giant policies. YOU can use this book's 5 chapters yourself, right now.
Chapter 1 is about recognizing and "educating" all those aspects of you, mind, competence that are OUTSIDE your head--things schools should examine and educate but they unfortunately do not. Research on those a the top of 60+ professions found they had a large variety of tools and persons around them who performed distinct cognitive inspiration or news functions--amplifying beyond what brains alone can handle. The smartness of these "mind extensions" is most vital than what your brain instantly can produce.
Chapter 2 is how all influence, communication, persuasion, and sales depends on DETECTING LAYERS OF CONTEXT in both you as sender and others are receivers. What something means depends on those layers and the layers in you will NEVER be the same as the layers in others--so the beginning of power and influence and understanding is learning to WRAP your meaning in packaging that penetrates and helps what is needed and interesting in the receiver's differening context layers.
Chapter 3 is the specific features of a place--Silicon Valley--that made it lead the world in innovation for 50 years till invaded by East Coast USA snob MBAs filled with money seeking and status seeking. The features of Silicon Valley are matched by "border cities" that are partly in one nation-culture and partly in another (across a river, bridge, hill etc.). The feature are matched by mass workshop events that bring together 100s in a day or two of 16 hours of design workshops each team using different expert procedures from entirely different professions and domains--wedding together at the end partial results into never seen before whole-group done inventions
504 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 26, 2023
About the author
Richard Greene
113 books14 followersRichard Thomas Greene is a Canadian poet and biographer whose book Boxing the Compass won the Governor General's Award for English language poetry at the 2010 Governor General's Awards. Greene received his BA in English at Memorial University in 1983, and took his doctorate as a Rothermere Fellow at Oxford University in 1991. He returned to Memorial University to teach English before joining the University Of Toronto at Mississauga in 1995, as a member of the English and Drama department. Married to pianist Marianne Marusic and father to four children, he resides in Cobourg, Ontario.
Greene first distinguished himself as a teacher and a critic with his book Mary Leapor: A Study in Eighteenth-Century Women's Poetry, published in 1993. In addition to 18th-century poetry, it was with scholarly works on Dame Edith Sitwell and Graham Greene that Greene broke through to greater renown and a wide general readership. He enjoyed international success in 2007 with Graham Greene: A Life in Letters - a biography constructed out of the novelist's own words. His recent biography, Edith Sitwell: Avant-garde Poet, English Genius is an attempt to revive the reputation of a neglected writer.
Greene is primarily known in Canada as a poet. His first collection, Republic of Solitude: Poems 1984-1994 drew little attention from reviewers when published in Newfoundland in 1994. However, it contains poems such as "Utopia" that have been often anthologized. His second collection, Crossing the Straits, was published by the St. Thomas Poetry Series of Toronto in 2004. Richard Greene's third collection of poems, Boxing the Compass, describes the journeys Greene made by Greyhound and Amtrak while visiting archives of Graham Greene's letters. It eventually won him the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry.
Richard Greene currently teaches Creative Writing and British literature at the University of Toronto.
Greene first distinguished himself as a teacher and a critic with his book Mary Leapor: A Study in Eighteenth-Century Women's Poetry, published in 1993. In addition to 18th-century poetry, it was with scholarly works on Dame Edith Sitwell and Graham Greene that Greene broke through to greater renown and a wide general readership. He enjoyed international success in 2007 with Graham Greene: A Life in Letters - a biography constructed out of the novelist's own words. His recent biography, Edith Sitwell: Avant-garde Poet, English Genius is an attempt to revive the reputation of a neglected writer.
Greene is primarily known in Canada as a poet. His first collection, Republic of Solitude: Poems 1984-1994 drew little attention from reviewers when published in Newfoundland in 1994. However, it contains poems such as "Utopia" that have been often anthologized. His second collection, Crossing the Straits, was published by the St. Thomas Poetry Series of Toronto in 2004. Richard Greene's third collection of poems, Boxing the Compass, describes the journeys Greene made by Greyhound and Amtrak while visiting archives of Graham Greene's letters. It eventually won him the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry.
Richard Greene currently teaches Creative Writing and British literature at the University of Toronto.
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